Jóhann Jóhannsson (1969–2018)

Jóhannsson's hypnodrone Oort Cloud cello-synth score takes phantasmal form from the vacuum of space, "a volume of non-luminous gas" ushering Tilda's Swin-tones to our primitive ears from two thousand million years in the future. She's an infinitely-evolved form of humanity, a telepathic being from Neptune of unknowable depth, so she's well-cast here, as are the Cyclopean Yugoslav spomeniki as the kind of structures a race of Swintons with "astronomical eyes" and bodies "covered with fur, or mole velvet, revealing the underlying muscles" might come up with if left to themselves for untold millenia. One spomenik in particular is reminiscent of the Easter Island moai, the work perhaps of another people confronting their own annihilation. The narration is gently anthropological, Attenboroughsian even, priming us on the peculiarities of our future selves ("the fetus is carried for twenty years. Infancy lasts for about a century") and touching on Ballardian eco-horror with talk of polar migrations and evaporating oceans before zooming out and losing itself in Saganesque cosmic awe. Like all great science fiction, it's a deeply human story.

Great are the stars, and humankind is of no account to them. But humankind is a fair spirit, whom a star conceived, and a star kills.

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