Best known for his work with Hawkwind, Robert Calvert was a singer, lyricist, poet, playwright, and conceptual artist who collaborated with Brian Eno and Barney Bubbles among others. As excellent writer on all things Hawkwind, Joe Banks, wrote Robert Calvert was ‘(a) brilliant performer and clever, witty songwriter, Calvert used science-fiction and fantasy as a way of interrogating, rather than escaping, the modern world (Banks 2015). This is an interesting observation on Calvert and contrasts him with another figure he is sometimes compared with, David Bowie. According to Hebdige ‘Bowie’s meta-message was escape - from class, from sex, from personality, from obvious commitment - into a fantasy past…or a science-fiction future. When the contemporary ‘crisis’ was addressed, it was done so obliquely, represented in transmogrified form as a dead world of humanoids, ambiguously relished and reviled’ (Hebdige 79: 61). According to Mankowski, Bowie used sci-fi themes to create an outsider perspective (Mankowski 2021: 24). Calvert's writing, by contrast, often encouraged empathetic engagement from the perspective of someone involved and affected. Calvert knew escape was individualised illusion and that in reality the options were active involvement or apathy, this is illustrated by the above photo, a still from the recently released Hawklords video for ‘25 Years’ where he ad libs from a daily newspaper before screwing it up and discarding it. (The video is part of the Days of the Underground box set on Atomhenge.)
In 1977 Calvert commented on his lyrics “It’s more a case of actually being influenced by the science that’s all around you. You can’t help but come into contact with it all the time, rather than being influenced by S.F. We make what we make of the world into music and it comes out as S.F. which I think is the only valid way you can write about the times we find ourselves in. I always try to write about things that haven’t happened quite yet, but I’m quite sure will happen. Like ‘Spirit of the Age’ is not quite about the age that we are in now, but one we are heading for” (Calvert 1977: no.pag.) (I wonder if the original transcription has the punctuation wrong, and it should be “...time. Rather than being influenced by S.F. we make what we make of the world into music and it comes out as S.F., which…”)
This article will look at Robert Calvert’s lyrics, poetry, prose and interviews from the perspective of futurology or future studies, Futurology is described as ‘an interdisciplinary field that aggregates and analyzes trends, with both lay and professional methods, to compose possible futures. It includes analyzing the sources, patterns, and causes of change and stability in an attempt to develop foresight’ (1). In other words, the exercise of identifying possible trajectories on the basis of current trends. Obviously this requires a high degree of intelligence and engagement with the contemporary world, and Jill Calvert commented in interview “He just loved finding out about things. I mean, he’d go off to the library and come back with 20 different books all about…anything, you know, a bit of a detective kind of attitude to things I suppose. He just loved finding out about things. And as you say there were the recurrent themes, but once something appealed to him he would research it deeply and widely and find the most bizarre connections from one thing to another. That would take him on another step and he’d be somewhere else and so on and so on. He would kind of butterfly out everywhere” (J. Calvert 1996: no pag.). Banks describes Calvert as being an ‘autodidact’ (Banks 2015: no pag.), and Jello Biafra commented “I saw them as the Hawklords in 1978. It was stripped down, no light show. I was 19, in freshly spray-painted punk clothes. I had a chat with Bob Calvert about Captain Lockheed… asking him, ‘Where do you get your information?’ He told me where he read things up, and how he had dossiers on white-collar criminals. When I began doing spoken word, I was doing the same thing” (Kendall 2013: no pag.). Biafra also commented “...he kept dossiers on corporate wrongdoers. I’d never heard of such a thing before, reverse surveillance, reading what’s out there and making a note of it” (Abrahams 2004; 123). It would seem Robert Calvert was both extremely intelligent and hard working, his prescient writings based on wide reading and hard earned knowledge of the contemporary world.
As Conlon writes ‘In 1977, a book by Jacques Attali was published entitled Noise: The Political Economy of Music. It made the following claim: “Music is prophecy: its styles and economic organization are ahead of the rest of society because it explores, much faster than material reality can, the entire range of possibilities in a given code. It makes audible the new world that will gradually become visible, that will impose itself and regulate the order of things; it is not only the image of things, but the transcending of the everyday, the herald of the future.” Calvert’s work lends credence to Attali’s thesis. His translation into music of the science-fiction eschatologies of J.G. Ballard, Norman Spinrad and Roger Zelazny was genuinely prescient, and in spite of his bipolarity, or perhaps as a result of it, he was able to perceive with lucidity the authoritarian contours of an emerging dystopia. Where “sane” people might have taken at face value what politicians told them, Calvert fixatedly sought out information on governmental and business skullduggery’ (Conlon 2013: n.pag.).
Androids/AI.
One of the recurring elements in Calvert’s lyrics and poetry writing is the figure of the android. This concept is expressed in two ways; the companion/lover and the worker. On his 1986 album Test Tube Conceived the track ‘Thanks to the Scientists’ is a note of thanks to those who have created the protagonist’s ‘biotronologic bride’
“Your flaxen hair's a waterfall
a Niagara where echoes call,
your moonstone eyes
are twice the size
of human kind.
A hologram could not compare
with anything that's really there
in four dimensions
all inventions
of the mind.
Thanks to the scientists
that such a thing as you exists
Thanks to the scientists,
the scientists
who made you.
You're always there right by my side
my biotronologic bride
we're interfaced
the past's erased
the future's now.
We watch the screen and share its glow
where all you see is all you know
'cause I won't take you
out and break you
in the crowd.
Thanks to the scientists
that such a thing as you exists
Thanks to the scientists,
the scientists
who made you” (Calvert 1986).
Of course, a similar idea had been expressed in the previous decade in the poem ‘The Starfarer’s Despatch’ incorporated famously into the song ‘Spirit of the Age’ where Calvert complains “Your android replica is playing up again, it’s no joke, when she comes she moans another’s name” (Calvert 1977).
In a fascinating 2023 article ‘A bot on the side: is it adultery if you cheat with an AI companion?’ the prescient poetry of Calvert seems to have been fulfilled. The article reports that people have been forming relationships with AI chatbots, some even including ‘erotic role play’. The article reports, ‘As well as providing an outlet for Replika’s 2 million users to pour out their troubles and feel seen and heard (unlike humans, AI takes in and remembers everything), the chat can get flirty, even leading to explicit sexual role play if that is what is desired. With the deepening connection between these humans and their bots becoming clear, can such relationships be considered cheating on real-life partners? To illustrate the extent of this human-bot connection, when a recent Replika software update removed the erotic role play function, many users, some of whom considered themselves married to their companions, were so distraught that the CEO, Eugenia Kuyda, wrote on Facebook in March: “For many of you, this abrupt change was incredibly hurtful … the only way to make up for the loss some of our current users experienced is to give them their partners back exactly the way they were.” The function was initially restored for all users who had signed up before 1 February this year. Subsequently, the company announced it would be rolled out to everyone this summer’ (Fleming 2023).
Of course, Calvert was not the first person to explore the idea of a sexually engaging android, Fritz Lang’s politically problematic 1927 film Metropolis includes the ‘maschinenmensch, but Calvert’s description of an android replica as relational and sexual partner seem to be becoming increasingly realised.
The other representation of the android in Calvert’s writing comes in the PXR5 track ‘Robot’. Joe Banks interprets the song as exclusively about ‘suburbia’s white collar workers’ with Calvert taking the part of the titular Robot (Banks 2020:358-9). However, while the song certainly includes this element and supports that reading I think the lyrics are more ambiguous (as well as brilliant) and able to be read as shifting between human and android workers, who together may up the workforce.
“Nine to five or ten to six
Up to the city and back to the sticks
Got to unwind your mind
You've got to unwind your mind
Sit back, switch on
Your face has got a twitch on
Your fuses are blown out in a double bind
Air-conditioned, psycho-analysed
You're very nearly human, you're so well disguised
Robot, robot
You are a robot, robot
You're warm when it's cold, you're cool when it's hot
Robot, robot
Your life is recorded on a micro-dot
Robot, robot
You'd hold the whole world in your metal claws
If it wasn't for the Three Laws of Robotics
Automated homunculus
You queue for your paper, you queue for the bus
You're a "Good morning!" machine
You're a "How are you?" device
Sit back, light up, never put a fight up
Sit there fuming ‘til your face goes green
Air conditioned and desensitised
You're very nearly human, you're so well disguised
Robot, robot
Robot, robot
You're cool when it's warm, you're cold when it's hot
Robot, robot
Your life is recorded on a micro-dot
Robot, robot
You'd hold the whole world in your metal claws
If it wasn't for the Three Laws of Robotics
I am only a robot, I am your friend, I cannot harm you, I can only obey the three laws…”
(Calvert 1979). (The last line is, of course, a reference to sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.)
Again, Calvert was ahead of the game, as the 21st century has been unfolding so the future of work and workers in the light of advances in AI has been increasingly discussed with a Goldman Sachs report commenting that ‘two-thirds of jobs in the U.S. and Europe “are exposed to some degree of AI automation,” and around a quarter of all jobs could be performed by AI entirely’, another report by ‘researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and OpenAI’ observed that ‘jobs in the information processing industries, like IT, are the most exposed because jobs that use "programming and writing skills" are more closely related to GPT’s capabilities’ (Johnson 2023: no pag.). (See also ‘Rise of the robots raises a big question: what will workers do?’) Calvert’s prediction of white collar work (“up to the city and back to the sticks”) being particularly susceptible to advances in AI seem to be extremely accurate although other technological advances will obviously make android commuters unnecessary!
(As an aside in 1980, a year after PXR5, Classix Nouveaux released their debut single, ‘The Robots Dance’, which included the idea of robots being variously deployed, “Now we have made machines, To work our industries, Better than we can do, And in the household, too”. The song, ignoring Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, asks if “One day the roles could change, Robots tell human slaves - Dance!” It is quite a different take on a similar subject, centered around anxieties about robots assuming power.)
Governance, corporations and the state.
The album and tour for the 1978 Hawklords’ album 25 Years On were based around a Calvert concept that found its most comprehensive expression in a booklet/programme that was not printed in time for the album release but was available on the tour (Banks 2020: 312,316). Alongside the images from the front and back of the album and other striking, quasi scientific, images the 16 page booklet gives Calvert the room to develop his vision of Pan Transcendental Industries, a concept that underpins and holds together the album, tour set and ‘25 Years’ single. Pan Transcendental Industries is a transnational corporation formed in 1953 (+25 years=1978). Through a reciprocal arrangement with governments, and financing by corporations and states of all political persuasions, all power over the planet has been ceded to PTI. The text seems to describe PTI as setting up vast mega factories that produce car doors for use as wings by extra terrestrial beings -angels- in exchange for their feathers and ‘cosmic energies’, these energies possibly used to power ‘techno psychic batteries’. The work force is described as made up of car crash victims and ‘voluntary prisoners’ who are being ‘perfected’, once perfected they are permitted to meet the ‘painted angel brides’. The text continues, ‘In 1966, Pan Transcendental Industries began its historic programme for the industrialisation of religion. To fuse the popular with the metaphysical and the commercial with the sublime… the reduction of culture to commodity…’. Within the booklet there are hints at virtual reality and computer controlled environments/societies within a global totalitarian industrial complex which controls religious and ideological thought, ‘a wholesale megastructural rehabilitation of the globe’ (2).
Lyons, reviewing Joe Banks’ book, comments ‘the dark satire of Pan Transcendental Industries – developed by Calvert, again in partnership with Barney Bubbles, for the 1978 Hawklords tour, and drawing on the thinking of architectural theorist Rem Koolhaas – offers a prescient metaphorical critique of global corporate hegemony that’s acutely alive to the essential absurdity of hegemonic ambition. The tour programme came in the form of a corporate brochure for PTI, a business engaged in the industrialisation of religion; proof of PTI’s success, Calvert writes, is the fact that angels have now exchanged their wings for car doors’ (Lyons 2020: n.pag.). In this booklet written in 1978 Calvert seems to grasp the trajectory of neoliberal capitalism, which started to be imposed by Thatcher after her election victory the following year. Neoliberalism was described by Harvey as ‘a successful project for the restoration of ruling-class power’, ‘(a)ll forms of social solidarity were to be dissolved in favour of individualism, private property, personal responsibility and family values’ (Harvey 2005: 23). The imposition of neoliberalism, (an economic theory devised by Hayek, propagated by Friedman) required economic, political and social restructuring. But Thatcher was aiming high, her intention was to reconfigure both the subject under neoliberal capitalism and the structures of society (Harvey 2005: 23). As well as further empowering the capitalist class through the privatisation of state assets and deregulation the Tory government also sought to disempower the working class by dismantling trade union power, promoting individualism and diminishing the significance of class as a primary marker of identity. Calvert grasps the implications and trajectory of what was known at the time as ‘Reaganomics’, its totalitarian ambitions where all is incorporated, or eradicated. A system where all is commodified, people are in effect contained within a vast, global open prison and governments have, in reality, ceded power to corporations. To quote Conlon again ‘he was able to perceive with lucidity the authoritarian contours of an emerging dystopia.’
In the 1977 article/interview ‘And you thought Hawkwind were just a bunch of old cosmic hippies’ Robert Calvert comments “Hawkwind is an experimental group at a time when rock music is very conventional; very conservative…That’s the thing that puzzles me about the ‘new wave’ actually. It’s produced by kids who have grown up with the media at their disposal and yet still their view of the world is so old-fashioned. Their political ideals seem to be based on really outdated ways of thinking; influenced by George Orwell. They still believe that a 1930’s vision of paranoia for the future applies for our time. Big Brother is watching you is nothing to the subtle techniques that are already being used” (Hancock 1977: no pag.).
Calvert explores these ideas further in the songs ‘Fly on the Wall’ on the 1986 album The Cellar Tapes Parts I and II.
“Like a fly on the wall
clocking all that you're saying
there's a bug in the hall
so there's no use in praying.
They've invaded your home.
They've invaded your privacy.
You thought you were alone
but there's always the microphone
listening in - before you begin
it's all on file.
While you wait in the queue
hanging round in the foyer
there's a lens fixed on you
(no it's not paranoia.)
It's a steel toothed comb
like the ones used for head-lice tests.
You can tell by the tone:
hollow echoing on the phone.
It's all on tape -
your voice-print's wave shape.
It's stored on file.
There's a sign on the door:
The Department of Secrets -
And in there there's yours,
all your hopes and your regrets.
They've invaded your home.
They've invaded your privacy.
You thought you were alone
but there's always the microphone
listening in - before you begin
it's all on file” (Calvert 1986).
Complementing ‘Fly on the Wall’ is ‘Hidden Persuasion’ where Calvert looks at subliminal messaging.
“In the picture - on the big screen
buried message - urging you to
make up your mind
all the faces - in the darkness
staring eyes are / hypnotised
and easy to wind
it's a politician’s dream
and some new technicians scheme
hidden persuasion
sub-lim-inal
auto suggestion
how can you tell
On the TV - in a close-up
quickly flashed up - a split second
and then it's gone
ask the question - do they do it
would they dare to
is it only - imagination
The Thing from the
Black Lagoon
will swim to the surface soon
They tell you it’s not allowed
but they've got some good ways now” (Calvert 1986).
At the time Calvert’s comments and lyrics implying that we are subject to constant surveillance and manipulation may have seemed a little extreme and possibly paranoid to many in Western democracies. However, although he was looking through an ‘80s technological prism, his overall vision of a surveillance society where one is subject to constant subtle manipulation would not be considered controversial nowadays. Our data is constantly collected online by corporations and we are continually bombarded by targeted ads. In 2013 Edward Snowden leaked details of the depth and scope of the US state’s/NSA surveillance of US citizens. The Guardian reported ‘A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals…One presentation claims the program covers "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet", including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata…analysts can begin surveillance on anyone by clicking a few simple pull-down menus designed to provide both legal and targeting justifications. Once options on the pull-down menus are selected, their target is marked for electronic surveillance and the analyst is able to review the content of their communications…Beyond emails, the XKeyscore system allows analysts to monitor a virtually unlimited array of other internet activities, including those within social media…William Binney, a former NSA mathematician, said last year that the agency had "assembled on the order of 20tn transactions about US citizens with other US citizens", an estimate, he said, that "only was involving phone calls and emails". A 2010 Washington Post article reported that "every day, collection systems at the [NSA] intercept and store 1.7bn emails, phone calls and other type of communications” (Greenwald 2013: no pag.) In 2020 the NSA mass surveillance of American telephone records was ruled to be unlawful (BBC 2020: no pag.).
In 2020 ‘A report published by the British Security Industry Association (BSIA) estimates that the total number of CCTV cameras in the UK stands at somewhere between 4 million and 6 million. That’s around 7.5 cameras for every 100 people in the country – the third-highest total on the planet behind the US and China’ (Radcliffe 2020: no pag.). Of course, the distribution of the CCTV cameras is highly uneven with only 1 in 70 is operated by a local authority (Radcliffe 2020: no pag.).
A report released in 2018 ‘by the US Senate, exposed the scale of Russian disinformation efforts’ claiming ‘Russia used every major social media platform to try to influence the 2016 US election’, research shows that ‘YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram and PayPal - as well as Facebook and Twitter - were leveraged to spread propaganda’. The report ‘put together by University of Oxford's Computational Propaganda Project and the social network analysis firm Graphika’, suggested ‘YouTube, Tumblr, PayPal and Google+ were all affected, with Russia adapting techniques from digital marketing to target audiences across multiple channels’. The report concluded ‘’What is clear is that all of the messaging clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party - and specifically Donald Trump”’ (BBC News 2018: no pag.).
Calvert’s take on a surveillance society and manipulation was state centric, pre internet and through the available technologies and so can read a little clunky now but the outline he saw ‘through a glass darkly’ was remarkably perceptive anticipating the contemporary everyday experience of many in the online/industrialised world.
Technology.
A 1974 interview with Calvert includes “This is my new invention,’ he explained, showing me a cassette machine complete with earphones. ‘I'm going to patent it, because I think it'll catch on. At the moment, people seem to think it's silly to be seen with a pair of headphones plugged into a cassette, while reading the paper on the tube. But what the GPO should be doing is offering a news service that you can plug into your cassette overnight, so that come the morning, you can listen to the latest news on your tape” (Disc 1974). This seems an extremely similar idea to what would now be described as a podcast (Gerwers n.d; no pag.). How Calvert conceived this to be possible with the existent technology I’ve no idea!
A few months ago I went to see Mirror Mirror, written in 1979. It had been put on by Pentameters Theatre above the Horseshoe Pub in Hampstead. The play is set in 2030 and portrays a day in the life of Eleanor Bryant, who initially arrives home excited having bought a psycochromic dress that responds to her interior life with changing colours and patterns. In her apartment is a multiperspectival mirror whose various channels represent her as others perceive her.
The play revolved around the externalising of the interior life of the main character Eleanor, played by Samantha Charles who, I guess, spent 75% of the play on stage alone. The focus is initially on her ambivalent relationship with her new dress but gradually turned to her relationship with the multiperspectival mirror and her concerns over (particularly) her husband’s ‘view’ of her. Eventually she decides to call a technician to fix the mirror as she is sure there must be a fault in its representation of her husband’s image/imagination of her.
I think it was Roland Barthes who observed that the meaning of an art piece is constructed in the interaction of the viewer with that piece, the implication being that an art piece has no stable meaning but is reinterpreted by each interaction. Mirror Mirror was written in 1979 and has probably been interpreted in many different ways in the ensuing forty years. Watching it in 2023 the play seemed to be extraordinarily relevant, foregrounding contemporary socio-cultural themes.
Samantha Charles’ nuanced performance as Eleanor explored the internalisation of objectification and the prioritising of female physicality as she struggled with the effects of age and the knowledge that her husband had married her primarily for her looks. She highlighted the anxieties generated by consumer capitalism’s demand that women attain and sustain an adherence to an always out of reach ideal and the self preoccupation this can lead to as she attempts to prove to herself her continued attractiveness via her relationship with the unfortunate technician, subtly played by Edward Smith. (Who, in a wonderful inclusion of Calvert’s 'The Clone Poem', again best known via ‘Spirit of the Age, turns out to be a clone.)
Eleanor’s 1979 interaction with, and desire for affirmation from, others via the mirror seems remarkably prescient in 2023. The subsequent establishment of social media, our posting of selfies, our desire for ‘likes’, the oscillations in our self esteem depending on the affirmations of others, our staged presentation/s of self are all present in the play. In her adoption of recognisable poses and practices Samantha revealed the performativity of gender and the reproduction of female stereotypes in a way that was reminiscent of Cindy Sherman’s work.
It was intriguing, engaging, prescient playwriting and a remarkably relevant piece of performance art that engaged with issues around gender, relationships, consumer capitalism’s baleful effects on our self esteem and the power of social media.
Home computers had come out in 1977 and became more common through the ‘80s (4). This obviously sparked Calvert’s imagination resulting in the 1981 play about ‘Brad Spark, private eye of the cybernetic age’, The Kid from Silicon Culch (5). However, it was ‘(o)n February 26, 1991, (that) English computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN of Switzerland) introduced his invention of the World Wide Web to the public, the first publicly available internet browser’ (Dan 2018: no pag.). The internet/world wide web gradually became a part of everyday life as the 1990s progressed. Initially there were two competing systems, Gopher and the World Wide Web, but in 1993 CERN decided to make the World Wide Web freely available and released the code into the public domain (3). ‘By releasing Berners-Lee's invention for public use, CERN encouraged and enabled its widespread use…As its popularity increased through ease of use, incentives for commercial investment in the Web also grew. By the middle of 1994, the Web was outcompeting Gopher and the other browsing systems for the Internet’ (3).
So how did Robert Calvert write ‘On line’, a song about online anti corporate computer hacking for 1986 album Test Tube Conceived?
“This time I showed 'em
I plugged into my modem
I went on line.
Stole all their data
think I'll save it for later
when I'm on line.
An electronic hit man
I'm a million bit man
when I'm on line.
I'm a computer hacker
with a screen full of smackers
when I'm on line.
Me and my micro
it goes everywhere I go
when I'm on line.
I use high level language
and I just grab a sandwich
when I'm on line.
I'm a digital outlaw
with a Space Invader high score
when I'm on line.
I'm a raider of the cables
and it's me who turns the tables
when I'm on line.
on line now…
FX: a knock at the door
HACKER: Who's that?
VOICE: Fünf. I'd like a word with you.
HACKER: Enter.
All you big corporations
I tap your operations
when I'm on line.
I just key in the password
and it's me who gets the last word
when I'm on line.
I'm a silicon jackdaw
I just sneak in the back door
when I'm on line.
I got a mess of information
it's a real education
to be on line.
When I'm on line.
When I'm on line” (Calvert 1986).
In interview Robert’s son, Nick, remembered “He was constantly performing a kind of low-level ambient research all the time. The year before he died, he’d written a play about a private detective who worked solving internet-based computer crime, considerably ahead of its time. He was fascinated by scientific concepts, cloning, designer babies, technology but he always had an interesting moral view too. He was always looking ahead. And he made some good guesses about where we were heading” (N. Calvert no date: no pag.). This would place Robert Calvert’s second cyber detective play in 1987, still some years before the internet was publicly available!
Both Jill and Nick testify to Robert Calvert’s practice of continual research and enthusiasm for new information and knowledge and this explains why he was able to see so accurately the trajectories of the present. As stated above Futurology is described as ‘an interdisciplinary field that aggregates and analyzes trends, with both lay and professional methods, to compose possible futures. It includes analyzing the sources, patterns, and causes of change and stability in an attempt to develop foresight’. Robert was able to accurately predict future developments politically and technologically due to a serious and deep engagement with the contemporary world around him.
As Jill Calvert observed “...I don’t think he really looked into the future in that sense. He was too occupied with working on what he was working on to actually look into the future in a different way. I mean it’s something I’ve actually thought about recently, because recently more and more people have actually said to me "wow, you know, he really was quite prophetic". It’s only now, 8 years after his death that I think people are actually beginning to see how prophetic he was. But he was just too immersed in prophecying to see it!” (J. Calvert 1996: no pag.)
Image from video of ‘25 Years’ on Days of the Underground boxed set, Atomhenge 2023.
Bibliography.
(1) Anon. (no date) ‘Future Studies’https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_studies
(2)Hawkbinge. 25 Years On - Gig Booklet.
(3) Anon. (no date) ‘History of the World Wide Web’ https;//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web
(4) Anon. (no date) ‘Home Computer’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_computer
(5) Anon (no date) ‘The Kid from Silicon Gulch’ aural-innovations.com/robertcalvert/works/kid/kid.htm
Abrahams, Ian. 2004. Hawkwind: Sonic Assassins (Lumoni Press).
Banks, Joe. (2015) ‘Cult heroes: Robert Calvert – Hawkwind's prescient space-rock poet’
Banks, Joe. 2020. Hawkwind: Days of the Underground. Radical Escapism in the Age of Paranoia (Strange Attractor Press: London).
BBC News. (2018) ‘Russia 'meddled in all big social media' around US election’ www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-46590890
BBC News. 2020. ‘NSA surveillance exposed by Snowden ruled unlawful’ www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54013527
Calvert, J. (1996) ‘Jill Calvert on Robert Calvert’ by Knut Gerwers https://www.aural-innovations.com/robertcalvert/oncalvert/onmain/jillcalvertinterview96part2.htm
Calvert, Nicholas. (No date)’ Interview with Nick Calvert On His Father’s Legacy’ www.londonpubtheatres.com/top-pick-robert-calverts-mirror-mirror
Calvert, Robert. (1977) ‘Brock/Calvert Interview’, Sniffin Flowers # 2-1977 https://web.archive.org/web/20201026224106/https://plasticfragment.com/cuttings/cuttings-1969-1979/brock-calvert-interview/
Calvert, Robert. (1977) ‘The Starfarer’s Despatch’ in Centigrade 232 (London: Gonzo Multimedia).
Calvert, Robert. (1979) ‘Robot’, PXR5, Charisma Records (lyrics adapted from genius.com/Hawkwind-robot-lyrics)
Calvert, Robert. (1986) ‘Thanks to the Scientists’ The Cellar Tapes Parts I and II. aural-innovations.com/robertcalvert/lyrics/callyr4.htm#thanksto
Calvert, Robert (1986) ‘Fly on the Wall’ The Cellar Tapes Parts I and II. www.aural-innovations.com/robertcalvert/lyrics/callyr4.htm#fly
Calvert, Robert. (1986) ‘Hidden Persuasion’ The Cellar Tapes Parts I and II.www.aural-innovations.com/robertcalvert/lyrics/callyr4.htm#persuasion
Calvert, Robert. (1986) ‘On Line’ Test-Tube Conceived www.aural-innovations.com/robertcalvert/lyrics/callyr4.htm#online
Classix Nouveaux (1980) ‘The Robots Dance’ ESP genius.com/Classix-nouveaux-the-robots-dance-lyrics
Conlon, Mark. 2013. Musicians and Mental Illness, Part One: Robert Calvert, https://pathwaygroupstoke.wordpress.com/tag/dave-brock/
Dan, Major. (2018) ‘February 26, 1991: When Did the Internet Go Public? (First Web Browser)’ www.historyandheadlines.com/february-26-1991-internet-go-public-first-web-browser/
Disc (1974) Author Unknown, ‘Captain Lockheed’ www.hawkwindmuseum.co.uk/calvert.htm
Fleming, Amy. (2023) ‘A bot on the side: is it adultery if you cheat with an AI companion?’ www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jun/15/a-bot-on-the-side-is-it-adultery-if-you-with-an-ai-companion?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=user%2FTheGuardian
Gerwers, K. (n.d.) www.aural-innovations.com/robertcalvert/quotes/calvertto.htm#walkman
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