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"[Science fiction is ] That branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance upon human beings."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Music Sphere | ||
| A beautiful white sphere full of your music. |
After their conquest of space and the physical sciences, Man wanted to try a recreation of their race, with some limits. A controlled experiment. They made better than they knew.
| I wanted to find one of those spheres!
Sunrise on a bubble of snow. Low clouds mottled in pink and black. Around its gleaming whiteness, trees of green flushed with warm yellows and golds. It swelled high over my head, melting into the sky. I loved it. I was human enough for that. I went inside. It was simple. The door slid open at my touch. There were no guards, no attendants, no ticket-takers. There was only a soft, hushed hallway, and then a cool circular room, fresh and clean as pebbles in the silver depths of a spring.
 (Music spheres from 'Controlled Experiment' by Chad Oliver) I sat down in a chair and closed my eyes. The music started. Can’t you hear it, if you tty? It was like all the music of all the worlds, and yet it was achingly, wondrously new. It lifted me buoyantly, utterly outside myself. It whispered and sighed to me, gently, reverently. It was my music. Softly, softly, remember the quiet nights and the stars? Feel the flowers and the winds? Remember the friends you have been happy with, the friends who are gone, the friends of long, long ago? Touch the warm air of summer and the sunsplashed waters of lakes of memories? |
| Technovelgy from Controlled Experiment,
by Chad Oliver. Published by Orbit in 1954 Additional resources -
|
The final result:
They took out my tapes then and played our music, they listened, and then they all knew. Music saved our world, and more than that. It saved our self-respect.
The change in the Great Ship was astonishing, the tension drained away as though it had never been, and the Men relaxed...
Two years later, I was back at the pickup ship, and it carried me up to the Great Ship where the Men were waiting. Mote than ever, I hated to be slowed down, but they had to adjust me back to ship time...
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'Space-sickness is one of the most unpleasant sensations that a human being can experience. Not all are subject to it...'
'...I saw a nice black heavy-looking cloud sailing by just now, and I can get the electrical machine out in five minutes to draw it down.'
'From a distance it could resolve the cosmic rays reflected from various substances.'
'The answer to the dumb student's prayer.'
'He had travelled the space-lanes of the solar system for the greater part of his life...'
'The dinner was excellent. It was completely vegetarian — grown in specially prepared gardens in this Moon base...'
'Telepaths had their sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind.'
'It was a relief to enter one of the comfortable autos, whisper a direction down the tube, and just know that you would be taken to your destination in the quickest, safest, and cheapest manner.'
'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
