No bother
Can’t remember if this was a novel or something shorter, in a book or a magazine, but IIRC I read it back in the early '70s..
Somebody has invented a way to make copies of things, copies so perfect that no one can tell which is the original and which the copy. Except for the protagonist, who discovers that he can tell by touching one if it’s just a copy – different vibes from the original, or something. He probably doesn’t tell anyone – who’d believe him? One day he meets a big-shot politician (closer to Sec Gen of the UN than to POTUS) for some reason. Bur when he shakes hands with the politician, our hero realises he’s shaking hands with a copy…
In case it wasn’t answered before, the title of the story is “All the Last Wars at Once”. Google tells me the author was George Alec Effinger.
Thanks - I should have linked to my answer, not to the question
I’m not sure whether this has been asked already, but don’t know good search terms for it.
Post-apocalyptic, terminator style war: humans vs robots. Soldiers holed up in impenetrable bunkers. The robots learned to trick the soldiers to let a decoy (humanoid robot) in the bunker, then it explodes, killing everyone. Whenever soldiers learn of an old model, the robots devise a new one: a wounded soldier, a lost child. The story is about a soldier who encounters someone who claims is not a robot and wonders whether it is in fact the new model.
The title of the story was in fact, I believe, something like ‘new model’. But searching for that title in the ISFDB did not yield the story. I read it long ago so it’s from before 2000, probably 1970s-1980s.
It’s not that good a fit, but it made me think of Phillip K. Dicks Second Variety.
Yes, that’s the one! So I misremembered a few details. Thanks!
An Analog magazine story from the John W Campbell era, part of his love for psychic phenomena. An author he published had a gimmick called “De Angelis boards” that read people’s emotional state, but it took a skilled operator to get the exact emotion, and which person had that emotion. In the story, the De Angelis detectors were all over a city - much like traffic cams now - but it was hard to hone in on a particular person. There supposedly was a series of these stories, but I only saw this one, where a clever operator sends the cops to catch a potential child attacker, who only broadcast a low level of emotion. I remember at the end the little girl finding her dolly (or whatever maguffin caused her to wander off) in the park, walking out to the safety of her adults, and thinking “how wonderful wonderful lucky she was”, while clueless of the danger she was saved from.
For some reason this concept and story is really hard to find via Google.
That sounds vaguely familar - I’ll look around for it. Since Google isn’t helping, it may be that “De Angelis” is slightly misspelled.
(Looks like I was wrong - “De Angelis” did find me a review excerpt from Analog, crediting an author named “Fitzpatrick” - searching…)
R. C. Fitzpatrick is the author Summary Bibliography: R. C. FitzPatrick
Here’s a link to one of the stories on Project Gutenberg
It ends like this:
She was a friendly little thing, and pretty. Maybe five, maybe six, and her Mommy had told her not to talk to strangers. But the funny old man wasn’t talking, he was sitting on the curb, and he was eating candy, and he was offering some to her. He smiled at the little girl and she smiled back.
The scout car settled to earth on automatic. Two officers climbed out of the car and walked quietly over to the old man, one on either side. They each took an arm and lifted him gently to his feet.
“Hello there, Old Timer.”
“Hi, little girl.”
The old man looked around bewildered. He dropped his candy and tried to reach his knife. They mustn’t interfere. It was no use. The officers were very kind and gentle, and they were very, very firm. They led him off as though he were an old, old friend.
One of the officers called back over his shoulder, “Bye, bye, little girl.”
The little girl dutifully waved 'bye.
She looked at the paper sack on the sidewalk. She didn’t know what to do, but the nice old man was gone. She looked around, but no one was paying any attention, they were all watching the softball game. Suddenly she made a grab and clutched the paper bag to her body. Then she turned and ran back up the street to tell her Mommy how wonderful, wonderful lucky she was.
Oh Em Gee that is amazing - I love this place! That last line stuck with me since the 80s or 70s, when I read this in a collection.
Glad to help!
I remember a sf short story I once read in the early Seventies, about an Earth mission to a world of humanoids, similar to us, in another star system. An Earth shuttlecraft touches down on a scouting mission. The pet dog of one of the crewmen is separated from the party, and has to be left behind. The dog is found by the aliens, who at first try to communicate with it, but then realize it’s a dumb but adorable animal. (I think part of the story is told first-person from the dog’s perspective, but I’m not sure of that). When formal first contact is made, dogs become very popular pets among the aliens, playing an important role in the good relations which develop between the aliens and the humans.
Let’s make it a dog-themed evening!
I remember a relatively short story, almost certainly from one of the zillion anthologies I read in the late 70s or early 80s. Humans are in space, and dealing with the difficulties of exploring planets with hostile environments. If I remember right, the solution on the planet in the story is that they are able to transfer human consciousness (temporarily I think) into either an alien body or a constructed body suited for the environment. The human, now in a suitable body, can go out and do the exploration stuff that is needed.
Somehow, in the course of this story, our protagonist’s dog’s consciousness either accidentally or intentionally also gets transferred into one of these exploration bodies. The dog is overjoyed to finally be able to communicate fully and use the full cognitive power of this supposedly temporary body. The conclusion of the story is the dog asking not to be put back into a dog body and our story’s hero I suppose agrees. I don’t really remember.
Ring any bells?
Edit: do I get bonus points if I answer my own question, and quickly at that? Desertion, by Clifford D. Simak. Readable as PDF here. Turns out that formulating my question was enough to provide me into remembering keywords that worked for a search.
This rings a bell but it might take a while to find it
Possibly “Propagandist” by Murray Leinster?
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/240531/i-am-trying-to-locate-a-story-about-first-contact-where-the-aliens-want-to-talk
Simak wrote several more dog themed sf stories, which were collected in the fixup novel City. Desertion is probably the best and most memorable. I do remember the last story (or stories?): humanity more or less dies out. Dogs take over the earth, but later are driven offworld by an ever expanding ant civilization.
I like the comment on that page: "Luckily they didn’t [get] ahold of the ship cat, who is like “I don’t care about them; you can get rid of them if you want!”
Yes.
Simak’s “Desertion” matches the description, although the dog was only one of the protagonists.
That reminds me of a throwaway gag line in the movie Explorers (1985):
“I watched four episodes of Lassie before I figured out why the little hairy kid never spoke. I mean, he rolled over, sure, he did that fine, but I don’t think he deserved a series for that.” --Wak