In my freshman English class, we read a story that struck me as really cool, but I can’t remember the name of it or the author. Where else would I turn for help?
Short story:
Overpopulation has become a serious problem. As a solution, everybody (of a certain age? kind of like selective service, I think) is required to go to a carnival made up of rides. Each of the rides had a 1 in 6 chance of failure resulting in death, so each person was required to ride six rides. If you survive the six rides, you’re free to go and continue with your life. Main character survives the first five rides, and feeling invincible, rides his sixth on a roller coaster with a (even more) dangerous reputation. The ride fails, and the story ends with him plummeting to the ground talking about how it’s not fair.
[/quote]
Poem:
I seem to think this was a long time (maybe 15-20 years)ago, and all I can remember is imagery. The narrator is walking along the road in the middle of a dark night. (S)He sees a shape lying in the road that looks like a man. I don’t remember what happens next, but at the end a car runs over it. The shape moves off down the road after the car hits it, and the narrator realizes it couldn’t be a man because it survived, and it turns out to be a paper bag.
The story has elements of Logan’s Run. In that story, people only live to the ripe old age of twenty-one. At that time, a crystal on the palm of their hand changes color and they are to report to “Carousel”. On this carousel, they sort of ascend and a laser beam fries them. There was no element of chance, however – everyone gets fried just the same.
In Logan’s Run, the protaganost – Logan – is a Sandman. His job is to chase down and eliminate those members of society who choose not to report to their Carousel ceremony (the “runners”). He performs his Sandman duties with exceptional skill and dedication. He has the respect and admiration of all in the Sandman service. Suddenly, the society’s central computer chooses Logan for a top-secret mission to infiltrate an organization of runners. His enthusiasm for the mission evaporates, however, when the computer changes his crystal prematurely. Now his Sandman buddies chase him because he has become a runner.
Okay, not the same story, but it’s sorta close. Gotta run.
I remember a short story in Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine that ran about 15-18 years ago. Because of overcrowding in America, people who went to some kind of big amusement park paid for everything – rides, food, the bathroom – by accepting a small risk of being injected with a fatal poison. The more “expensive” the ride, the greater the risk of injection.
The story dealt with an American couple and their kids talking with a foreign visitor. (Foreign visitors could use money, rather than risk death.) Throughout the story, the husband pays for everything himself – risking himself over and over again, basically, rather than requiring his wife and kids to do it. (This is legal.) I think that the Americans are defending the concept – the foreigner thinks it’s barbaric.
The requisite zinger ending: the wife takes the kids off to the bathroom. Both of them are fatally injected. Boo hoo.
Sorry – I have no idea who wrote the story, what it was called, or exactly when it ran. But it’s a similar premise to the one you remember.
That is VERY similar to the one I remember, but different. In mine, the main characters are a bunch of kids (four, I think), going to the park after school. And I don’t know how old the story was, but I read it in either 1984 or 1985.
All these stories, and yet no one recognizes any of them yet. Well, here’s my half-remembered sci-fi story along the same lines:
The economic system is set up to ease problems and control the population. No one has to work for money. Instead, there are ATM-like devices everywhere (I think it was written before ATMs) which dispense any amount of money people wish to withdraw. However, there is a proportional risk that for every amount you withdraw, you will be killed. Hence, the richest people are also the biggest risk-takers. I don’t remember much else about the story, though. (I don’t think it was the same as Interrobang’s, but it might have been).
This theme of statistically thinning the population must be pretty popular. Probably the best known example is Shirley Jackson’s 1948 short story “The Lottery”, which is a bit more enigmatic about the reasons behind it. There’s also a Borges story with a title something like “The Lottery in Babylon”, which expands the metaphor somewhat more literally.
Reminds me of another story involving overpopulation. The main characters, a family, are sitting in traffic waiting to enter a tunnel. The father is thinking about all the problems that the world faces. Everybody lives in massive high-rises; theirs is lucky enough to have a “zoo,” with a cat and a fish. The payoff of the story is that, at random intervals throughout the day, as cars enter the tunnel, the ends close off and all the people inside are gassed to death. Very depressing.
I read the story in either 1984 or 1985. You know how school years span the new year.
Wow, it looks like overpopulation is a more pervading scifi theme than I imagined. I don’t know if I can give any more useful clues, but I’ll try.
The main character (the “star”) was a boy, probably in his teens, maybe early teens. He was with a girl, maybe his girlfriend, but I really don’t know. He was bragging and swaggering about his appointment to go to the amusement park all day long at school that day, certain that he would survive. When they got there, he rode all the most dangerous rides, because he was confident that he was above the odds. He survived the first 5 rides, which boosted his confidence even more. The story ended with him on the way to an appointment with the pavement when his sixth ride (a roller coaster, I think) went off the tracks, and he said something like that it wasn’t fair, all he had to do was survive six rides, and that was his sixth one. Something like that.
I hope that helps. Because this has been driving me up the wall for a couple years now.
I believe the delicious Borges story mentioned by PanamaJack was ‘The Babylonian Lottery’, and it (and its possibilities) has haunted me since I read it in my twenties.
Are you sure it was something you read? That is the exact plot to an episode of Sliders, once you add Quinn and Co. not grasping the concept until after using the ATM.
I remember reading the short story in the OP when I was in 7th grade, placing it around 1994/95. It was part of our English exam, so I didn’t read it outside of the class; if I did, I probably would have remembered more of the details. However, just wanted to tell you that you’re not insene, that the story does exist.
Thanks to everybody so far, the brainstorming is really interesting. And it’s really good to know that somebody else remembers reading it. I’d contact my English teacher if I had any clue how to reach her. haha
Joe_Cool,
I think you could post this question to the Stumpers-L mailing list, assuming you’ve already asked this question at a library. You have great support from the Dopers that this story really exists, you know what year you read it and in what setting… So, I’d set a bunch of reference librarians to the task. Read the welcome and FAQ very carefully and have fun! http://domin.dom.edu/depts/gslis/stumpers/
