Name that Sci Fi

May 5, 2004 8:31 PM

Let's play name that Sci Fi [inside].

Ebert writes in his review of Envy:

"My memory for some reason dredged up an ancient science fiction story in which a child's toy would zap little metal objects like paper clips into the fourth dimension. Great, until they started leaking back into our three. When you walk through a speck of paper clip, you can do serious damage."

Tiny bits of inter-dementional paper clip floating around causing injuries sounds pretty cool. Any idea what story he's thinking about.

posted by dgaicun to Writing & Language (12 answers total)

Response by poster: dimensional
posted by dgaicun at 8:36 PM on May 5, 2004

Another challenge: a college roommate described a book (or series of books) positing a large society of planets, each with it's own homegrown intelligent species, among which humanity was unique in that it was the only intelligent species from a planet with multiple continents that managed to (just barely) avoid nuking itself into oblivion. Humanity was apparently portrayed as largely feral, at least in comparison to the other, mono-continental species.

Anybody got a lead?
posted by NortonDC at 10:36 PM on May 5, 2004

My brain's not cluing into the first one, but the second one sounds a bit like the Brin's Uplift universe. My memory's rusty; I got bored with that series about 10 years ago.
posted by SpecialK at 11:05 PM on May 5, 2004

There are a few stories that play with the fourth dimension like that in Rudy Rucker's Gnarl collection, but I don't recall that one specifically.
posted by majcher at 2:13 AM on May 6, 2004

NortonDC, it's: this

(Holy Poop, that review from Publisher's Weekly looks like it was written by a 14 year old with a grudge)
posted by Capn at 10:33 AM on May 6, 2004

That certainly looks like it, Capn. Thanks. (read it? liked it?)
posted by NortonDC at 7:45 PM on May 6, 2004

Response by poster: Norton you hijacked my Askme!
posted by dgaicun at 9:09 PM on May 6, 2004

Dude: " Let's play name that Sci Fi"

I played!
posted by NortonDC at 9:16 PM on May 6, 2004

Although I think all his writing is too old to be this, the premiss sounds like something Frederick Brown would write. He writes the most consistently great sci-fi short stories I've ever found.

SpecialK: BORED? With Uplift Wars??? For me, its one of the best works I've ever read, comparable easily to Heinlein's best. David Brin rules.
posted by Goofyy at 12:04 AM on May 7, 2004

Getting back to the original question, it sounds kind of like Mimsy were the borogoves. It's been 20 years since I read it; I don't recall it being about toys that zapped objects into the 4th dimension but about 4-dimensional toys that only small children could appreciate.
posted by adamrice at 9:14 AM on May 7, 2004

There was a story about a device that made garbage disappear; it was used for bigger and bigger collections of junk until the first bits started reappearing -- it turned out the thing was shoving stuff into the middle of next week or something. Oops! Don't remember the name, but this might be what Ebert was remembering. (Doesn't sound like "Mimsy," but that is a great story.)
posted by languagehat at 10:13 AM on May 7, 2004

languagehet: a story about making shit disappear? sounds like Envy
posted by quasistoic at 11:26 AM on May 7, 2004