A Work of Art
1956 short story by James Blish
"A Work of Art" is a science fiction short story by American writer James Blish. It was first published in the July 1956 issue of Science Fiction Stories with the title "Art Work". It has often been anthologized, appearing in The Worlds of Science Fiction, The Stars Around Us and The Golden Age of Science Fiction, among others.
Plot
In the year 2161, a new medical specialty has been developed, known as "Mind Sculpting." Human personalities from history are re-created and placed into voluntarily donated physical bodies. Two mind sculptors, Drs. Kris and Seirds, re-create the mind of Richard Strauss and place it in a body. After animation, the "new" Dr Strauss is encouraged to re-commence his life as a composer of music, which he does.
After some difficulty adjusting to the current techniques and theories of musical composition, which are based largely on random choices on a composition machine, Strauss searches for subjects to inspire him and composes several songs. He then comes across a play by Christopher Fry, Venus Observed, which he realises is an ideal subject for his music.
Working to a tight deadline, he completes the opera and conducts its premiere.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “A Work of Art” as 1956 short story by James Blish. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as 1956 short story by James Blish. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 31, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4660790. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1956.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “A Work of Art” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.