F. L. Wallace 36 min read

After the concert, little Danny Tocar slips back to the empty stage and strokes a violin, heavy, solid metal, its 'strings' mere ridges that made no music for him, though they sang for the players.

F. L. Wallace's 1952 story is a clever, poignant AI-and-social-SF tale. Sharp, thoughtful golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a child's curiosity about instruments that only certain hands can play opens onto a quietly unsettling truth about art, music, and who is permitted to make it.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

36 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).