Someone (you?) is looking for the same story and there’s a possible answer
(I started reading Asimov’s just a year or so later)
Good detective work, Andy! That was clearly me asking about the same story almost 8 years ago, although I don’t remember making that post. Aliens erasing my memory? Again? Anyway, the cheesy melodramatic alien-human love story suggested in a response there does not ring any bells, and I was never a reader of Asimov’s magazine. I do begin to think that the ‘semi abandoned mile-hill building’ setup is intriguing enough to inspire several acts of homage - such as Frederick Pohl’s ‘Reunion at the Mile High’. I seem to recall a hint of it in his novel ‘Narabedla, Ltd.’ as well, which makes it quite likely it might be a much earlier story of his own.
Thanks Wendell.
Andy, can you answer my question about what books are in the pile that the librarian is holding in the SNL sketch from this Saturday? The sketch is the one called “A Peak at Pico”. The books are science fiction and fantasy. You can see my question in this thread:
Here’s a couple…I think i read them in 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents books", but I’ve never been able to find them.
In the first all I remember is the end, the perp hides his gun (the murder weapon) in the toilet tank, thinking its the perfect spot. When the police arrive, one cop says to the other “Go check the toilet tank, its always the first spot they hide it”
In the second, a landfill operator works for the mob burying bodies. He thinks they are safe some five stories down, but has to dig them all up again when a high-rise company buys the land and tells him they dig some ten stories deep.
Were these in space, or the future, or the space future?
Oh eff me. (Seriously) I forgot about the Sci-fi part.
I guess Ill throw out a novella i’ve asked about twice. Read it in the 70’s. So it would have been a kid book. Its about 100 pages long or shorter. Here’s what I remember
The protagonist plays baseball. He’s really good at eye-hand coordination A war breaks out with an alien race. His brother is lost and presumed dead.
The aliens have like a single eye on a stalk that shoots out a laser-like ray.
During a battle, our heros ship is punctured by one of those rays. The humans have a ‘repair gun’ that shoots out a self-sealing blob kind of like the blobs that captured Mr. Incredible in The Incredibles.
Our hero crashes on a planet with one of the aliens. The alien feebly blinks his eye ray at our hero but it is too weak to kill our hero. He sees that a boulder is tottering on a girder and will fall and kill the alien even though the gravity they are in is much lighter then earths. In saving the alien the is knocked out and when he comes to his brother is hovering over him in a hospital.
He says our hero stopped the war in saving the alien and the whole thing was a mistake because those lasers of the aliens are actually a means of communicating.
In The Godfather, Part I, hiding a gun in a toilet tank was a significant plot point.
Trapped In Space, by Jack Williamson?
I looked at it in Internet Archive…thats got to be it! Too many details fit. You’ve solved a years old mystery!
I vaguely remember a post-apocalyptic story in which people start playing baseball in Wrigley Field for the first time in a couple centuries, and one of the teams actually calls themselves the Cubs. They’re nowhere near major-league level, though. This is just something they do for fun. Any ideas what this is?
There’s a short story I remember, except for the title, so I can’t find it. It’s told in the first person by someone(turns out to be a ten year old) about how he and his family live in a tiny pocket of warmth on a frozen planet. Not sure if it’s Earth though. Every so often the storyteller has to go out of their place and digup some “frozen air” Eventually they are found, and I assume rescued by others to be taken to a more livable place, and that’s when the narrator says he’s ten. He wants to grow up so he can be closer acquainted to the rescuer, who’s an adult young woman.
Wow, eleven minutes. And I know the author too.
Dangit…one i actually could have answered
A story, there is plenty for everyone, it is indeed the land of plenty.
But then some dude on a island just keeps demanding more and more and more= mostly giant toys.
Turns out what he really wanted was his Teddy bear.
This is Fred Pohl’s The Man Who Ate The World, I think.
Reviewed here GMRC Review: The Man Who Ate the World by Frederik Pohl | Worlds Without End Blog
The title story “The Man Who Ate the World” is the weakest in the collection and is the only one I remember reading as a youngster. It’s a tragic story about this child growing up and trained to consume and consume, without his parents nurturing him. This important part of early childhood development is left to robots. Eventually, as an adult, he continues to consume and build robots to produce robots that destroy robots, ever repeating the cycle of consumption, ultimately threatening the existing world order. A psychologist comes to the rescue, reuniting the adult child with his teddy.
Hey Andy_L, there’s a SF short story I read back in the '70s that takes place sometime in an undefined near future. In this world dead people can be medically revived (not in a zombie/horror story kind of way), but it comes at the cost of how they socially and emotionally identify themselves. So these revived dead seem in all respects normal except that they no longer identify with their former acquaintances, friends, and romantic partners.
The main thrust of the story is that the protagonist is a man can’t stop obsessing over his late (but revived) wife who is firmly ensconced in a community of revived people who travel together, go on tours together etc. The protagonist’s obsession is such that his wife’s group of friends finds him to be a huge harassment issue.
Thinking back about it I assume that the community of revived dead is probably an analogue for any marginalized group IRL, as there is nothing creepy or weird about it. In the case of this story SF could almost mean sociological fiction.
Have you ever heard of this story? Thanks