Please help to identify this story

Cafe Society
1

Another “Can you identify this story” thread:

Science fiction short story, late 80’s, early 90’s, in an anthology devoted to ecological issues facing the world at that time. The plot is that the owner/president of a privately-held industrial coprporation dies and, after the funeral, the man that had previously been the dead man’s physician takes aside the hand-picked replacement to discuss some anomalies the physician had noticed.

The physician cuts into the body to display unfamiliar organs, while explaining that the dead man had not been a man at all, he was an advance man sent to make Earth’s atmosphere into something more appropriate for his fellow beings. The dead being had purposely devoted itself to putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to raise the tempreature, and to adding other pollutants to the air that would make Earth more “home-like” to its fellows.

Anyone else remember this?

2

It might be Theodore Sturgeon’s “Occam’s Scalpel.”

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“Occam’s Scalpel” by Sturgeon I think. ‘Occam’s Scalpel’ by Theodore Sturgeon | Everything Is Nice

Published in these locations Title: Occam's Scalpel

4

Oops. I didn’t see that you’d beat me to it.

5

Sounds like a new “Outer Limits” episode, too.

6

Some aspects of the plot sound like the 1996 movie The Arrival, which starred Charlie Sheen. It was quite good.

7

BTW, the author of that completely missed the point of the story (and probably didn’t read the ending, which turns everything on its ear – again – and makes it clearly SF).

8

Thanks. I’m sure I read the Sturgeon, but it’s been decades. Hopefully the description here SFE: Xenoforming is closer (though shorter)…

9

It’s only in the background but the Aliens in They Live were doing that too. They mention they are trying to make “our air more like their air.”