Science Fiction Short Story - Memory Recovery Services Required

January 16, 2019 9:25 PM

I'm dying to remember a story that I read years ago. I want to read it again and it keeps coming up in my head to use as an example in conversation but I can't quote from something I don't remember the name of (or any quotes from). I'm pretty sure it was a short story, and I'm pretty sure it was written between 1940 and 1970 but I am certainly not 100% on that. Please help me extract it from my brain.

Here's what I remember about it:

There's a luxurious party of some kind happening on a world or in a location that needs to be reached by flying car or ship. The main character and his wife attend, it seems to be a kind of upperclass future affair, but the main character steps away upstairs to a rooftop (?) overlooking a savannah or a desert or... something. There's a kind of view. He has an introspective conversation with someone who joins him there.

That's about all I can recall and it's driving me nuts. Does it strike any sci fi fans as familiar?

Thanks in advance.

posted by no_context to Writing & Language (10 answers total)

It's a Jack Vance story, but I can't remember the title. I'll see if I can find plot summaries somewhere.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 9:29 PM on January 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

This also makes my Jack Vance radar ping.
posted by seasparrow at 9:52 PM on January 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

Not a short story, but I believe Heinlein's The Number of the Beast features an elegant party at a desert-adjacent home in a timeline with flying cars, attended by a main character and his soon-to-be wife. It being Heinlein, the conversation they have is doubtless the absolute worst.
posted by mumkin at 11:37 PM on January 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

Do you mean Robert Silverberg’s Sailing to Byzantium?
posted by Andrhia at 5:21 AM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

Best answer: It's a long shot, but from your description I immediately flashed on a scene from Childhood's End (1953) by Arthur C. Clarke. It's a long shot because it's a novel, not a short story, and it's hard to say that the character is a main character.
posted by Transl3y at 5:55 AM on January 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

This may be Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones by Samuel R. Delany. There's a rooftop conversation scene at a luxe party, and it's set in a world where helicopters and space ships are a usual conveyance. The wife in the interaction is not the main character's wife, though. The linked .pdf is atrocious quality but it might be enough to jog your memory, if this is the story.
posted by DSime at 7:29 AM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

This is sort of a Sci Fi trope actually - Heinlein used variants of it in a couple stories, one of Asimov's Foundation books . . .
posted by aspersioncast at 11:26 AM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

Best answer: It sounds like a scene from Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End". There is a scene in the book in the future after The Overlords have come, and a couple go to a party in a flying car. I want to say it was in Africa. I seem to remember that at one point the man has a conversation with another man, who aspired to be a scientist, but those career opportunities all ended after The Overlords ushered in the "Golden Age of Man".
posted by Hanuman1960 at 3:27 PM on January 17, 2019

Best answer: I found a link that describes each chapter of the book as a synopsis. The scene I remember is in chapters 7 and 8.
posted by Hanuman1960 at 3:35 PM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Childhood's End is it! Thanks for all the input. I now have lots of others to explore as well.
posted by no_context at 4:08 PM on January 17, 2019 [2 favorites]