Why do authors bother to reference music in a written text? Sure, some references are ubiquitous in the time they’re published - but those are going to date as badly as adolescent slang. And what about inventing new songs or genres wholesale?
These are some of the questions addressed in this month’s subscriber essay by Mary Fan. Both a musician and an author, Fan looks at some instances of music in a variety of SFF settings, and then explores the reason for its existence in her own work.