# 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:** 7
**Author:** ![Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Springtime\_for\_Spacers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Springtime_for_Spacers)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2008, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/121 "2008-09-16T02:00:20Z")
> [@Myrrajh](#): > > 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. It’s even worse than that. The kid is a recent immigrant form Earth so she’s the only one who actually remembers what sunshine looks like and she really yearns for the sun and they make her miss it. ---
**Author:** ![Wile\_E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c37758/32.png) [@Wile\_E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wile_E)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2008, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/122 "2008-09-16T04:06:26Z")
This story had to do with a Black Hole. There was a group of people on a spaceship, a guy (main character) and his girlfriend and two other guys. Somehow the main character gets off the ship just before it gets sucked into the event horizon of the black hole. The only other thing I remember about this is the fact that the girlfriend insisted on having some asparagus in her food rations and the other guys complained all the time because in close quarters the asparagus pee smell was obnoxious. I want to say it’s a Pohl _Gateway_ novel but I may be mixing that up with another story I read about the same time. ---
**Author:** ![pinkfreud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pinkfreud/32/17603_2.png) [@pinkfreud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinkfreud)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2008, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/123 "2008-09-16T04:23:09Z")
> [@Wile\_E](#): > > This story had to do with a Black Hole. There was a group of people on a spaceship, a guy (main character) and his girlfriend and two other guys. Somehow the main character gets off the ship just before it gets sucked into the event horizon of the black hole. The only other thing I remember about this is the fact that the girlfriend insisted on having some asparagus in her food rations and the other guys complained all the time because in close quarters the asparagus pee smell was obnoxious. > > I want to say it’s a Pohl _Gateway_ novel but I may be mixing that up with another story I read about the same time. Yep, that’s the first book of the Gateway Heechee series, named (wait for it…) _Gateway_. An excerpt: “Klara had this bad habit. She liked asparagus. She had brought four kilos of dehydrated foods with her, just for variety and for something to do; and although she shared them with me, and sometimes with the others, she insisted on eating asparagus now and then all by herself. Asparagus makes your urine smell funny. It is not a romantic thing to know when your darling has been eating asparagus by the change in air quality in the common toilet.” ---
**Author:** ![Wile\_E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c37758/32.png) [@Wile\_E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wile_E)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2008, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/124 "2008-09-16T14:53:32Z")
> [@pinkfreud](#): > > Yep, that’s the first book of the Gateway Heechee series, named (wait for it…) _Gateway_. > > An excerpt: > > “Klara had this bad habit. She liked asparagus. She had brought four kilos of dehydrated foods with her, just for variety and for something to do; and although she shared them with me, and sometimes with the others, she insisted on eating asparagus now and then all by herself. Asparagus makes your urine smell funny. It is not a romantic thing to know when your darling has been eating asparagus by the change in air quality in the common toilet.” So I was remembering it right. Odd that the only thing I remember from it is the asparagus pee. ---
**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 16, 2008, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/125 "2008-09-16T15:09:51Z")
Hey, great thread! Two SF books I’ve been looking for since I read them as a kid, and no one else seems to know them: 1. A bad guy uses a time machine to go back a little in time and kill the President with a laser rifle… Camp David, I think. A group of young people figure out what’s going on. They go far forward in time to find that humanity was nearly destroyed in a terrible disaster as a result of the President’s death. Then they go back in time to stop the Chinese (I think it was) from detonating a superbomb which will kill nearly all of humanity. A bald girl who’d come back with them from the distant future now has hair, so they know they’ve succeeded. I know, I know: but it was better than I’ve described it. 2. A teenager goes along on the first mission to explore Pluto, aboard a new superfast ship called (I’m almost certain) the _Lodestar_. The ship leaves from a big space station orbiting Earth. Googling and asking in used bookstores have left me frustrated. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2008, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/126 "2008-09-16T15:18:43Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > This is not one I’ve read but one I’ve just heard about and wanted to read, even though I know the ending: > > There’s an idyllic community (don’t know if it’s a city or a country) where everybody has wonderful happy lives, except that some leave. At a certain age everyone is taken into a (temple? palace? storm shelter? guest house?) and shown a horribly tortured child who is in complete agony and made to know that the beauty of the town requires his suffering. Some remain and keep the secret, others choose to leave. (Occasionally somebody will say “Cool… hey, if I kick the kid in the nuts really hard, can I have an I-Phone?”) > > Does anybody recognize this outline? “Those Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. LeGuin ---
**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 16, 2008, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/127 "2008-09-16T15:32:52Z")
> [@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… I think I know that book, but damned if I can remember the title. Something with the word “tunnel” in it, mebbe? I read it when I was in elementary school in the mid-Seventies. The cover showed the bald boy from the hidden arcology crouching in a tunnel, looking in wonderment at the the trees and birds overhead. This was a Scholastic book, IIRC, which we could order from the book sale that set up now and then in our school’s gym. The other thing I remember from the book was the boy’s delight in tasting real maple syrup; the underground colony’s synthetic syrup was not nearly as good. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2008, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/128 "2008-09-16T15:41:07Z")
Here’s my Very Obscure Story I can’t find again, whose plot I only vaguely remember because its been so long: A man is stranded on some sort of airless moon or moon with a non-oxygen providing atmosphere. Somehow, he’s out on the surface when his air supply runs out, and he trips and falls face-first into a flower which supplies him with oxygen and keeps him alive. Somehow, this flower causes him to grow an air storage sack on one side of his face, which disfigures him but keeps him alive so he can store up oxygen and go wondering about the moon/planetoid. By the time rescue shows up, he’s enjoying his abode and way of life. The rescuers express horror/disgust at what’s happened to his face, but because for him the change is beneficial he likes the third lung hanging off his cheek. Yeah, weird. Can’t remember name, author, or where I read it. I think it might have been from a hardbound collection of short stories I checked out of the library. ---
**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 16, 2008, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/129 "2008-09-16T16:23:57Z")
> [@](#): > > A man is stranded on some sort of airless moon or moon with a non-oxygen providing atmosphere. Somehow, he’s out on the surface when his air supply runs out, and he trips and falls face-first into a flower which supplies him with oxygen and keeps him alive. Possibly _The Lotus Caves_ by John Christopher. Plot: Two boys living in a Moon colony steal a buggy and the colony behind to go exploring. They find a famous person (I think the colony’s founder) living in a cave and being kept alive by a plant. I don’t remember the air sac on his face, though. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2008, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/130 "2008-09-16T16:46:18Z")
No, no, not the _Lotus Caves_ - I distinctly remember the\* Lotus Caves\* and the story I’m looking for is most emphatically NOT that one - it’s not on Earth’s moon, and there’s only one person through most of the story. ---
**Author:** ![Ichini\_Sanshigo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/d9b06d/32.png) [@Ichini\_Sanshigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ichini_Sanshigo)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2008, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/131 "2008-09-17T04:39:16Z")
I’ve got one. Well two, actually. These are going to be really vague, so… 1. A story about a cyborg who just wants to be left alone in the peaceful wilderness and a woman who has distanced herself from humanity and surrounds herself with robots. I think she may have been divorced or widowed. The cyborg is a veteran of some war. For some reason, a shadowy conspiracy group is trying to assassinate him. In one attempt they try to kill him when he visits the dentist, but the machinery refuses to hurt him. Oh, and I think there were also these people who acted as priests for machines/AI. In the end it all turned out to be some plot to start a war so that the shadowy cabal could make mad profit. 2. To raise public interest in the space program, the government/future equivalent of NASA agrees to film a movie on some planet (I think it was Mars. It usually is). There’s a stowaway who breaks her arm and a misanthropic cosmetic surgeon who is recruited to act as the team’s doctor. And the pretty actress lady grows a beard during their non-cryogenic sleep. ---
**Author:** ![pinkfreud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pinkfreud/32/17603_2.png) [@pinkfreud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinkfreud)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2008, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/132 "2008-09-17T19:44:25Z")
> [@Ichini\_Sanshigo](#): > > 1. To raise public interest in the space program, the government/future equivalent of NASA agrees to film a movie on some planet (I think it was Mars. It usually is). There’s a stowaway who breaks her arm and a misanthropic cosmetic surgeon who is recruited to act as the team’s doctor. And the pretty actress lady grows a beard during their non-cryogenic sleep. That’s [Voyage to the Red Planet](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0688094953), by Terry Bisson. ---
**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 18, 2008, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/133 "2008-09-18T20:07:24Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Hey, great thread! Two SF books I’ve been looking for since I read them as a kid, and no one else seems to know them: > > 1. A bad guy uses a time machine to go back a little in time and kill the President with a laser rifle… Camp David, I think. A group of young people figure out what’s going on. They go far forward in time to find that humanity was nearly destroyed in a terrible disaster as a result of the President’s death. Then they go back in time to stop the Chinese (I think it was) from detonating a superbomb which will kill nearly all of humanity. A bald girl who’d come back with them from the distant future now has hair, so they know they’ve succeeded. I know, I know: but it was better than I’ve described it. I think this is “Time Gate” by John Jakes; the description from Amazon ([Time Gate: Jakes, John: 9780451078896: Amazon.com: Books](http://www.amazon.com/Time-Gate-John-Jakes/dp/0451078896/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221768150&sr=8-1)) sounds about right (I skimmed the book in a school library back in 1981 or so, so you’re tickling some very vague memories of mine). Yes, this is the same John Jakes who made a mint writing potboiler historical novels in the 1980s (“North and South” , “The Bastard” etc). ---
**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 18, 2008, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/134 "2008-09-18T20:36:21Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Hey, great thread! Two SF books I’ve been looking for since I read them as a kid, and no one else seems to know them: > 2. A teenager goes along on the first mission to explore Pluto, aboard a new superfast ship called (I’m almost certain) the _Lodestar_. The ship leaves from a big space station orbiting Earth. > > Googling and asking in used bookstores have left me frustrated. This might be Donald Wollheim’s “Secret of the Ninth Planet” ---
**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 19, 2008, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/135 "2008-09-19T00:19:05Z")
Thank you, **Andy L** , for your two suggestions. I’ll look into 'em. ---
**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 19, 2008, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/136 "2008-09-19T01:19:37Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > 1. A teenager goes along on the first mission to explore Pluto, aboard a new superfast ship called (I’m almost certain) the _Lodestar_. The ship leaves from a big space station orbiting Earth. That sounds like Robert Silverberg’s _World’s Fair 1992_ but I don’t remember the name of the ship in that novel. The first half of the novel concerned the teenager working at the World’s Fair Space Station, and then he gets assigned to the Pluto trip because he wrote an insightful essay about what life on Pluto might be like. \*\*\* Ponder ---
**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 19, 2008, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/137 "2008-09-19T01:28:36Z")
> [@Ponderoid](#): > > That sounds like Robert Silverberg’s _World’s Fair 1992_ but I don’t remember the name of the ship in that novel. The first half of the novel concerned the teenager working at the World’s Fair Space Station, and then he gets assigned to the Pluto trip because he wrote an insightful essay about what life on Pluto might be like. > > \*\*\* Ponder That does sound like a good fit - here’s a description of the book [http://www.majipoor.com/work.php?id=1312](http://www.majipoor.com/work.php?id=1312) ---
**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 19, 2008, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/138 "2008-09-19T04:17:16Z")
Hmmm. Could be. Too bad they don’t mention the ship’s name… I’m pretty sure it was _Lodestar_. ---
**Author:** ![Tusculan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecd19e/32.png) [@Tusculan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tusculan)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2008, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/139 "2008-09-19T10:36:36Z")
Nice thread. Hope you can help me with a few which have been bothering me for a while. 1. Time-travel plot very much like A Sound of Thunder, but it is not the same. Time travellers go to past and accidentally kill a butterfly or so, thereby changing the present (future) slightly. They return several times to try to undo the damage, but only end up making it worse (without knowing it, as their memory ends up being changed as well). In the end society has changed to a bug society. 2. A set of grand space opera books about cities that managed to leave earth in bubbles which travel through space like giant space ships. I think the book centres around Chicago. The final volume is about the end of the universe when increasing entropy means energy runs out. I tried googling it, but ‘cities space’ provides far too many other results. ---
**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:** [September 19, 2008, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/140 "2008-09-19T12:20:47Z")
Tusculan writes: \> 2. A set of grand space opera books about cities that managed to leave earth \> in bubbles which travel through space like giant space ships. I think the book \> centres around Chicago. The final volume is about the end of the universe when \> increasing entropy means energy runs out. I tried googling it, but ‘cities space’ \> provides far too many other results. _Cities in Flight_ by James Blish. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417.md?page=8)