Reinvigorated by performance of the best known Coms, he decides to compose music without lyrics. Out of money, Baque leaves the Tunesmiths’ Guild and joins the Performers’ Guild and takes a job at a grimy bar. Although everyone knows Baque is the best at what he does, he composes so slowly and so well that companies never want to replace their jingles. “The Tunesmith” (1957), novelette, 4/5 (Good): Erlin Baque (you know, Bach) composes Com music - i.e. music for commercials with sung slogans: “We start off our Coms by Baque with that little masterpiece Baque did for Foam Soap” (8). I might read his novel Monument (1974) next. Many of the stories in The Metallic Muse center around the transformative power of music and art: for example, a song calls space orphans back home in “Orphan of the Void” an artist dares to create non-commercial music in “The Tunesmith” TV keeps the masses in line in “Well of the Deep Wish” and a robotic violin teacher deprives a professor of his students in “Spare the Rod.” Lloyd Biggle, Jr.’s ebullient style of telling sometimes trivializes and simplifies the heady themes, but his inventiveness and positivism invigorates.Īll but one of the seven stories are worth reading! Recommended for fans of 50s/60s SF. And due to an unnatural aggregation of cosmic particles, our ratings align with unnerving precision. Mike’s mostly positive review of his short stories in The Metallic Muse (1972) reminded me of my lack of knowledge of Biggle, Jr.’s strange brand of relatively breezy but earnest SF. Over the years I’ve collected quite a few of Lloyd Biggle, Jr.’s SF novels and collections but have not read any of his work since late 2011 when I reviewed The Light That Never Was (1972). (Ed Nuckolls’ cover for the 1972 edition)
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