I had this memory of a story my mother told me. About a girl who floated, body and mind, and could only think straight when she was swimming. Problem was, my mother had no memory of reading me this story. And I couldn’t find it in the stack of books in the attic.
For a while I thought I dreamt it. Then someone came into the book store and asked for “The Floating Princess”. I knew that was it. My mind was put at rest.
When I was a kid (older than when my mother read me The Floating Princess, but younger than i am now) I used to wander around the sci-fi section of the library and pick out whatever had a good dust jacket. I did know any authors. I didn’t know anyone who read science fiction to talk about it with. I just read what looked interesting.
I read a book about these anthropologist (well that’s not the right word if they’re studying aliens, but…) who go to this planet and study the artifacts of an ancient culture that apparently florished there. Meanwhile there are the curent inhabitants, who are considered to be- well, like apes, intelligent, but without culture. They communicate with there eyes. I mean, there eyes change color and shape, and some of the anthropologists think this bespeaks a higher level of intelligence than previously thought- like maybe to do with the ancient culture. Then there’s something at the end with a cocoon.
I also read a book where everybody is brains in jars. Apparently, utopia had been reached, but having gotten that far, somebody thought the next step was complete abandonment of the body, for the perpose of spiritual enlightenment. And I remember there was one brain who was very resentful of being moved out of his body by these do-gooders. And the was the brain of a young boy who had nightmares about a film he saw of people eating monkey brains.
So, obviously, this post is about: Does anybody know what the hell those books are?!?
But also: Any body else got a book/movie/etc. they know they remember but now they can’t track down? Perhaps we can put each other’s minds at rest.
Trying to recall correctly – are you sure the first book wasn’t The Light Princess by George MacDonald? I don’t remember the L.P. having recourse to the act of swimming, though.
Is your first book “The Word for World is Forest” by Ursula K. LeGuin? LeGuin is the daughter of Kroeber (that’s what the “K” stands for), the anthropologist who was responsible for bringing Ishi into whatever museum he spent the last part of his life in. LeGuin’s books are excellent, and usually deal with anthropology/sociology. Read “The Dispossessed” or “The Left Hand of Darkness” by her.
As for your other book – I don’t know. There are a LOT of books with brains in jars. It’s a venerable sf cliche. But I don’t know of one with a story like the one you describe.
Well, I’m looking for a movie. I asked about it before, hope no one is offended if I ask again…
It’s about two children who are granted a wish by a computer. They wish to go to the moon. The computer says they have to give it a gift - something “as beautiful as the earth to a returning astronaut.” They bring it a kaleidoscope. The computer then tells them if they go to the moon, they can’t come back, because they didn’t wish for a round trip. So they watch the rocket launch without them.
Part of the movie takes place at a World’s Fair.
My brother thinks this must have been a foreign film. We saw in the early 1970’s. I’m begining to think we lived in the Twilight Zone, because no one else has ever heard of this movie!
scratch1300 - In the Light Princess, the only time she had weight was when she was in water. So she loved swimming.
Okay, a movie I saw 30 years ago, in the wee hours. I recall no plot, except it involved a group of children who communicated with each other by wagging their ears, or wagging their fingers near their ears or something to that effect.
Transfigurations is out of print. The story, “Death & Designation Among the Asadi” can be found in Donald Wollheim’s 1974 Annual World’s Best SF, also out of print.
Alibris.com sells used copies of them both. As I mentioned in another thread, I heartily recommend the Wollheim series.
Re your last book - the brains in jars - you are not imagining it: it was a real book and I have also read it - admittedly over twenty years ago.
I can remember lots about it: the premise - a world where minds evolve through various levels of artificial environment and stimulation until they are advanced enough to be worthy of a super-dooper physical body and re-released into the physical world; the plot concerns those minds trapped in Level 1 - they were disembodied very early in the history of the development of the process, sometimes because of illness, and sometimes because they were rich enough to pay for it - and none of them is sufficiently advanced to make it to the next level; the rest of the book is what they do about it and the various ways they succeed or fail in escaping. I can even remember the names of two of the blasted characters - Skeets Kalbfleischer and Philip. But do you think I can remember either the author or the title? Can I heck.
But it’s a real book and it’s out there somewhere…