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"None of us, no matter what continent or island or ice cap, asked to be born in the first place, and that even somebody as old as I am, which is 80, only just got here."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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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... |
| Technovelgy 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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Tech news articles related to The Preserving Machine
Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
Preserving Machine-related
news articles:
- Implanted Memories Provide Songs To Birds
| What'll You Have? Extinct Animals Returned, Or Synthetic Eggshells? |
| Black Fungus Blocks Radiation |
| Lunar Biorepository Proposed For Cryo-Preservation Of Earth Species |
| Let's Make Slaver Sunflowers! Engineering Plants To Reflect Light |
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'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
'Midges have many capabilities. To the untrained eye, they look like sparrows.'
'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'
'The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe- like independence.'
