SF Short Story ID
May 14, 2023 5:58 AM Subscribe
My turn, for once! I am trying to remember a short story that I read in (almost certainly) one of the first twenty-five volumes of Dozois' Year's Best Science Fiction. This is How You Lose the Time War reminded me very sharply of it, and I want to find it again, but I no longer have my collection of the physical books.
The story opens with a couple on a multi-day bike ride. One of the riders' bikes breaks due to metal fatigue, and they have to stop at a little shop to get it repaired. This sets off a chain of events that leads to a posthuman future, war in space, and eventually the Big Crunch, after which the narrator finds himself back on that bike ride, but this time, has the impulse to check the part that will break beforehand.
Science fiction writers fucking love bicycles and so this is proving much more difficult to search for than I hoped, and the title isn't obvious to me from the ToCs available on Wikipedia. Any ideas?
The story opens with a couple on a multi-day bike ride. One of the riders' bikes breaks due to metal fatigue, and they have to stop at a little shop to get it repaired. This sets off a chain of events that leads to a posthuman future, war in space, and eventually the Big Crunch, after which the narrator finds himself back on that bike ride, but this time, has the impulse to check the part that will break beforehand.
Science fiction writers fucking love bicycles and so this is proving much more difficult to search for than I hoped, and the title isn't obvious to me from the ToCs available on Wikipedia. Any ideas?
Response by poster: Oh my God yes. Absolutely not a title I would have twigged to. Thank you!
posted by restless_nomad at 6:12 AM on May 14, 2023
posted by restless_nomad at 6:12 AM on May 14, 2023
13 minutes to come up with an answer to that? Hive-mind, you're slipping..
Kidding, of course.. I remain amazed how quickly such questions are usually answered here.
posted by Nerd of the North at 3:42 PM on May 14, 2023
Kidding, of course.. I remain amazed how quickly such questions are usually answered here.
posted by Nerd of the North at 3:42 PM on May 14, 2023
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Night_owl at 6:11 AM on May 14, 2023 [7 favorites]