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September 21, 2021
Lincoln Michel's Playlist for His Novel "The Body Scout"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Lincoln Michel's novel The Body Scout is a fast-paced, inventive, and thought-provoking debut.
Esmé Weijun Wang wrote of the book:
"This novel is delightful in its brio and sharp as a tack in its inventiveness—and yet its greatest, most poignant gift is in asking: What does it mean to inhabit a body? A superb read."
In his own words, here is Lincoln Michel's Book Notes music playlist for his debut novel The Body Scout:
My debut novel, The Body Scout, is a science fiction noir set in a climate-ravaged future where body modification, cybernetics, and genetic editing have turned the human body itself into the latest booming “market.” There’s also philosophical Neanderthals, hybrid animals, cyborg baseball players, and lots of other fun stuff.
The novel is a bit of a return to my youth, in the sense that I decided to stop worrying about what counts as “literary” or not and drew on the authors I loved as a teenager, which were mostly SFF authors or weird literary authors—Italo Calvino, Ursula K. Le Guin, Kurt Vonnegut, Franz Kafka, etc.—who tackled big ideas but never forgot to have fun. In this spirit, I thought I’d make a playlist of artists who were important to me back in high school and have a science fiction or surreal edge.
The Government Flu by The Dead Kennedys
For better or worse, no band influenced my aesthetic sensibilities as a teen more than The Dead Kennedys who combined scathing political satire, dark humor, and weird vocals with ripping punk chords. This song about a government manufactured flu feels relevant to my novel, which features governments and corporations more than happy to create and release genetically edited diseases and parasites on protestors and rebels.
Halfsharkalligatorhalfman by Dr. Octagon
Kool Keith and Dan the Automator’s Surrealist space opera hip-hop album about a time traveling alien doctor hit my teen sense of humor right on target. This isn’t the most famous song on the album, or best, but for some reason it’s the one I always remember. My vomit fluctuates, covers your skull like protoplasm / Lightning bugs turn pink, on my tongue catches spasms. Same, Doc.
Caribou by The Pixies
For many kids I knew, The Pixies were a gateway to punk, hardcore, metal, and other more extreme music. For me, they were the opposite. I listened to so much brutal, screamy music as a kid that The Pixies half-singing / half-screaming style helped me realize “Hey, maybe melody isn’t so bad after all.” I don’t think this song is SF really, but the lyrics about hating one’s “human form” are something my main character would sing along to.
Moonage Daydream by David Bowie
There’s likely a law that any list of science fiction songs needs to include one by David Bowie. My favorite song on Ziggy Stardust is “Moonage Daydream.” Be warned that if you go to karaoke with me, you’ll probably hear me butcher it.
Keep your 'lectric eye on me, babe
Put your ray gun to my head
Press your space face close to mine, love
Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah!
Space Junk by Devo
Devo were a band that knew how to marry political satire and weird melodies with a great sense of fun. Here’s a song about the junk we leave in space falling down to earth and killing people. Isn’t that what rock is all about?
Invasion of the Dragonmen by Man or Astroman?
Man or Astroman? was a weird '90s band who placed instrumental '60s surf music with a punk edge and lots of science fiction movie audio clips. What’s not to love?
Chicken Headed Raccoon Dog by Melt Banana
I have no clue what this song is about (kind of impossible to parse Melt Banana’s poppy but noisy vocals), but Melt Banana are a good enough stand in for the screamy bands I loved as a teen and I’m choosing to believe this one is about some kind of transgenic hybrid animal since I’ve got some of those in The Body Scout.
Astro Zombies by The Misfits
If you didn’t spend your high school years driving around the backroads bellowing gory B movie-inspired lyrics by some corny dudes from Jersey, then we are not the same.
The Clampdown by The Clash
After The Dead Kennedys, The Clash were probably the punk band I listened to the most. While they didn’t exactly play with SF concepts, “The Clampdown” definitely conjures a dark hyper-capitalist dystopia that would probably be recognizable to the characters in my novel.
Bachelorette by Björk
Björk’s whole music catalog is science fiction in my book. Her dreamy cosmic sound and surreal lyrics (written by the poet and novelist Sjón in this case) were right up my alley. This song, with its focus on the body, might be The Body Scout appropriate.
Iron Galaxy by Cannibal Ox
Released my last semester of high school, The Cold Vein remains one of my favorite rap albums. El-P’s beats are cosmic and cold, while MCs Vast Aire and Vordul Mega somehow combine gritty NYC realism with science fiction tropes. Just an amazing album from start to finish. Here’s the first song, and perhaps a good place to end.
Lincoln Michel is the author of The Body Scout (Orbit, 2021), as well as the story collection Upright Beasts (Coffee House Press, 2015), which was named a best book of the year by Buzzfeed and reviewed in the New York Times; Vanity Fair; O, The Oprah Magazine; Tor.com and elsewhere. His fiction and poetry appear in The Paris Review, Granta, Tin House, Strange Horizons, Vice's Motherboard, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. His essays and criticism have been published by The New York Times, GQ, Rolling Stone, and The Guardian. He is the former editor-in-chief of Electric Literature. He is the co-editor of the science fiction anthology Gigantic Worlds (Gigantic Books 2015), the flash noir anthology Tiny Crimes (Catapult, 2018), and the forthcoming horror anthology Tiny Nightmares (Catapult, 2020). He teaches speculative fiction writing in the MFA programs at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University.
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