11 Fictional Band from Sci-Fi & Fantasy That Will Rock Your World

Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes (Space Opera, by Catherynne M. Valente)
If Douglas Adams took a whole lot of acid, watched Velvet Goldmine and Spinal Tap, and fell asleep listening to nothing but glam rock B-sides, he might dream a book like Space Opera. It’s a whirlwind of bizarre aliens and cutting satire the likes of which only comes around once in a generation (so don’t wait for the reunion tour). It’s Eurovision on a universe-wide scale, as washed-up glam rocker Decibel Jones, late of Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes, is recruited by aliens (or maybe settled on—all of their top picks were dead) for a concert/contest that he can’t lose. If he does, it will prove humanity isn’t sentient, and get Earth blasted into smithereens. Decibel Jones is a wreck of a human being, poured into an Alexander McQueen body suit and clinging to his glory days with white-knuckled desperation. For a brief, shining period (maybe only a single song), they were great, but those days have passed. Band member Oort St. Ultraviolet has moved on, and now makes hay as a humble studio musician, an honest living that provides for his wife and daughters. The third, perhaps most essential, Absolute Zero, Mira Wonderful, is dead. Flung onto a mind-bendingly strange planet with barely a hope, and (living on) a prayer, Decibel and his broken dreams are humanity’s only chance to live to sing another day. It’s a wacky, oddly heartbreaking and beautiful novella that shows that humanity can triumph over anything, with the help of banging costumes, the liberal application of glitter, and a hell of a lot of heart.

The Weird Sisters (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by J.K. Rowling)
The Harry Potter books are set in the late ’90s, which is why this wizard band sounds like it offers the very best of ’90s rock music. In fact, when the books were brought to the big screen, members of Pulp and Radiohead played for one night only as this magical supergroup. The Weird Sisters are one of the hottest acts in the wizarding world, and it’s a huge get for Hogwarts when they play the Yule Ball in The Goblet of Fire during Harry’s fourth year, where their hit song “Do The Hippogriff” brings down the house. No fair, Hogwarts—if my high school got Radiohead to play, maybe I would have gone to prom after all. Are DJs a muggle thing?

Sex Bob-omb (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, by Bryan Lee O’Malley)
Speaking of bands that have made the leap from page to screen, there’s Scott Pilgrim and his band of Canadian rockers. Sex Bob-omb, named after one of the enemies in Super Mario Bros., try their best to make a name for themselves in the Toronto music scene, while Scott does his best to avoid being beat to hell and back by the seven evil ex-boyfriends of his girlfriend, Ramona Flowers. Sex Bob-omb puts on a good show, but their concerts tend to turn into literal battles of the bands, as the evil exes take the opportunity to attack Scott when he’s vulnerable. One memorable showdown sees the power of their music manifest as a hulking yeti in order to take down a duo of EDM dragons, and that’s but one of several video game-inspired fights. And this is a band that doesn’t only live in our imaginations: the Edgar Wright film adaptation, less than a decade old and already a cult classic, has one of the best soundtracks in recent memory. You can’t go wrong with the likes of Metric, T-Rex, and the Pixies! Sex Bob-omb’s music was written by Beck, with Metric and Broken Social Scene lending their skills to the other bands.

The Band With Rocks In (Discworld, by Terry Pratchett)
Nothing on the Disc was safe from the pen of Terry Pratchett, and rock music is no exception. Soul Music brings rock music to Ankh-Morpork, creating a mild panic as The Band With Rocks In wrecks the place. Satirizing the rock music moral panic of the ’50s and ’60s, Soul Music delves into how quickly music can change your life, and change the world. Death himself is even taken aback. The band is made up of a harpist-turned-guitarist who rolls into town one day seeking his fortune, a troll who slams rocks together in lieu of drums, and a horn player. They cause Beatles-esque riots when they play, and their lead refuses to succumb to death, letting the music keep him alive instead. This forces a very reluctant and annoyed Susan Sto-Helit (Death’s daughter) to go deal with him. Literal rock music! Sir Terry, you scamp.

The Cantina Band (Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, edited by Kevin J. Anderson)
Star Wars has a long history of creating out of this world music, and it all started with the Mos Eisley Cantina band. In one of the most iconic scenes in the series, Luke Skywalker steps into a wretched hive of scum and villainy, and changes his life by meeting Han Solo. The Cantina band, a.k.a. Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes, sets the scene, showing just how alien, yet how familiar, this galaxy is. Other bands pop up throughout the series (who can forget Max Reebo in Return of the Jedi? And Lin-Manuel Miranda himself lends his voice to Star Wars: The Force Awakens), but Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes will always be first in our hearts.

Disaster Area (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, by Douglas Adams)
Who could blame Douglas Adams for wanting to add musical flair to his out-there sci-fi satire? In the sequel to the The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Arthur Dent and crew travel to the titular restaurant, when their ship breaks down. Zaphod and Ford manage to steal another ship and discover, to their delight and horror, it’s owned by the famous rock band Disaster Area, certified as the loudest band in the known universe. The only drawback—the vessel is designed to drive straight into a star to capture backup vocals for their concerts. Plenty of bands have stories of vans breaking down and equipment being stolen. There’s something hilarious about it happening again, in the furthest reaches of space.

Windhollow Faire (Wylding Hall, by Elizabeth Hand)
Moving from space satire to haunting horror, we have Elizabeth Hand’s spooky Wylding Hall. Windhollow Faire is a folk band dogged by tragedy: their lead singer has died under mysterious circumstances, and the band decamps to a remote manor house to regroup, and figure out what to do next. Death hangs over them, and they can’t shake the feeling something is horribly, hideously wrong. The book is haunting and tense, told as an oral history of the band as they recollect their time in the house. Each member is an unreliable narrator, having been drunk or high at the time, and unable to tell reality from hallucination. The story meanders as they try to make sense of what’s going on. It’s a hair-raising experience, and, in that sense, probably not unlike heading out on tour with Led Zeppelin

Amaterasu (The Wicked + the Divine, by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matthew Wilson, and Clayton Cowles)
This insanely gorgeous graphic novel series is heavily influenced by pop music, and it shows. Co-creators Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie both have refined taste in music, and that leaks into every part of the series, from the quippy asides to the huge set pieces based on modern-day musical acts. The series follows the trials of the reincarnated spirits of gods called the Pantheon—doomed every 90 years to be reborn as humans, and live for two years, only to die again—who harness pop culture and fame to feed their supernatural powers. That description barely scratches the surface of what has become one of the best graphic novel series the decade, and it all starts with a performance by Amaterasu. Part Bowie, part Stevie Nicks, her concert serves as the first step for the series’ protagonist Laura, into a new world of fame, gods, and death.

Kvothe (The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss)
If you like your music more on the singer/songwriter side of things, you would probably go crazy for Kvothe. Patrick Rothfuss‘s incomplete trilogy of epic fantasy novels spins a heady tale of a young lute player who uses his wits and his talents to gain admittance an exclusive magical university—and relies on his playing to keep his head above water and a roof over his head in a cutthroat world of academics and powerful magics. Kvothe is obscenely talented, enough that he’s one of the rare few to win the coveted talent pipes in the ongoing talent show at the Eolian, a local tavern where musicians congregate. Lucky for us, Kvothe is also going to get the chance to spin a song on the screen: adaptation rights for the books have been acquired, and Hamiltion juggernaut Lin-Manuel Miranda (him again?) is attached to the project. With Miranda onboard, there is no way Kvothe can hit a wrong note—Rothfuss even gave the Tony-winner his own talent pipes!)

Eddi and the Fey (War for the Oaks, by Emma Bull)
This seminal urban fantasy opens with struggling Minneapolis rocker Eddi McCandry quitting her band and breaking up with her boyfriend. Her night goes from bad to weirder when she discovers she’s being hunted by a strange man and a sinister dog—who turn out to be a shapeshifting fey creature who wants to recruit Eddi in a fairyland war between the Seelie and Unseelie courts. Eddi finds facing the supernatural a challenge for sure, but it’s not much tougher than putting together a new rock band. The book’s climax takes place during a rock concert that pits the newly formed Eddi and the Fey against the Queen of Air and Darkness, ruler of the Unseelie Court and a damn good singer, with the fate of worlds on the line. Many of the songs from the book have been played in real life by Bull’s band Cats Laughing.

David Bowie, Prince, and Queen
But Meghan, you say, these are all real bands! Well, are they? Some days I have to remind myself that David Bowie was real. Would anyone be surprised if he turned out to be an alien love god from another plane of existence? Someone else had a similar thought: Matt Wallace’s Sin Du Jour series casts two dearly departed musicians as integral characters. David Bowie finds new life as the king of the absurdly beautiful goblins in Lustlocked, and Prince swoops in as a deadly goblin warrior in Taste of Wrath. Both are utterly believable as supernatural badasses, and Wallace gives them an additional kind of immortality by placing them in his stories so soon after they left us in the real world. Queen has their own magic as well: in Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s iconic Good Omens, any cassette tape (remember those?) left in a car glove box turns into a Best of Queen compilation after a fortnight. Honestly, that’s one bit of book magic I wouldn’t mind. Who doesn’t love Queen?