Robert F. Young 21 min read

A flaxen-haired android built to sing the best Isolde ever heard is deactivated and stored away, until an unusual buyer comes for her.

Robert F. Young's 1960 story opens on the manufactured opera-singer Isolde, warehoused with the rest of a robotic Wagnerian cast, before her fate takes a stranger turn. Wry, poignant SF about artifice, art, and desire. Read it for a bittersweet golden-age tale where a singing machine becomes an object of longing.

In its time

Published in 1960, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

21 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

John Giunta