Lost SF
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The reason people read SF
is for the ideas.
I've read a bunch of short story anthologies, best of the year
stuff. Often I'll remember one amazing idea, but won't remember
the story. Here are the great SF memories I have which I'm
looking for the origin of.
War
An episodic story of humans gradually evolving during a thousand
year long war with an alien species. First their giant ships
divide into classes, and eventually the classes diverge genetically and
culturally as well. Instead of being generalists, humans become
instinctual - pilots have their sex drives linked to guiding missiles,
etc. Eventually none of the beings actually know
what's happening or why. Amazing story.
Creatron
someone buys a super-version of sim-earth and gets really into it,
setting up conditions for life, watching it develop, learning the
languages that his race invents, being worshipped by the people, and
eventually entering the world as one of them. Incredible.
Duplication
a trombonist discovers a simple way to duplicate any object. He
dups his trombone and sells it, and buys some other instruments.
Then he dups himself and creates a band. Eventually there are
hundreds of him running around, then millions, then a huge war.
Turns out that duplication isn't quite perfect, and introduces slight
changes. So he sees many versions of himself. Eventually
they all die out and he goes back to his poor life.
Wurple
A species with 4 sexes reproduces by taking any group of 3 and
"wurpling", which produces a being of the 4th sex. There is
usually one sex which is more common, and looked down upon - nobody
wants to mate with them, which perpetuates there being too many of that
sex. Since the 4 types have distinct personalities, the
population goes through drastic sex-balance shifts.
Photosynthesizing
sex blob
A extreme sports lady tries the ultimate trip - getting merged with a
synthetic life form which drills your brain and combines with your
neurons, while you are floating inside it, in space around the rings of
jupiter,
photosynthesizing, in the middle of a 3-way population war. I
think this one is called "equinox".
Sex Blob
A depressed suburban man bumps into a silvery alien blob who
likes to envelop him and communicate. Turns out the blob isn't in
love with him after all, but only looking for info on Earth, and sees
other men when he's at work.
Lily Pad Riders
On a primitive planet, botanists ride giant motile lily pads,
controlling their direction with low intensity lasers. One day,
the pads don't respond as expected.
I knew It!
A man slowly emerges from what turns out to have been a
self-imposed exile on Earth. He had hypnotized himself into
become a normal IQ 100
human, but gradually wakes into his true self, a galactic spy with a
four-digit IQ, just as
his false identity is being discovered by other super brainiacs.
Dumb Band
One morning the elevator boy surprises the professor with
insights, borrows a calc book, starts reading. Prof feels
pretty inspired himself. Pretty soon it's going on all over the
world -
turns out every X million years, the Earth passes through a band of
dumbness in space that slows down our brains and causes
extinctions. Coming out of the band, humans become insanely
smart, and peace mostly prevails (except for a few darn conservatives),
until everyone leaves Earth for
better things. Left behind are an incredibly retarded guy and a
collie, now of about equal intelligence. They make do.
Drunken
bears
First contacters discover a super awesome natural predator
bear-thing that's practically unkillable, and intelligent as
well. They invent a drug which makes this predator drunk, and
imprison most of them in a thorny enclosure. Drunken bears
occasionally escape, wreak havoc, and try to sober up and figure out
what's happening
to them.
The cold equations
A stowaway on a tiny landing pod is discovered. Due to mass
considerations, there's simply no way that either one of the occupants
of the pod can survive atmospheric braking unless the stowaway is
thrown out of the ship.
Medusa
First contacters find extremely advanced ancient cities, and small
tribes living in tiny huts in their shadow. Turns out the tribes
aren't so primitive after all.
Blind
A kid discovers alien tourists
in suburbia. He finds a ring of invisibility which makes you
blind because your eyes don't grab any light. However, the ring
only makes you invisible human-visual light, which is ok for aliens,
since they can see in IR and UV.