Story Details
Categories Science Fiction
"Making Music on Ganymede" takes us to Jupiter and its most famous moon where Liz —a young resident of Spudsville— becomes enthralled by the possibility of her favorite band, Jantz Ecstatic and the Angels of the Cybernetic Afterlife, performing in her own home town. As Liz tries to convince her neighbors to host the concert, she navigates local politics, community resistance, and personal responsibilities. Here we follow Liz's efforts to bring change and excitement to a conservative society, reflecting broader themes of community, ambition, and youthful determination.
Author Details
Chad Gayle’s science fiction has appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, Inner Worlds, and The Colored Lens. In addition to teaching English at institutions in Texas and North Carolina, Chad has worked as a computer programmer, a graphic designer, and a freelance photographer. Proud father to two humans and three felines, he’s also an avid roller skater who can be found on fair weather days skating gleefully through the streets of New York, the city he calls home. Learn more about Chad’s publications and photography at https://chadgayle.com/. STORY NOTES FOR "MAKING MUSIC ON GANYMEDE" I fell in love with David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” when I was seven years old. I lived in the country then, outside of a peanut farmers town paradoxically known as Grapeland. After my parents’ divorce, I looked on that time in my life as a moment of unspoiled innocence, and it wasn’t until I became an adult that I wondered how I would’ve turned out if I hadn’t been forced to trade the piney woods of my childhood for the dirty streets of a city I’d never seen—the city of Waco, Texas. What would have happened to the teenager I became, the rail-thin, insecure geek who hated sports and loved the Talking Heads, Dungeons & Dragons, Pee-Wee Herman, and everything David Bowie had ever recorded, if I’d stayed in Grapeland, if my family had never left the woods? “Making Music on Ganymede” is my (unabashedly) hopeful answer to that question. It’s an answer that acknowledges a harsh reality of being different and of not fitting in: that is, that wanting to make a space where you can be accepted for who and what you are forces you to deal with the very people who would dismiss you. We all need allies, in other words, and we have to be willing to give those allies a chance to side with us, even when we think they won’t.
Making Music on Ganymede, by Chad Gayle
Author Details
Chad Gayle’s science fiction has appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, Inner Worlds, and The Colored Lens. In addition to teaching English at institutions in Texas and North Carolina, Chad has worked as a computer programmer, a graphic designer, and a freelance photographer. Proud father to two humans and three felines, he’s also an avid roller skater who can be found on fair weather days skating gleefully through the streets of New York, the city he calls home. Learn more about Chad’s publications and photography at https://chadgayle.com/. STORY NOTES FOR "MAKING MUSIC ON GANYMEDE" I fell in love with David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” when I was seven years old. I lived in the country then, outside of a peanut farmers town paradoxically known as Grapeland. After my parents’ divorce, I looked on that time in my life as a moment of unspoiled innocence, and it wasn’t until I became an adult that I wondered how I would’ve turned out if I hadn’t been forced to trade the piney woods of my childhood for the dirty streets of a city I’d never seen—the city of Waco, Texas. What would have happened to the teenager I became, the rail-thin, insecure geek who hated sports and loved the Talking Heads, Dungeons & Dragons, Pee-Wee Herman, and everything David Bowie had ever recorded, if I’d stayed in Grapeland, if my family had never left the woods? “Making Music on Ganymede” is my (unabashedly) hopeful answer to that question. It’s an answer that acknowledges a harsh reality of being different and of not fitting in: that is, that wanting to make a space where you can be accepted for who and what you are forces you to deal with the very people who would dismiss you. We all need allies, in other words, and we have to be willing to give those allies a chance to side with us, even when we think they won’t.
