A) Eccentric billionaire has everything. Worked his way up from abuse and poverty. Wants to clone himself, to raise himself as his own kid, give himself everything he never had as a child. The kicker: Kid grows up but, since he has no drive to succeed, winds up not knowing how to do much more than play tennis.
B) Future America, terribly overpopulated and desperate, establishes laws where a couple has to earn the right to reproduce; have to go through a parenting program; if the couple makes it this far, the last stage of the program is that you have to take home an android baby for six weeks or so. What the prospective parents don’t know is that the android has been programmed to be as difficult as possible – constantly crying, making messes, etc. – with the result that the vast majority of couples decide that it’s just not for them. The kicker: the whole thing has been a plot by Communist China to de-populate the U.S., and twenty or so years later have taken over. Central Park is a rice paddy.
Sorry - these ring a slight bell, but I don’t recall enough to give a name. Clarke’s Imperial Earth has a wealthy man who cloned himself, but doesn’t seem to fit very well.
a35362, what year did you read these stories? Did you read them in a new issue of a magazine? Did you read them in an old magazine, and if so how old was the magazine? What magazine? Did you read them in a book? Was it a single-author collection or an anthology of various author’s stories? Was it new? If not, how old was it? Any information like this would be helpful.
When I was in high school (early '80s) I used to read lots of anthologies of short stories by well-known writers. These two were probably written in the '50s or '60s (reference to “Communist China”). I used to get Analog and Asimov’s and F&SF in the '90s but I’m sure these are earlier than that. Sorry I have no more info.
a35362, please don’t be offended, but I think it’s very likely that you’re combining parts of several short stories that you read. I’ve read a lot of the threads that have been started on the SDMB over the years where people ask us for the name of a short story, novel, movie, or TV episode that they vaguely remember. A lot of the time, perhaps even the majority of the time, they are mashing together several short stories, novels, movies, or TV episodes. I say this partly because you don’t have a clear memory of reading this particular story. You just remember a period when you read a lot of collections in a short time, and I suspect that you’re combining several short stories from those collections. Second, “The Education of Tigress McCardle” has so many things in common with your description of the second short story that it’s hard to believe that it’s not one of the things being combined in your memories.
