Thanks again, Andy.
ETA: OK, I did find a way to go to the next month… that should speed up my browsing at least.
I went to those sites, but it’s extremely difficult to browse anything. There’s no way to just go to the next month; you have to actually type it into the address. Then there don’t seem to be any story synopses anywhere. Clicking on story titles got me a page full of nothing much. Still, I bookmarked them, and maybe I’ll eventually stumble onto something.
Yeah it is a pain. The previous and next issues are hyperlinked for the Analog issues (under “Notes”), but for story summaries, you’d have to recognize some cover art as a promising possibility and then google on the story title and author to hope to come up with a summary.
(on preview, I see you found the Analog hyperlink).
That’s what I was saying: clicking on the story titles just gives me a page with publication data, including later anthologies. I have yet to see a story synopsis.
One great thing, tho: I’m able to see some absolutely fantastic artwork. SF artists from back then had truly unique visions, before it all got taken over by Frazetta/Corbin wannabees.
Yes - you’ll have to google on the story title to find a story synopsis - there aren’t any synopses (unfortunately) on the ISFDB itself. Fortunately, there are a lot of story synopses on the Internet as a whole, and if you use Google Books, there’s a chance you’ll actually find an excerpt of the story online. For example, when I was looking for “The Smallest God” story and thought I had the right one, I googled “The Smallest God Del Rey” and found an excerpt online to confirm that I had the right one.
Someone asking about this on another forum:
*Written in 80s at the very latest. Author Unknown.
A man has discovered the secret to eternal youth. He applies the treatment to himself. 40,000 years later only the man is immortal and evolution has passed the man by. He is kept in a type of zoo by the next evolution of man as a curiosity to be seen as an exhibit. New humans are taller, thinner, and much more intelligent. Immortal Caveman wants to die but new man won’t let him. At one point he has some hope that an asteroid is going crash into Earth killing him. He worked it out over years and years with physics. His hopes are dashed when the super intelligent humans tell him the asteroid will not hit the Earth but they knew what his hopes and all his calculation were for but let him continue because it seemed to make him happy. His immortal life continues. *
Kindness by Lester Del Rey was suggested but rejected by OP.
*I wish I could say that was it but it is not. Took me a while to find a copy of Kindness online. In Kindness it looks like he wants to escape. In the one I’m looking for her wants to die. *
Sounds like Where Hesperus Falls (1956) by Jack Vance although it’s years since I read it. I believe he manoeuvres the ocean-going yacht he’s imprisoned on to where there should be a comet strike, iirc.
the “time viewer” story could have been this…
OK, typical alien invasion story, set in the fifties. Alien scout party, despite disguising themselves as human based on intercepted TV transmissions, are easily detected. You see, real humans are “in color”, TV transmission at the time was “black and white”.
Meurglys, I’ll pass on the suggestion, and let you know if there’s any response.
I found a partial copy online. Looks good to me.
Originally Posted by Peter Morris View Post
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.
Bester is most likely the author but a better contender for the book might be “Golem 100”. If you remember a half-naked black woman on the cover, that’s a bingo. (It does fit the timeframe.) Also Joe Haldeman’s “Mind Bridge” might be a contender.
OP thinks it’s probably correct. Thanks.
This reminds me - I suggested “Angry Candy” as the book Peter is looking for back in post 258 http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11563736&postcount=258, but never heard back if Peter agreed or disagreed (the description of the story I found certainly sounds like what he was talking about).
Apologies, I must have missed your answer back then. Thanks for the suggestion.
I’m not sure, it sounds very similar to what I saw. But my memory is of a novel-length book with tricks throughout. Not a section in a short story collection. Mind you, it was only a brief look about 35 years ago. Memory plays tricks.
Maybe it’s been published as a book on its own? If so, it’s probably the one.
You can get a whole bunch of great "purple prose’ of the same era on Project Gutenberg - check out Abraham Merritt, I really like Burn, Witch, Burn - a movie was based on it.
I have been looking for a novel I read in a library in the early 1970s - basic is walled city where most of the food is synthesized. A man who has the job of ‘inventing’ artificial flavors [he was known for his strawberry flavoring] ends up leaving the city and tasting real food, he meets people who left the city for various reasons, and when he goes back into the city is in serious trouble and the government is pissed at him. He is trying to get people to trade with the outside people because the flavors of natural food are so much better and he thinks that the city should open up.
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski? Do a Google image search on the title and you’ll see some of the bizarre page layouts that occur all through the book.
Sounds somewhat similar to Asimov’s short story Good Taste.
You can read it here.
No, sorry. I saw the book circa 1978-80. House of Leaves is far too late for it.
No problem.
Two of them:
One of them I post every oh–5 years or so here.
It was an anthology. Probably a crappy Roger Elwood one but certainly a multi-author anthology. I’d guess it was published anywhere from the very late '60s to the very early '80s, but probably around 1975-ish. I checked it out of the library in the early '80s. It was a collection of downbeat SF stories, possibly ecology-themed. The story in question has a mother talking to a psychologist-type. It’s mostly the mother pleading for mercy for her (it turns out) young son while the psychologist type explains how (something, mankind, no doubt) despoiled and polluted the earth, extincting all sorts of species and how every creature is sacred/protected so we can rebuild. And the son KILLED something. Exposition/pleading/lots of exposition/pleading/exposition…son will be lobotomized or executed or something hyper-drastic/pleading…shock ending: mom wails “But it was only a butterfly…!”
Terrible, terrible story but I do want to reread it to see if it’s as bad as I remember.
Oops–second story. Actually book or short (2-3 books, max) series. Probably Ace books, certainly mid-'80s. Before anyone suggests it, it’s not the Temeraire series (which were published in the wrong era, by a different publisher and it’s a much longer series, with a totally different setting)
A hero from our world–some sort of fighter-pilot in a Reagan-era, cold war setting is transported (with his jet?) to a fantasy world. Dragons are involved…either the pilot has to use his flight skills to “pilot his dragon” against the forces of eeee-vil or he gets to keep his jet-fighter and goes up against dragons.
Again, not Naiomi Novick (or however it’s spelled)
I first asked about this short story 15 years ago on this board. I read it in the 1980s in an anthology. (NB it is not *On *by Adam Roberts, nor is it Clarke’s The Wall of Darkness).
The story concerns a tribe who live on a vertical cliff face of seemingly infinite height. Despite this precarious situation they have lived on the face for generations and have a developed society, language etc.
One day, one of them looks over his shoulder and sees in the distance another cliff face that wasn’t there before.
Over the next few days, it becomes apparent that the second cliff face is getting closer and closer. The tribe has to decide what to do: some choose suicide and let go off the cliff, while the others debate the relative merits of going up or going down…