“The Preserving Machine” (1953)

Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, editors of The Weird and other highly recommended anthologies, really talked up this story by Philip K. Dick somewhere. It’s not widely included in collections—the VanderMeers’ point, if I recall correctly, was that they had not been able to license it, for whatever reason. Maybe the estate thinks the story is too weird. It does have an interesting premise that is very weird even for Dick. The hero is an academic, Doc Labyrinth, who is worried about nuclear extinction and saddened most by the idea that music would be lost. So he draws up plans for a machine that will save music by converting printed sheet music into animal life forms. The idea is staggering in its way yet also a great example of Dick’s willful soft science fiction. This is creating life that we’re talking about, which is only an incidental function in Doc Labyrinth’s mind. He can’t even build the machine himself. He only draws up the plans and ships them off to a manufacturer. There is not a single theoretical basis for any of this. Take at face value—take it or leave it. I like the cheek, the confidence, but wish for a little more science. The manufacturer at any rate is excited about the project and promptly assembles the machine and ships it to Labyrinth. A sort of charming Holmes-and-Watson scene follows, with Labyrinth and the story’s first-person narrator sitting around trying it out. First they convert the Mozart G Minor Quintet, dropping the score into the machine. Out comes a bird, apparently of heretofore unknown species: “pretty, small and slender, with the flowing plumage of a peacock.” They call it a “mozart bird.” Later they produce a “beethoven beetle” (note that this story was written before the Beatles and even before Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven”) and then a “schubert animal.” The ones that are described merely as “animal” are far and away the creepiest but lowercasing the proper noun has its effect too. Doc Labyrinth is kind of disappointed and lets them loose in the woods behind his house. He doesn’t think about them for some time. When he finally checks on them, they have evolved and changed. Some have died. He tries running a bach bug through the machine—evidently reverse-processing these animals is how the preserved music is obtained again—but the music he gets back is mere cacophony when he plays it. More disappointment. So weird!

Philip K. Dick, The Preserving Machine
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