Bandwagon Read online

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  By Andrew Fish

  Copyright 2013 Andrew Fish

  All Rights Reserved

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons alive, dead or goth is purely coincidental. But then, that's the entertainment industry for you...

  Foreword to the Digitally Remastered Edition

  There are, in my experience, two kinds of writers - ice floes and icebergs. Both are adrift on a sea of opportunity, pushed around by currents of circumstance. But the ice floes are all on the surface - what you see is what you get - whilst the icebergs are more than meets the eye. What do I mean? Well, assuming you know any writers or wannabe writers, how often do you come across one who has the “one big idea” that will make them rich? How often are they peddling the one book they have written with seemingly no intention of writing another? Those are the ice floes.

  The icebergs meanwhile will push one book whilst writing another. This is partially because they enjoy the writing rather than simply clamouring for the success, partially because they find it difficult to retain confidence in a single idea or book for long enough to keeping pushing just the one. An iceberg that has been adrift for a long time, therefore, will have a vast amount that is never seen by the masses.

  I am, by this definition, an iceberg. Since the heady days of 2001, when I decided finally to take my writing seriously and strive to complete a novel, I've written armfuls. Most have never been published. Most have never even been submitted to an agent or publisher. The reason for this is largely the very complex history of Erasmus Hobart and the Golden Arrow, which was written in 2003 (under the title Robin Who?) and which has been accepted for publication three times and actually published twice in the last decade. Being driven around by the vicissitudes of that particular current, it is perhaps not surprising that I haven't got round to publishing other books.

  There is, however, one exception. Bandwagon was the book before Erasmus. There had been two previous volumes, Others and Others at War - neither of which, in retrospect, were very good - but Bandwagon was the first book I felt had something. It was fun, original, and it’s one of the most Douglas-Adamsy things I ever wrote.

  It was, of course, rejected by publishers. Not often - I’ve never had the stamina to keep resubmitting the same book until I could, like Frank Herbert, wallpaper my bathroom in rejection slips. But after half a dozen rejections, I despaired enough to look at self-publishing. The process was somewhat slow and laborious, but eventually a copy was issued through a company called Publish and be Damned. So slow was the process, however, that by the time the book was ready to sell, Erasmus had been written and accepted for publication for the first time. As a result, Bandwagon never got enough of my attention to make a mark.

  Some years later, during a surge of optimism brought on by Erasmus’ second acceptance, I revisited Bandwagon. To my surprise, I still rather liked it. Sure, it was rather rough around the edges, but the charm and humour still appealed to me. I decided, therefore, to give it a little tweak. Not for release, but more or less as an exercise and to see how far I’d come. The result, which I refer to as the Digitally Remastered Edition, is a book still not as professional as Erasmus (which was, after all, a quantum leap in my literary development) but one I could imagine having pushed more vigorously had Erasmus not emerged.

  Fast-forward another few years and Erasmus is out there again, this time as an e-book (hopefully going into print soon). The emergence of the Kindle and its kindred has created new opportunities for authors and publishers alike. I’ve decided, therefore, to let Bandwagon in its digitally remastered form out into the world. Not as paying book, but a freebie, partially to see if people enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, partially - to be honest - to create a little noise and help Erasmus along.

  So take, read, and enjoy. If you do enjoy this one, Erasmus isn’t quite the same, but you may also find it worth a look. There’s a website at https://www.erasmushobart.com which will help you find it in shops and point you to the Facebook page. And please do feel free to share Bandwagon with friends. The more people who read it and enjoy it, the more who might read Erasmus and the more of that iceberg that may eventually become visible.

  Andrew Fish, June 2013

  Notes to reader: Allegro, with feeling – rest if feeling crotchety.

  The origins of music are lost in the swirling mists of antiquity - the time signature lost to the memory of a race that can only faintly hear its coda in the wind. Historians generally hold that music, as we understand the term, emerged from the rhythmic chants used by primitive warriors to unnerve their enemies before a battle, but why something intended as a weapon could have found itself a place as a form of artistic expression is scarcely understood - after all, you wouldn’t expect to see an H-Bomb on display in an art gallery1. The reason that we do not know why music made its leap from weapon of mass distraction is that in most civilizations this occurred before the days of recorded history: by the time our ancestors leap onto the written page, they have already played the pipes of peace. A notable exception to this, however, is to be found on a planet in the Rigel system, where the transition came relatively recently: the planet of Rigel IV had been a veritable arena of war for millennia – a place where you didn’t only shoot the piano player, but hung his body on a gibbet as an example to anyone else who tried to sing about their ex-wives with a pot of paint balanced on their instrument. The planet was in a continual state of turmoil and, although the myriad tribes had gradually coalesced into two huge power blocks, there seemed to be no let up in the violence. Oddly enough, this hadn’t stopped music from advancing from the stage of people yelling ‘you’re gonna get your f***king head kicked in’ accompanied by a very large drum, and the many tribal communities had brought their traditional instruments to the army such that the two opposing armies would march into battle with substantial music troupes in tow. And this is pretty much how things would have remained, until one fateful day, when a battle now known as the peace overture was about to be joined. The two armies duly began their pre-battle psychological warfare, but by a million to one chance, the opposing music troupes happened not only to be playing in the same key, but in the same time signature and, against all odds, they broke into a jam session and all thoughts of battle were forgotten. Needless to say the powers that be were not amused and, at the signing of the subsequent briefly maintained treaty, both sides agreed to ban musicians from accompanying military operations. The last thing that any nation with a vested interest in war wants is racial harmony.

  Whilst we can only speculate as to the cause of the transition on our own world, it is clear that music, freed from the constraints of the military, was able to develop along more experimental lines, producing material that was not intended simply to scare, but to elicit other effects in its listeners: music could be used to woo a maiden, to impress visiting nobility or to give praise to a deity. This increasing diversity of music led to the development of notation by which songs could be passed not only between contemporary musicians but also between generations, allowing music to develop and evolve in a more complex manner than had been possible with the earlier oral traditions. So, music thrived for many years until, perhaps inevitably, the major religions began to get involved.

  In many cultures, as strong religions arose to dominate and subdue their precursors, restrictions were placed on all forms of creative expression in order to suppress any influences which might allow the older, pagan religions to survive. The most holy order of the blue flame on Omicron II, for example, decreed that not only was polyphony to be outlawed as a reflection of a polytheistic society and repetitive rhythm as the basis for the monotony of eternal damnation, but that any note other than middle C would imply that the holy flame could have some
other colour than blue and was therefore also banned. As a result, music on Omicron became totally monotonic and arrhythmic and was frequently mistaken for the song of a particularly dull breed of bird. The ruling also resulted in the killing of all other species of bird, as they were obviously heretics. Religious constraint did not last forever, however, and as people began to question the established values of their precursors, music began to go through a form of rebirth or renaissance. Once more the art flourished and, as it became fashionable with the less constrained nobility of the time, they gave their patronage to a new breed of professional musicians, relieving them of the worry of feeding themselves and leaving them free to explore music as it had never been explored before. Studies were made of music from other cultures, which were brought together and blended to create rich orchestral tapestries. Musicians began to gain an understanding of how music worked from an analytical viewpoint and used this to produce pieces of surprising simplicity and subtle mathematical elegance. At least two cultures are known to have created unfinished symphonies based