I invoke the famed SF SS identification powers of the SDMB, does anybody remember a story where a lone astronaut lands in a planet where the plants emit some kind of allucinatory effect that makes him see them as women? he ends up er… pollinating them.
Also, anybody knows who said something like “A book is an SF book when it says ‘Science Fiction’ in the cover” ?
Probably not what you’re thinking of, but the classic “Martian Odyssey” (Weinbaum) has plant-like creatures that can hypnotize animals (and humans) into seeing attractive things. One astronaut sees a famous actress, and is only saved by his alien counterpart.
Nope, It wasn’t “Martian Odyssey”.
The protagonist had an FTL space ship, and his name was (I think) Randy.
Could be * The Pollinators of Eden * by John Boyd
Nope, it was short story, nothing like novella length and it was a somewhat comedic story.
Bit of a stretch but “Child of Mind” by Norman Spinrad has the plants but instead of hallucinations, they summon up “actual” women, tailor made to the fantasies of the three crew members.
Norman Spinrad said
“There is only one definition of science fiction that seems to make sense: ‘Science fiction is anything published as science fiction.’”
And I’d have guessed it was The Pollinators of Eden as well; maybe there was an earlier short story Boyd expanded?
Definitively not “The Pollinators of Eden”, there was just one astronaut, I remember the story had a comedic tone, and in the end he gets rich by planting “gardens” in different worlds and selling the plants “services”, he gets called “Randy green fingers” and it’s implied that there is a coarser version of his nickname where what is green is not precisely his fingers.
But in either case, he’s still Randy?
I don’t know, how randy can he still be after all those hard years of pollinating?