Thanks, I asked about this on Analog’s forum, and no one could give me a title or author. It’s interesting that it is Brin, he is my favorite (aside from Asimov and Clarke, any discussion of favorites comes after them).
I read a short story sometime around the late 1970s about a scientist (a botanist, maybe) who came across some kind of potion or drug that he took that slowed his metabolism down so much that he could finally see the violence in the plant kingdom. Plants fighting for water, choking each other out, etc. I think at the end of the story he was stuck and about to get choked out by vines or something. My memories are a little vague.
Does that sound at all familiar?
According to ISFDB it was published in F&SF not Analog (I read it in Brin’s collection “Otherness” which is a great book) Title: Detritus Affected
Amazingly enough, I found this one “Alien Earth” by Edmond Hamilton, published in 1949 Title: Alien Earth (I used some obvious keywords to find a thread on rec.arts.sf.written (USENET), and did some other googling to confirm)
We subscribed to Analog, but once in a while I bought F&SF off the newstand, so this must have been in one of those. No wonder I could never track it down.
Brin actually wrote a script based on it, but the production company that bought the option and commissioned it doesn’t have it listed as one of their projects in development.
Cukoo’s Egg, by C J Cherryh?
I haven’t read it, but based on the summary here Cuckoo's Egg (book) - Wikipedia that might be right
I thought of a short story I’d like to read again, prolly from MF&SF or Asimov’s or Analog in the late 70s or early 80s.
The story was long-ish, novella size, about a guy who lived inside a huge, planet-size spaceship and his journey thru it for something (power cells? medicine? can’t remember). It was so old that it was breaking down, I seem to recall, and travel thru it was rare, almost non-existent. Various levels has different dominant cultures and maybe even life forms. I seem to recall that he had discovered an old elevator system that he was using.
I think the end was that he finally found a way out onto the surface, where he confirmed that he was indeed inside something constructed.
Also pretty sure that artwork on the cover was inspired by this story.
Unfortunately, I lost a lot of my old SF mags while I was in college, and I’ve been unable to find this story in any compilation about artificial worlds since.
Doesn’t ring a bell, and I haven’t found any useful hints online yet. Let me know if you think of any other facts about it, and I’ll keep thinking.
Here’s a link to a list of books with megastructures - one of them might be your novella (later expanded into a book)http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/msg/a594356f3c70b1af?hl=en&&q=“big+dumb+object”+spaceship
Okay, this might be the hardest one of the lot to identify. Many years ago when I was at school I had a friend who was obsessed by all things science fiction. Anyway, he showed me a science fiction novel he had received as a birthday present. The thing was the text had a lot of weird effects, for example one one page the text was printed in a spiral so that you had to keep turning the book arouind to read it. Another page started with text in a great big font size, and gradually decreased the size so that you had to almost use a magnifying glass to read the last line.
I didn’t read the novel, I just glanced at it briefly. I have no idea what the plot was about, or who the author was It might for all I know be some totally forgotten piece of trash that nobody read apart from my old friend.
An interesting but not uncommon SF trope: Generation ship - Wikipedia
Based on the cover art, and the boy’s name, I’m pretty sure that’s the one. Amazing, thanks!
Yes, I know… that’s why I’m having a hard time finding the story I’m looking for.
It was definitely a story about a Dyson Sphere, with people living on the inside and unaware or in denial about it.
ETA: clicked on every link in Elendil’s link, and it isn’t any of those. I even checked over the novels in there that I don’t own already.
Did you check the link I gave?
Peter Morris, are you talking about The Demolished Man perhaps?:
Two authors who did that kind of typographic stuff were Alfred Bester and Gahan Wilson. However, some Googling found this reference to a Harlan Ellison story, “The Region Between”, with spiral text Sweets From Harlan Ellison : ANGRY CANDY <i> by Harlan Ellison (Houghton Mifflin: $17.95; 324 pp. 0-395-48307-7) </i> - I’d say, based on this description
“includes rather childish, overly literal illustrations; columnar and mirror-image text and text arranged both left-to-right and up-to-down on the same page; another page with only one word on it; a paragraph in which lower-case letters that describe one character are interspersed with capital letters that describe a second; plenty of italics, bold-face and little squares of black ink; the word “this” printed as ‘tHiS’; and a maddening spiral of fine print that requires the reader either to rotate his copy of “Angry Candy” 16 times or (as Ellison would undoubtedly prefer) to place the volume on a pedestal and orbit 16 times around it”
that I’ve found it. The story was first published in 1970 Title: The Region Between
Yeah, I did, Andy. I didn’t see anything there that rung a bell, but I did go and look up some of the stories under Dyson Sphere and related structures. Nothing there that sounds like the story I remember, not even close.
Thanks tho. I’ll keep looking around. Now that I’ve put the request out there, it’s going to become somewhat of an obsession until I find it.
Good luck - I know from obsessions. If you think of any other details about the story (or if you find it), keep me updated - I’m interested.
Since you had a vague memory of the cover art, you might want to browse through the covers displayed at ISFDB
Publication: Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, January 1977 is the format for seeing Analog covers
Publication: Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, January 1979 for Asimovs and
Publication: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1977 for F&SF