Thing of Beauty (short story)

"Thing of Beauty" is a science fiction short story by American writer Damon Knight. It first appeared in the September 1958 issue of Galaxy magazine and has been reprinted three times, in Far Out (1961), The Sixth Galaxy Reader (1962), and The Best of Damon Knight (1976).[1]

"Thing of Beauty"
AuthorDamon Knight
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)Science fiction
Published inGalaxy Science Fiction
Publication typePeriodical
PublisherGalaxy Publishing Corporation
Media typePrint (Magazine, Hardback & Paperback)
Publication dateSeptember 1958

Synopsis

One morning, a group of men in tight purple clothing make a delivery to the house of Gordon Fish in Southern California. It is a machine, the controls of which are labeled in an unknown language. By trial and error, Fish discovers that the machine produces high-quality drawings of people and things. Fish enters one of the drawings in an artistic competition, claiming that it was drawn by a nephew. It wins, but to receive the full prize money, the artist is required to paint the image on a wall. Fish convinces a friend to carry out the task. Fish continues to try to find ways to make money from the machine; he poses as an art teacher and takes on a young woman as a student. As time goes on, he notices that the variety of the images being produced by the machine becomes smaller and smaller. An operating manual came with the machine; he sends it to be translated, and learns that the language is Swedish. He discovers that he has systematically been removing images from storage in the machine each time he produces a picture.

gollark: I figured out a terrible, terrible (in the sense of being slightly cheaty) way to get diamonds:1. hook up slag production to thermal centrifuge (there's a 1 slag -> tiny gold dust + 5 coal dust recipe)2. feed coal to compactor (makes compressed coal balls; without this it would need flint, but that's easy too)3. compress the coal ball into a ... compressed coal ball4. compress the compressed coal balls into a coal chunk (usually this would require obsidian, iron or bricks, but the compactor skips that too - obsidian is automateable easily but with large power input, though)5. compress coal chunk into diamond
gollark: Oh, this is really cool, Random PSIDeas has a thing which allows me to move my camera position.
gollark: ... right, the dirt, silly me.
gollark: It would also expose the stone brick roof to the surface.
gollark: <@280423421555507203> I would but there's a farm which would need moving.

References
  1. Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections
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