OK, folks, I'm trying to remember the title and/or author of a story
I read, probably in the late '50s or early '60s (yes, I am that old).
It was probably in an anthology from the Science Fiction Book Club.
Here is the plot:
*** SPOILER ALERT ***
The main character is this guy who is an artist (painter).
He is not especially good, so he is not successful.
One day a large package arrives for him, and when he opens
it up he discovers that it is a machine that does drawings.
You stick a piece of paper in it, push a button, and it draws something.
The instruction manual is in a foreign language.
After experimenting, he discovers that he can control the
subject matter of the drawing by flipping switches on the side of the
machine -- landscape, ****trait, still life, modern, historical,
religious, etc. Some of the switches he never figures out.
So naturally he takes the drawings, colors them, and p***** them off as
his own work. And naturally he becomes hugely successful and wealthy.
After a while he notices that the machine never seems to repeat the
same subject. For example, he is commissioned to do some art for a
church, and once the machine produces the first picture of Jesus
it never draws Him again.
He eventually gets the instruction manual translated (from Swedish, I
think), and discovers that:
1) The machine is from the future.
2) The way he set the switches, the machine erased the pattern for every
subject after the first time it used that subject.
3) Because of #2, the machine is now empty, so it cannot draw anything
more.
At the end of the story he is in big trouble because he accepted huge
advances from his clients and now is unable to fulfill the commissions.
Does this sound familiar to anyone?
Thanks in Advance,
Mike
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