# 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:** 33
**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:** [June 13, 2020, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/641 "2020-06-13T20:13:12Z")
> [@ChrisM](#): > > I think this might be “None Before Me” by Sydney Carroll, which was included in an anthology edited by Ray Bradbury called _Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow._ It was reprinted several times in the 1960s. Detailed discussion of this story [What short story has the protagonist killed in his upper story apartment with the window crushed from the outside - Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/77286/what-short-story-has-the-protagonist-killed-in-his-upper-story-apartment-with-th) ---
**Author:** ![campp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@campp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/campp)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2020, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/642 "2020-06-13T22:28:04Z")
> [@ChrisM](#): > > I think this might be “None Before Me” by Sydney Carroll, which was included in an anthology edited by Ray Bradbury called _Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow._ It was reprinted several times in the 1960s. Thank you ChrisM! That was it. I used to have that book of Bradbury. Found it on Youtube. ---
**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:** [June 13, 2020, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/643 "2020-06-13T23:05:50Z")
There’s a story by Marc Laidlaw called “Love Comes to the Middleman” which has somewhat of a similar universe as “None before Me” but not a similar plot. There is a guy who lives in a universe where there are tiny people who live in tiny houses within his own house. Furthermore, his house is actually a tiny house from the point of view of the much larger people in whose much larger house his house exists. And so on to infinity each way, apparently. ---
**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:** [June 22, 2020, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/644 "2020-06-22T12:20:46Z")
Bumping this thread to make sure I’m still subscribed to it. Bring on the identification questions. ---
**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:** [June 22, 2020, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/645 "2020-06-22T14:54:46Z")
Also bumping this thread to make sure I can. ---
**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:** [June 22, 2020, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/646 "2020-06-22T23:41:04Z")
Thanks Wendell. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2020, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/647 "2020-06-23T00:11:40Z")
I’m bumping this thread because I now know it’ll give Andy a pointless notification. ---
**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:** [June 23, 2020, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/648 "2020-06-23T13:58:51Z")
Oh, you… ---
**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:** [June 30, 2020, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/649 "2020-06-30T23:38:35Z")
I’ve got one for you guys. A short story probably from the 1960s, that I read in an anthology in the 1970s. It’s about this guy who thinks he’s the center of the universe. Everything works out for him, no matter what - there’s always a parking spot where he needs one, etc. But it turns out that he’s not the center of the universe - he’s just holding a space for the real most important person ever, and when our hero isn’t needed any more, he dies in an accident that is convenient for the real most important person. Any ideas. ---
**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:** [July 1, 2020, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/650 "2020-07-01T02:34:13Z")
The Importance Of Being Important? ---
**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:** [July 1, 2020, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/651 "2020-07-01T02:44:24Z")
Quite right [short stories - Story from old anthology of sci-fi - Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/186291/story-from-old-anthology-of-sci-fi) 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:** [July 1, 2020, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/652 "2020-07-01T12:37:40Z")
I must have read it in the 1980s, here [http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?178021](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?178021) - a collection that also includes “Give Her Hell” ---
**Author:** ![Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiendish_astronaut/32/3295_2.png) [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiendish_Astronaut)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2020, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/653 "2020-07-01T12:40:11Z")
I know the answer to this one, but just for fun: Which sci-fi book begins with this scenario? (Albeit not with such a massive star): > **[Mystery over monster star's vanishing act](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-53235909)** > > A huge star has disappeared - did it become a black hole? ---
**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:** [July 1, 2020, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/654 "2020-07-01T12:47:29Z")
> [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](#): > > I know the answer to this one, but just for fun: > > Which sci-fi book begins with this scenario? (Albeit not with such a massive star): > > [Mystery over monster star's vanishing act - BBC News](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-53235909) Whipping Star by Frank Herbert. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2020, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/655 "2020-07-01T12:50:28Z")
OK, how about this one? There’s this galactic empire, but it’s falling, and this old dude who has some sort of mathematical science of the course of history has a plan to rebuild it over the course of a thousand years by sending a bunch of scientists to a world at the edge of the galaxy. I feel like it was by one of the big names, like Heinlein or Clarke or someone. ---
**Author:** ![Baal\_Houtham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baal_houtham/32/13604_2.png) [@Baal\_Houtham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baal_Houtham)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2020, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/656 "2020-07-01T13:21:47Z")
That might be [Never Gonna Give You Up](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ) by Richard Astley. ---
**Author:** ![Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiendish_astronaut/32/3295_2.png) [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiendish_Astronaut)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2020, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/657 "2020-07-01T15:25:56Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > Whipping Star by Frank Herbert. This isn’t the novel I was thinking of. ---
**Author:** ![raspberry\_hunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@raspberry\_hunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raspberry_hunter)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2020, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/658 "2020-07-01T16:43:01Z")
Oooooh can you help me with this? I read this story in… hmm, the late 80’s or possibly very early 90’s, though it may have been in an anthology of much older stories. I _think_ it was in an SF anthology, but I’m not actually sure. The problem is that my recollection is really hazy. I think it might have been a post-apocalyptic world… but maybe not… I feel like I remember forests??.. there is an older man who lives by himself and doesn’t want to hang out with people much, and a younger girl, who (it is strongly implied) is neuroatypical in some way. They become friends. Eventually, she gets mixed up with a young guy and gets pregnant and he runs away, and there’s a scene where she goes to tell the older man this, and he thinks something along the lines of “They would make her give it up, and they mustn’t do that. Not to [girl’s name].” The ending scene is told from the POV of the guy who comes back years later to that place, I think looking for the girl, and sees a couple of kids playing around. They refer to their mom and dad, and it becomes clear to the reader that the older man has married the girl and is bringing up her kid (and i think they have at least one additional kid together). …There’s nothing in there that says SF, except that maybe the setting was SF; I _think_ it was SF because that was mostly what I was reading at that time, but I don’t know for sure! I have all these feelings about it because it was the first story, I think, where I did a ton of inferencing and was able to fill in the blanks. I’ve tried googling for the quote above, but I must not remember it entirely correctly because it doesn’t return any hits. The “feel” of it feels a little like Clifford Simak to me – it has that kind of folksy and sort of wistful feel – but not entirely so. If that makes any sense! ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2020, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/659 "2020-07-01T17:18:34Z")
I asked this in another story ID thread here; I might have even made my own thread about it. No luck getting it IDed then, but maybe I’ll have more luck here. It’s a short story I read as a kid. It has the feel of an Asimov story, but I’ve looked at descriptions of all his short stories and haven’t found anything that sounds like it: Some time in the future wormholes have been invented/discovered that allow people to travel great distances quickly. The main character uses his personal wormhole to commute to work-- he lives say, in Los Angeles and takes a short walk through the tunnel-like wormhole to his job in New York (I don’t remember the actual commute location and distance). He discovers a tear in the wall of his tunnel-like wormhole and curious, walks through the tear. It takes him to a desert where small (like inch-tall) people wearing primitive clothes are wandering. He continues to visit them day after day and they start to worship him. He like the hero worship and encourages it. Then he gets ahold of some texts they’ve created and gets the language translated by his work computer. It turns out to be ancient Hebrew, and the people in the desert turn out to be the Israelites led by Moses through the desert. So the tear in the tunnel took him back in time, and the man is mistaken for God by the Israelites. The reason the Israelites were so small is because of the expansion of the universe in that time period (I know that’s not how it really works). ---
**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:** [July 1, 2020, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/660 "2020-07-01T17:33:20Z")
> [@raspberry\_hunter](#): > > The “feel” of it feels a little like Clifford Simak to me – it has that kind of folksy and sort of wistful feel – but not entirely so. If that makes any sense! Sounds kind of Theodore Sturgeon-ish to me. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417.md?page=32) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417.md?page=34)