# Help Me Find This SciFi Story
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-find-this-scifi-story/534857
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [April 3, 2010, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-find-this-scifi-story/534857 "2010-04-03T22:00:24Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2010, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-find-this-scifi-story/534857/1 "2010-04-03T22:00:24Z")
Sorry the details are so sparse, but it was about the future of humanity…basically, mankind had “done everything”-people were jaded, and only wanted to live fantasy lives.
So people woul allow themselves to be placed into suspended animation, where they would live dream lives.
Any of this ring a bell?
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### Author:  [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2010, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-find-this-scifi-story/534857/2 "2010-04-03T22:09:13Z")
This rings a couple of dozen bells. LOTS of stories with this as an element if not the main plot points.
Got a year? Was it in a magazine, or an anthology, or was it a novel?
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### Author:  [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2010, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-find-this-scifi-story/534857/3 "2010-04-03T23:58:30Z")
It was a full length novel, good reading it was.
Hope I can find it (never finished it).
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2010, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-find-this-scifi-story/534857/4 "2010-04-04T02:37:16Z")
Unless you can give us more details, we can’t figure out what it is. What year did you read this novel? Did you own it or did you borrow it from a library or a friend or whatever? Was it paperback or hardback? Was it an old book at the time? What did the picture on the cover look like? Approximately how long was it? Do you have any more details about the story or the author?
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### Author:  [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2010, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-find-this-scifi-story/534857/5 "2010-04-04T03:37:56Z")
Something from Theodore Sturgeon, maybe?
I suggested him because I don’t read much SF but I do read Sturgeon, so I’m thinking that’s why it rang my bells too.
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2010, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-find-this-scifi-story/534857/6 "2010-04-04T04:10:50Z")
Heck, I remember that story. A 20th-century guy wakes up from suspended animation in the far future and he’s sufficiently unhappy that they pack him off into endless virtual-reality land (something normally only done after people retire) to get rid of him.
The fantasy they stick him in (of which we only get a taste in the final paragraph) has him as a rugged cowboy. Gosh, I guess a good ol’ American West fantasy is timeless!
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### Author:  [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2010, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-find-this-scifi-story/534857/7 "2010-04-04T04:17:53Z")
\*[Spectator Sport](http://books.google.com/books?id=1M0Y2RYqffIC&pg=PA160&lpg=PA160&dq=%22pick+the+harem+series%22&source=bl&ots=T1C7yfuXyn&sig=nbu8qwjDzL0SyFSPcw7xlYmkB1c&hl=en&ei=JhK4S5DvK43YtgOf0-noDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22pick%20the%20harem%20series%22&f=false) \*by John D. MacDonald.
Printed in _50 Short Science Fiction Stories_.
The link is to Google Books and not all the pages are displayed.
**Bryan Eker’s** post rang the bell for me.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2010, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-find-this-scifi-story/534857/8 "2010-04-04T04:32:11Z")
There was another one where I guy is flying off to a colony on another planet; only his suspended animation doesn’t work right. The ship’s computer provides him with virtual reality simulations so he doesn’t lose his mind being immobile for however-many decades.
When the ship arrives at the planet, he thinks his arrival is another simulation – one that he’d been through countless times during his journey.
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2010, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-find-this-scifi-story/534857/9 "2010-04-04T06:28:41Z")
runner pat, how can it be that story? ralph124c said that it was a full-length novel.
Johnny L.A., the story you’re thinking of is probably “Frozen Journey” (a.k.a. “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon”) by Philip K. Dick. Unless we’re assuming that ralph124c has no correct memories of the story at all, that can’t be it either, since it’s a short story.
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### Author:  [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2010, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-find-this-scifi-story/534857/10 "2010-04-04T06:34:26Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#):
>
> runner pat, how can it be that story? ralph124c said that it was a full-length novel.
I missed his second post.:smack:
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2010, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-find-this-scifi-story/534857/11 "2010-04-04T13:45:43Z")
> [@runner pat](#):
>
> I missed his second post.:smack:
S’okay. I was being facetious. I knew the story I was thinking of wasn’t a full-length novel, as described. I was just joking about how commonplace the theme is. Without additional detail, it’s nigh-impossible to narrow down except by randomly guessing until ralph hears a familiar element.
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### Author:  [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2010, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-find-this-scifi-story/534857/12 "2010-04-04T15:32:59Z")
Well, the brain cells are starting to work-I now remember that the people in the dream state KNEW that they were dreaming-and getting “killed” in your dream was no big deal-since you knew it was illusion.
Oh, and the main crarcter dreams he is vacationing with his girlfriend in Hawaii-where he is robbed and murdered.
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2010, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-find-this-scifi-story/534857/13 "2010-04-04T16:15:48Z")
I don’t want to mention it outright because the VR story was a surprise ending as I recall but maybe you’re thinking of _Old Twentieth_ by Joe Haldeman.