Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with shortstory

Curiosity seeks remorseless inexorable robot for long walks in countryside.

Leud — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:39:51 -0800

Identify an old sci-fi short story - unstoppable robot slowly hunting a man across wilderness? Can you identify a sci-fi short story that I remember reading perhaps 20-25 years ago. A robot hunting a man across a wilderness - unusual as the robot moves very slowly, walking pace only. The the man can avoid it and get clear but whenever he stops to sleep/rest/eat etc it gains on him.

Memory is vague, but robot may have been spherical and I'm pretty sure was silvery and reflective - allowing the man to spot it at long distances (such as seeing it on the horizon when waking in the morning?)

The wilderness I think was just - woods, mountains etc, not a post apocalyptic desert. I don't think there were any other characters other than the man and robot and no communication between the man and his hunter.

Can't remember any more than that but the idea of an inexorable pursuit by a robot came up in conversation the other day and day and it's bugging me that I can't remember the name/author or how it ended!

A tale of mystery, intrigue and suspense

caveat — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 20:37:03 -0800

'New Yorker' short story posted in the last year, or the last few years, about a man who lives with the ghost of his parents. Link? I recall something about a dead body that the protagonist and a co-worker tries to hide, in an office closet of all places, but it starts to smell so they bury it at an archeological site. It is, of course, discovered.

His parents are nightly subjected to being murdered by a group of drugged up foreigners. He is also eventually murdered, but it all has a happy ending. If you can provide me with a link to this, I'd be incredibly happy.

I am almost 100% sure this was on 'The New Yorker' website, but I've searched their archives to no avail. The phrase "You never know who you're living with" comes to mind, but I don't know if that is a line in the story or my own creation.

Title of short story

Pendragon — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 13:02:15 -0800

Does anybody know the title of a short science fiction story about the male population going mad and killing all the females ? I read this story 5-6 years ago, but the story was older, I think from the 70's.

ID this short story

palindromic — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:45:35 -0800

Sci-fiShortStoryFilter: A generation ship on a long-term voyage slowly forgets the purpose of its mission and begins to interpret the mission control manual and previous captain's logs as religious works, and cease working toward their target. Basically all other details I've forgotten, and I'm pretty sure it's not "Thirteen to Centaurus" by JG Ballard that I'm thinking of.

I need some advice about publishing my story.

Salvor Hardin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:04:57 -0800

Hive authors: help me publish a sci-fi story! I've written a science fiction short story (hard sci-fi). I've been told that it's pretty good, so I was thinking about trying to publish it in a periodical of some kind for the fun of it. It's a little over 5000 words. I've never done this before, and I don't read sci-fi magazines very often, so I'm looking for the following:

Suggestions on where to send in the story. How many places?

Warnings, things I should know beforehand or avoid. I'm clueless about copyright, etc.

Estimates of whether or not I can get any money from this. It'd be fine if I didn't, but I'd like to know going in.

Any other advice.

Thanks!

I readed a story, but I forgetted it.

jrishel — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:16:06 -0800

I'm trying to find a short sci-fi story I read over 10 years ago that I barely remember. It may have involved some or all of the following: bicycle repair, ripe banana smelling bacteria used as deodorant and anti-libido medication. I think it might have been from one of the "Year's Best Science Fiction" Anthologies, but I'm not sure, it could have been in a sci-fi pulp magazine I subscribed to for a few years who's name also alludes me. Here are the barely remembered things I can recall, in order of rememberedness, not actual relevance to the story's plot:

main character uses a bacteria application to prevent BO. He smells like ripe bananas.

main character is working a bicycle, perhaps a racing bicycle.

in order to concentrate on his work, he takes an anti-libido pill.

he meets a girl. she may or may not be some sort of spy. I think he nurses her back to health.

he lives in some sort of post crash world where his workshop is raised from the ground to prevent looters.

he receives nagging video phone calls from his mother.

So, Hivemind, can you give me a title and author?

Help me identify this story.

uans — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:29:36 -0800

Please help me remember the title and author of a short story I read maybe 15 years ago. A handicapped woman, living with her sister and her sister's family, sees a man in church she feels quite sure is the devil. In order to get away from him, she struggles to regain the physical independence she had given up. (She had gone into a wheelchair because walking was possible, but too painful.) She does manage to become self-sufficient enough to move out on her own--and then wonders if it was worth it, after all. I am almost sure the author was Italian. Can anyone help?

So much for the light at the end of the tunnel

yawper — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 21:47:02 -0800

Help me find this short story that I read in 8th grade 20 years ago. It's about a prisoner who finds the entrance to a tunnel in his jail cell and crawls all the way down... When the prisoner discovers the entrance after moving some loose bricks, he finds a note from his predecessor congratulating him and wishing him well on his escape. The prisoner anxiously crawls down the steep, dark tunnel and finally starts to see the light...but as he gets to the end, he sees that the exit is blocked by steel bars. He also finds the skeleton of his predecessor.

I'm pretty sure this story was titled "The Escape" but when I google, there are too many results for short stories with that name.

Looking for the story "Bomb Run"

nightengine — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:46:44 -0800

In the early 1980s, Starlog magazine ran a column called Quest that featured readers' artistic submissions. To this day, I still recall a story called "Bomb Run," which dealt with an Enola Gay-style bombing of an alien planet. Did anyone else read this story, and if so, do you know where can I find it online or at least learn the author's name?

please help me identify this scifi short story...

maryrussell — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 14:49:14 -0800

please help identify this short story...I believe I would have read this in the 80's. There was a team of psychic investigators, and they are called to look into strange events (unexplained accidents?) on a section of highway. In the end it turns out that cumulative spiritual energy of roadkill animals is somehow striking back/rising up, and there is an exorcism of some sort. Then they hear about the bus full of dangerous inmates which has crashed...(implying that the aftereffects will be horrific) I believe I read this in an anthology. The characters seemed well developed, and it had the feel of one of a series of stories. I seem to remember some backstory on how each member joined the team. I might be conflating that last part with the novels about psychic spies by Herbert Burkholz (which were very good, but no supernatural elements outside of the mind-reading). Help?

Name this short story!

Bizurke — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:30:41 -0800

Name this short story about an immigrant student working as a babysitter for an American professor. I hope you folks can identify this short story from my hazy recollections of a Postcolonial Feminism course.

It begins when a young women immigrates to the US from a Caribbean nation. She goes to a University (maybe Michigan) and starts working as a maid/babysitter for a professor. The story ends when the professor makes a sexual advance on her and she seems to welcome it.

Like I said, these recollections are hazy and I'm not sure which ones are actually correct.

Thanks!

Help me write a professional short story cover letter.

uans — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 08:34:08 -0800

Short story cover letters: How do I indicate I have actually read the journal I am submitting to , or do I do so, at all? I am a Canadian who wants to publish short fiction in the far larger market in the U.S. Every literary journal’s submission guidelines urge you to read at least one copy of their magazine before submitting. But even *if* I did buy a copy of every single interesting literary magazine out there—a very unlikely prospect-- what are the editors looking for in my cover letter that indicates that I have indeed read at least one edition of “Fiction Forever”? I feel that saying “my story has the same kind of ‘theme/realism/tension’ I enjoyed in Volume 1000 of Fiction Forever” sounds ….not right. The advice in Writer’s Market also feels somehow….not right. Do I really say “I think my writing has the ‘vitality/deep characterization/youthful daring’ you asked for in your description of yourself in Writer’s Market?” This certainly does not indicate I have actually read the journal, anyway. It only shows I've read Writer's Market.

short story for short film

breadfruit — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 13:24:10 -0800

What are some short stories/myths etc. with a sole female protagonist for film adaptation? The setting is a city (dark in mood, the usual city locations such as parks, metros, bars available). The cast consists entirely of one young female actress and possibly other people for just bit parts. The film is to be silent and about 10-15 minutes long.

I'm looking for any stories that come to mind that could be adapted.

Short Story: Journalist on Death Row?

web-goddess — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 14:30:07 -0800

Anyone recognize this short story about a journalist who wants to learn what it's like to be on Death Row? It's NOT by Roald Dahl. I used to run a prominent Dahl site so I get a lot of questions from people trying to identify his stories. He tends to get misidentified with a lot of stories just on a basis of a twist ending. Yesterday I got an email from a writer who's working on a book (something to do with experiential journalism) with a similar question:

"My friend told me about a Dahl short story in which a reporter decides to find out about what it's like to be a prisoner on death row. The prison agrees, and even straps him to the chair. The prisoner has a heart attack, thinking that he really is going to be electrocuted."

I've already written him back to tell him it's not by Dahl. I'm curious myself now though, and I wondered if maybe the Hive Mind could identify the original story. (I'll send him this link and provide any follow-up details he gives me.)

SF story about formerly-mortal woman

tigrrrlily — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:44:57 -0800

SFShortStoryFilter: Looking for a short(ish) story I must have read in one of the more popular SF anthologies about a human race of nigh-immortals spread out through several verses. The protagonist of the story was a woman who had been born before the advent of the technology of gradually supplanting the human brain with some sort of crystal medium. This made her practically unique in an infinite sea of later generations, and infinitely lonely. She had also, somehow, been responsible for humanity's expansion into different dimensions/verses through some sort of mathematical breakthrough.

Other details I remember:

She'd had a friend in her youth who'd managed to commit suicide. Either that friend or the protagonist herself had some Hungarian-sounding name (Magda? Margit? something like that). There was a game in the story that was reminiscent of volleyball with energy waves. Also, when people grew tired of their surroundings they never said goodbye, they just packed up and slipped away quietly in the night, to set up in some other community.

Maybe you would like to purchase yours now, and then hate me forever.

medusa — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:34:02 -0800

Please explain what happened in Edna O'Brien's short story "Old Wounds", published in the June 8-15 issue of the New Yorker (link). I don't understand what was being communicated in the crucial tombstone discussion between the two characters. The discussion goes:

He had been looking into the cost of a tombstone for his wife and himself and had found that it was going to be very expensive.
"Have you thought of what you intend to do?" he asked.
"I haven't," I said flatly.
"Maybe you would like to purchase yours now," he said.
"I don't understand the question," I said, although I understood it all too clearly and a river of outrage ran through me.

Apparently there is something about tombstones that I just don't understand. What is the cousin implying by suggesting the narrator buy a tombstone? Why is she so outraged by his question?

A Visit to the Cream-Puff Factory

oozy rat in a sanitary zoo — Thu, 21 May 2009 20:39:33 -0800

Help me remember the name of this short story I read in a humor anthology in the late 70's. I remember the title as "A Visit to the Cream-Puff Factory," but all my attempts to find it again have been unsuccessful. It was in an anthology of humorous writings from the 1940s or 1950s. As I recall, it was about a cream-puff factory where the assembly line got out of control.

I could have sworn the story was in either A Subtreasury of American Humor or The Thurber Carnival, but subsequent investigations proved it wasn't in either one. Google, WorldCat, and my library's short story indexes have also failed to find the story.

Does anyone know the title and/or author of this story? Thanks!

Can you identify this short story about a kitten found during breakfast?

maudlin — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:26:47 -0800

This question about eggs reminded me of a short story I read years and years ago. It features a kitten and breakfast. The story was in an old collection for high school students I found in a secondhand shop, probably published in the 1960s at the latest. A fussy, stodgy middle-aged American man is sitting down to breakfast, which should usually consist of a perfectly soft-cooked three minute egg, but it's interrupted by his wife's discovery of a forlorn kitten under a bush in the backyard. Man's comfortable life is turned upside down when his wife adopts the kitten and is completely distracted (burnt toast and hard-cooked eggs!) but he eventually warms up to the kitten. The kitten is not eaten.

I can't remember anything else about the story, but it would be nice to find it. Any ideas?

Stalemated trying to find fantasy chess story

fearfulsymmetry — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 06:49:35 -0800

I'm trying to track down a fantasy short story based around a real life infamous chess game. Years ago I read a short story in a collection that I borrowed from a library. Details are a little hazy but it was fantasy, was set in some sort of inn and was based around a chess game between a man and some sort of intelligent talking unicorn (I think - it could have been some other fantasy creature) that may have also have had psychic/magic powers. I'm not certain but I think it was by Robert Silverberg.

I can remember reading in an introduction to the story that the writer had three requests for short stories for fantasy collections themed around 'inns', 'unicorns' and 'chess games'... so he wrote one that combined all the elements and sold it to all three. The introduction also said that the moves of the game in the story were taken from an infamous real life chess that involved, I think, cheating, or accusations of cheating or some other notoriety, that the author had taken from some book.

Googling's failed me so if anyone has any idea what the story, and/or the real life chess game itself might be, I'd be grateful.

Short Story Question

nvly — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:16:58 -0800

What is this short story about a diver falling from the sky? The (scuba?) diver falls through a hole from the sky and there are normal people walking around below. Ends with a line about fish gasping and convulsing on the street. Probably not more than 400 words long.

A Short Story About Toilet Paper and Poison

DWRoelands — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:09:40 -0800

Help me remember a short story about a girls' detention center. The details I remember about this short story:
- Took place, at least in part, inside a girls' detention facility.
- There is one girl who beats and abuses some of the other girls
- The girls are allowed to send one girl into town from time to time to buy things like toilet paper.
- One of the girls comes back and the toilet paper is wet, because she fell into a puddle.
- She gets beat badly by the bully.
- The bully dies, and it turns out that the girl who had gone into town had actually sprayed a toxin on the toilet paper and then wet it to disguise it.

My memory tells me this is a Steven King story. Anyone?

What is the name and who is the author of this science fiction short story about a Utopian Transparent Society

y2karl — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:20:03 -0800

After looking everywhere and which a way, I am at a loss. I am looking for a short story with a near future high tech anarchy as background-- something that resembles David Brin's concept of The Transparent Society, Utopian Version, where every body knows everybody else's business--as opposed to, say, Police Surveillance State On Steroids Big Time where Big Brother knows your business and location as in 1984 meets The Minority Report. The story itself in part recounts the life of a young man coming of age in a world where the revolution is over and everyone's life is an open book in document and real time--in this world, teenage men have to find spaces under culverts or abandoned warehouses to stage their fights and duels as all else is on camera, being recorded and provided then to everyone else's examination.

At more than one point, the youth confides in an old man on a park bench. An old man who is a veteran of the recent Revolution, who can remember the penultimate moment of said Revolution as being there when the mountain fortresses of Zurich are breached and battle is joined hand to hand with the Gnomes in the caves beneath their vaults. Or something like that.

As part of the story's later action, said old man/war veteran on the bench draws out his younger companion in conversation and then later posts, to the local or universal public access channel, a not unsympathetic documentary about this youth, his life and his loves, along with supporting documentation and points of view from the all encompassing public record. Which is, as I recall, profoundly embarrassing to this sensitive young man.

The story ends with the report of death of this young man in a duel--which occurs offstage in every sense, at an undisclosed location without camera or microphone, and which is to that young man the only place in the world where a person could be free. Or so I recall now.

No doubt, some of you have had the answer since the opening paragraph but I have yet to find the story of which I speak. And it was a nominee, if not winner, for best short story or novella or something in some year or another. I forget which. I only read it once-- damn, where was I ? The dentist ? --and now I can't find hint not mention of it. Woe is me. Hope me please. What is the title and who wrote it ? I want to re-read it and see how my memory of it compares to the real thing.

I'll be pissed if it's Brin, btw...

SciFi Story Identification - Body Switching and Mindreading

anthy — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 09:38:08 -0800

"What science fiction short story is this?" filter. One story about body switching/different perceptions, and another about mindreading. I read these two short science fiction stories probably about a decade ago. I think both were in books rather than magazines - part of science fiction story collections. I don't read too many collections, so they may have even been in the same volume. I've tried googling for various things, but nothing's coming up.

One was about a science experiment that allowed you to perceive things as others did. I don't remember if it was an actual body switch, or just a change in the way you perceived things. I use "perceive" because it wasn't just sight. It was other senses as well.

I remember that other people perceived things in completely different ways...like I think some people saw different colors than others (what was blue to one person would be red to another) and felt different textures. In some cases, things were a lot sharper/more alarming, or softer/brighter. One thing that stood out was a guy who was seeing things from a particular woman's perspective, and I THINK everything was soft and squooshy. This was why she was so optimistic all the time. The guy was horrified.

The other story was about man who could read other people's minds. He was the only one who could do so, and he took full advantage of this. No morals about rummaging around to find things out whatsoever. I believe that he felt he was superior to other people because of this power. At the end of the story, he...either hunted down or bumped into another person (a woman?) who could do the same thing. At first he was excited about this, but then when they were actually in "range" of each other...the story ended with them both screaming "get out of my mind!" at each other telepathically.

It's been a long time, so it's possible that some of these details are wrong.

Anyone know what stories these are, and who wrote them?

Thank you in advance!

I am the worst former English major/ Librarian-in-training

Isingthebodyelectric — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:12:46 -0800

I'm looking for the title of a French short story, in which a father kills his son. I have not actually read this story. It apparently begins with a lengthy description of a particular region in France, where trees have been burned down. The main character, a boy, betrays the location of a man in hiding when he's offered a silver watch. His father discovers this betrayal and kills him.

What is this story called and who wrote it? I am ashamed to say that I did study literature in undergrad and I'll receive my MLIS in May. I am sufficiently mortified by my lack of Google/literary-database-fu.

Thanks in advance!

Once upon a time, there was an old storyteller toy...

infinitewindow — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 11:28:52 -0800

"ID this short story" Filter: Story about a storyteller toy à la Teddy Ruxpin who is discarded by its owners after they receive a new model. You'd think I'd be able to find the story and author with the myriad details I recall. The old toy is kind of robotic and limited in its storytelling; the new toy is much more natural and can tell many more random stories, not just fairytales about knights, damsels, dragons, etc. At the end of the story, the old toy tells itself a reassuring story about what will happen when all the intelligent consumer electronics rise up against their heartless masters, but gets stuck in an infinite loop, repeating "and then-- and then--"