Conference noted::sf

I second the vote for 9,000,000,000 Names of God.

My second favorite was one I read long ago - I have forgotten both the title
and author, but perhaps if I give a short summary of the plot someone
out there will be able to help me. (I won't give away the ending though)

The story had to do with "the day of complete control" when all the people
on this palnet
on this planet will have been conditioned to love and obey the every word of
the leader. The story goes through a chain of people until you find out who
really controls the leader, and what happens to him. Can anyone identify
this for me?

I also LOVE all the short stories by Eric Frank Russell, but in particular
"Diabologic".

Steve

"Nightfall" is good but my first choice would have to be 
"My name is Legion" by Lester Del Rey.

Tough one! I've read so many great sf stories that it would be extremely
difficult to choose the top few. Unfortunately, I don't remember the titles,
much less the authors, of most of them...

I will put in another vote for "9 Billion Names of God", one of my favorite
surprise-ending stories, and for "Flowers for Algernon". I also liked "The
Game of Rat and Dragon", by Cordwainer Smith - an amusing tale of humans
and cats, linked telepathically to combat deadly beings in hyperspace. 

Does anyone remember the title of a Ray Bradbury story about the colonization
of Venus? I believe it appeared in "The Illustrated Man". All the while I was
reading it, I could almost feel the rain beating down, and hear the squashing
sounds of boots on the soggy ground.

"The Jaunt", by Stephen King (yeah, really!), is also quite good. I don't know
if it's been published anywhere but "Twilight Zone" magazine. It's about a
transportation system that sounds like a cross between suspended animation and
a Star Trek-type transporter, and about what happens to the unfortunates who
choose to remain conscious during the trip...

There are dozens of others. Have at it!

-b

re .1 - The "complete control" story is The Servant Problem by
        William Tenn.  I have it in Seven Come Infinity (an anthology
        editted by Groff Conklin; probably long out of print) and
        The Human Angle (a collection of Tenn's stories; this has
        been printed many times so if it's not in print you should
        be able to find it used).

One of my favorites is Dear Devil by Eric Frank Russell.  Also,
many of Roger Zelazny's early short stories.

					John

For those of you who haven't read "My name is Legion", you should. It 
not only gives a fitting end to Hitler, but also a new definition of the 
word "Hell".  It sort of has a "surprise" ending...at least it's a
surprise when you "grok" what is really happening and all its
implications. 

"By His Bootstraps" by RAH.  Also "All You Zombies" (same author).

I've heard it said that there were no time-travel stories published in
the pulps for two years after BHB appeared -- the competition was *that*
impressed.  Can anyone corroborate this interesting assertion?

JP

re:.3
	The Bradbury story you're thinking of, Beth, is "The Big Rain".
"The Jaunt" was reprinted in GALLERY (same publisher as TZ), but nowhere
else that I know of (and I'm a King collector nonpareil).

Actually, I have the same problem as you: I've read *so many* damn good
stories in my time, that I'd have a hard time coming up with a top 5 list.
Aside from "Nightfall" ("Nine Billion..." was good, but I wasn't *that*
impressed with it), I can think off-hand think of:

"A Rose for Ecclesiastes" by Roger Zelazny
"Piper at the Gates of Dawn" by Richard Cowper
"With Morning Comes Mistfall" by George R. R. Martin
"Sandkings" by GRRM
"The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr" by GRRM
"The Persistence of Vision" by John Varley
"Behold the Man" by Michael Moorcock [the short version, not the novel]
"Of Mist, Grass, and Sand" by Vonda N. McIntyre
"Inconstant Moon" by Larry Niven
"Not Long Before the End" by Niven

They're all relatively recent stories, mainly cuz that's all my poor,
tired brain can think of right now.

--- jerry

The Last Question
Nightfall
Spectre General (don't even remember offhand who wrote it, but it was cute)
The Gentle Vultures


Hey, there are millions of these suckers -- I could be typing all day!

	/dave

a vot for "FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON"

	And I'll "vot" for "REPENT HARLEQUIN", SAID THE TICKTOCKMAN by
	Harlan Ellison.

	Best Collection (one drelb's opinion): STARSWARM, Brian Aldiss
	Best Anthology :		AGAIN, DANGEROUS VISIONS, H. Ellison,ed.

	All in all, I don't like short stories - they aren't long enough to
	really grab my attention; they don't have the time needed to develop
	characters or a large plot; and they "waste" a lot of good ideas.
	What I mean is, say my goal was to say something about peaceful
	coexistence, so I propose in a short story a planet populated by
	intellegent fish and intellegent birds, which thus don't compete.
	The short story format isn't long enough for me to do a proper job
	on the main theme - but no other author can do the "fish-birds"
	society without the stigma of "Oh, it's been done before...".

	A good story idea is like a bullet - shoot straight, because once it's
	been fired, it's shot, if you follow me.

	So don't waste your ammunition on short-story target practice -
	save it for the battle - a good novel.

re .10

I agree about REPENT...; a nice strong story.  I disagree with what
you say about short stories, though.  The goals of a short story and
a novel are completely different.  The short story is a way of
presenting a single idea much more strongly than a novel could do.
To use your example, the important idea is "peaceful coexistance" not
"intelligent birds and fish".  Themes can be endlessly examined.  It's
not important whether a specific case has been "used up".  Look at
MISSION OF GRAVITY and DRAGON'S EGG; they both have something to say
about intelligent life in a high gravity environment.

					John

Trouble is, just as you get really interested in the ideas BEHIND the main
theme in a short story (and there usually are some...), the story ends!  You
can't get truly involved with a short story, the way you can with a good
novel. (That's why I consider multiple-book stories the 'ultimate' in writing
(if they're good, that is), because you can get involved and stay involved
for a long time.)  I haven't read any short stories in about 5 years, because
they just can't compare to a good novel.

"Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card
Also, Asimov's "Nightfall."
The interesting thing that these two have in common is that they were both
the first published works of these authors (major publications, anyway).
Asimov wrote in his centenary book that he was always insulted that
people would claim his first work, Nightfall, was his best, implying that he
couldn't improve in 20 years more writing.

The point about short stories "wasting" ideas is partly well-taken, but look
how many themes can be built out of episodes on a short story theme, such
as Spider Robinson's Callahan's Bar stories and Niven's Known Universe
stories (short and long).
The idea of a short story is quite like a bullet;  you have to hit what you
aim at, or the shot is wasted.  That's why some people shoot still pictures
and some people make movies.

- tom]

re: .8   Spectre General - Theodore Cogswell

A vote for NIGHT OF HOAGY DARN by Ralph McKenna (author of the Sand Pebbles)
an interesting mix of prophesy and ecology. To my knowledge it was his
only endeavor in the SF genre. It was in a small anthology edited by Gold
which also contained Helen O'Loy, The Roads Must Roll and a fourth story.

/jim

re:.10 & .12

I disagree strongly about short stories vs. novels. Some of the best short
story writers *can* cram everything that needs to be said into a short, like
Fred Brown, Ray Bradbury, or Harlan Ellison. In my 20+ years of sf reading,
I'd say that I'd read *many* more excellent short stories than excellent
novels. Furthermore, there are a number of cases in which an author has taken
a terrific short story or novelette and expanded it into a terrible (or at
least disappointing) novel. BEASTCHILD by Dean Koontz, BEHOLD THE MAN by
Michael Moorcock, and DEEPER THAN THE DARKNESS by Greg Benford are three such
stories. Two others that made reasonably good novels, but were still better
as shorts were MILLENIUM by John Varley (originally "Air Raid") and GRIMM'S
WORLD ("Grimm's Story") by Vernor Vinge.
	To continue the gun analogy, it's the difference between a single
shot pistol and a machine gun. Spraying a target with bullets gets the job
done, but I think it's much more skillful to place a single bullet into the
bullseye.

--- jerry

Short stories are intended to express a single thought.  Like a still
photograph, or a painting.  A novel is a travelogue, where the author can
take you by the hand and show you around her new universe, show you all
the new things invented for it, show you how people think and act in the
universe, and why.

A short story is a still photograph.  It doesn't matter what the characters
did before or after, or what the rest of the world looks like, or why.
There is a point to be made, a concept to get across, and the scenery and
the characters are tools for expressing that point.  Continuing series
of short stories, such as the Callahan's Bar stories or Niven's Known Space
stories, are more like installments on a novel, rather than true short
stories.

In the previous note, Fred Brown was mentioned.  Which brings to mind something
I should have listed among my favorites.  I believe it was titled "The
Ultimate Weapon."  It's a story designed carefully to express one point:
the moral responsibility of scientific development.  It could never be
said in a novel, except as a minor subplot (for it's far too simple a concept
to interestingly fill a novel), which would destroy its impact.  The story
concerns a brilliant scientist working for the government to develop the
ultimate weapon.  The fact that this weapon could only be used to destroy
the world is of no consequence to him: after all, he's only a scientist,
and this is science.  A man comes to attempt to convince him to halt the
dangerous work, and does not succeed.  Before leaving, he visits the
scientist's severely retarded son's room briefly.  After, the scientist
in panic discovers that he has given the son a pistol, and manages to wrest
it from him as the son examines the barrel and toys with the trigger. 
The reader is left with the line "What sort of madman would give a loaded
gun to an idiot?!"  Pardon the synopsis, but the point is that you can
easily see how paper thin the characters and plot are, even without actually
reading the story.  The envelope is just strong enough to contain the message
it was intended to carry.  The message is the important part of a short
story.  The STORY is the important part of a novel.  Preachy novels are
usually boring and frustrating.  Furthermore, a message cannot be stretched
enough to fill an entire novel without adding more fully developed scenery
and characters, and this detracts from the message.  But a message fill
fit nicely in a short story, and does not have to share the stage with
anyone.

	/dave

	I can appreciate both sides of this discussion - there are some stirring
	short stories in SF, and some genuinely bad novels. But in comparing
	the two formats, it becomes a question of values: What do you want
	from a story?

	Shorts give you a character, conflict, and sometimes a resolution.
	Some may even throw in a moral. Longer works give you all this, and
	a lot more - multiple, interlocking plots - alternate viewpoints -
	often plural conflicts, and plural resolutions. But the main thing
	that longer works can offer, and the thing that I read them for, is
	character development. We see the character, we get to know him well,
	and we see him face his dilemma. But then we see him change - he is
	altered by his experiences, he grows - and that transformation is
	fascinating. It happens to us all the time, and perhaps it is one of
	life's central mysteries - how do we learn? How do we grow? How do we
	become corrupted?

	A clear example of this in a novel can be seen in "Lord of the Rings".
	When Frodo leaves the Shire, he's young, innocent, and frightened -
	but his jaw is set in resolution. When he returns, he is tired, weary,
	but confident - and his resolution has fled him. He has lost interest
	in the good life of the Shire-folk. At one point, Gandalf asks him
	some leading question about returning to his life in the Shire,  -
	expecting Frodo to be joyous about his return to life-as-usual. But
	it is the anniversary of Frodo's wounding by the Morgul captain, and
	he is in pain. He replies: "I have been wounded by the weapons of the
	enemy, and I shall never be whole again."

	What has wounded Frodo is not so much the enemies' weapons, but his
	experiences and memories. He has lost his innocence, and it can never
	be returned to him. In Victory and Conquest, he has been defeated.
	He is a victim of his own heroism. In the end, he gives up life and
	sails out of the world to Valinor - a metaphor for death by suicide,
	and the afterlife.

	Wow. What a drama - and what an insight to the human condition by
	Tolkein. There's no way for a short piece to portray this kind of
	character development - like a snapshot, it's characters are frozen
	and static.

	Science Fiction takes us far afield in technology, fantasy, or the
	future. But as literature, it can say potent things about mankind
	today. Revisit "BLADE RUNNER" and watch the Harrison Ford character
	for development - and consider the Replicant in the closing scenes
	in terms of change. You started out hating him, you ended up cherishing
	him as the only human silhouetted against the backdrop of inhumanity.

	The short story format cannot pack that kind of punch. It can do other,
	entertaining things - even toss in a moral for consideration. But it
	cannot show us a person, growing and changing into something he never
	was before. And that is the essence of literature.

	(Sound of big guy getting off soapbox).

	I vote for any (and all) the stories in "Adventures in Time and Space"
	by Healy and MacComas (sp).

bob

Just thought of another one - I believe it was titled "Semley's Necklace",
by Ursula LeGuin, and although it was published separately it was also used
as a prologue to "Rocannon's World". Anyway, it was a beautiful thing,
Faery colliding with Technology, lovely and incredibly sad. It certainly
stands on its own as a story, and as such, it leaves the reader with a
sense of having glimpsed a tiny part of a much larger picture; that's a
quality I admire in short stories, whether or not the rest of that larger
picture is ever drawn. 

-b

re:.17
	I can't argue with much of what you say. My point was (and is) that
there *are* short stories that do all that! Most of Ellison's stories have
characters that grow and change from their experiences. As do Zelazny's
(try reading "A Rose for Ecclesiastes"). As do Bradbury's. As do many others'.
	Granted, one *can* get more background material in a novel, but it's
really the story that counts. For all that I like Niven's work, I was disap-
pointed in RINGWORLD, because it read more like a travelogue than a story.
RINGWORLD ENGINEERS had much more meat to it. At any rate, I think on the
whole, that Niven's short stories are *much* better than his novels. Same
for Varley, or George Martin, or Zelazny.

Both novels and short stories have their strengths and weaknesses, and I
don't advocate one at the expense of the other. I just don't like seeing the
short story form being picked on.

--- jerry

An excellent collection of short stories can be found in:
"The Science Fiction Hall of Fame". When the Science Fiction Writer's 
Association formed in the mid-sixties, they began to award Nebulas to 
SF stories and novels. The winners were determined by the votes of 
working writers. To honor stories written before the founding of SWFA, 
they voted on their favorites of the pre-SWFA era. The result was this 
collection.

Longer pieces were collected in Volumes IIA and IIB.

See also "The Hugo Winners" (all 3 Volumes), and the Nebula Award 
winners series.

Although it is not a "great" story, one of my favorites is:
"Profession", from Asimov's collection "Earth is Room Enough".

					andrew

If somebody is looking for a concentrated spate of excellent short works,
nothing beats the "Dangerous Visions" anthology series edited by Harlan Ellison.
It amounts to some 1200 pages of consistently gripping work.  Of course,
if you know Ellison, his taste runs a bit bizarre at times.  Also, skip the
intros on each story until after you've read it; he throws in spoilers.

- tom]

What are the 3 short stories appended to the 1st edition of Ray
Bradbury's novella, FARENHEIT 451 (as I read it on 1950 or so):
1) 'The Swing' about a playground swing into null-space
2) ? about a gringo couple driving on a hiway into the jungle
3) ? 
(the novela & stories were illustrated w/ b&w pen dwgs.)
-Bill Costley, APO Learning_ctr

My favorites include
	Martian Odessy by Stanley W.......<argh, spaced the name>
	Mimsy Were The Borogroves   <same problem with the name>
	
	and almost anything by Larry Niven.

Nigel

re:.23
	There were only two other stories in the early editions of FAHRENHEIT
451. One was "The Playground", which originally appeared in ESQUIRE. The
other was "And the Rock Cried Out", originally published in the mystery maga-
zine MANHUNT, under the title "The Millionth Murder". Actually, FAHRENHEIT
451 itself was expanded from a shorter version published in GALAXY as "The
Fireman".

re:.24
	"A Martian Odyssey" was by Stanley Weinbaum, and "Mimsy Were the
Borogroves" was by Henry Kuttner under the pseudonym Lewis Padgett. I agree
that both of these are classics in the field.
	It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, that Niven's short
stories are wonderful. [Incidentally, you can find my name at the end of
the introduction to TALES OF KNOWN SPACE.]

--- jerry

Re .25:  Jerry, I seem to recall that "Mimsy.... " was a collaboration 
between Kuttner and his wife. I also seem to recall that nobody really 
knew who wrote what when they used that nom-de-plume.

Granted, the following is a minor quibble, but nit-picking is my 
business. Here is the first verse of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky":

		T'was brillig, and the slithy toves
		Did gyre and gimbal in the wabe.
		All mimsy were the borogoves,
		And the mome raths outgrabe.

Please note that the last word in the third line contains but one "r".

P.S. Jerry, HOW did you manage to get your name into a Niven intro????

					Jealous,
					 andrew

A friend (Spike MacPhee, who owns the Science Fantasy Bookstore in Harvard
Square) and I drew up the initial draft for the Known Space Timeline that's
in the front of the book. How we ended up doing that is a long story. But
we got paid for it, and so far, it's my only "professional" work in the
field. Ten years ago, Spike and I started work on a Known Space Concordance,
and Judy-Lynn Del Rey had expressed an interest in seeing it when it was
completed. But, for reasons too varied and personal, we dropped the ball on
it, and never got very far.

--- jerry

Gee, Jerry shall we start a contest to see how many of us on the net are
mentioned in the prefatory material in Niven's books? 'Course I cheated.
Sternbach mentioned me, not Niven, but what the heck. Boy those were the
days. I wish I still had Sternbach to wash the dishes and McCaffery to
clean the house. Ah, well.

JimB.

		I nominate "Punch" by Fredrik Pohl and the entire book 
	Unicorn variations (a lot of short stories by Roger Zelazny).
	"Flowers for Algernon was good, but it was so hard to read I
	almost quit reading it.

				
					sam

On shorts --  there are so >>many<< really good 'uns that trying to pick
the best would be an exercise in futility.  Picking favorites is a different
matter, however, and a few of mine:

	"... And Then There Were None " by Eric Frank Russell
	"the Proud Robot" by Henry Kuttner/Lewis Padgett
	"Nightfall," by Dr. A (well, who wouldn't?)
	Many things from Stanley Weinbaum, including:
		"A Martian Odyssey"
		"Parasite Planet"
		"The Valley of Dreams"
		"the Circle of Zero"
		"Dawn of Flame"
		"The Red Peri"

	"City of the Singing Flame" by Clark Ashton Smith
	"The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin
	"Gentlemen, Be Seated" by Robert A. Heinlein
	"Mewhew's Jet" by Theodore Sturgeon
	"Derm Fool" by Theodore Sturgeon
	"QRM - Interplanetary" by George O. Smith (well, any of
		the Venus Equilateral tales, frankly)
	"Black Destroyer" by A. E. van Vogt.

That should be a reasonable selection

Steve

What!? No Cordwainer Smith?!	:-)

--- jerry

One of my favourite "Night call collect" by Ray Bradbury.

And then there was this story ( by Asimov?) where people from the future keep
sending messages to the past so that lot of inventions become possible. Anyone
remember the title?

Sampath.

Does any one remember the author of the story titled 'SURFACE TENSION'? It is
about a man like creature living under water and trying to get out. The
creature is so small that the surface tension is so great to overcome.

Sampath.

"Surface Tension" was written by James Blish.  It's been included in
several collections.

					andrew

The best place to find it would be a copy of Blish's book THE SEEDLING STARS.
The other stories in the book deal with other forms of bio-engineered humans.

--- jerry

Thanks, Jerry... I couldn't remember the collection's title.

					andrew

Are there any novels written by James Blish?

Sampath.

I know of one right off.  (novel by James Blish, that is.)
   A Case of Conscience   ---  1958 copyright.

I have the book in front of me and don't remember a thing about it, which
means I must not have been very impressed with it.

                                     --Kathy--

Unfortunately, all my reference books are up in Nagog already (I follow in
a couple of weeks) or I could give you a complete Blish bibliography. The
following is from memory:

CITIES IN FLIGHT	An all-in-one volume of 4 novels. One of his best
			works.

BLACK EASTER		One of my personal favorites. The US Marines versus
			the forces of Hell. (You think I'm kidding, don't you?)

THE DAY AFTER JUDGEMENT	The sequel (more like the second half) of the above.

DR. MIRABILIS		A non-sf novel about Roger Bacon, a medieval philo-
			sopher.

A CASE OF CONSCIENCE	Another of his best books. About the religious impli-
			cations that follow the discovery of a race with no
			concept of sin.

	[Note: Blish considers DR. MIRABILIS, BLACK EASTER/THE DAY AFTER
	JUDGEMENT, and A CASE OF CONSCIENCE to be a "thematic series" with
	the overall title "After Such Knowledge". What he means is that
	rather than have an overall story that is developed over a number
	of books, here there is an overall them that is developed over the
	four books.]

THE SEEDLING STARS	Already mentioned.

MISSION TO THE HEART STARS	Another collection.

VOR			A wretched alien-invasion novel.


That's all for now; my memory's slipping away.

Of course, I'm not even counting his STAR TREK books.

--- jerry

Re .39

>VOR			A wretched alien-invasion novel.

I believe this was taken from a somewhat less wretched alien invasion
short story (because it was a short) that either was (or was going to
be?) transmorgified into a movie script, which explains its wretchedness.
This was a long time ago, and my memory's spotty on the point.

I think the title of the short was "Vengance of ROGV," or some such;
the initials being as the initials of VOR (to prevent possible spoilers,
if anyone might want to read it, I won't explain what VOR is).

Steve Kallis, Jr.

Re .32:

>And then there was this story ( by Asimov?) where people from the future keep
>sending messages to the past so that a lot of inventions become possible. Anyone
>remember the title?

"The Red Queen's Race," whose title was taken from _Through The Looking-
Glass_.  It was more that a lot of seeming anomalies were rectified than
that inventions would become possible.

Cute, but not great, short.

    	Of all the short SF stories I have read, I think the one that
    would get my vote for most beautifully rendered is Roger Zelazny's
    "For a Breath I Tarry", written in 1966.  It almost reads like a
    poem to me.  
    	Has anyone else heard of it, and if so, what do you think of
    it?
    	Larry
    

Has anybody heard of a not so short story, called "The Mother of Invention"? I
know it is in my collection of books, but Ghod knows where! 

The story is about a exploration ship landing on an Earthlike planet with a high
percentage of carbon (diamonds!), the ship practically blows up in an accident,
and how the crew manages to invent a way home within seven years, 'cause the sun
is going nova then. 

Jim.

    re:.42
    
    "For a Breath I Tarry" is certainly one of Zelazny's better stories,
    but I've read better from him and others.
    
    re:.43
    
    Try SPECTRUM 5, edited by Kingsley Amis & Robert Conquest. It has
    a story by that name in it, written by Tom Godwin. I haven't read
    it, so I can't say whether it's the same story or not.
    
    --- jerry

    I've never tried to pick out an all-time favorite short story, but
    this is a good place to mention a very good and very original short,
    uh, work by Ursula K. LeGuin.  It isn't any kind of story, but rather
    "Extracts from the Journal of the Theriolinguist League."
    
    This is apparently a magazine published some time in the near future,
    when very dramatic advances have been made in animal communications
    studies.  There are three extract.  The first is an article, "The
    Author of the Acacia Seeds," discussing in solemn pseudo-archeological
    manner the implications of some short compositions written in
    scent-gland extract on the empty hulls of acacia seeds, found in
    an abandoned ant nest.  (I believe it is subtitled "MS Found in
    an Ant Hill.")
    
    The second extract is a call for members to join an expedition to
    the deep Antarctic, there to study the body-language of Emperor
    penguins as they stand around for months at a time in blinding
    blizzards with eggs on their feet.  Try to make THAT sound like
    a tempting offer!
    
    The last extract is the editorial in which the editor waxes lyrical
    and visionary about the future possibilities of plant communication
    and even mineral linguistics.  (It's interesting that recent REAL
    studies of plants have made the editorial slightly obsolete.)
    
    Anyway, there are very few people like LeGuin for breaking molds
    creatively.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    re .42
    
    Sorry havn't heard of it - but...
    
    
    Try 'Home is the Hangman' By Zelazny. Good tight, and with an
    interesting, (and in my humble opinion) more believable approach
    to the whole AI question.
    
    Stan.

with a short story, you can get more mileage out of "ambience":
so how about
	"Gonna Roll the Bones" (Leiber)
"Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" (Delany)
	"The Voices of Time" (Ballard)
?

Heinlein also had some good ones based on dimensional trickery
("He Built a Crooked House" and "By His Bootstraps") plus the
short novel "Waldo" ("magic is loose in the world!")

re: .42

If you liked the title poem of "For A Breath I Tarry", you may want 
to look into other work by A. E. Housman.  He was a Cambridge 
classics professor of the early part of this century who specialized 
in this kind of short, lyrical poetry.  He was also quoted quite a 
bit in the movie "Out of Africa".  The final toast that the men of the club 
offer to Karen Blixen was one of his lines.  

My own favorite Zelazny story is "He Who Shapes".  The protagonist 
does psychotherapy by entering people's subconscious worlds.  All is 
fine until he meets a blind woman who wants to use his skills to see.
The story was later padded out into the novel "The Dream Master".

/jlr

        I wouldn't call "He who Shapes" (was that really the title?)
        a "short story"... it was rather long.  Furthermore, he wasn't
        trying to teach her to see, per se, but to teach her to deal
        with visual images (within the mind) in order to be able
        to train as a therapist.
        
        	/dave

       Another vote for the LeGuin short "story" about Linguistics.
    
       I don't like mush LeGuin particularly her more pretenstious stuff,
    but that piece helps me understand why some people RAVE about her.
    
       I believe you can find it her collection call Compass Rose.
    
    tlh
    

    	How about Bradbury's good old standby, "A Sound of Thunder".
    
    	Larry
    

    re.42
    "Then come with me to Bright Defile, where Judgement Day is not
    a thing to be put aside." --from memory; please don't take potshots.
    
    Home is the Hangman (from memory again) appeared in MY NAME IS LEGION
    which I think appeared in F&SF (my memory is less reliable than
    Jerry's files).
    
    If you liked the early Amber try LORD OF LIGHT and an old favorite
    THIS IMMORTAL (serialized in F&SF with a better title: "...And Call
    Me Conrad."
    
    (TRUMPS OF DOOM and TO DIE IN ITALBAR still sit on my shelf, unread.)
     
    Anyway, I've found most of his short stories readable.
    
    							Don

    "Home is the Hangman" first appeared in ANALOG. One of the other
    two LEGION stories appeared in an anthology --- I think it was
    AN EXHALTATION OF STARS (I'm doing this from memory --- I'm too
    lazy to look it up). I don't off-hand recall where the other story
    first appeared.
    
    --- jerry

	 This topic  has  been quite dead for almost a year, but I'll try to
	 revive it. Here are my favourites:

	 "...and he built a Crooked House"     -- RAH

	 "Old Folk's Home"		       -- Simak

	 "The Big Front Yard"		       -- Simak


 	-- POL

    There was a short story written by Isaac Asimov about the end of the
    universe and God was actually a super computer who found out how to
    reverse the third law of thermodynamics, entropy is increasing. The
    super computer decides to recreate the universe and the last words of
    the short story was "let there be light", straight out of the book of
    Genesis.  Does anyone remember this story?  I forgot the title but I
    thought it was intriguing.

    RE .55
    
    The story was called "Entropy" I believe and it was in the Short story
    collection "Nine Tomorrows".
    
    Steve

    Re .55 & .56
    
    I thought the story was called "The Last Question."
    
    (And the increase of entropy is the SECOND law.)
    
    Earl Wajenberg

	Didn't he write the above as well...something about some monks
	buying a super computer to take every name that God is called
	plus all permutations and combinations of them and all the 
	words of all languages and print them out.

	Charlie

    Wasn't that Clarke?

    Clarke wrote the Nine Billion Names short story. 
    
    About short-short stories. Asimov has two books he edited called...(I'm
    trying to remember)... something like "100 Short Short Stories"
    and "100 More Short Short Stories". There were quite a few "god"
    stories. But don't think the one mentioned a few topics back is included.
    
    			Domenic

    Well it could be "The Last Question". It has been many years since
    reading this book/story.
    
    Steve

    
    Wasn't "The Last Question" the story where someone asked the 
    ultimate supercomputer, "Is there God?"
    (Spoiler)
    
    The answer, of course, was "There is now!" and a lightning bolt welded
    the breakers closed.

    	No, that short story is "The Answer", by Frederick Brown.
    
    	Larry
    

    "The Last Question" is a story by Isaac Asimov in which a succession
    of computers -- starting from a very primitive one from a decade or so
    in the past and ending with one that occupies an entire dimension in a
    time when humans have evolved to beings of pure energy and the stars
    have all burned out -- are asked a cosmic question, such as "What will
    happen after the stars burn out?", or "How did the universe begin?"
    Each time, the response is "Insufficient data."  Then the last star
    goes out and the last humans expires after incredibly long lives flitting
    through the galaxies and the MultiVac (or whatever) continues to compute.

    And eventually it finishes computing the question.

    Hey bo, do you think it's a spoiler?



    Aw!  You guessed!



    And the computer answers the question -- it says, "Let there be light!"

    And there is light.

In "The Last Question", the last question was asked for the first time
in the twenty-first century.  (I think it was May 21, 2056, but I'm not
positive.  That date sticks in my mind because May 21 is my father's
birthday, and it was about 100 years in the future when I read the story
the first time.)  The last question was not the last question asked, but
the last one left unanswered (and ultimately answered as described in
.64) after all data had been collected (and the universe was growing
cold).  The last question was "Can entropy be reversed?".

Dave C.

    re .64
    
    Yes I think the story's name is "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov.  I
    remember now.  I read it many years ago, about how a long line of
    computers tried to figure out how to reverse the effect of entropy and
    restart the universe.  I do remember man asking each computer the
    question and each time the answer was 'insufficient data'.  Now what
    I'm trying to figure out is where this story is.  In what book of short
    stories does "The Last Question" appear.  Can someone help me out here.
    
    king

    It appears in _The_Azimov_Chronicles_, now out in hardcover
    and available at the Nashua Library.
    
    			-John Bishop

Just polishing the corners, but wasn't the response from the series of "AC's" 

	"There is, as yet, insufficient data for a meaningful conclusion."

 - or was that something else ?

Ian

The answer was: "Insufficient data for a meaningful answer."

    re .69,.70
    
    You're both probably right. I read the story over ten years ago.  So I
    dont remember exact wording.
    
    ktl

    I believe "The Last Question" first appeared in the collection "Nine
    Tomorrows".  I still have a (crumbling) paperback edition of it.
    
    len.
    

    Re .72 (len):
    
    >I believe "The Last Question" first appeared in the collection "Nine
    >Tomorrows".  I still have a (crumbling) paperback edition of it.
     
    Check the copyright credits in the crumbling paperback.  I believe
    it first appeared in a magazine.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    Oops, I should have qualified that with "first appeared in book form";
    I would have expected it to appear in a magazine first.  It *was*
    "Nine Tomorrows", I checked last night.  Also in this collection were
    "The Feeling of Power" (where arithmetic is rediscovered), and "The
    Ugly Little Boy".  It's a real shame that paperbacks won't last 30
    years.
    
    len.
     

    I checked, and it appears "Nine Tomorrows" was the first appearance of
    any of its stories.  I.e., none of them are credited as having appeared
    elsewhere first.
    
    len.
    

    re:.75
    
    It may not credit any earlier appearances, but all of the stories
    therein (with the possible, though unlikely exception of one or two)
    appeared first in the sf magazines.
    
    --- jerry