Whilst originally the idea was to arrive at a TopTwenty only, with in the end 189 different songs nominated by 22 UNL SCTL program faculty, staff, alumni and students too many good songs would not have made it, so it became a FabForty instead – and still, a song needed at least two major nominations to make it to the final list. If songs were still tied, simple seniority and first-to-file rules would decide – and they always allowed for final prioritization. Secondly, songs with higher individual nominations would win out over songs with lower nominations – on the assumption that at the top of individual lists nominations should perhaps gain a little more than merely one point over the competitor one place down. Firstly, representing the spirit of the commonality of the UNL program, songs with more individual nominations would win out over songs with less. Whenever songs ended with equal total points, pre-determined tie-breakers were used. Then, a simple scoring system awarded points from 20 for the individual #1 down to 1 for the individual #20, totaling the scores per song. In addition, similar types of references to ‘Nebraska’ could substitute for references to ‘space’, to recognize UNL’s unique Space, Cyber and Telecommunications law program. The eligibility criteria were quite generous: to be nominated a musical piece either had to reference one way or another ‘space’ or space-related names, items, or concepts in the title, or in the lyrics (if applicable), or had to be accompanied by video footage so referencing ‘space’ respectively be used as soundtrack for space-related footage.
The process was fairly simple: everyone so interested could nominate up to twenty favorites. What better way of reflecting the common spirit of the UNL program than allowing everyone involved with the program so interested to nominate his or her favorite pieces of music (classical, jazz, minimal music, pop or rock, hiphop or rap, whatever was of appeal) that have a close connection to space, and combine them into a single, major list – the Fabulous Forty? Frans von der Dunk, Leiden, July 2016 The Process I already had been collating a list of space-related songs for my own purposes, so I knew there was enough eligible material around – although I would soon find out there was much, much more than I had originally figured currently the score is just over 400. It was this approach which inspired me to collect the musical choices of faculty, staff, alumni and students of the program in much more comprehensive fashion.
Yet, few may have taken this seemingly natural linkage so literally as Professor Jack Beard: as soon as he started teaching classes in UNL’s LLM program in Space, Cyber and Telecommunications Law, he decided to use clips of music to set the mood, allowing students to come up with their respective favorites. From the launch of a spacecraft as a first-magnitude dramatic event, naturally calling for the accompaniment of bombastic high-volume orchestration, to the immense emptiness of outer space, to be reflected by alienating minimal-music soundscapes: there’s nothing like a good piece of music to underscore the uniqueness of outer space and the space experience. Many are the links between space and music – music as the most abstract of arts often offering the most appropriate means to capture and reflect the out-of-the-ordinary character of outer space, where words may easily seem to come up short.
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