# 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:** 2
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2008, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/21 "2008-09-07T17:32:22Z")
> [@astro](#): > > Story where where there are huge aliens that look like classical “devils” that want to be worshipped. Aliens that are sentient slugs (or was it a virus?) that can infect and destroy the devils. The first part would lead me to “Childhood’s End” by Clarke but the rest of the story doesn’t match up. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2008, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/22 "2008-09-07T18:23:12Z")
Short story, if I recall correctly; gist of story is a time traveler who misconstrued the direction in which probabilities diverge, was trying to travel forward in time and went backwards instead, time machine only goes in one direction so he can’t come back. He is “Merlin” circa King Arthur and the “wand” is a Colt 45 or some such. Something happens to make it necessary for him to escape Arthurian times and he ends up in distant past and creates Stonehenge for the express purpose of finding out when the hell he ended up. ---
**Author:** ![as\_u\_wish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6f9a4e/32.png) [@as\_u\_wish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/as_u_wish)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2008, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/23 "2008-09-07T20:16:27Z")
Sometime between 1970 and 1990 I read a short story where people are being evacuated from a planet/moon. They are lining up to board the space ships. Some youngsters are busy playing with cars and trucks in the school yard. Their teacher is angry with them for playing. The kids are extremely intent and serious. The teacher kicks the trucks and pours water on them. Later it turns out that the cars/trucks are foreshadowing what will happen to the escape pods. The last pod (which the teacher is on) is scheduled to be kicked out of orbit and/or flooded out. Does this ring a bell at all? I probably remember the details only partially and could have some of them wrong. Edited to add: Oh, and the teacher realizes it and is feeling guilty and sick at heart. ---
**Author:** ![Pyper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Pyper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pyper)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2008, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/24 "2008-09-07T22:40:11Z")
Ooh, ooh, I’ve got one! I read it in some type of “Best Short Stories of Some Year” collection. It more supernatural than sci-fi, though, so you might not know it. It involved a man waiting in a bar for another man, pondering angrily how the second man had ruined his life through manipulating him, and how he (the first man) was not going to let the second man hoodwink him again. The second man arrives. This other man has some sort of Jedi mind trick powers and gradually twists the first man’s ideas through his conversation, convincing the other guy that he is completely at fault. It was really well done, basically only a conversation, although I’m not describing it well. ---
**Author:** ![Kat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b19c9b/32.png) [@Kat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kat)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2008, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/25 "2008-09-07T23:23:02Z")
I don’t recall where I read this story, but the details that I remember are: human colonists land on an apparently uninhabited planet, with conveniently cleared sections that the colonists used to grow crops, some of which are exported off-planet. At some point, the alien inhabitants “grow” out of the cleared sections, but they are badly misshapen, as portions of them were absorbed by the crops in some way, so the missing portions need to be tracked down and removed by the animals (or humans!) that they ended up in. ---
**Author:** ![Ponderoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponderoid/32/19221_2.png) [@Ponderoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponderoid)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2008, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/26 "2008-09-07T23:52:40Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > It’s a full-length novel. Set a few hundred years in the future, after humanity had apparently been wiped out by some sort of sentient computer viruses. An immortal, super-enhanced woman, believing herself the last human left, escapes to some faraway planet (in sub-light speeds) with a cargo of human embryos, and there she sets up a new human civilization Sounds like it might be [_Eve’s Rib_ by Bryn Chandler](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22eve%27s+rib%22++%22bryn+chandler%22). \*\*\* Ponder ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2008, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/27 "2008-09-07T23:54:37Z")
It would be Screw-P, by the way. Old LISP thing. [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/p-convention.html](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/p-convention.html) “Do you want to screw?” Okay. Okay. This one… there’s only one real answer to. It’s an Isaac Asimov story, and it’s about a really. Really. Really horrible pun. No, no. I mean _really_ horrible. Short-short. Name 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 8, 2008, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/28 "2008-09-08T00:14:27Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > Okay. Okay. This one… there’s only one real answer to. > It’s an Isaac Asimov story, and it’s about a really. Really. Really horrible pun. > > No, no. I mean _really_ horrible. Short-short. > > Name it. There are a few choices: “Shah Guido G” ends with Atlantis sinking beneath the WAVES. “Loint of Paw” ends with “A niche in time saves Stein” “Sure Thing” ends with “Sloan’s Teddy wins the race” and there’s “Death of a Foy” that ends “Give my five hearts to Maude, Dwayne; dismember me for Harold’s choir” Which one is your groaner? ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/29 "2008-09-08T01:08:23Z")
> [@as\_u\_wish](#): > > Sometime between 1970 and 1990 I read a short story where people are being evacuated from a planet/moon. They are lining up to board the space ships. Some youngsters are busy playing with cars and trucks in the school yard. Their teacher is angry with them for playing. The kids are extremely intent and serious. The teacher kicks the trucks and pours water on them. > > Later it turns out that the cars/trucks are foreshadowing what will happen to the escape pods. The last pod (which the teacher is on) is scheduled to be kicked out of orbit and/or flooded out. > > Does this ring a bell at all? I probably remember the details only partially and could have some of them wrong. > > Edited to add: Oh, and the teacher realizes it and is feeling guilty and sick at heart. It’s a Zenna Henderson short story, probably from _The Anything Box_, because it’s not one of her “People” stories. I don’t remember the title offhand. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/30 "2008-09-08T01:09:40Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > It would be Screw-P, by the way. Old LISP thing. > [The -P Convention](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/p-convention.html) > > “Do you want to screw?” > > Okay. Okay. This one… there’s only one real answer to. > It’s an Isaac Asimov story, and it’s about a really. Really. Really horrible pun. > > No, no. I mean _really_ horrible. Short-short. > > Name it. My favorite bad Asimov pun is “the star mangled spanner.” ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/31 "2008-09-08T01:11:05Z")
There’s a few more than that, Andy. But you’ve got it in your shortlist. Which is 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 8, 2008, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/32 "2008-09-08T01:17:37Z")
> [@Bill\_Door](#): > > My favorite bad Asimov pun is “the star mangled spanner.” Actually that one’s by Clarke: “Neutron Tide” is the title I’m pretty sure ---
**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 8, 2008, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/33 "2008-09-08T01:19:39Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > There’s a few more than that, Andy. But you’ve got it in your shortlist. Which is it? 🙂 I’d guess “Loint of Paw.” ---
**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 8, 2008, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/34 "2008-09-08T01:22:20Z")
> [@Bill\_Door](#): > > It’s a Zenna Henderson short story, probably from _The Anything Box_, because it’s not one of her “People” stories. I don’t remember the title offhand. That sounds right - she did a lot of stories about children Here’s the list of stories in “Anything Box” [http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?THNTHNGBXX0000](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?THNTHNGBXX0000), btw. ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/35 "2008-09-08T01:30:10Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > It would be Screw-P, by the way. Old LISP thing. Thanks. I have this weird ability, demonstrated here, to remember odd details about stories (not necessarily accurately) without remembering any of the substance. ---
**Author:** ![De\_La\_Rue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@De\_La\_Rue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/De_La_Rue)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/36 "2008-09-08T01:37:53Z")
> [@A\_shameful\_cracka](#): > > I have another one. This was either a children’s or YA book, read in the early 80s. It follows a kid in the future who travels to a planet in another star system on a vacation/business trip with his Dad. The trip would take months or years normally, but they have the technology to transmit data faster than light, and the way the kid travels is that a body is created for him at the destination and his mind is transmitted to a receiver at the remote location and uploaded into the simulated body’s brain while his real body was kept in a kind of unconscious storage. This was seen as somewhat commonplace to him, but not something everybody got to do - kinda like a kid getting to go on a vacation to Europe. There was some kind of nefarious plot against his father that involved this body duplication process. Hey, I read something like that! He went to stay with his aunt, and the only way you could tell if you were a brain in a robot was by a scar on your stomach… Upon further research, that book was apparently called “My Trip to Alpha-1”, by Alfred Slote. Is that it? ---
**Author:** ![luvtinayothers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@luvtinayothers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/luvtinayothers)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/37 "2008-09-08T01:47:23Z")
About twenty years ago I bought a used paperback from a garage sale for a quarter. I remember very little about it. I know that it was a bunch of science fiction stories all of them involving the same character, a man that I think was a scientist. One of the stories involved some sort of virtual reality device that allowed him to fully experience the pleasures of harems! I could have sworn that the title of the collection was “The Best Laid Plans” but I can’t find a collection of short stories with that title so maybe my recollection of the title is completely wrong. I think that the stories were from the late sixties, early seventies. Help! ---
**Author:** ![Naturally\_Oblivious](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ec9cab/32.png) [@Naturally\_Oblivious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Naturally_Oblivious)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/38 "2008-09-08T02:18:59Z")
Heh, I have a few that I’ve been trying to find the titles of. The first is a book. I read it in the early 90’s, but I’m pretty sure it was published a lot earlier than than that. The paperback version had a blue cover. The people in the story all live in giant trees that float through “space.” At the very beginning, it has one of the characters visiting a doctor while the doctor is digging a bug out of a woman’s brain. He says it’s to late for the woman, but hopefully he got all the damn eggs or something. The people get water by tossing a pot attached to a rope into ponds of water that occasionally float by. Partway through the story, the tree is ripped in half, and the main characters end up floating on a raft. Two of the members tie themselves to the side, and end up having sex. Later on they find a ship, and make their way to another tree where they are captured and sold as slaves. I don’t remember anything else from this point on. Another one, which I think is a short story, has this guy who invents a telescope that lets him see through anything, including back and fowards in time. This eventually leads the main character to realize that everyone is being watched by someone, always. I’m sure there’s more, but that’s all I remember right now. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/39 "2008-09-08T02:31:56Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > I’d guess “Loint of Paw.” You really think that’s worse than “Give my big hearts to Maude, Dwayne. Dismember me for Harold’s choir. Tell all the Foys on Sortibackenstrete that I will soon be there --” ![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/BdPDEcUWu3s/maxresdefault.jpg)https://www.youtube.com/embed/BdPDEcUWu3s?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque ---
**Author:** ![Ponderoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponderoid/32/19221_2.png) [@Ponderoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponderoid)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/40 "2008-09-08T02:53:17Z")
> [@Naturally\_Oblivious](#): > > The people in the story all live in giant trees that float through “space.” _The Integral Trees_ by Larry Niven. > [@](#): > > this guy who invents a telescope that lets him see through anything, including back and fowards in time. “I See You” by Damon Knight. \*\*\* Ponder [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417.md?page=3)