The Long Walk, Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman)
Thank you. Quick service.
Man, the one time I actually know one…
The Long Walk may be my favorite King novel. He really sticks the landing for once.
Ironically, the very ending is up for debate.
That’s what I love about it.
I liked that book, but not nearly as much as some of his others (The Stand, 'Salem’s Lot, Firestarter, The Dead Zone, 11/22/63 and Misery are my favorites). I was intrigued, though, by King’s allusions to the alternate history underlying its dystopic setting, including a U.S. commando raid against Nazis in South America IIRC.
This story appeared relatively recently, I think it was in Analog but I’ve been wrong about that before. The story starts with aliens landing, I think at a major NASA space center. They’re greeted by a bunch of officials and NASA employees. The aliens start asking around for specific names of humans, the first names they call are for NASA people already right there at the landing. Then the aliens start shooting the specific people they were looking for. All of the people had put their name into one of those massive list of supporter names carried on many modern space probes these days. The aliens have come to kill them one by one.
Yikes! I don’t recognize it because I’m a bit behind on Analog, but I’ll look
I got so excited to see you starting to type your reply almost instantly after I posted, and I was thinking I was about to see a new Doper record, but alas.
I might not have been clear in my question: The aliens want to kill every last person who signed up on the internet to put their name on the list carried by the probe, no matter how long that takes. Thousands and thousands of names they have to track down. The names at the top of the list were course all NASA employees.
Actually that does ring a bell. About to run off for a meeting but will work on it tomorrow
From fifth to eighth grade I read a ton, and nothing but SF short stories (I have clear memories of sitting in those back shelves of our town library, on the floor with a stack of SF anthologies next to me).
A story that I’d love to find again: An evil CEO of some Sciencey Corporation has a nemesis… maybe the guy who did most of the work on their biggest invention, who the CEO gets imprisoned.
But the guy has smuggled something into prison… that big invention. It’s a wire that’s only one molecule wide, with much larger handles on the ends. He loops it around the prison bars, tugs, and cuts through them effortlessly.
I’ve completely forgotten the rest of the book, except for the the guy’s very clever last lines to the CEO:
(paraphrased from 60 years ago)
I can’t put you in jail, but don’t forget what I have possession of. Think of that invisible, efficient wire every time you walk through a doorway, every time you reach into your mailbox, every time you swing your legs under your desk…
I think of that story often, but have no idea where to look for it.
But after reading this thread, I’m amazed at everyone’s detective skills… so I have hope.
Thin Edge, by Randall Garrett?
That’s it!
(And the text is online! Html or ePub or Kindle or plain text)
(And the last line is just as powerful as I remembered it)
(Thank you so much!)
Glad to hear it. (And, yeah, he’s great with last lines; Despoilers Of The Golden Empire is a classic.)
I have one that I read in the mid 80’s, it was a short story so probably in a compilation. It has a feel of Bradbury, so probably isn’t.
A man is taken into a psychiatrists office on earth in a straight jacket. After listening to his story, the Doc diagnoses him as delusional as he seems to think they are on a spaceship that has been boarded by aliens. Luckily there’s a pill to treat that and he offers it to the patient. He refuses, saying that it is the Doc who is delusional as he’s suffering from space sickness. There’s a different pill that treats that and the patient agrees to take his pill as long as the Doc takes that pill. They both swallow their pills and the office dissolves to reveal the spaceship and laser wielding aliens.
Any ideas?
The Yellow Pill, by Rog Phillips?
That’s the one. Thanks for the speedy reply!!
You could say it was on the tip of my tongue. 
I remember my dad telling me about this short story a long long time ago (the 1980s) but I have no idea the title or context.
But basically this demon wants to torture a blind man, so he sticks him into a maze with a bunch of knives and various other sharp objects in the walls, so the blind man has no way of escaping the maze without being cut a bunch in the process.
I’ve tried searching things like this
and searching SF short story review sites, like this
with no luck yet.