# 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:** 24
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/461 "2019-03-31T21:31:48Z")
Sounds like “Not In The Literature”, by Christopher Anvil. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/462 "2019-03-31T22:41:05Z")
That’s it! Thanks. ---
**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:** [March 31, 2019, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/463 "2019-03-31T23:49:07Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Sounds like “Not In The Literature”, by Christopher Anvil. I should read more Christopher Anvil - I’ve liked the stories and novels of his that I’ve read, but I know there are more out there. ---
**Author:** ![ChrisM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/47e85d/32.png) [@ChrisM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChrisM)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2019, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/464 "2019-04-01T04:26:51Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > The title I’m looking for is set in the contemporary 1960s. There are tunnel networks under cities, with entrances in basements. There are bad guys called elves living in the tunnels. The protagonist enters the tunnels to rescue a woman. An hallucinogenic fungus grows in the tunnels that the elves eat. I recall someone reading tea leaves. I’m pretty sure this is “The Shadow People” by Margaret St. Clair. ---
**Author:** ![Sleel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/73ab20/32.png) [@Sleel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleel)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2019, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/465 "2019-04-26T02:56:55Z")
> [@Mr.Bill](#): > > Don’t know if that’s the one. I also remember it was one of his stories set in Africa, with I believe a Maasai protagonist. > > Definitely not Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge, however, as I recently read that. [Into the Out Of](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Out_Of) by Alan Dean Foster. ---
**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:** [April 26, 2019, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/466 "2019-04-26T03:05:26Z")
> [@Morgyn](#): > > Thank you, **Peter Morris** , for identifying both _The Galactic Rejects_ and _The Ghosts_ for me. I found both inexpensively on Amazon and spent a pleasant evening revisiting both. > > Alas for me, _The Ghost of Dibble Hollow_, while available, costs far more than I’m willing to spend, but thank you anyway, **TheOtherWaldoPepper**. I’m still amazed you were able to identify it, given that I had only a vague memory of plot points and most were wrong! It’s on my bookshelf along with other favorites from my elementary-school reading days 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2019, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/467 "2019-04-26T17:16:39Z")
OK, here’s a couple I’d like to identify – the first because I’d like to re-read it, the second because I really would not like to re-read it but every once in a while I think of it and when I do it bugs me. 1. Longish short story or possibly a novella; I think maybe about fifteen or twenty years old? Researcher – I think a linguist – trips over an isolated group of people who don’t categorize people into male and female. Researcher says something like (not direct quotes) ‘don’t you notice that some people have penises and flat chests and other people have vulvae and large breasts?’ and is answered in effect ‘of course some people have penises and some people have vulvae. But some people with penises have larger breasts than some people with vulvae and why would we categorize people by that anyway?’ Researcher then goes hunting for other unusual gender categorizations or lack of, and comes across a pair of twins with a twin language, which has terms for a lot of, I think several dozen, genders. Note that I read this significantly before I started seeing common reports of people identifying as anything other than male or female. 1. Quite a short story, and I think considerably older. Small boy is sick in bed. He complains that his foot – I think it was his foot – isn’t part of him any longer, but has been taken over by something awful, and begs to have it amputated. Family tries to soothe him, tells him he just has a fever and is hallucinating, of course it’s his own foot. He then starts saying that the something awful is moving up his leg, taking over more and more of him. Family continues in the same attitude. The awful thing continues on upwards. Child, or rather something now looking like the child, wakes up, has developed some sort of destructive power, destroys something in the room I don’t remember what, and then goes off to kill the parents. ---
**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:** [April 26, 2019, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/468 "2019-04-26T17:26:24Z")
The second one is by Bradbury. Stand by… “Fever Dream” [Fever Dream (short story) - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fever_Dream_(short_story)) I saw a picture book version of this once, with the infected parts of the kid being phosphorescent! ---
**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:** [April 26, 2019, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/469 "2019-04-26T17:33:07Z")
Corrected link [Fever Dream (short story) - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fever_Dream_(short_story)) PS: At the end of the story the kid deliberately infects his pet bird with the disease and resolves to shake hands with lots of people, starting with his family. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2019, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/470 "2019-04-26T21:16:43Z")
Yup, that’s it, Andy L. I remembered a lot of details wrong, but that’s certainly the one I was remembering. – not sure I might not have been around fifteen myself when I read it; it’s certainly old enough. Scared the hell out of me, that’s for sure. Thanks! ---
**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:** [April 26, 2019, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/471 "2019-04-26T22:19:01Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Yup, that’s it, Andy L. I remembered a lot of details wrong, but that’s certainly the one I was remembering. > > – not sure I might not have been around fifteen myself when I read it; it’s certainly old enough. Scared the hell out of me, that’s for sure. > > Thanks! Glad to help. The “glow in the dark” edition [https://www.amazon.com/Fever-Dream-Night-Lights-Bradbury/dp/0312572859](https://www.amazon.com/Fever-Dream-Night-Lights-Bradbury/dp/0312572859) is extra creepy. ---
**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:** [April 26, 2019, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/472 "2019-04-26T22:23:12Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > 1. Longish short story or possibly a novella; I think maybe about fifteen or twenty years old? Researcher – I think a linguist – trips over an isolated group of people who don’t categorize people into male and female. Researcher says something like (not direct quotes) ‘don’t you notice that some people have penises and flat chests and other people have vulvae and large breasts?’ and is answered in effect ‘of course some people have penises and some people have vulvae. But some people with penises have larger breasts than some people with vulvae and why would we categorize people by that anyway?’ Researcher then goes hunting for other unusual gender categorizations or lack of, and comes across a pair of twins with a twin language, which has terms for a lot of, I think several dozen, genders. > > Note that I read this significantly before I started seeing common reports of people identifying as anything other than male or female. This sounds familiar to me too. Maybe Le Guin? ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Bill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mr.Bill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Bill)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2019, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/473 "2019-04-26T22:42:49Z")
> [@Sleel](#): > > [Into the Out Of](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Out_Of) by Alan Dean Foster. You got it. I even recognize some of the characters names in the link. Man, I could have sworn that was a Mike Resnick story. I bow to your superior knowledge. ---
**Author:** ![El\_DeLuxo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_deluxo/32/9043_2.png) [@El\_DeLuxo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_DeLuxo)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/474 "2019-04-27T04:10:02Z")
Oh, I think I’ve got a really obscure one for you! Mind you, I’m not trying to play stump-the-expert here, I really would like to find this tale and read it again. The story was published in the late 1970s or early 1980s, I think; I read it in an anthology whose title I don’t recall. PREMISE: Space travelers from Earth visit a planet where the intelligent local entities are some kind of bipedal vegetables or plants, with language and a culture and like that… Said locals have a tradition of hanging up their children and stretching their bodies out as the kids become adolescents. This rite of passage horrifies the do-gooders among the Earth visitors, who see it as child abuse. Another faction of the traveller group argues for a “Prime Directive” of sorts: _Don’t interfere with the indigenous culture!_ A local kid named Spet or Splet or something similar befriends the Earthlings; the well meaning don’t-stretch-your-kids faction starts working with Splet-or-Spet’s family, trying to convince them to break tradition by not subjecting their boy Spet-or-Splet to the ritual. It has an ending which is either very sad indeed or happy in a weird way, depending on the reader’s interpretation. I read this story like ten, fifteen years ago and it has somewhat stuck with me – but obviously not completely, or even sufficiently. If you could supply me with the title, and the author’s name, and maybe even what magazine or anthology it was published in, I’d really appreciate it. Thank you in advance. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/475 "2019-04-27T10:18:06Z")
UNHUMAN SACRIFICE, Katherine MacLean. [Published in Astounding Science Fiction (March, 1958), reprinted in Damon Knight’s anthology A Century of Science Fiction](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_MacLean). ---
**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:** [April 27, 2019, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/476 "2019-04-27T12:45:45Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > UNHUMAN SACRIFICE, Katherine MacLean. [Published in Astounding Science Fiction (March, 1958), reprinted in Damon Knight’s anthology A Century of Science Fiction](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_MacLean). Excellent! ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/477 "2019-04-27T14:40:39Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > This sounds familiar to me too. Maybe Le Guin? I’m pretty sure it’s not LeGuin; I think I’d have remembered it as LeGuin if it were. (It’s true that I’ve been sure of things before that turned out not to be so --) ---
**Author:** ![El\_DeLuxo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_deluxo/32/9043_2.png) [@El\_DeLuxo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_DeLuxo)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2019, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/478 "2019-04-28T06:21:26Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > Excellent! Yeah, that’s it! Thank both of you guys. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2019, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/479 "2019-04-28T08:07:46Z")
> [@hammos1](#): > > I first asked about this short story 15 years ago on this board. I read it in the 1980s in an anthology. (NB it is not \*On \*by Adam Roberts, nor is it Clarke’s _The Wall of Darkness_). > > The story concerns a tribe who live on a vertical cliff face of seemingly infinite height. Despite this precarious situation they have lived on the face for generations and have a developed society, language etc. > > One day, one of them looks over his shoulder and sees in the distance another cliff face that wasn’t there before. > > Over the next few days, it becomes apparent that the second cliff face is getting closer and closer. The tribe has to decide what to do: some choose suicide and let go off the cliff, while the others debate the relative merits of going up or going down… Could be THE PEOPLE ON THE PRECIPICE, by Ian Watson. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2019, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/480 "2019-04-28T08:12:20Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Could be Ian Slater’s USA VS MILITIA book series. Thanks for this! The cover is exactly how I remember it. Another one. Sci-Fi short story I read in a short story collection that was published in the 90’s. About 50-70 pages long. Aliens come to Earth and pose us a challenge. Beat them at their version of a board game and if we win we gain the knowledge of how to beat all diseases. Fail and they destroy the Earth. The board game is needlessly complex but a newspaper writer who’s covering this somehow gains an understanding of it and becomes Earth’s champion. He’s sent to challenge the head alien and pretty much instantly loses once the game gets underway. However he’s able to figure out the aliens simply want a fun challenge and don’t care about the medium so he challenges them instead to a game of poker, which he beats them handily at every time. Intrigued they thank him for the fun and give us our prize and go off to another planet to challenge them to a high-stakes poker game. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417.md?page=23) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417.md?page=25)