With These Hands

Kornbluth, C[yril]. M. "With These Hands." Galaxy Dec. 1951. Coll. The Best of C.M. Kornbluth. Frederik Pohl, ed., introd. New York: Taplinger, 1977. Contents © 1976.

Like many other things in a near-future culture, art is usually produced optical/electro-mechanically, with cybernetic assistance, by devices such as the "stereopantograph" (191) and, more generally, the "esthetikon" (192-93), a device that foreshadows in some ways early 21st-c. PhotoShop, but in more than two dimensions. The situation is not good for art or for what appears to be one of the last artists. (RDE, 19/09/06)