# 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:** 3
**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 8, 2008, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/41 "2008-09-08T03:10:54Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > 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? You left out “Bottommos” for the low-slung 3rd moon of Mars. And I believe the actual punchline on the ‘Maude, Dwayne’ story was more like “Give my big hearts to Maude, Dwayne; dismember me for Harold’s choir; tell all the Foys on Sortibrackenstrete that I will soon be there” 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Myrrajh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/87869e/32.png) [@Myrrajh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Myrrajh)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/42 "2008-09-08T04:18:35Z")
Okay, this is pretty cool! Hope you can find this one for me. I read it probably around 1979. There was an underground city and the people would stand in cubicles and be gassed to sleep for the night. They had no sunlight to know when it was day or night, so they relied on the gas. Story was that the world had gone through a nuclear war and this city retreated far under a mountain to escape radiation; and it was a very long time they’d been there, perhaps for generations. Whenever someone in their society rebelled, they were exiled to “outside”, presumably to die from radiation sickness. No one ever came back. There was some old tunnel they’d use to get the bad guys outside. Well, of course this wouldn’t be youth fiction if it didn’t have a curious youth in it. This boy decides to venture outside to see how bad it is. He finds out that the earth and all life had recovered and the world was clear, pristine, and teeming with plants and all kinds of animals. Rather Eden-ish, if I’m remembering it correctly. I’d love to read it again. Those images of his first view of the renewed earth are still in my head after all these years. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Myrrajh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/87869e/32.png) [@Myrrajh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Myrrajh)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/43 "2008-09-08T04:28:17Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > I don’t think anyone else here knows the answer, so please feel free! > > Here’s an easy one, since Ray Bradbury wrote it. (I read it in a high-school anthology, but haven’t encountered it in any Bradbury collection I own, and I own quite a few.) > > Schoolhouse on Venus. It rains _all the time_. On this particular day the sun is supposed to come out for five minutes. Sad little loner girl really looking forward to it. Bullies lock her in a closet, and forget to let her out in time, so she misses it completely. Wahhh. > > One of Bradbury’s “Kids suck” specials. Okay, that dredged up bad memories of when I first heard that in elementary school. Talk about depressing. I remember it that the teacher said this was going to be the only time in 100 years or something that they would see the sun. And she missed it. Absolute wahhh. ---
**Author:** ![Hunter\_Hawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/50afbb/32.png) [@Hunter\_Hawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hunter_Hawk)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/44 "2008-09-08T07:09:17Z")
> [@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. This could be the “Quintara Marathon” trilogy by Jack L. Chalker. Not particularly worth reading IMO. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/45 "2008-09-08T09:37:36Z")
> [@Naturally\_Oblivious](#): > > 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. Asimov’s [The Dead Past](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Past) ---
**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, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/46 "2008-09-08T10:57:52Z")
> [@Ponderoid](#): > > _The Integral Trees_ by Larry Niven. > > “I See You” by Damon Knight. > > \*\*\* Ponder Thank you! Those are it exactly. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/47 "2008-09-08T11:03:28Z")
> [@Ponderoid](#): > > 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 Nope. Sorry, not it. ---
**Author:** ![Risha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/5fc32e/32.png) [@Risha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Risha)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/48 "2008-09-08T13:04:19Z")
> [@Kat](#): > > 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. It’s from a short story collection by Anne McCaffery. ---
**Author:** ![Risha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/5fc32e/32.png) [@Risha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Risha)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/49 "2008-09-08T13:20:27Z")
> [@Risha](#): > > It’s from a short story collection by Anne McCaffery. Found it. It’s _Velvet Fields_ from “The Girl Who Heard Dragons”. I remembered this story right off the bat because it, quite frankly, really disturbed me. It’s told from the perspective of one of the colonists, who is proud to say (though he no longer has a tongue) that they did what was right to make up for their accidental crime. ---
**Author:** ![A\_shameful\_cracka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ebca7d/32.png) [@A\_shameful\_cracka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_shameful_cracka)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/50 "2008-09-08T14:23:43Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > The first part would lead me to “Childhood’s End” by Clarke but the rest of the story doesn’t match up. That was the first thing I thought of too, but the Overlords were benevolent and most definitely did NOT want to be worshipped. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/51 "2008-09-08T14:45:08Z")
OK, I’ll play. Two related stories by the same author. These were probably in one of the SF mags in the mid-80’s or earlier, which is about when I stopped reading. Basic premise is that there’s a race of women that can travel in parallel dimensions. They’re fairly possessive of this ability. The first story opens up with a woman (belonging to this group, though she doesn’t know it) who comes in to work with a bunch of roses given to her by a nice old gardener. The roses are wet with rain although it’s not currently raining. That’s pretty much all I remember from the first story. The second story concerns a character who has the ability to make entropy run backwards. He gets in a wrecked car and it starts running better. Eventually he meets (the character from the first story?) and saves her from or helps her defeat the parallel-world travelling women/priestesses. As I recall, the stories weren’t written all that coherently, but the concept was interesting enough so that I’ve wondered if there were more stories set in that universe. ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/52 "2008-09-08T15:00:01Z")
> [@Myrrajh](#): > > Okay, this is pretty cool! Hope you can find this one for me. I read it probably around 1979. There was an underground city and the people would stand in cubicles and be gassed to sleep for the night. They had no sunlight to know when it was day or night, so they relied on the gas. > > Story was that the world had gone through a nuclear war and this city retreated far under a mountain to escape radiation; and it was a very long time they’d been there, perhaps for generations. Whenever someone in their society rebelled, they were exiled to “outside”, presumably to die from radiation sickness. No one ever came back. There was some old tunnel they’d use to get the bad guys outside. > > Well, of course this wouldn’t be youth fiction if it didn’t have a curious youth in it. This boy decides to venture outside to see how bad it is. He finds out that the earth and all life had recovered and the world was clear, pristine, and teeming with plants and all kinds of animals. Rather Eden-ish, if I’m remembering it correctly. > > I’d love to read it again. Those images of his first view of the renewed earth are still in my head after all these years. > > Thanks! This sounds like a story I read by Phillip K. Dick. There were robots involved. I’m looking through my books now to see if I still have the one that included this story. ---
**Author:** ![Gryff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/919ad9/32.png) [@Gryff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gryff)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/53 "2008-09-08T15:46:31Z")
There is a book (two actually) I have trying to find for over a decade now. The book was about 2 guys trying to run a independent trade ship, one of whom had been modified “before it became illegal” in a way that allowed him to grow teeth and claws. While modified he could move extremely fast and had increased strength. I am pretty sure the first book was about him rescuing the daughter of some rich guy who was planning to overthrow the local government. At some point he finds an ancient ring that allows him to heal fast, which in one scene kill all the grass he was lying on. One of the books has an ancient alien spaceship hidden underground. Also I remember something about firing weapons while in warp to be extremely dangerous for boh parties. I think the protagonists friends name was Kohn. I have never managed to get a hit on this even on dedicated book finding websites. ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/54 "2008-09-08T16:12:03Z")
> [@Myrrajh](#): > > Okay, this is pretty cool! Hope you can find this one for me. I read it probably around 1979. There was an underground city and the people would stand in cubicles and be gassed to sleep for the night. They had no sunlight to know when it was day or night, so they relied on the gas. > > Story was that the world had gone through a nuclear war and this city retreated far under a mountain to escape radiation; and it was a very long time they’d been there, perhaps for generations. Whenever someone in their society rebelled, they were exiled to “outside”, presumably to die from radiation sickness. No one ever came back. There was some old tunnel they’d use to get the bad guys outside. > > Well, of course this wouldn’t be youth fiction if it didn’t have a curious youth in it. This boy decides to venture outside to see how bad it is. He finds out that the earth and all life had recovered and the world was clear, pristine, and teeming with plants and all kinds of animals. Rather Eden-ish, if I’m remembering it correctly. > > I’d love to read it again. Those images of his first view of the renewed earth are still in my head after all these years. > > Thanks! Okay, I found what I was looking for. The short story is called (WARNING! SPOILERS IN LINK!) [The Defenders](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Defenders_(short_story)) and you can find it in [this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Short_Happy_Life_of_the_Brown_Oxford_(collection)) collection. This might not be the story you’re looking for, but if it’s not it was almost certainly either ripped off by (or a ripoff of) the story in the link. ---
**Author:** ![Myrrajh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/87869e/32.png) [@Myrrajh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Myrrajh)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/55 "2008-09-08T18:02:03Z")
> [@Mosier](#): > > Okay, I found what I was looking for. The short story is called (WARNING! SPOILERS IN LINK!) [The Defenders](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Defenders_(short_story)) and you can find it in [this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Short_Happy_Life_of_the_Brown_Oxford_(collection)) collection. > > This might not be the story you’re looking for, but if it’s not it was almost certainly either ripped off by (or a ripoff of) the story in the link. Thank you so much! I will check it out and let you know! ---
**Author:** ![rhythmonly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ee59a6/32.png) [@rhythmonly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rhythmonly)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/56 "2008-09-08T19:09:24Z")
The answer to post #10 is “Press Enter”, by John Varley. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/57 "2008-09-08T19:58:11Z")
I remember finding a book in the seatback of a plane I was on, so I thumbed through it (reading bits & pieces amounting to about 60% or so). Cheap paperback, at least a decade ago (though I got the sense the book was even older by the look of it), in the 200-300 page neighborhood. Don’t remember the author, but the name definitely didn’t ring a bell at the time. Protagonist is Tour Guide who works for Time Travel Agency. He takes people back to different periods of time to indulge in period-style adventures, including decadent/erotic behavior. Don’t remember all the setpieces, but ancient Rome (orgies, debauchery, etc.) was a prominent setting. There is quite a lot of fairly explicit sexual descriptions throughout the book. Don’t remember any of the plot elements, but I think he ends up falling for this woman (perhaps a redhead?) and sleeping with her, only to discover that she is his ancient ancestor (from the Arthurian age, maybe?). Although there seem to be more liberal provisions involving the interference/undue influencing of time, I believe the Time Travel protocols still involve a couple big DON’Ts, and this is one of them. He becomes a pariah or outcast or fugitive or non-entity or something, but can’t remember anything more (including how it ended). Didn’t take the book off the plane, but always wondered about it and always meant to post the inquiry here, so…There you Go! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ring](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Ring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ring)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/58 "2008-09-08T20:29:56Z")
A guy had two brains and he could do all kinds of neat things with one of them. The only thing I can remember, though, is if he memorized a place to a bunch of decimal places he could magically transport there. ---
**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, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/59 "2008-09-08T20:33:33Z")
> [@Ring](#): > > A guy had two brains and he could do all kinds of neat things with one of them. The only thing I can remember, though, is if he memorized a place to a bunch of decimal places he could magically transport there. A. E. Van Vogt’s “Null-A” series - Gilbert Gosseyn is the hero ---
**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, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/60 "2008-09-08T20:37:14Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > OK, I’ll play. Two related stories by the same author. These were probably in one of the SF mags in the mid-80’s or earlier, which is about when I stopped reading. Basic premise is that there’s a race of women that can travel in parallel dimensions. They’re fairly possessive of this ability. > > The first story opens up with a woman (belonging to this group, though she doesn’t know it) who comes in to work with a bunch of roses given to her by a nice old gardener. The roses are wet with rain although it’s not currently raining. > That’s pretty much all I remember from the first story. > > The second story concerns a character who has the ability to make entropy run backwards. He gets in a wrecked car and it starts running better. Eventually he meets (the character from the first story?) and saves her from or helps her defeat the parallel-world travelling women/priestesses. > > As I recall, the stories weren’t written all that coherently, but the concept was interesting enough so that I’ve wondered if there were more stories set in that universe. The second story sounds quite a bit like “All the Time in the World” by Daniel Keys Moran (not to be confused with Daniel Keyes (the author of “Flowers for Algernon”). The guy who can run entropy backwards is named Georges (not a typo - the french name), and he lives in the present - the girl he mets is from a future after an atomic war. It was published in Asimov’s in 1982, and according to this [Daniel Keys Moran - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Keys_Moran) it is part of a series. Andy [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417.md?page=4)