Please see our Publisher’s Note following this month’s Editorial that has important information about a new threat to the survival of all SF/F/H magazines.

The backdrop of the greatest concert performance of all time was catastrophic solar behavior that devastated the Tau Ceti system in 4032, knocking the technology of the three inhabited planets to the stone age and putting fourteen billion sentient beings in peril. Of course the news swept the United Systems and generated an outpouring of grief, support and promises of aid, but promises fell short and soon people moved on to other stories. It wasn’t until supergroup Hinged Metal’s single, “Remember the Children,” climbed the charts, reaching number one in a record breaking seventeen systems that the idea of a simultaneous, multi-venue charity concert took hold with the most popular musicians.

The HooDoos, who soared to prominence on Trappist C, joined first. When their lead singer, Klanli-Shu pledged to sacrifice two tentacles for the cause, other celebrities joined. Even Briggedy Starm from Rigel D came out of retirement, guitar in claw. Thirty-three supergroups enlisted in the effort, filling massive stadiums in a colossal, joyous, raucous, simulcast celebration of rock-n-roll exuberance.

All peoples in the United Systems participated. All species: the para-dolphins of Gliese B, the winged flocks of Kapteyn D, the underground-dwelling civilizations of Proxima Centauri C and its moons. All that walked or crawled or oozed sponsored concerts.

But it was Hinged Metal’s performance on Fomalhaut E that everyone remembers, the greatest concert in the long history of concerts.

Lead singer, Hownes, of old Earth, whose vocal range and stage command had already made her an icon, was keyed up as she never had been before. Drummer Lydia King, in her only interview where she talked about Fomalhaut, said, “Before we went on, Hownes told me, ‘Be my beating heart tonight. March me to glory.’ Bit of a poser, she was. Full of herself.”

No extro-planet band had ever played Fomalhaut E. The amorphous connectome organisms that populated the world covered acres of ground, like land-based slime mold. Thousands of independent brain sacks in the massive colonies protruded above the living blanket that was themselves joined in a vast circulatory, digestive, neuro cooperative. Each brain sack could see and hear, and most importantly, sing. Eyes drifted across their jellied heads. Mouths opened where you least expected. They could separate from their colony, work independently, build and fly starships—autonomous bear-sized amoebas flowing over their tools, reshaping themselves to fit the task. Their science was impressive, but they felt most at home in their collectives.

They’d built performance stadiums for their home-grown talent. Their enthusiasm for pop reached light years. The open-air stadium on Fomalhaut E held 1.2 million intelligences, and it did that night, but another three million attended from outside, hooked together in the largest gathering of neuro-colonies on the planet.

Blade, Metal Hinge’s lead guitarist, opened the set in a single spotlight, picking through the two-chord progression of “Crime.” The Fomalhaut blanket of sentience, like a bumpy jelly sea, roared in unison.

Hownes emerged from the darkness, backlit, her hair a golden nimbus haloing her head. She hummed the tune, no lyrics yet. In her trademark white makeup, pale as a drum head, slender as a reed, she stepped to the edge of the stage. She swayed clutching her microphone and then pointing it to the audience. They hummed with her. She hummed. They hummed. Eyes glistening in the reflected light. A droning call and response.

Finally she sang, “If you see the sky . . . if you see the sky . . . we burn with you . . . we burn.”

Lydia King joined with the drum accompaniment, at first a soft rhythm from the floor tom and bass. The rhythm guitar pulsed to life.

“Petals coat the ground . . . petals coat the ground . . . we touch the curve . . . we touch.”

Five minutes to the first crescendo. Keyboard counter melody. Lydia King really leaning into the drum set. Camera close up on their faces, perspiration glistening. Hownes poured herself into the verse. Panoramic audience view. The blanket of sentiences pulsing to the beat, bioluminescence rippling through the crowd.

Hownes dropped her microphone. The band settled into a variation of the opening. Blade stepped forward, picking through the two-chord intro again, but up-tempo, bouncing with the drum. Hownes ran across the stage, beckoning to the audience, exhorting them. She stepped over the knee-high rails of the raised stage and lowered herself to the ten-foot wide apron separating the crowd from the performers.

The band couldn’t see her now.

She’d done this before, was legendary for it. On Ross B, she’d pulled four members from the crowd onto the apron. Danced with them for fifteen minutes. “The music makes us one,” she’d said later. Exhausted, the band played on, not knowing what she was doing, variation on variation while Hownes cavorted with the fans. Hugging them. A singer of the people.

But she’d never danced on Fomalhaut E, never seen the sheen of millions joined together in primitive protoplasmic rock-n-roll joy.

No one had.

So she reached into the mass to draw an individual out. That must be what she intended. Her hand went in, disappeared into the living jelly, and in and in, up to her shoulder. The camera hovered above. No images exist of her final expression. Her head went under, and then her torso and legs. She’d joined the neuro-collective.

The faces on the brain sacs, such as they were, if they could be interpreted, seemed ecstatic.

Unknowing, the band played and played.

Then, Hownes’ voice arose from the crowd, inaudible at first below the drumming and guitars and keyboard.

Lydia King said, “We believed it was her. We thought there must have been another microphone. It was her.”

“If you see the sky . . . if you see the sky . . . we burn with you . . . we burn.”

Hownes sang from the crowd with over four million mouths, four million individuals ringing as one, as if they were a single throat eight-million square feet wide.

Camera cut to Lydia King, sweat flying as she played, hands a blur. She wept. She said, “We were plugged into the music gods, or something,” she said. “Never felt that way before.”

Hownes’ voice took them to the ending verse.

“Angels cry for love . . . hold the angel’s hand . . . for love.”

And her voice faded to silence.

No applause. A profound quiet.

They knew, even then, in that peace of millions, they’d become a part of music history.

Academics studied the eleven minutes from Blade’s opening chords until the stillness. Young musicians for a generation displayed Hownes’ image on their bedroom walls, dreaming about playing their instruments and writing forever songs that would never be forgotten.

Blade and the rest of the band refused to talk about “The Performance” later. Hinged Metal broke up not long after, as if they knew their moment of fame passed.

Only Lydia King offered comments, and it was years removed, in her last interview before she died. “It was always about her, right to the end.” She sat for a moment, an old drummer who once played to full stadiums, who once had been the beating heart within the body of Hinged Metal. A footnote to the greatest concert of all time.

Lydia King rested her face on her arthritic hand, tapped out an unheard rhythm on her cheek.

Finally, she added, “Still, you have to admit. She knew how to work a crowd.”