# Help Me ID This 1950's SciFi Story **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 8, 2010, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-1950s-scifi-story/546033 "2010-07-08T23:57:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2010, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-1950s-scifi-story/546033/1 "2010-07-08T23:57:07Z")
All I can remember, is that a human expedition to Mars finds an abandoned city, which seems to have been abadoned for millenia. This city is called “The City of Time”, and it contains a vault which is locked. Then there is something about a flow of enery (iesis), which somehow powers the lock on the vault. Does this ring abell? ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2010, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-1950s-scifi-story/546033/2 "2010-07-09T01:44:41Z")
This probably isn’t the story you’re thinking of, but parts of it sound similar to the movie (not story) **The Wizard of Mars** (1965). Astronauts stranded on the Red Planet find a citadel where the last of the Martians are preserved in a sort of chronal stasis. The city is presided over by the telepathic group-mind of the Martians, which convinces the astronauts to restart the flow of entropy in the city, causing the city to decay into dust and allowing the Martians to finally pass on to a higher plane of existence. In return, the astronauts are looped back to before the accident that caused their crash, with only their memories as evidence that it ever happened. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2010, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-1950s-scifi-story/546033/3 "2010-07-09T01:47:57Z")
Speaking of Martians, what’s that story where an astronaut is marooned on Mars and he finds that he can get water out of the stones – but it also turns him into a Martian? ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2010, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-1950s-scifi-story/546033/4 "2010-07-09T02:20:18Z")
Don’t know if this is it, but at least one- I think more- of the John Carter of Mars stories involved an abandoned city. [According to this](http://www.erbzine.com/mag30/3033.html), one abandoned city was called Thark. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2010, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-1950s-scifi-story/546033/5 "2010-07-09T02:34:23Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > Speaking of Martians, what’s that story where an astronaut is marooned on Mars and he finds that he can get water out of the stones – but it also turns him into a Martian? That sounds a bit like John Varley’s “In the Halls of the Martian Kings” - but in that case, it was more than one person stranded on Mars (and they weren’t exactly converted to Martians, but rather learned how to use the biotechnology that the Martians had left behind, apparently in anticipation of a visit from Earthlings). ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2010, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-1950s-scifi-story/546033/6 "2010-07-09T02:36:02Z")
I’ll wait for the OP’s question to be definitively answered before I continue the hijack. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![ChrisM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/47e85d/32.png) [@ChrisM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChrisM)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2010, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-1950s-scifi-story/546033/7 "2010-07-09T03:03:49Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > Speaking of Martians, what’s that story where an astronaut is marooned on Mars and he finds that he can get water out of the stones – but it also turns him into a Martian? I think that’s A. E. Van Vogt’s “Enchanted Village.” The story in the OP sounds familiar, but I can’t come up with anything specific. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2010, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-1950s-scifi-story/546033/8 "2010-07-09T04:46:44Z")
> [@ChrisM](#): > > I think that’s A. E. Van Vogt’s “Enchanted Village.” > > The story in the OP sounds familiar, but I can’t come up with anything specific. That’s correct. [http://www.librarything.com/topic/69039](http://www.librarything.com/topic/69039) > [@](#): > > Then he wakes up: > The dais felt comfortably warm, not hot at all. He had a feeling of wonderful physical well-being. > Eagerly he scrambled down the ramp to the nearest food stall. As he crawled forward, his nose close to the floor, the trough filled with a steamy mixture. The odour was so rich and pleasant that he plunged his face into it and slopped it up greedily. > > At the end of the story: > Ecstatically Jenner wriggled his four-foot tail and lifted his long snout … > Then he waddled out to bask in the sun and listen to the timeless music.