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"...a market economy is essentially a genetic algorithm for solving resource allocation problems..."
- Charles Stross

Preserving Machine  
  A device that would create a unique animal from a piece of classical music.  

Doctor Labyrinth despaired of the fate of the world and its music; what would be the best way to make sure that great classical music could survive the end of the world?

If only a Machine could be built, a Machine to process musical scores into living forms.

...Doc Labyrinth was no mechanic. He made a few tentative sketches and sent them hopefully around to the research laboratories. Most of them were too busy with war contracts, of course. But at last he found the people he wanted...

Weeks passed. The Machine was coming along fine; in fact it was almost finished. They had given it a trial run, feeding a couple of popular songs into it. The results? Two small mouse-like animals had come scampering out...

Technovelgy from The Preserving Machine, by Philip K. Dick.
Published by Mercury Publications in 1953
Additional resources -

The Mozart G-Minor Quintet came out as a bird "slow and slender with the flowing plumage of a peacock."

Compare to the living book from The World Below (1928) by Sydney Fowler Wright.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Preserving Machine
  More Ideas and Technology by Philip K. Dick
  Tech news articles related to The Preserving Machine
  Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick

Preserving Machine-related news articles:
  - Implanted Memories Provide Songs To Birds

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