The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion
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Uncanny Magazine Issue 9
Short Stories
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August 2025 Short Story: "Just Another Future Song" by Daryl Gregory
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Natalie
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Aug 01, 2025 02:06PM
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The story had potential, but not enough character or setting information was shared for it to make sense. The ending, in particular, lacked the buildup required for it to be comprehensible.
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As I understand it, David (Jones) Bowie is in a hospital with either age- or drug-induced dementia. Doctors want to offer him a way to upload his mind, but he's not mentally competent enough to be able to fully consent. Some super fans break him out and offer to upload him instead to a world built around his past persona from the album "Diamond Dogs". In the end, he comes to his senses enough to upload or recreate himself into a brand new persona. (Exactly how, I don't understand.)
As a Bowie super-fan, I'm surprised I hadn't found this story before. Thanks Natalie for suggesting it. At the very least, it was fun seeing how many quotes and references I could catch.
...Just another future song, lonely little kitsch
(There's gonna be sorrow) try and wake up tomorrow
BTW: for those who don't know, the album "Diamond Dogs" incorporates songs based on the novel 1984. Bowie couldn't get the rights to the book, so he spun the few songs he'd written for that into a new SF concept.
As they pulled you out of the oxygen tent
You asked for the latest party
With your silicone hump and your ten inch stump
Dressed like a priest you was
Tod Browning's Freak you was
Crawling down the alley on your hands and knee
I'm sure you're not protected, for it's plain to see
The Diamond Dogs are poachers and they hide behind trees
Hunt you to the ground they will, mannequins with kill appeal
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OK. But it's Daryl Gregory and Bowie who created all that. (And Natalie who picked it.)
Ah, okay, makes more sense now, though it's still murky. I'm only vaguely aware of David Bowie and completely ignorant of Diamond Dogs.Still, a SF story shouldn't depend so completely on a pop culture reference to make any kind of sense.
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Creators should make whatever they want. But obscure references will turn off much of the audience.
I don't go watch current superhero movies, for example, because I don't know the deep history of the hundreds of characters. Some people live and breath that stuff, and that's fine for them, but not me.
Ed, you and I are sympatico both as Bowie super-fans & super hero character aficionados (old school). Filling in a little more Bowie info, he went through several personas in the early to mid-70s, corresponding to his vision of the character representing the musical phase he was in. Thus there was the alien Ziggy Stardust through 1972-73, the (classic) albums The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders from Mars, Aladdin Sane (“a lad insane”), topped off by Pin-Ups, an album of covers as Ziggy was dying off. He then fired his band, signifying a significant musical change, and moved to his next persona, Halloween Jack, who was made for the Diamond Dogs concept album. He wasn’t too far off the Ziggy/Aladdin Sane character in appearance though. Jack didn’t last long - Bowie made a radical musical change to Philly-style soul, becoming a suited soul singer (“Soul Man”) during the tour & next album, Young Americans (the album David Live documents this change). In 75-76, Bowie played the main character in the SF movie The Man Who Fell to Earth (from the book by Walter Tevis) & took on that persona as “The Thin White Duke” for the album Station to Station & the subsequent tour. And was thin indeed - it was the peak of his drug use - cocaine addiction. The Duke never had a send off, he just disappeared as Bowie moved to Berlin with Iggy Pop so that both could clean up & make music together, quite successfully
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But did you like/understand the story?
