# 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:** 81
**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:** [November 19, 2024, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1601 "2024-11-19T00:18:16Z")
Even today, very few people know who made the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic in a plane You’re probably thinking of the first **solo** transatlantic pilot. You forgot these guys: [Transatlantic flight of Alcock and Brown - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_flight_of_Alcock_and_Brown) I’ve read some far future SF where the details of Apollo are not widely known, and one poem about how future people believe that Louie Armstrong was the first man on the moon. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2024, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1602 "2024-11-19T00:47:33Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > Even today, very few people know who made the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic in a plane And of course that wasn’t the first flight to cross the Atlantic, just the first non-stop flight. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2024, 8:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1603 "2024-11-19T08:31:26Z")
I looked it up and apparently it’s mentioned in the film Dead Poets Society (though in that one it’s a crazed killer not a monster) but the 1998 short film Puzzle DOES have a monster, so I’m guessing this is just a very old story that’s been done and redone numerous times. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2024, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1604 "2024-11-19T08:37:16Z")
Here’s another one. It’s a short bit out of a longer Sci-Fi story. A massive war has ended (World War 3 I think) and a museum is given an old enemy cruise missile in its launcher to display from the war that was taken as a war trophy. The museum has it for several years until a visitor who fought for the other side sees the display and realized the warhead is still armed (nuclear I think) so he alerts the museum staff and the entire city is evacuated while American military bomb disposal experts successfully disarm it. It sounds like something out of The Ayes of Texas but I can’t find mention of it online. ---
**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:** [November 19, 2024, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1605 "2024-11-19T11:16:48Z")
The Whirligig of Time by Vernor Vinge is similar, but not quite what you’re looking for > **[The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Collected_Stories_of_Vernor_Vinge)** > > The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge is a collection of science fiction short stories by American writer Vernor Vinge. The stories were first published from 1966 to 2001, and the book contains all of Vinge's published short stories from that period except "True Names" and "Grimm's Story". > Originally published in Analog Science Fiction Science Fact, 1966. > The United States government has experimented with intelligence amplification by connecting a chimpanzee named Norman Simmons to an electroni... > The story opens with a description of an attack on the unidentified losing side of a nuclear exchange. Ballistic missiles rain down on military installations, while smuggled bombs destroy cities. Over the next centuries the winning side of this conflict forms an oppressive Solar System wide empire. The rest of the story is set in space on the occasion of the imperial heir’s 18th birthday celebration, at which the emperor and most of the aristocracy is present. During the party, a descendant of the losing side (who is employed as a “pet” slave/jester by the prince) alerts the ship’s captain to an interesting object orbiting Earth, knowing the prince’s penchant for collecting space debris. The captain is instructed to divert towards the object, and soon realizes that the object is a nuclear weapon from the original war. He decides not to change his course or inform others of this, believing that his death in the collision will be worth the elimination of the empire’s elite to free the Solar System from its tyranny. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2024, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1606 "2024-11-20T05:49:33Z")
I may have asked this before but I haven’t found it, my apologies if I’m asking again. This was a short story I read quite a few years back. It’s about society breaking down because folks think if you are different you are bad. It isn’t just skin color or ethnicity, folks are fighting each other over eye and hair color. Towards the end of the story two survivors are exhausted and wondering if this has been worth it, and are about ready to be at peace until they are confronted by a young woman who thinks “we haven’t won the war against ourselves” She is passing out little suicide kits with matches and gasoline, and the two survivors are looking out into the night and seeing little fires all over. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2024, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1607 "2024-11-20T08:35:09Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > This was a short story I read quite a few years back. It’s about society breaking down because folks think if you are different you are bad. It isn’t just skin color or ethnicity, folks are fighting each other over eye and hair color. Towards the end of the story two survivors are exhausted and wondering if this has been worth it, and are about ready to be at peace until they are confronted by a young woman who thinks “we haven’t won the war against ourselves” She is passing out little suicide kits with matches and gasoline, and the two survivors are looking out into the night and seeing little fires all over. I recall that story; I _think_ it was by Zenna Henderson but can’t find it if I’m right. ---
**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:** [November 20, 2024, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1608 "2024-11-20T11:27:10Z")
Asked before and answered before, I think - this is “All the Last Wars at Once” by George Alec Effinger Previously asked and answered here [ID a short story please?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-a-short-story-please/613356) ---
**Author:** ![Eclipse\_Chaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@Eclipse\_Chaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eclipse_Chaser)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2024, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1609 "2024-11-20T13:08:23Z")
Doesn’t sound like Zenna Henderson, her stories are usually positive aren’t they? ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2024, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1610 "2024-11-21T04:53:11Z")
This time I’m going to write it down as I keep forgetting the answer. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2024, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1611 "2024-12-13T23:11:30Z")
All right–I’m gonna try out the services in this thread. Recently, someone linked to a great story based on John Carpenter’s _The Thing_, called _The Things_: > **[Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy](https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/)** > > Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine and Podcast. This page: The Things by Peter Watts It’s told from the viewpoint of the alien, and is all about how it wants to merge with other life. Thing is, I’m almost certain I read a story with an identical premise some decades back. It affected me so strongly that I based a Big Bad in a D&D game on it. It may have been in one of the _Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror_ anthologies, edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow; but I’m not sure. It definitely would have been before 2010, when _The Things_ was published. Has anyone encountered a story like this (based on _The Thing_, told from the monster’s viewpoint, and NOT Watts’s story)? ---
**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:** [December 13, 2024, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1612 "2024-12-13T23:18:01Z")
Just to get this out of the way: it’s not Asimov’s “Green Patches” (aka “Misbegotten Missionary”), right? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2024, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1613 "2024-12-13T23:23:51Z")
Almost certainly not–I remember it being more horror in tone, and better (or at least more flowery) prose, than Asimov. Edit: and reading a summary of Green Patches, definitely not: it was definitely told from the monster’s point of view, and was overtly a retelling of _The Thing_. ---
**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:** [December 13, 2024, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1614 "2024-12-13T23:48:55Z")
There’s a collection of short stories responding to Who Goes There, called “Short Things” Do any of the titles listed here look familiar [https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?759549](https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?759549) ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2024, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1615 "2024-12-14T00:37:56Z")
Annoyingly, the story I think it might be is “The”, by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. I have absolutely no idea how to Google that fucking title. Edit: actually, it looks like that book was published in 2019, and it claims the stories are never before published, so if both of those things are true, it wouldn’t be any of those stories. ---
**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:** [December 14, 2024, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1616 "2024-12-14T00:57:56Z")
Wild shot in the dark “Vault of the Beast” by Van Vogt > **[Vault of the Beast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_of_the_Beast)** > > "Vault of the Beast" is a short story by Canadian writer A. E. van Vogt, published in the August 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. > A shape-shifting construct created by malevolent extra-dimensional beings arrives on Earth as a stowaway on a freighter from Mars, having disguised itself as various inanimate objects during transit. The construct is capable of imitating any form of matter, passing through solid objects, controlling gravity, and reading human minds, but is also in constant ph... ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2024, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1617 "2024-12-14T01:12:20Z")
Not that–again, it was an overt retelling of _The Thing_, not an adjacent story. I’m almost wondering if the “all-new stories” line is incorrect on that anthology, as it _feels_ like the sort of story that Yarbro (or Tanith Lee, or someone like that) would’ve written. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2024, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1618 "2024-12-14T13:18:00Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Annoyingly, the story I think it might be is “The”, by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. I have absolutely no idea how to Google that fucking title. She has a Wikipedia page, but no such title in the bibliography. ---
**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:** [December 14, 2024, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1619 "2024-12-14T14:05:57Z")
Andy L above linked to a collection of stories based on The Thing, or rather based on the original story Who Goes There? Here’s the link again. [https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?759549](https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?759549) Collection contains _The_ by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro ---
**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:** [December 15, 2024, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/1620 "2024-12-15T05:02:40Z")
This earlier thread on Carpenter’s movie _The Thing_ is worth a look; it includes some discussion of Peter Watts’s very good 2010 short story “The Things,” mentioned above: [The Thread about The Thing (1982)](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-thread-about-the-thing-1982/951421) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417.md?page=80) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417.md?page=82)