Galactic Gourmet. IIIRC it’s one of those cases where their “universal translator” isn’t quite as universal as they’d like, because it didn’t take into account that the locals use the same word for “doctor” and “butcher”.
Yep, that’s it. I actually have all of the books as epubs on my phone, but my key word searches of the books all failed me. The story takes up pretty much exactly the second half of the book and the aliens are the Wem.
(I actually did search for the word “preserve” in the books with no help–if I had searched for “preserver” I would have got 17 hits.)
They live in caves and generally hold themselves apart from the other humans. They’re nude except for their long hair and a neckpiece (torc?).
The other thing I recall is that they have an incredibly complex sculpture which somehow represents their entire philosophy. As a rite of passage all young males are given as much time as they need to study it, then have to recreate it from memory; the result is judged by a council of elders, and that judgment determines their status in society (or in extreme cases, causes them to be cast out to live among “normal” humans).
They’re also supposedly-peaceful and have no weapons, except that they’re quite acutely aware that tools can have multiple uses, and that any starship drive is an extremely effective weapon.
This was either a short story or part of a TV show.
Aliens invade the Earth, however humanity has a trick up it’s sleeve. It captured a live alien at Roswell and by interrogating/torturing it it reveals the way to bypass their advanced shields. So humanity using this knowledge builds a ton of orbital rail guns around the Earth specifically to shoot down any enemy spacecraft if they approach.
So aliens finally invade after several decades and the world governments turn on their orbital defense shield. Half the rail guns immediately explode and the other half turn 180 and start firing down onto human cities.
The captured alien was actually deliberately telling them how to make their job easier.
Here’s a post-apocalyptic novel I read in high school, but I think it was written probably circa 1980.
It starts out pretty similar to The Stand, actually. Something (I think it a pandemic, although my memory is fuzzy) kills off most of the world’s population. Whatever it was, there was some warning it was coming; the early chapters had the main characters trying to prepare for the impending disaster. After the apocalypse the survivors coalesce into two groups, one composed mostly of biker gangs and other criminal types, and the other composed of generally good people (I told you it was like The Stand, but it wasn’t The Stand). At the climax of the story the two groups are about to face off in battle. It seems hopeless for the Good Guys; the criminal tribe has them outgunned and is generally stronger. But the unlikely hero of the Good Guys is a nerdy, out of shape scientist, who has an idea. On the battlefield it’s reveled that using his knowledge of chemistry and physics he’s taught them how to make chemical weapons, which they launch at the Bad Guys using trebuchets. The Bad Guys flee in terror when they realize what they’re up against. Brains win over brawn! Nerds win! The Bad Guys leave the Good Guys alone from then on.
Although looking back at it now, “brains defeat brawn” was how I interpreted the ending at the time, and is probably what the author intended, now I’m wondering if the Good Guys were really that good if they were willing to use friggin’ chemical weapons in battle. Or was it supposed to be ok because their opponent was obviously Bad Guys?
Niven and Pournelle’s Lucifer’s Hammer - the good guys defeat the cannibals with mustard gas
You mean the jive-talking urban black cannibals. That book is all kinds of cringe.
If you’re fighting for your very lives against marauders who will execute you and your children, possibly after torturing you awhile first for fun (unless you’re a young and good-looking enough woman to be worth keeping captive as a rape slave), then yeah you use mustard gas, napalm, white phosphorus, camouflaged cluster bomblets, poisoned bullets or any damn thing whatsoever that effectively says “better you than me”.
We didn’t stop using chemical weapons because they were cruel and barbaric- war is anyway. We stopped using them because they didn’t give any advantage; they were a useless escalation that made life on both sides harder for nothing.
Yeah. And after the battle, the survivors became involuntary farm workers, I seem to recall.
Come to think of it, in my memory I was probably conflating elements of The Stand with elements of Lucifer’s Hammer, with them both being post-apocalyptic stories and all. Because I completely forgot about the bad guys being black and cannibals. But yeah, Lucifer’s Hammer is definitely the book I was thinking of.
…Huh. I don’t remember that at all.
I remember the white doctor they’re holding as a prisoner consenting to advise them on how to not make themselves sick from eating diseased individuals. Also, it’s related in flashback how one of them destroyed the van full of food that a character in an earlier chapter had painstakingly prepared.
I think I was too busy snarling at the sexism to notice. Not surprised, though; there was a whole lot of sneering-at-outgroups in that book.
This one is SF only in that it’s set in “the future”, for some nebulous definition thereof.
A young woman, whose family Has Money, is living on her own. At some point, she attends a party, where a rather nutso, but fabulously wealthy, man becomes smitten with her.
And he starts sending all the gifts from the Twelve Days of Christmas.
By the 5th day or so, the various critters have essentially taken over her home.
She somehow gets the idea to the would-be suitor that thanks, but not interested.
ETA: this has been done several times, including here. That is NOT the version I’m thinking of. Pretty sure the one I recall is recent-ish (last 5-10 years).
I’ve been trying to find an online reference to my favorite Frankenstein story. It was published in early 1990s, and I’m 90% sure it was in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I recall the title was “Victor”, and I thought it was by Paul DiFillipo. ISFDB disagreed with me the last time I checked. Since I can’t find a reference to it I must be mistaken about the title or author or publication or date.
The story was told from the doctor’s point of view. When he animates the monster it acts like a newborn. He and Igor raise the boy, named Victor “after my father”, send him to school, help him through being bullied for his size appearance and clumsiness, send him to college, and help him marry his love and have children of his own. It’s a very sweet tale, and turns the Shelley original on its head.
Does anyone have a clue for me. I wouldn’t have hallucinated this story, would I?
I don’t think this will help, but (a) it might, and (b) I’m curious: is that the doctor talking about naming the boy “after my father” in your recollection? Because if the doctor was Victor, that maybe isn’t something he’d say; but if the doctor in this story is the son of Victor Frankenstein — acting sweetly a generation after his dad, uh, didn’t — then maybe that’s enough of a running start to narrow it down?
My recollection is the Doctor was the point-of-view character in the story. The doctor is the one who named the creature Victor, after his (the doctor’s) father. The creature was named after his step?? grandfather.
All apologies if I’m expressing this poorly, but my point is: the doctor in the original was Victor Frankenstein, right? And his father wasn’t also Victor Frankenstein — Shelley wasn’t penning a tale about Victor Frankenstein Junior, or Victor Frankenstein The Third, or whatever — so if a guy in a story says “hey, let’s name him Victor, after my father,” then it’s not meant to be a What-Could-Have-Been where the original Victor shows compassion; it’s meant to be someone else, who isn’t named Victor.
If so, I hoped the “someone else” bit there might prompt you to say, oh, that’s right; the doctor in the short story was named Bob, or something, and then you’d have one more clue to go on than before.
Various Frankensteins in the cinema;
Victor (Peter Cushing)
Henry (Colin Clive)
Wolf (Basil Rathbone) - (I think I’ll have to watch that one again; Rathbone is usually good)
Froderick (Gene Wilder)
Charles (Sting) - (er, no thanks)