Stuck in a series of tubes!

September 25, 2006 1:25 PM

Science Fiction Story Identification: Protagonists are in an endless maze of hallways that connect different worlds. There are evenly-spaced new doors. They are trying to get back to Earth, but can't find it. Some characters will decide to stay on 'good enough' worlds - one was like earth but with a fractured moon, I think.

Read in the early 80s (but could be older), probably in a short story collection from the public library. I think I remember the corridors were described in detail, including a sewage system over the side of the walkway. I thought it might've been in the Dangerous Visions anthology, but the story descriptions on Wikipedia don't sound correct.

posted by sohcahtoa to writing & language (13 comments total)

I re-read Dangerous Visions within the last 3 months, I don't think it's in there. Sorry I can't provide a positive ID but at least I think you can rule that out.

Someplace to start might be, why did you think it might be Dangerous Visions? Because of the style? Because of Harlan Ellison? I suspect it might be because Dangerous Visions has a picture on the front of a woman looking through one door out of the thousands of available ones, on a ladder? (Well, some versions do)
posted by RustyBrooks at 1:33 PM on September 25, 2006

The only reason I thought of Dangerous Visions is that it's the one collection I remember by name from the small science fiction shelf at the library.
posted by sohcahtoa at 2:18 PM on September 25, 2006

Could it have been out of the sequel, Again Dangerous Visions?
posted by geekhorde at 3:01 PM on September 25, 2006

It certainly could be. I haven't found any online summaries of the stories in the sequel.
posted by sohcahtoa at 3:10 PM on September 25, 2006

There isn't anything like that in ADV.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 3:41 PM on September 25, 2006

Thanks for checking, Steve C. Den Beste.
posted by sohcahtoa at 3:43 PM on September 25, 2006

If not everybody suffered a horrible fate, and you understood everything that was going on, It isn't Harlen Ellison.
posted by Megafly at 4:29 PM on September 25, 2006 [1 favorite]

It doesn't sound familiar, but you may find teleskiving's answer to a similar question I asked about a book a girlfriend couldn't remember the name of but remembered themes, much as you do.

Good luck!
posted by Meep! Eek! at 6:10 PM on September 25, 2006

I just read this recently in a 70's-80's era sf magazine, I don't remember the name or author, sorry to tease you ( but it was published in analog, sf&f or asimov's).
posted by 445supermag at 6:12 PM on September 25, 2006

Thanks for the suggestion, Meep! Eek!. I spent a good period of time at that site, but nothing's matched yet.
posted by sohcahtoa at 7:37 AM on September 26, 2006

This is probably one of several short stories by the recently-deceased John M Ford. The most likely candidate is "Mandalay" - do you remember the characters marching along singing "On the Road to Mandalay / Where the flying fishes play / And the dawn comes up like thunder out of China 'cross the bay"?

These stories were linked by the idea that the Alternities Corporation found a trick to move between alternative worlds. Some (all?) of these worlds were linked by a sort of service tunnel into which people stumbled when some sort of disaster made the interworld connections break down.
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:20 PM on September 30, 2006

Joe in Australia -

Thanks! That might be it. Here's what I can find of when it was published:

"Mandalay" (an Alternities Corporation story)
Asimov's, October 1979; Asimov's German edition; reprinted in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Anthology, ed. Scithers (Davis 1980); From the End of the Twentieth Century

It's possible I read it in the 1980 Asimov's anthology, I really doubt I had my hands on the magazine it was in.

NYPL doesn't have From the End of the Twentieth Century, unfortunately. Anyone have the Oct 1979 Asimov's laying around? I'd like to know this is the real deal before I drop $20 on it.
posted by sohcahtoa at 7:08 AM on October 3, 2006

I ened up buying From the End of the Twentieth Century from NESFA. Within the first paragraph of the story Mandalay I knew it was the one.

Thanks, AskMefi!
posted by sohcahtoa at 2:43 PM on October 24, 2006