Yet Another Story ID Question (science fiction, mid '70s)

Cafe Society
1

Ok–I read this no later than 1984 but I’m sure it was an older book (maybe even a textbook?) that I checked out from the library.

The book was a Roger Elwood-esque anthology (I don’t know if it was Elwood, but it was certainly his era).

The story was one of those whiny mid-'70s ‘cautionary tales’. Mom is taken into an office. A guy starts talking to her. He explains that her son is incorrigible and will be dealt with. He then begins lecturing mom–years ago, humans just treated animals like renewable resources( :eek: ). Soon we started making species go extinct from over-exploiting them! Her son committed the worstest crime evearh!. It doesn’t matter than he’s only (say) 8 years old!!! More info-dump/exposition occurs as he recounts that such-and-such caused whatever to go extinct and then three years later, this and that caused another critter to go extinct. And on and on and on.

And now he’s got to be punished (brain-wiped, executed, lifetime of hard labor…something like that). Mom wails as stern guy starts to leave the office “But he only killed a butterfly!” (or some other bug)

It was a terrible, terrible story, but I really would like to reread it for some inexplicable reason.

I think the book had other ‘cautionary’/‘depressing’ stories. IIRC, Bradbury’s “All Summer In A Day” was in the anthology, but mining ISFDB for anthologies that “All Summer” appeared in didn’t connect with any story names that rung a bell, but the mystery story (being a whiny mid-'70s cautionary tale) could very well have had a stupid, non-descriptive title like “The Criminal” or “Punishment!”

Anyone have any ideas? I’ve been trying to find this story for decades.

Thanks in advance,

2

Here’s a list of Roger Elwood’s anthologies:

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Roger_Elwood

Do any of them sound familiar?

3

Could this be the anthology: http://www.philsp.com/homeville/ISFAC/t81.htm#A1771

4

I vaguely remember that story, though I (regretfully) cannot name it either.

It seems to me that science fiction went through a brief, uncomfortable period in the seventies in authors realized that it could be a vehicle for Big Ideas, but did not quite grasp that this was not a license for didacticism.

5

Since this thread is here, I’m going to hijack with another short story - similar idea, probably the same time period:

A man is driving along thinking about various things and looking at the scenery, and somehow gets into a terrible car accident, during which he focuses on the sight of a woman (pretty sure it was an adult woman, might have been a girl) peacefully asleep in either his or the other car, right before impact. Then he ‘wakes up’ and remembers - and the reader is shown - that it was an advanced driving test simulation. He’s still very dazed by the whole thing, still thinking about the sleeping woman, and they’re offering him the driver’s license so without thinking he numbly tries to accept. Whoops, that was a trick! He was supposed to show reluctance to even want to drive, but his numbness led him to just go along with it, so they’re not only not giving him his license but … doing something else to him, maybe a psych evaluation.

6

This is possible. The mystery story doesn’t stand out in the contents, but it probably wouldn’t. If I get a copy and it has that story, I’ll report back.