Evelyn E. Smith 16 min read

In a future where machines make everything, the Cimabue Gallery is the last stronghold of hand-made art, and its proud partners believe it proves the machine will never conquer man.

Evelyn E. Smith's 1956 story spins a gently ironic AI-and-social-SF tale of art, dreams, and automation. Wry, thoughtful golden-age SF. Read it for a bittersweet story about the value of the handmade in a mechanized world, and the dream that sustains it.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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