This story sounds a little bit like Timestorm by Gordon Dickson. I have never seen the paperback cover that rjk describes, but the story does involve a protagonist who travels with a semi-telepathic jaguar through a post-apocalyptic future.
rjk writes:
> In the first, all I remember is the hero going to the city and
> climbing the stairs into an office building, where he finds a
> painting that just looks like random blobs of colour up close,
> but from a distance resolves into a vase of flowers. “A great
> magic!” he says.
“By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benet
Sounds like “Jachid and Jechidah”, where the two were in love and the female is condemned to spend time on Earth: “a prison where souls bound for Sheol…await destruction”
Found in the collection Short Friday
AL
Thank you!
Thanks, guys! I’ll look those up.
Turek - I don’t think that one is it, but it does sound interesting, and I may check that out if I can find it, but I think Wendell Wagner may possibly have it. Like I said, it’s been a LONG time since I read the story, and undoubtedly a lot of the facts of the story have been forgotten. I’m going to the Library tomorrow and see if I can find that one! Thanks.
Anybody ever read the short story about “slow glass”. That was a cool one. I’ll expound on it if anybody would like me to.
brianmelendez:
Another one that I’ve been looking for: a story where various cycles and fluctuations in the global economy and politics end up being related to the personalities and neuroses of the bureaucrats who run the responsible departments. I read the story in a science-fiction anthology at least 20 years ago and haven’t been able to find it since.
That’s by Fritz Leiber but I can’t remenber the name.
Bob Shaw wrote several stories about “slow glass,” which he collected in a novel titled Other Days, Other Eyes (1972). The most-often reprinted is the first slow-glass story, “Light of Other Days” (1966), which appears in at least half a dozen anthologies. (Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter used the same title for a novel in 2000.)
Thanks for the reference, musicjunkie. Your mentioning Fritz Leiber reminds me of another one that I have been looking for. I don’t know if Leiber wrote it, but the style was similar:
The protagonist awakens every day with his memory being slowly peeled away, so that the last point that he can remember is further back in the past each time he awakens. On Friday, he can’t remember anything since Wednesday; on Saturday, he has forgotten Wednesday and can’t remember anything since Tuesday; and so forth. He takes to writing notes to himself so that, when he wakes up the next time, he can at least figure out what is going on (sort of like the movie Memento). I think that everyone in the story is experiencing this effect, not just the protagonist.
This is definately Neil Gaiman from the Smoke and Mirrors book. I read it a couple months ago.
brianmelendez writes:
> The protagonist awakens every day with his memory being
> slowly peeled away, so that the last point that he can
> remember is further back in the past each time he awakens.
Some of your details aren’t quite right, but this is clearly “Sketches among the Ruins of My Mind” by Philip Jose Farmer.
I posted this one on the last “Identify from a vague description” thread, but it was towards the end, so I don’t think it got much exposure. I’d really love to identify this book and try to find a copy. However, I’m afraid it’s pretty obscure.
Children’s novel published in the early 20th century. '20’s maybe, but not later than the '40’s. Possibly translated to English.
A family living on a farm in Yugoslavia, Romania, or another European country. The father’s brother dies, and they adopt his daughter, Kata. She and the biological son have horses that they ride around the farm, race, etc. Kata gets caught in the barn rafters eating Papa’s curing sausages. The father (and possibly the son) go off to fight in a war, probably WWI. The book chronicles the life of the family that’s stayed back on the farm. At the end of the book, the father dies in the war, but the family does not yet know. The last sentence of the book is something like “They did not know that he was sleeping under a blanket of snow.”
I think this one is The Unforsaken Hiero by Sterling Lanier, but my copy is packed away and I can’t confirm right now. I know he had a telepathic large cat he could communicate with.
OK - I may be able to help you here, or maybe not. I have a book called “The Good Master” by Kate Seredy, first published 1935. The plot involves a young girl named Kate from Budapest who gets shipped off to live with her uncle because her father can’t handle her.
She has a bunch of adventures with her cousin Jancsi. She learns to ride and gets a horse. She doesn’t like porridge and milk, so she climbs up into the rafters and eats the curing sausages there. She heads off a stampede, goes to the fair, gets kidnapped by gypsies and hears some traditional folktales from the local herders in her uncles employ.
But, the book doesn’t have anything to do with the war. It ends when Kate’s father comes to visit at Christmas time and decides to stay on the farm instead of going back to the city. The whole thing had that sort of “staying where we belong” feel to it that was pretty common to the time period.
I admit that I bought the book at a second hand store because I thought that the title was hilarious. The back blurb was even better - talking about a “young girl who must be tamed” and “her understanding uncle, the Good Master.” giggle
I’m new here, but have enjoyed reading this thread and thought I would see if a book I remember rings a bell with anyone.
My brother went to San Francisco in the 70s and brought back a really creepy book about a woman who moved into an apartment on Lombard Street. Awful things started happening to her, some sort of supernatural, and some sort of not. Her experiences didn’t stop until she moved from the “evil” house. It was a really frightening book, but, of course, I can’t remember its name or author. Does this sound familiar to anyone?
This is a story I read some time ago, and I’m completely unable to recall the author.
It’s sort of a detective story, except the ‘detective’ is actually more a mystic, spooky occult investigator rather than a hardboiled PI. He goes to a town where several different people are having the same bad dream, about being at a feast, only the host always turns them away at the end. After looking around for a while, he finds out what’s going on. The dream is actually a spiritual guilt trip they’re all taking; they’re all sinners in some way or another, and they’re dreaming of the host (Jesus) denying them Heaven. The detective leaves them to their dreams and leaves town in the end
Gravity Thank you so much! I believe that may be the book, because I sort of have a vague recollection of a sequel, so the war may have come in the second book if that was accurate. It sounds pretty familiar. I’ll be so thrilled if I find a copy. 
Is there nothing not known by the Teeming Millions?
I checked and you’re right on. The Good Master is the first book. Apparently I had a second book of hers; A Tree for Peter seems to ring a bell.
Kate Seredy (warning, annoying .wav file)
Okay, I have one. I read this back in one of my jr. high lit. books. There is this guy who has learned that there is supposedly an alternate world that is a paradise. He approaches this man who is supposed to know the path to get there. The man tells him about it, issues a few warnings, and instructs him to show up at a barn somewhere outside the city at a certain time.
He and several others show up and are told to wait in the barn and not leave. They wait, and wait, and wait. Finally, he decides they’ve all been had. He runs out of the barn in anger and suddenly there is a flash from inside. He looks in and sees a strange landscape inside the barn. He rushes in (I think) and it goes black. The other people are gone. Knowing now that the world is real, he returns to the man in the city to get a second chance, but the man pretends he doesn’t know what the guy is talking about.
Any ideas? Thanks!
*I have a book title that I’ve been trying to remember, though I don’t know that I’ll ever reread it.
Its a story of two kids, and there;s this tree stump that if they climb in through it, they come out as birds (crows?). There’s also an island where they go into this cavern/hole, and it’s like all the trees are upside down because of the tree toots coming down into the cavern. I read this book when I was in grade 3 (1989), and I was reminded of it in a dream I had, and I’m wondering what it was. I haven’t theied to Google for it, though I’m going to do that now…*
Yeah i read that book!! I know the upside down tree part takes place in new york central park on an island there, man I cant remeber the Title but I will look online and see if i can find it. 