I thought it was an Isaac Asimov story, or maybe Philip K. Dick, but I have not had luck finding it yet in searching through what I can find of their published works.
The game described at the end of the story was sort of like Monopoly, a board game with money and properties - but instead of encouraging players to accumulate more, it encouraged them to give it away. The games and toys were intended to be psychological warfare that would condition the children of earth to be economically weak, making Earth's defeat years in the future easier - but the investigators searching the shipment for dangerous materials did not realize this at all since they were looking for short-term threats.
My impression is that the story was published somewhere around the 1950's, but it may have been later.
"A note and a Question for readers! :) Reading this article has brought back to mind a science fiction dystopian short story that I read at some point back in the mid-1970s. It was one of a collection of short stories in a moderately slim paperback with a very bare white cover and an odd title. I read the story on the train from Philly to NY, and found it SO disturbing that I actually dumped the book in a trash can in the train station rather than take the chance of bringing it home and having my parents find it!
The core of the story involved a society in which prostitution was unknown, but had been replaced with legalized necrophilia. People could sign a contract during their lifetime in which they agreed that in return for a financial payment upon signing the contract they would will their body to a necro company. Upon their death, that company would then make profits out of "pimping" the body out to the hordes of necrophiliacs that had evidently become the norm in that new future society! The price for hooking up with a hottie (er... I guess that might be a "coldie"?) would vary depending upon the physical desirability of the corpse in terms of looks and in terms of freshness. I believe there were five grades, with by far the most expensive (Grade A or maybe A+) being those deceased for less than twelve hours and neither refrigerated or otherwise preserved, and Grade F being really pretty much rotten to the falling apart stage.
All I can say is that by the standards of acceptability of anything other than straight missionary position married Catholic sex, you can imagine how disturbing that storyline (whatever the hell the full storyline WAS!) was pretty disturbing. LOL!
I''ve tried tracking that book down but have never succeeded. Anyone out there ever run across it?
" original person who asked is in the comments to this, but now I want to read it too.
https://qr.ae/TWtxJs
Does anyone know what book is?
It felt like an African-American version of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, except I don't think it had creepy drawings. Like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, most of the stories had an urban-legend feel and were set in modern times, although a few had classic-ghost-story or even fairy-tale-like tropes. A few I remember are:
- An old railroad worker gets off his shift at the trainyard late at night. He hears a train whistle when there aren't supposed to be any trains scheduled for hours. He checks his watch - it's 11:59 pm. He thinks it's weird, but shrugs it off. The next day, he's playing poker with a bunch of his old railroader friends and one of them tells the story of "the 11:59", a train that comes to carry wicked railroadmen's souls to hell. The main character is panicked, because he swears he heard the whistle of the 11:59 last night. He returns home to the remote little shack where he lives, and tells his wife to leave the house, because he doesn't want anything to happen to her. He boards up all his windows, tears out all the appliances that could be a fire hazard, wears gloves and showers obsessively to not catch disease. As the clock ticks toward 11:59 pm, and the railroader becomes increasingly giddy believing he has cheated death, he hears a distant rumble drawing closer. At exactly 11:59 pm, a train bursts through the walls of his house. Days later, the house is found in ruins and the railroader's body lies among the wreckage, with his watch stopped at exactly 11:59.
- A young girl in the rural South wishes she had a little brother. She comes across a strange old woman, a sort of pariah in her town who everyone knows as a creepy recluse, who gives the girl some sort of voodoo talisman she claims will allow her to make a wish that comes true. She wishes for a little brother, and it works. The past has been changed, so everyone else thinks the brother has been around ever since he was born. Now, though, her brother turns out to be her parents' clear favorite, and all the toys that the girl had before she wished her brother into existence now belong to him. She seeks out the voodoo lady again, attempting to reverse her wish, but is told that wishing her brother out of existence would be tantamount to killing him. The voodoo lady isn't necessarily opposed to it because it's murder, though, but because it requires a more powerful and dangerous kind of magic. I think it ended with the girl trying to reverse the spell herself, and accidentall
then it breaks loose and slaughters everyone. This was one of the short stories described in the book Hyperspace. I'm 99.9% sure it's not a lovecraft story.
Hello
Do you know of any short story collections that collect stories from countries around the world?
(I should add - that are translated into English)
I have a Brazilian one (Oxford Anthology of the Brazilian Short Story) a Japanese one on the way (The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories) and a two volume British one edited by Philip Hensher.
Continents would be okay too. I would quite like to read some things from African countries and countries in the Middle East but really I am interested in anything from anywhere.
Thanks for any suggestions.
I ran across this article on CNN about this book, which is available in various formats including audible. It is now widely available in the US, UK, France and elsewhere. Here's the link to the CNN article if interested. Anyone here had a chance to read this yet? The author is still in North Korea - I have to wonder who is getting the money for the sales (I would hope the money would be set aside for him, should he ever escape NK). http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/02/asia/north-korea-the-accusation/index.html
- Cover was lime greenish if I remember correctly, possibly portraying an alien.
- Likely British publication.
- The first story is about a tiny alien spaceship and a dog (and his owner a boy).
- There are extracts from science fiction books like War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man and The Purple Cloud
- Isaac Asimov's "The fun they had" is included
- there's an expert from a book about a girl born on the moon, something by Jules Verne
- and a short story about a boy who creates a black hole and destroys the world.
- Ursula K. Le Guin likely included too.
The book was part of a series of short story books with different focuses. There was also a horror book and a ballet book that was edited by Phillip Pullman.
I've been googling for several weeks I feel like I'm going crazy
As it is 20 or so years ago I was read these stories I just remember parts of the book.
As I remember the book was a collection of peculiar short stories. One of the stories are from the perspective of one of the last inventor. He's been working on an invention for years in seclution and when he finally reveals his invention to the world people he meet say that it has already been invented. This leads to the inventor in his frustration to purposely reinventing many other modern inventions like the elevator and escalator and so on.
Another one is about a man that wishes to travel in a strait line around the earth. We follow his trail of thought while he is planning the trip. He for example has difficulties finding a way to travel with the crane that he needs to lift his car over the building on this path.
Another one is about a man that for som reason starts to swap word for things in his house around. So e.g. Chair becomes table and wall is spoon and so on. He over time swap so many words that he needs to write them down in notebooks and as he learns this new configuration of words slowly looses the ability to communicate with others.
The last of the stories I remember is about a person that knows the train time table by heard, but has never been on a Train before. This becouse he finds it stupid to go on a train becouse he has observed that nearly everybody that leaves on a train eventually comes back. He even sometimes tries to stop people going one the train for the same reason.
This is all I remember. For some reason I keep thinking of these stories but I have been unable to find them again. Thank you so much for reading this far. I hope someone has heard of just one of these short stories.
>There are times even now, when I awake at four o'clock in the morning with the terrible fear that I have overslept; when I imagine that my father is waiting for me in the room below the darkened stairs or that the shorebound men are tossing pebbles against my window while blowing their hands and stomping their feet impatiently on the frozen steadfast earth. There are times when I am half out of bed and fumbling for socks and mumbling for words before I realize that I am foolishly alone, that no one waits at the base of the stairs and no boat rides restlessly in the waters by the pier.
>At such times only the grey corpses on the overflowing ashtray beside my bed bear witness to the extinction of the latest spark and silently await the crushing out of the most recent of their fellows. And then because I am afraid to be alone with death, I dress rapidly, make a great to-do about clearing my throat, turn on both faucets in the sink and proceed to make loud splashing ineffectual noises. Later I go out and walk the mile to the all-night restaurant.
>In the winter it is a very cold walk, and there are often tears in my eyes when I arrive. The waitress usually gives a sympathetic little shiver and says, "Boy, it must be really cold out there; you got tears in your eyes." "Yes," I say, "it sure is; it really is."
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