My father once told me the story of a machine that mixed together the world's best music, and upon listening to this new song, men would die.

In his old age my father cannot remember the title nor the author, but believes it may be a Ray Bradbury short story from "I Sing the Body Electric." Is this possible? Does anyone know the title? Thank you for your assistance.

Sincerely,

Ned Conway

"Tomorrow's Child?!" from...Body Electric.

No. It may be by Asimov, Vonnegut, Ellison, etc.

This answer came from Beth Friedman by way of rec.arts.books.childrens:
Again, it's probably not the one you have in mind, but one of Arthur C. Clarke's Tales from the White Hart is about some music that is so entrancing that people can't do anything but listen to it.

This answer came from Peter Meilinger by way of rec.arts.books.childrens:
That's the first one I thought of, too. Looking online for the table of contents, I'm about 100% sure it must be The Ultimate Melody, written in 1956.
It doesn't sound quite like the story in question, but it's well worth reading. The whole Tales From The White Hart collection is great, actually.
Pete

The same idea was used in the novel "Elidor," by Alan Garner, but that music only held people spellbound. Enthralled, but didn't kill 'em.
Cori

These replies came from the BookSleuth Forum at Abebooks:

From:� Browsers

Almost certainly not the story you're looking for, but your description reminded me of it, so...

The short story "Buzz" by Rudy Rucker (found in The 57th Franz Kafka) is about a youth who mixes different cuts from rock songs together with a strange recording obtained from a piece of�Egyptian pottery (read the story to find out how), resulting in a sound that doesn't kill anyone, but if you're not making love when the sound hits you, it sends you to Mars or something like that.

From:� jent

The Ultimate Melody only affected the man who discovered it, before his gadget was switched off. He was left totally catatonic. But it does sound a good match, if the poster is remembering a little incorrectly. Perhaps The Sound Sweep by J G Ballard, but then again , more insanity than death.
Jen in Melbourne

This reply came by way of the newsgroups rec.arts.books.childrens and rec.arts.sf.written at Google Groups:

It almost certainly is not a recent radio piece written by broadcaster Armando Ianucci (I'm not sure about his name, I dare say it'll be the Lady of Shalott thing again - look up various spellings in Google.com is what I mean) which described the
Museum of Lost Keyboards, an exotic and fictional collection of keyboard instruments. The last exhibit was a masterwork whose music is so sublime that whilst not lethal in itself, it makes all
sensory experiences afterwards disappointing.

However, wasn't it Pythagoras who first told us (or, rather, told his secret club, I suppose) that as you develop a taste for finer things, you lose interest in those less fine - or, at least, you ought to do? So it goes back quite a long way.

But in neither case was it a matter of mixing together the best music in the world. I think that's what the LP albums on the Voyager spacecraft do. (And if the ships landed back on Earth now then how many people would be able to play the disc...)

(Not that sending CDs would have helped, either - nor DVDs; they're being replaced, too.)

Robert Carnegie

Asimov was suggested, and while Asimov readers have come up with a few titles it is *not,* they haven't named one they think *is.*

Hello,
this was possibly a short story by Frank Herbert. The details escape me (my english was pretty bad when I read it - it happened some years ago), but I do rememeber that it had something to do with this. I hope this is helpful to you.
Cheers,
Translator