# Ask the guy who is pretty good at SF Story Identification **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [September 7, 2008, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417 "2008-09-07T00:08:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2008, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/181 "2008-09-29T01:00:21Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > The classic story with this theme is E M Forster’s “The Machine Stops” which is online here [Aspects of E.M. Forster: The Machine Stops (1909)](http://emforster.de/hypertext/template.php3?t=tms), but in the wikipedia page [The Machine Stops - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops) they reference a Mad magazine parody called “Blobs” As I think about it, though, “The Machine Stops” doesn’t have a guy travelling into the future. That sounds a bit like John Campbell’s “Twilight” [Twilight (Campbell short story) - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_(short_story)), possibly mixed with Hamilton’s “The Man Who Evolved” [The Man Who Evolved - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Evolved) ---
**Author:** ![moes\_lotion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ba0ec/32.png) [@moes\_lotion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moes_lotion)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2008, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/182 "2008-09-29T02:07:32Z")
This one was a short story in a collection that I’d borrowed from a friend in the mid 1980’s, but the book was probably older. An agent has been smuggled onto the surface of a planet whose inhabitants have been banned from the rest of the universe because of their uncontrollably warlike and aggressive nature. The rest of the universe’s civilizations have created an inescapable forcefield around the planet and left the race to it’s own devices for hundreds of years. But a new race has appeared, just as fierce and warlike, and is currently rampaging across space kicking ass. Thus the initial character’s mission is to try to recruit the banned race of beings to help save the day. It’s only at the very end of the story that we discover that this is taking place on our Earth and that we humans are the banned race. The one scene that I sort-of-kinda remember is when the agent first encounters a member of the banned species, a youngster, just as a party of the raiding aggressors also happen to stumble on the scene. The agent is in hiding and watches first in horror at what seems about to happen to the helpless child, then in astonishment as the surrounding forest seems to come alive and destroy the raiding party at the child’s command. ---
**Author:** ![Amok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f17d59/32.png) [@Amok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amok)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2008, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/183 "2008-09-29T02:56:21Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > For some reason I’m thinking of Anne McCaffery’s Pirate Planet series, but it doesn’t quite fit. I glanced at the description for that on Wiki. Nope, not it. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/184 "2008-09-30T01:12:34Z")
> [@moes\_lotion](#): > > This one was a short story in a collection that I’d borrowed from a friend in the mid 1980’s, but the book was probably older. An agent has been smuggled onto the surface of a planet whose inhabitants have been banned from the rest of the universe because of their uncontrollably warlike and aggressive nature. The rest of the universe’s civilizations have created an inescapable forcefield around the planet and left the race to it’s own devices for hundreds of years. > > But a new race has appeared, just as fierce and warlike, and is currently rampaging across space kicking ass. Thus the initial character’s mission is to try to recruit the banned race of beings to help save the day. It’s only at the very end of the story that we discover that this is taking place on our Earth and that we humans are the banned race. > > The one scene that I sort-of-kinda remember is when the agent first encounters a member of the banned species, a youngster, just as a party of the raiding aggressors also happen to stumble on the scene. The agent is in hiding and watches first in horror at what seems about to happen to the helpless child, then in astonishment as the surrounding forest seems to come alive and destroy the raiding party at the child’s command. I think this is “With Friends Like This” by Alan Dean Foster ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/185 "2008-09-30T01:29:56Z")
I’m coming in way late here, but I wonder: Can I ask you to do it in reverse? What is your recollection of the plots of Brunner’s Stand On Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up ? ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Some\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ad7895/32.png) [@Just\_Some\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Some_Guy)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/186 "2008-09-30T01:55:41Z")
> [@blondebear](#): > > I’m coming in way late here, but I wonder: Can I ask you to do it in reverse? > > What is your recollection of the plots of Brunner’s Stand On Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up ? I’ve read _Stand on Zanzibar_ recently. It’s… uh… Joycean. Okay, there’s two basic plots involving a company that decides to make the world better by buying out a third world country where no conflicts occur. There’s another where a spy is infiltrating a closed communist country where they claim to have invented pre-natal genetic engineering. This claim has for some reason that I couldn’t follow caused the entire world to freak out. In between these arcs there’s a lot of… um… “text” I guess is the best word that fills in details of the terminally overpopulated world with seven billion people in it (_The Population Bomb_ being a recent best seller telling us how the world would be terminally overpopulated by the 1980’s). These chapters are either annoyingly pretentious or brilliant writing depending on which side of the fence you fall on. They’re certainly not coherent in any way. I thought the main plot was okay but I hated the background chapters that interspersed them. I wrote a review for [my blog](http://das-ubernerd.blogspot.com/2007/11/review-stand-on-zanzibar.html) if you want some more details. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/187 "2008-09-30T02:01:55Z")
> [@blondebear](#): > > I’m coming in way late here, but I wonder: Can I ask you to do it in reverse? > > What is your recollection of the plots of Brunner’s Stand On Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up ? “Stand on Zanzibar” takes place in the near future where overpopulation is a desperate problem - people with more than two children are treated like pariahs and suspected of secret Catholicism, and people with genetic defects are also discriminated against (“bleeder” is a slur). The political order is upset when a scientist in a tiny nearly third-world nation reports that he can make sure that children are born genetically optimized. There are many subplots: one about the nation of Beninia in Africa where people seem naturally peaceful, one about a man who is drafted and trained as an assassin, and several about people just going crazy from the population pressure. In “The Sheep Look Up” the problem is pollution. ---
**Author:** ![Risha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/5fc32e/32.png) [@Risha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Risha)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/188 "2008-09-30T05:08:26Z")
> [@Amok](#): > > This was a series of SF books; I’m pretty sure there were at least 3 of them. I think the writer was a woman and I read them in the early to mid 80s when I think they were newish. > > The protagonist was female and lived on a future Earth that’s ruled by a nasty dictatorship. The story starts when she’s fairly young. She’s put into a state school where sexual abuse is rife and trained to be a spy. When she’s sent off-world on her first real mission she rebels and hooks up with a pirate starship captain. They go to some rebel world where they manage to become the rulers or something like that. Eventually they muster a fleet and return to Earth and overthrow the dictatorship. I think that I might have read one of these. Was she surgically sterilized when she was first placed into government care, and then raped by one of the doctors? If it sounds familiar, I’ll go comb through my old SF novels to see if I still have it hanging around. I’m pretty sure that I’ll recognize it from the cover, even though I don’t recall the name or author. ---
**Author:** ![MacSpon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@MacSpon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacSpon)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/189 "2008-09-30T08:44:31Z")
This one’s been nagging me for years. Probably a YA book; it’s about a group of people who’ve built a mechanical ‘mole’ type machine and go for a journey underground. I have a vague memory that the machine had a French name; possibly “Tatou”. All the travellers had their appendixes removed before leaving, just in case. :dubious: As the journey proceeds, one of them gets claustrophobic, sleepwalks to the controls and throws the machine off-course so they end up lost, bursting out in some kind of massive cave system and unable to go further as the mole has been damaged. They get rescued when a man who’s lowered a camera down a crevasse on a line sees a woman in his photograph. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/190 "2008-09-30T13:42:29Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > I don’t find it embarrassing. I find it fascinating how memory works. I’d like to work out a general theory from threads like this what people remember. It really is a fascinating thing. I’d read all the Sherlock Holmes stories as a kid, and I’ve been going through them again - I remember almost none of the actual plots (except for some reason the one that involved fuller’s earth and counterfeiting, and that’s specifically because I had to look up what fuller’s earth was) - but I remember almost most of Holmes’ deductions from ordinary objects and a lot of the ordinary household scenes. I specifically remembered almost word for word his examination of Watson’s watch, but NOTHING at all about the actual mystery and plot of _A Study in Scarlet_. I only really remembered anything about the plots of the most widely read ones, and I assume that’s because I came into contact with them more than once or twice (_The Speckled Band_ and _The Hound of the Baskervilles_.) I see this kind of thing all the time as a librarian, too. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2008, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/191 "2008-09-30T23:14:14Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > I think this is “With Friends Like This” by Alan Dean Foster Correct. And, as I remember it, the alien agent doesn’t have to be smuggled in - his starship just lands. And there’s no doubt from the outset that it’s humanity which has been imprisoned on Earth; there’s no “twist” in that sense. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2008, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/192 "2008-10-01T01:35:45Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Correct. And, as I remember it, the alien agent doesn’t have to be smuggled in - his starship just lands. And there’s no doubt from the outset that it’s humanity which has been imprisoned on Earth; there’s no “twist” in that sense. BTW, Foster later wrote a trilogy with a similar theme - humans are the only species in the universe in which many individuals are willing to kill an intelligent being, so they are recruited into an interstellar war [The Damned Trilogy - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Damned_Trilogy) ---
**Author:** ![phil417](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/6bbea6/32.png) [@phil417](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phil417)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2008, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/193 "2008-10-01T06:08:58Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > Hi there. It’s been just about 4 years since I signed onto the SDMB, but I’m back. A few weeks back I helped out in this thread [Help me find this Science Fiction short story - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=476861) with a story identification (by emailing the answer to Wendell). If you’ve got a story you’d like me to try to identify for you, give a description (include a rough idea of when you read it, and as many details as you remember) and I’ll give it my best shot. > > Andy I remember three stories. The first, I think was part of a novel. The “hero” was on a prison planet, where he was sent to harvest protein from a giant chicken heart, called “chicken little”. He escaped. The other two I have questions are short stories of the armageddon sort. In the first, there are are a group who, after a holocaust, are given a drug which can take them into the pre-holocast past (ostensibly to teach them how to survive). One of the survivors is in charge of morale for the group. He steals the drug that & uses it to revive his own past passions. In the second, there’s a time when mankind can’t procreate without this: a regenerated/recreated Janis Joplin concert happens. She self-destructs while her audience procreates. Thanks, Phil ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2008, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/194 "2008-10-01T06:38:58Z")
> [@Amok](#): > > Here’s one that’s bugging me… > > This was a series of SF books; I’m pretty sure there were at least 3 of them. I think the writer was a woman and I read them in the early to mid 80s when I think they were newish. > > The protagonist was female and lived on a future Earth that’s ruled by a nasty dictatorship. The story starts when she’s fairly young. She’s put into a state school where sexual abuse is rife and trained to be a spy. When she’s sent off-world on her first real mission she rebels and hooks up with a pirate starship captain. They go to some rebel world where they manage to become the rulers or something like that. Eventually they muster a fleet and return to Earth and overthrow the dictatorship. > > Obviously there was more detail than that to fill a series of books, but that’s the major arc as I remember it. Not sure why I was thinking of this one, but it popped into my mind and now I can’t place it. I believe that you’re talking about F. M. Busby’s _Rissa Kerguelen_ series. Busby is a guy, BTW. For more info, see [http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/b/f-m-busby/](http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/b/f-m-busby/) . ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2008, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/195 "2008-10-01T11:26:00Z")
phil417 writes: \> The first, I think was part of a novel. The “hero” was on a prison planet, where \> he was sent to harvest protein from a giant chicken heart, called “chicken little”. \> He escaped. This is a piece of _The Space Merchants_ by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2008, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/196 "2008-10-01T22:26:25Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > phil417 writes: > > \> The first, I think was part of a novel. The “hero” was on a prison planet, where > \> he was sent to harvest protein from a giant chicken heart, called “chicken little”. > \> He escaped. > > This is a piece of _The Space Merchants_ by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth. Yep - the “prison planet” was Earth (South America as I recall) ---
**Author:** ![Amok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f17d59/32.png) [@Amok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amok)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/197 "2008-10-04T19:09:02Z")
> [@Risha](#): > > I think that I might have read one of these. Was she surgically sterilized when she was first placed into government care, and then raped by one of the doctors? I think you are remembering the same book. I had forgotten the sterilization detail, but your mention of it reminded me of it. And I don’t remember that specific rape, but sexual abuse was something of a reoccurring theme, so probably. [QUOTE=Lynn Bodoni] I believe that you’re talking about F. M. Busby’s Rissa Kerguelen series. Busby is a guy, BTW. For more info, see [http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/b/f-m-busby/](http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/b/f-m-busby/) . [/quote] Ah, yeah, I checked your link and that’s definitely it. I think the specifics Risha mentioned happened in the first book _Young Rissa_. Looking at the reviews on Amazon I got more details wrong than just the author’s gender, but that’s usually the case with memory. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/198 "2008-10-04T19:38:27Z")
Well, since **Lynn Bodoni** stole _Rissa Kerguelen_ from me… 😛 I’ve been trying to find this story for yonks–I think I read it in one of the small format magazines, F&SF or Asimov’s, late '80’s. I’m thinking the title was numeric, a time stamp, something like “3:48” and it referred to the amount of time it took the _Challenger_ passenger compartment to fall to the ocean, which was a pivotal plot point as well. I’ve gone through the archive lists of both magazines from about 1986 onward but have had zero luck finding the story. Anybody? ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/199 "2008-10-04T23:48:24Z")
> [@SmartAleq](#): > > Well, since **Lynn Bodoni** stole _Rissa Kerguelen_ from me… 😛 > > I’ve been trying to find this story for yonks–I think I read it in one of the small format magazines, F&SF or Asimov’s, late '80’s. I’m thinking the title was numeric, a time stamp, something like “3:48” and it referred to the amount of time it took the _Challenger_ passenger compartment to fall to the ocean, which was a pivotal plot point as well. I’ve gone through the archive lists of both magazines from about 1986 onward but have had zero luck finding the story. Anybody? I checked the Internet SF Database and the online Locus magazine index and didn’t find anything relevant (there was a narrative poem called “Challenger as Viewed from the Westerbrook Bar” which I remember reading). Here’s a link to all the stories published from 1984 through 1999 that start with numbers [Index: Stories, Listed by Title](http://www.locusmag.com/index/l1.htm), but nothing looks promising ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/200 "2008-10-05T05:06:56Z")
Yah, it’s a bear, ain’t it? I’m pretty good with the Google-fu and I’m starting to wonder if I imagined the whole thing, except the story itself really impressed itself on me and since this is pre-internet I had no way of fact checking the story but I always wanted to. Figures I couldn’t have an easily identified story… although there was this one, something about it only stops raining like every twenty years… 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417.md?page=11)