Robert Abernathy's "The Record of Currupira" (short story, free): The origins of human speech & music
I might have liked it more without its monster hunting parts, but it's still a decent enough read.
May be 2 years back, I recall a Discovery or National Geographic show in India that reconstructed an ancient predator. A predator whose hunting technique was very similar to that in this story.
Story summary.
Human explorers on Mars have found dead Martian cities. And from a museum in one of these cities, they've found earthly relics dating 50,000 years back! Apparently, Martians visited earth in that remote time, & collected specimen.Among the specimen is a video recording & a flute. Men have rebuilt a machine that can play back the recording, minus visual parts - only sounds. Two scientists who hear it first - James Dalton, a linguist, & Dr Oliver Thwaite, an archeologist - will get nightmares for days afterward: the recording is of a human lured & eaten by an animal somewhere near equator!
"Currupira" of title is the name of this ancient predator. It makes different sounds to terrorize or sooth its prey - so the prey will come willingly to it! And some of the sounds it makes are very human; apparently, men learned the power of words from this hunter!
Thwaite has an idea the animal may not be extinct, & goes hunting it in Brazil. Dalton follows, but has a better idea of a weapon to fight the monster - the ancient flute!
We'll hear fearful accounts of locals about this monster. Of course, the heroes will eventually find it, & Thwaite will almost become its meal - until Dalton gets courage to deploy the flute as a weapon.
See also.
- Arthur Clarke's "History Lesson": Venusians have found a well preserved video recording of the long extinct humans, & have built a machine to play it back. We see very funny theories about what the bipeds in the pictures might be doing & the apparent purposes of their visible anatomical features.
- Henry Kuttner's "Nothing But Gingerbread Left" (download): Music as a weapon in WWII! Very funny story.
Fact sheet.
First published: Fantastic Universe, January 1954.Download full text from Project Gutenberg or Manybooks.
Rating: B.
Related: Fiction from 1950s.
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