Science Fiction: The Short Stuff discussion

The story I am selecting for the August 2024 group read, moderator pick, is "The Lost Language" (1934) by David H. Keller. This is an admittedly obscure choice, but it's one of my favorite SF stories of all time and the one I'd like to start things off with.

The story is about a boy finally born to a royal family who is to become the heir. Everyone is very excited until they're not. There is a problem, you see. The boy doesn't speak. In fact, he refuses to deal with language. He has his own already. But he can't speak it. He does write it, but the alphabet isn't a standard one. What can be done about this situation? How can anyone learn to communicate with this boy? Why won't he use his family's language? Where did his come from? To find out, you have to read this wonderful short story.

Kindle offers two David H. Keller story collections for less than a dollar each. Unfortunately, this story is not included in these. I only know of two ways members can read this story. You can buy the anthology Science Fiction of the 30's edited by Damon Knight on the used book market easily. It's included there, and the anthology as a whole is well described at science fiction awards database's website: https://www.sfadb.com/DecadeBests.

You can also find the January 1934 issue of Amazing Stories at Internet Archive or here: https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/lu... starting at page 93. The pdf can be sideloaded into an e-Reader if you have the technical expertise. Otherwise, it's a short story, easy enough to read from a computer screen.

Seriously, I think you'll find the story is worth the effort to acquire and read it. When or if you do, please share your thoughts regarding it.

"The Lost Language" by David H. Keller appeared in this magazine:
A live link to it can be found near the end of message 1 above.

This illustration from a scene in the story is drawn by an artist identified only as Morey. That is a really accurate depiction of one of the story events. The boy just won't talk. Does anyone know more about Morey?

I've just read the story. Thanks for choosing it, Dan. I read the magazine version link.

I'm glad you liked it. I think authors today would be scared to write an ending like that. The art of compassion has become lost.

One thing I love about reading old science fiction is to see how often they write about inventions not in existence at their time of writing which are now a reality in ours. Here Keller writes about an SF machine he named the vibrowriter. It wasn't until 1996 IBM launched a device named MedSpeak, the first commercial product capable of recognizing continuous speech.