In a mechanicized future Earth is controlled and dominated by competing O'Neill colonies, circling a submissive society and struggling for complete control. The Vienna Station, one of those competitors, is in the hands of Masters who will use a reconstituted Mozart, a broadcast premiere of a new Concerto to the billions and an intricate plan of espionage to crush all opposition...but the cloned Mozart, an orchestral cellist Drusilla and renegade science combine in opposition. The novelette is intricate, multi-leveled and utterly satisfying. It stands with Edgar Pangborn's 1955 Galaxy novelette "The Music Master of Babylon" and Richard Strauss's 1956 "A Work of Art" as one of science fiction's three great works centered on classical music. Judge David Drake writes "Its imagined future is as gritty and brutal as one could ask but the focus is on hopeful struggle. Engaging characters, well-realized settings and the intelligence which had to underlie every Galaxy story made this a real pleasure to read."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert Walton has published several stories in small press outlets, won the New Millennium Writing 2011 short fiction contest; his YA novel CHAOSO GATE won the 2010 Yorkshire Publishing competition. A reader of Galaxy in the 1950's, Walton was a great fan of the magazine. He taught in a California Middle School for thirty-six years before his retirement five years ago, has been married for 39 years and has two grown sons.
