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Saturday, October 24, 2020

Science Fiction Stories I Remember

The video I posted earlier reminded me of several science fiction stories I've read. Let me describe them. I don't recall most of the names.

One was a guy who became very wealthy and started enjoying himself a little too much. He became fat and slovenly, so much so that he began to disgust himself. But hey, they have this new super technique that allows them to copy your mind to a new body, a body identical to the one you had before you started down the road of dissipation, a body grown especially for you. So his mind is transferred to the new body and new body immediately starts going down the same road he went down before, the road to slovenly dissipation. Fine. But what happens to the old body? Well, it still has the same mind, but he's no longer a legal person, so he is put to work pulling weeds by hand on a farm. The overseer is a sunbaked, wiry guy, and fatty is basically his slave. By the time the new body has become obese, dissipated and is ready for a new younger, healthy body, the old fatty has become sunbaked and wiry. He becomes the new overseer and the new fatty becomes his slave. I don't recall what happened to the overseer.

Another was a story about some kind of secret agent man. At one point in the story he is flying a spherical space ship through the center of galaxy. The ship is roughly a mile in diameter. The control room is attached to the under side of the ship. He guides the ship by waving his hands around some kind of sphere. He guides it around and past stars as an airplane pilot would fly around mountains and buildings. He must be traveling at a rate of light years per minute.

Then there was the story about robots protecting us from ourselves. It started innocuously enough, but soon progressed to the point where you couldn't do anything at all. I remember foam blocks being involved. The story was basically about a guy going about his life, but his activities are constantly being proscribed by the robots as being too dangerous. He keeps pushing the boundaries, but I don't remember how it turned out.

We also have 

Star Trek with their warp drive

and 

Star Wars with their hyperdrive

At first I thought Way Station by Clifford D. Simak might be applicable, but after thinking about it I realize it isn't. I am including it here anyway because I thought I had posted a synopsis but I could not find it. The story had some aliens contract with a Earth man living in the backwoods to operate a way station for aliens teleporting from one distant point to another. The aliens provided him with a perfect house to house the teleportation machine. The house required no maintenance.

2 comments:

thomas said...

Story about pilot to center of galaxy might be a Larry Niven story, have to find paperback but pretty sure. General products hull, Puppeteer... check his Known Space anthology

Chuck Pergiel said...

Ah yes, Puppeteers and General Products. That sounds about right.