Neha Patil (Editor)

The Sound Sweep

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"The Sound-Sweep" is a short story by J.G. Ballard in which the title character, a mute boy vacuuming up stray sounds in a world without music, befriends an opera singer living in an abandoned recording studio. As all previous music has been rendered obsolete thanks to advances in "ultrasonic music", the opera singer is destitute. It was first published in Science Fantasy, Volume 13, Number 39, February 1960 and was reprinted in the collection The Four-Dimensional Nightmare.

Trevor Horn and Bruce Woolley have said that the lyrics of "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles were inspired by this story of a world where audible music is superseded by developments in new technology.

References

The Sound-Sweep Wikipedia