ok but like. space shanties.
there’s a thing that should definitely be a thing in sci-fi.
my brain went straight to the ‘put him in the airlock ‘till he’s sober’ part of ‘what can you do with a drunken spacer’ and i never want to look back from this.
THIS IS 100% A THING. It’s usually considered a subset of filk, so naturally a lot of prolific filk artists like Leslie Fish have a selection. Sci-fi filk is possibly my favorite genre of music.
Most of these are actually ballads, not true shanties, but still:
The Senate - Space Shanty
Kristoph Klover - Fire in the Sky
Duane Elms - Dawson’s Christian
Catherine Faber - Providence Skies
Julia Ecklar - Ballad of a Spaceman
Leslie Fish & Ann Prather - Hanrahan’s Bar
Julia Ecklar & Ann Prather - Pushin’ the Speed of Light
Leslie Fish - Ship of Stone
Leslie Fish - Guardians
Leslie Fish - Sam Jones
Vic Tyler - Space Hero
Vic Tyler & Duane Elms - Spacer’s Home
You can probably just google “sci-fi filk” and get a zillion more. It’s a surprisingly rich genre for one so unknown to most people.
I don’t normally reblog this kind of post, but this seems so perfect as background music for a dark matter game, I had to share it with you all. SPACE SHANTIES HO!
For those unaware reblogging this post, “What Shall We Do With A Drunk Space Pirate” was the close out song for the Mechanisms concerts. Their entire discography was taking folk songs and making them sci-fi epic concept albums.
Some of my favorite songs include:
Matty Groves, now with electric violin, about a lute that controls the dead.
Pump Me Boys, now a shanty about keeping the life support systems running on a dying ship.
Gently Johnny, now about sirens in a neo-noir sci-fi city lulling people into complacency.
Rising of the Moon, now about a doomed manager of a space station that descends into chaos and mutiny, left abandoned.
What does filk stand for here?
What this has taught me, is a criminally low number of people know the word Spacer.























