I’d suspect it isn’t, but it sounds like L Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth. I can see how one would want to forget! 
A story for identification:
A total conversion machine is invented that can turn any matter into anything else. It’s the universal replicator. You can use simple rock as the base matter. Concerns are raised that eventually you’ll run out of earth to convert, but the concerns are pooh-poohed, because the earth is so big!
There is an epilogue where scientists in the far future are discussing the theory that in the long ago past the earth and the moon were not always the same size, and that the earth was several times larger.
.
I’ve read that short story, Just Asking Questions. I think it’s in one of the early (say, between the late 1940’s and the early 1960’s) science fiction anthologies. It’s possible though that it’s in a more recent anthology that contains some older short stories. Andy L, do you know the story?
Doesn’t ring a bell unfortunately, but I’ll do some searching.
The Dwindling Sphere, by Willard Hawkins?
Heres a review of that story Birthday Reviews: Willard E. Hawkins’s “The Dwindling Sphere” – Black Gate
I think that’s the short story I was thinking about, anyway.
That’s it! Amazing (or should I say, Astounding? )
I don’t think I own any of the collections it was published in, so I must have checked it out of the library decades ago.
Here’s one that’s bugging me. I read it a long time ago so I might not have all the details right.
A long term space mission sets out for a planet orbiting another star. The crew is a bunch of scientists, and to pass the time they are given some math/science problems to work on. It later turns out that the whole mission is a sham – there is no planet at the destination and the only point of the mission was to isolate the scientists so they could focus completely on these important problems. The fact that the crew will perish when they reach the nonexistent planet is considered acceptable by the mission planners. The crew makes astounding progress during the mission, and radios some of their results back to earth. Eventually they discover the ruse but by then they have advanced so far beyond earth science that they are able to survive anyway (I think that they actually CREATE a planet when they arrive at the destination star). One specific incident I recall is they radio one of their most important results (controlled fusion or something of that order) as a Godel-encoded number, and one of the crew comments that the Earth people are probably “too dumb” to de-Godelize it.
Anyone got this one?
The Gold At The Starbow’s End.
Answered in 6 minutes! Thank you.
Or in novel form “Starburst”
Yet another one I could have answered, had I seen it quickly enough.
ISTR that Arthur C. Clarke wrote several interlinked short stories about a multi-ship, international Moon exploration mission. What were the stories’ titles, and where can I find them collected these days?
“Venture to the Moon” Series: Venture to the Moon - six interconnected stories
The Starting Line
Robin Hood, F.R.S
Green Fingers
All That Glitters
Watch This Space
A Question of Residence
all in Clarke’s collection “The Other Side of the Sky”
Many thanks!
No problem.
Not exactly Sci-Fi, but alternative history novel set decades after WW2 ended in an Axis victory. Nazi Germany uses vast slave labor for their work force and is having a shortage of it, so at the start of the novel Germany forces Italy to reclassify Sicilians as “Untermensch” so they can be used as slaves or else Germany was going to classify ALL Italians as non-white.
This isn’t either Man in the High Castle nor the Draka series though similar events happen in both.
The Ultimate Solution by Eric Norden
"At the time of the plot, following the recent death of Benito Mussolini, who had to some degree resisted Nazi policies, the Germans are contemplating “a change in the racial classification of Italians”, and North Italians are desperately trying to save themselves by sacrificing the “Sicilian Ayrabs” to the Nazis. "
If challenges instead of requests for identifications are okay, here’s one…
- A time traveler knows how he’s supposed to die, but doesn’t like the details, so he refuses to go along with the “script” and instead dies somewhere else in time.
- Time starts to unravel because of the paradox of this guy dying twice. His best friend must resolve the conflict or else all life on Earth will end.
- Also includes a love triangle, going to jail on purpose, and time machines built into wristwatches.