"Sounds like a Human Performance": The Electronic Music Synthesizer in Mid-Twentieth-Century Science Fiction

This article examines the role electronic music and musical instruments played in the musicological discourse of the mid-twentieth century by analyzing two early sf stories about synthesizers: Charles Harness's novella "The Rose" (1953) and Lloyd Biggle, Jr's short story "The Tunesmith" (1957). It argues that science fiction echoed both the concerns of critics fearful that new electronic forms would "dehumanize" music and the optimistic rhetoric of those who dreamt of the technology's enormous potential. I argue that by examining sf's contribution to the perception of electronic music and musical instruments, one can find a prescient analysis of the consequences of an increasingly technologized culture, as well as a farsighted and thoughtful analysis of a nascent technology that would soon become one of the most significant cultural developments of the twentieth century.