Conference noted::sf

    I'll start with one that will probably be easy. A Philip Wylie (I
    think) novel. End of the world as we know it scenario. SOMETHING
    happens where by two parallel worlds are created; one has all the men,
    the other all the women. None of the opposite sex is present in either
    gender's world. Story then proceeds in parallel to tell what happens 
    to each group. Can't recall if they get back together or not.....

    Yes, it's Wylie, and the title is THE DISAPPEARANCE.
    
    --- jerry

    
    Well, _I_ got one that's been bothering me for a while.
    
    Long time ago, someone posted a SF trivia quiz here. One part was
    match the opening lines with the story. The opening line was, 
    "Yngvi is a louse." I _know_ I read it somewhere, but--where?
    It's been driving me crazy ever since! (And was the author Lewis
    Pagett?)

    It's not the OPENING line, but the line "Yngvi is a louse" occurs in
    "The Incompleat Enchanter" by L. Sprague deCamp and Fletcher Pratt.
    It is a line screamed out at intervals by a prisoner in a dungeon, in
    the world of Norse myth.  I don't know if deCamp & Pratt intended this
    as a joke or something, but "Yngvi" is one of the names of Odin, who
    appears in the story in his usual grim personna.  Perhaps deCamp &
    Pratt were humorously echoing some other fantasy story?
    
    "The Incompleat Enchanter" has a curious publishing history.  It
    contains several stories, most of which first appeared in UNKNOWN
    magazine.  They were published under "The Incompleat Enchanter.  Then a
    book called "The Compleat Enchanter" was published, with all the old
    stories plus "Castle of Iron."  But "The Compleat Enchanter" wasn't.
    There is now a book called "The Complete Compleat Enchanter" that
    alleges to have ALL the stories from the series.  I'm not sure I
    believe them.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    re:.4
    
    Yes, THE COMPLETE COMPLEAT ENCHANTER *is* complete.
    
    --- jerry

    Thank you.  That's nice to know.
    
    ESW

                       <<< Note 826.3 by AV8OR::EDECK >>>

    
>>     Long time ago, someone posted a SF trivia quiz here. One part was
>>     match the opening lines with the story. The opening line was, 
>>     "Yngvi is a louse." I _know_ I read it somewhere, but--where?
>>     It's been driving me crazy ever since! (And was the author Lewis
>>     Pagett?)

    If memory serves, the line is from the Norse-gods episode of L. Sprague
    deCamp's Compleat Enchanter (and it's in the middle of the story;
    specifically, where the hero {his name escapes me at the moment} and
    Thor are prisoners of the trolls or giants).

    The hero's name is Harold Shea, and the god he is imprisoned with is
    Heimdal.  The prison is owned by giants but staffed by trolls.
    
    ESW

    ... Re _... Enchanter_:
    
    The Harold Shea stories are:
    
    _The Incompleat Enchanter_ (consisting of two novellas, one involving
                               (the Norse gods; the other, the universe
                               (of _The Faerie Queen_)
    
    _Castle of Iron_  (a single tale based on Ariosto's _Orlando Furioso_)
    
    _Wall of Serpents_ (two novellas again: one involving Finnish tales
                       (and the other, Irish mythology).
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    
    Thank you all.
    
    (This had been bothering me for months...)

    Re "Yngvi is a louse":
    
    This is one of the two most famous "unusual" lines in
    science_fiction/fantasy.  The other is, "The doorknob opened a blue
    eye and looked at him."  To forestall the obvious, that one came
    from an interesting "Lewis Padgett" (Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore)
    tale called "The Fairy Chessmen."
    
    One of my favorite lines is, "If two energies are attuned to a twenty-
    decimal level of approximation, the greater will bridge the gap
    to the lesser as if there were no intervening space between them,
    though at finite speeds."  This was from (primarily) the first of
    van Vogt's Null-A series, _Players of Null-A_.  One almost as good
    was also a van Vogt effort, from _The Weapon Makers_: "This much
    we have learned: this is the race that will rule the Sevagram."
    It was the closing line in the book, and while "Sevagram" was probably
    not a futuristic whiskey, it wasn't explained just what it was.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

re: .the_above

>    Re "Yngvi is a louse":
Wasn't 
it      "Yngve is a louse" with an E?
             -

Also, the first book (comprising "The Roaring Trumpet" and "The Mathematics of
Magic", i think), was called "The Incomplete Enchanter" (the C-o-m-p-l-e-a-t
spelling was only for the two later editions).

And the mythological or literary worlds were (i think):
	The Roaring Trumpet		...	The Eddas
	The Mathematics of Magic	...	The Faerie Queen
	The Castle of Iron		...	Orlando Furioso
	The Green Magician		...	Tain Bo Cualgne (Ulster Cycle)
	The Wall of Serpents		...	Kalevala
?
								paul

    There was an ecologically-oriented end-of-humanity book I read in an
    unofficial hostel in the Scottish Highlands 12 years ago. I been
    looking for it on and off (I even checked the hostel 2 years ago :-} ).

    The main character is a geology graduate student in San Francisco who
    gets bitten by a rattlesnake while on a dig. In this transitional
    state he escapes a plague that quickly sweeps the earth and leaves only
    several hundred humans. The author doesn't go into detail on the
    plague; instead he examines the changes that take place as human
    influence is removed. As the narrator camps outside of SF, various
    cycles take place. After all accessible food has been eaten in the city,
    a swarm of rats spreads out until they reach a new balanced level. As
    sheep run wild among predators, slowly larger horned and less passive
    animals predominate.

    The narrator gathers about 40 people near SF and attempts to build up
    their technical level using the resources of the city and his beloved
    university library. However his promising son dies of disease and the
    rest of the next generation is just focused on daily life. The group
    develops an intermediate technology based on remmants of the past - e.g.
    arrowheads made from pennies. Other groups around the world develop
    their own culture based up their local geography and the knowledge of
    those who chance allowed to survive. The book ends with SF and the
    library burning, the group escapes over the Golden Gate Bridge. The
    narrator (now elderly) selects the next leader by handing over his
    geology mallet (which has acquired magical significance for the new
    generation).


    P.S. The books based upon mythologies sound interesting. I don't
    understand how you can keep so much detail in your heads. You should
    become the VMS's XQP maintainer. :-)

    re: .13  One of my all-time favorites:
    
    Stewart, George R.		Earth Abides		0-449-23252-2
    
    The title is from "Man comes and goes, but Earth abides."
    
    Willie

    Great book.  I believe there is another note in here about it
    somewhere.  It was reprinted recently becuase I found a copy in Walden
    Books down near Boston not long ago.
    
    								- John

    	See SF Topic 563.
    

    Thanks for identifying the book and mentioning that it has been
    reprinted. I tried checking 2 used book stores this weekend
    unsuccessfully; now I see I can buy a new copy. Funny how I missed a
    whole note devoted to this book. However, I didn't find enough info
    in the note to identify the book I was looking for.

    If you can't locate it send me mail with your mailstop and I'll loan
    you mine.
    
    					- John

    Ok , here's one I've been trying to remember for some time .
    It is a short story , and is about that favourite of subjects 
    time travel . It's not so much the story I want to find again as
    the anthology it was included in .
    
    The basic plot is of one guy who goes back in time via a time travel
    agency . He has to make full assurances that while he is there (this
    being several million years in the past) he will do nothing to cause
    any paradox , or change the future . I seem to remember that there
    is some political group in the present who are powerful but not
    in power .
    
    Anyway , naturally enough , he treads on a prehistoric butterfly
    , and Whammo! the future is altered , the extremist political party
    get into power and that is more or less where the story ends .
    
    Now , there are too many avenues of argument about the results of
    time travel , so I'm not even going to start to rathole this note
    but if anyone can remember the story/author/anthology I'd be grateful
    I think I read this about ten years ago , though the story is probably
    a lot older
    
    PETE

    	Piece of cake - Ray Bradbury's classic "A Sound of Thunder",
    written in 1955 (one of my personal favorites).  The premise is 
    that in the future year of 2057 Time Safaris are offered, where
    anyone with the money can go back to any time they wish and hunt
    the big game of their choice.  The catch is that they must be
    very careful not to affect the past, or even a small change will
    radically alter their present and future.
    
        The characters travel back to the time of the dinosaurs, 
    specifically to bag a Tyrannosaurus rex.  Actually, they can't
    take it home with them, they only get the "thrill" of having
    killed a T. rex.  When the time hunters arrive and the main
    hunter sees the actual dinosaur smashng through the jungle at
    them, he flips out and goes wandering away from the time machine,
    something strictly forbidden.  The rest of the party do kill TR
    and the hunter does make it back, though with dirt on his boots.
    When the hunters come back to their time, they discover that
    not only has the way English is spelled been changed, but that
    the American President elected into office when they left has
    now been given over to his more totalitarian opponent.  It seems
    the main hunter had stepped on a butterfly in the past, and this
    snowballed into radical changes in history through the millenia.
    
    	For real justice to this story, please check it out for yourselves.
    
    	Larry
    

    It's from Ray Bradbury's collection _The Golden Apples of the Sun_.
    
    The title of the short, unfortunately, evades me.

    Thanks a lot for those prompt replies , I had a feeling it was Bradbury
    but I wasn't too sure .
    
    One more for the old Christmas stocking !
    
    Thanks again ,
    
    PETE

Ok.  I read this one a LONG time ago (20 years maybe?) in one of
the "Best SF of ...." type anthologies.  I'm actually after the
whole anthology, but one story stood out.


The story presents a being, from a different dimension/reality (presumably), 
who is tinkering with some gadget he put together in his workshop (I get the
impression that it is a time machine, or dimension machine??).  He puts
his kid's toybox into his gadget, turns it on, and the toybox disappears.
He walks away disgruntled...

The story shifts to Earth, present-day (well, you know what I mean), where
two children, a brother & sister discover an odd toybox...

The kids play with the stuff they find in the toybox, some of which is
"educational", and learn some of the other-dimensional technology.
Toward the end of the story, they are arranging objects (marbles? jacks?)
in some significant pattern, and reciting parts of Carroll's _Jabberwocky_.


I know it's fragmented, but, for some reason, my brain is telling me to
find this story again.  Can anyone help me?

Thanx,
Paul

    
    Howsa 'bout _All Mimsy Were the Borogoves_ by Lewis Pagett?

    Sounds a bit like "The Twonky" (can't remember the author), and
    I seem to vaguely recall another one about a doctor's little black
    bag.
    
    Somebody needs to write a "Thematic SF Database".
    
    len.
    

    I second "Mimsy..." (Lewis Padgett is a pseudonym for Henry
    Kuttner and C.L. Moore).
    
    re:.25
    
    "The Twonky" was also by Padgett (or was it under Kuttner's own
    name? I forget...). "The Little Black Bag" was by C.M. Kornbluth.
    
    --- jerry

    
    I remember the one about the "little black bag." It was another
    of the "Marching Morons" theme. A doctor's medical bag from the
    future with its automatic instruments goes temporally adrift and 
    ends up in the hands of an alcoholic doctor in the present, who uses
    it to get rich doing liposuctions (once again, SF forshadows present
    technology), until...well, never mind...

Yes, "All Mimsey..." is it. It was collected in _The_Science_Fiction_Hall_
_of_Fame_ vol. I.

As for the "Black bag", wasn't that in _Dangerous_Visions_ or was it also
in ...Hall_of_Fame_?

                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
                  ) ///
                 /

    "The Little Black Bag" was undoubtedly in TSFHoF; it certainly
    deserved to be (there was also a perfectly marvelous adaptation
    of it on NIGHT GALLERY way back circa 1970). It pre-dates DANGEROUS
    VISIONS by over 15 years.
    
    --- jerry

Thanks for all the quick responses.  Hopefully I can find TSFHoF still
in print somewhere.

Re: .25
>    Somebody needs to write a "Thematic SF Database".

I think we already have an organic one.  Now if we can just get these
guys to sit still long enough to connect a database manager to their brains...

Paul

    this note is a great idea!
    
    what about two tiny short-story fragments?
    
    .19-.20 reminded me of another time-travel story from long ago (or
    maybe it's the one mentioned) that ends with the scientists'
    discovering jeep tracks in a prehistoric rock layer that they had
    left there themselves millions of years ago. this actually sounds
    suspiciously like what was mentioned before. is it?
    
    the other one that occurred to me is a story about someone in some
    multi-dimensional house, where he pursues someone through rooms and
    corridors, only to discover it's actually himself up ahead, 'folded'
    thru anouther dimension. i have a vague memory of the guy looking
    over this house in a desert that he's about to buy, or something? very
    tantalizing and fragmented.
    
    ah, another one! someone is in a corridor or cave that he can't seem to
    escape from; there are these bubbles floating in it that contain some
    kind of nutritive liquid?
    
    anyway, any of these bits seem familiar?
    
    ken

    Number one I don't recall.
    
    Number 2 is "And He Built a Crooked House" by Heinlein.
    
    Number 3 is a story I've read but can't recall the title or
    author of.  I think it dates from the late forties or early
    fifties (could it be Eric Frank Russell?).  I think it was
    in _Astounding_.
    
    The main character is in a moebius strip with a triangular
    cross-section (I remember making a model in plasticene to
    check that it was possible--it is).  He is taking a test,
    to see whether he can join a group of immortal supermen.
    
    			-John Bishop

   Ok, here's one.  I don't remember it being an exceptionally good story,
but it bothers me that I can't remember the name.

   The basic premise was that there were humans on some colony world which
was separated from Earth.  There was some natural mind-predator present
which would somehow attach the colonists (again, this is very vague...)

   In an effort to counteract the alien attacks, a discipline called
mu-shin ("no mind" according to the story) was used to empty the mind and
prevent the alien presence from taking over.  It turns out the whole thing
was an alien scam, the "high priest" type of folks involves with it were
actually the aliens...

   Anyways, the protagenist(sp?) discovers that the aliens are actually
doing this, and takes up the "way of the sword" or something like that.

   Is this familliar?  The cover had a Luke Skywalker-ish figure on it,
sitting in lotus (the position, not the spreadsheet... :-)

   It's really bothered me that I can't figure it out.  It was my brother's
book, and he doesn't remember it either, and for a while I started looking
through every single SF book at bookstores trying to find it, to no avail...
I just want to know!

---

   And a second one, which isn't a book, but a movie/tv show.

   I remember it as a TV series, but I recently was in colorado springs, and
it was showing on a late night sf/horror movie thing they had.  Unfortunately
the friend I was staying with didn't have a TV guide or paper or anything
so I didn't find out what it was...

   The premise is that there's this "ark" you see (a "B" ark... no, no, wrong
story...) with all these covered domes - something like the forests in
Silent Running.  The ark is travelling away from the Earth towards some
other star to call home.  (What happened to the Earth?  Something about a giant
mutant star-goat... no, no again, wrong ark...)

   So anyways, civilization in one of these domes settled for whatever
reason to a farming level, but then at some point, some of the younger
generation finds out they're on this ark, and finds the "iris" which can
open into the rest of the ship.

   As I remember the TV series, they would constantly be going around,
trying to find out what happened to the crew and seeing what's happening
in the other domes.  There were some pretty neat things - a computer
which projected an image of a living person (something projector, it was
called), which reminded me of the primitive stored personalities in
Pohl's Heechee series when I saw part of it the other week...

   Any clues?  I'd try to give more specifics, but it turns out that my
memories of this show and Silent Running were very confused and run together,
as I thought the name of the ark was the Valley Forge.  (I think that I
must have seen Silent Running in the middle of the series, and at my
relative state of conciousness at age 8 or so, assumed that all the things
with the domes must go together... I finally rented Silent Running last
weekend and watched it, so now I've got a fair idea of what I "remembered"
came from Silent Running...)

   Any help available?


					-mjg

    
    The second one sounds like the series _The Starlost_. I've got
    the paperback by David Brinn (?) hanging around somewhere, complete
    with the intro by Harlan Ellison ("Why I gave up writing for TV").
    
    E.

    re:.33
    
    The novel you're trying to remember is THE WAYFARER, by Dennis
    Schmidt. It's had a couple of sequels I haven't read, one entitled
    KENSHO (I don't recall the other title).
    
    The tv show is, as .-1 said, THE STARLOST.
    
    re:.34
    
    The STARLOST novelization is entitled PHOENIX WITHOUT ASHES, and
    was written (from Ellison's original teleplay, not the teleplay
    that was actually produced as the first episode) by Ed Bryant.
    
    Ben Bova, who was Science Advisor for the show until he realized
    that no one was paying attention to his advice, also write a novel
    describing his and Harlan's experiences on the show. It's entitled
    THE STARCROSSED, and it's hilarious.
    
    --- jerry

    Re .31 & .32
    
    The story about the jeep tracks is by Arthur Clarke; sorry, I can't
    remember the title.  A team of paleontologists are excavating a set of
    tyrannosaur tracks while a team of physicists at a nearby lab is doing
    experiments with liquid helium and entropy.  The two teams chat about
    entropy and its connection to time.  Later, there is an explosion at
    the lab and two paleontologists and a jeep go missing.  Shortly after
    that, they find that what the tyrannosaur tracks are following is a set
    of jeep tracks.
    
    Your man following himself around a multi-dimensional house sounds
    similar to Heinlein's "And He Built A Crooked House," but not
    identical.  In that story, there were three people trapped in the 4-D
    house, and I don't recall anyone seeing the back of their own head,
    though there were several other special effects.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    re: .33
    
    As others have said, the novel is Phoenix Without Ashes, one of my
    all-time favorites!  Get it and read it, it was much better than the TV
    show, and:
    
    
    			I WANNA SEQUEL!!!!!!!!!!!
    
    Willie

    re: a couple in there:
    
       Thank you.  My mind is much happier now.
    
    
    					-mjg
    

Re: Walking through a House and catching a glimpse of the back of your head

	Poul Anderson wrote a couple of Time Travel novels, and I remember in
one of them, there was a situation where the main protagonist almost runs into
himself.

Mike JN

    	 I am trying to find out about a show/movie(?) I saw on TV in
    Oklahoma City in 1963-5 time frame.
    
    	 It was about a square metal cube that falls to earth and when
    exposed it electricty gets bigger and bigger untill it becomes a
    giant rob like thing that goes around taking our power stations
    so it can grow bigger. The heros (I think) take a chopper to the
    top of it and ground it out in Mexico.
    
    	 I would like to find out if this was a movie or a TV show. If
    I could I would like te title/author/book name. This is the show 
    that started me into the SF world.
    
    	 Eric (the not so) Wise (guy)

    I remember a "made B-grade for TV" movie where the monster is a crystaline
    substance on a meteor that falls to earth.  It just grows and grows,
    occupying thousands of acres, inundating towns, driving up the price
    of real estate everywhere it isn't.  Black quartz-like stuff, but big.
    It needs warter to grow.  Noone can find a way to kill it, until the
    scientist-hero figures out that it can't stand salt.  Then they stop
    it before it eats their town but blowing the damn above the town after
    dumping trucks-full of salt in the river.  (The water somehow stays in
    the river and doesn't wash away the town, along with the rock-monster.)

    Anyone remember the name of the show?

    -- mike

Re .40 

I believe it was a late 1950's movie called CRONOS. I don't remember who
was in it, but its growth from a large cube-like structure made it look
like an early version of today's "transformers" kiddy toys...

Chris

    re:.40,.42
    
    Aside from a spelling error, .42 is correct. It's KRONOS. It's not
    based on any book or short story, though.
    
    re:.41
    
    The answer to your query is MONOLITH MONSTERS. It wasn't made for
    television, though.
    
    --- jerry

    There was a story I remember that starts out with a man given a
    device with which he can communicate with a man from the future
    to give him life or death solutions. The man is pursued by a robot
    or an android or something. He is given this device by, again, a
    robot, android or alien. He eventually, with the help of this device,
    kills the thing that is following him. At the end of the story,
    the beginning of the story is replayed. We see that the person he
    is communicating with in the future is himself and that he has been
    mind-altered by the alien that gave him the device.
    
    Any takers?
    
    steve p
    

    Re .44 (steve p):
    
    The story was called, I believe, "Happy Ending," and under any
    conditions, it was written by Henry Kuttner.
    
    The story starts out, "This is how the story ends," and gave what
    looked like a happy ending.
    
    Then it says, "This is the middle of the story," or some-such, and
    tells what happened fron a critical point to another.
    
    Finally, it says, "This is how the story begins."
    
    Actually, he was chasing a robot with hypnotelepathic abilities.
    As I recall, he didn't destroy it.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    	I remember a story about a wealthy man who has some telepathic
    powers coupled with excellent body control. He arranges his death and
    sets things up so that his body is somehow preserved (minus the
    identity of who he was) in a government research facility. He then
    makes contact with some entities that have been placed in a satellite
    by the Soviets. Some group is trying to track down what happen to the
    body of the guy that is in the research facility. Does anyone remember
    reading anything like this ?

    				Jim

    From many many moons ago:
    
    Typical barbarian gets in a battle with the bad guys, fights them off,
    and takes one of their incredibly sharp swords back home with him. 
    There he has the computer(!) analyze it and tell him that it's pretty
    advanced technology and there's just the chance that the people who
    made it could have starships that might take him home (well, home to
    his parent's civilization.  Turns out the ship crashed, the parents
    died, and the computer raised/educated the kid.  Kind of a neat mix of
    swords&sorcery with rivets SF.  I only read it as a short, but there's
    _got_ to be more (please?).
    
    Willie