Expert: Sue Kayton - 3/2/2004

Question
Hi!  I am a grad student looking for a science fiction story to illuminate my English 20 class this fall.  The story takes place in a future world in which no one lives to be much over either 30 or 40.  Once someone turns that age, their hand is stamped with "expired" or something like that.  People can gain extra time by turning in cut-off hands that are expired.  One young man discovers an elderly man living in an out-of-the-way place and makes plans to take his hand.  However, he hears the man playing the piano and cannot kill him.  Can you help me track this down?  It must have been written prior to the nineties...maybe in an anthology...possibly by a one-good-story author.  Thanks.

Answer
Sorry, I don't know this story.  You can try this short story index

http://contento.best.vwh.net/s8.html

If you can't find that, I recommend the anthology Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, recently back in print.  There are many excellent stories in there.  My personal favorites are Nightfall, A Rose for Ecclesiastes, Flowers for Algernon (the short story, not the interminably long book), and Mimsy Were the Borogroves.