Robert W. Lowndes 6 min read

At one of Jocelyn's dull parties, the narrator settles in to enjoy two friends bickering over progress, until the promised 'troubadour,' a Mr. Fayliss, arrives.

Robert W. Lowndes's 1953 story is a thoughtful AI-and-social-SF tale. Clever, literate golden-age SF. Read it for an idea-driven story that turns a party-argument about the rise and fall of cultures toward a strange, machine-made revelation, in a cerebral golden-age piece that prizes ideas and irony over action.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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