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"[Science fiction] is the one literary medium left in which we have a free hand. We can do any damn thing we please."
- Alfred Bester
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| Preserving Machine | ||
| A device that would create a unique animal from a piece of classical music. |
Doctor Labyrinth despaired of the fate of the world and its music; what would be the best way to make sure that great classical music could survive the end of the world?
If only a Machine could be built, a Machine to process musical scores into living forms.
| ...Doc Labyrinth was no mechanic. He made a few tentative sketches and sent them hopefully around to the research laboratories. Most of them were too busy with war contracts, of course. But at last he found the people he wanted...
Weeks passed. The Machine was coming along fine; in fact it was almost finished. They had given it a trial run, feeding a couple of popular songs into it. The results? Two small mouse-like animals had come scampering out... |
| From The Preserving Machine,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Mercury Publications in 1953 Additional resources -
|
The Mozart G-Minor Quintet came out as a bird "slow and slender with the flowing plumage of a peacock."
Compare to the living book from The World Below (1928) by Sydney Fowler Wright.
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Then some unknown race had chanced upon the dreamers and decided to "help them out."
'Improving man by bringing him close to Nature, while they combine the sensations of coasting with the interest of seeing the country well...'
Um, how about that pension for the humans who serve as the models for robot behavior?
'...used as surrogates in intense dependency cases.'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
