sci-fi peeps, name this story!
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tuxchick Jan 30, 2011 12:55 AM EDT |
Hey all, I've been trying to remember the name and author of a short story-- an apocalytic tale, it takes place in a "perfect" domed city, designed to be self-supporting and protect its citizens until it is safe to go outside again. But as always, there is a catch, and the catch is that this perfect city is uninhabitable. It is noisy and full of crazy flashing lights. If I remember rightly, citizens are hypnotized into perceiving it as a serene healthy place. The people tasked with the responsibility of running the city are made deaf and blind, and are telepathic. Anyway one of these men (it's always men, the girls are too busy painting their toenails) thinks he is going insane because he has these mad delusions of unbearable noise and visual hallucinations. Of course what's really happening is he is having flashes of reality. And he has something to do with opening the dome and going outside. And something about maybe the Builders planned it that way. Does that sound familiar to anyone? |
| tracyanne Jan 30, 2011 3:02 AM EDT |
Yes I know the story, the name at the moment also escapes me. |
| Ridcully Jan 30, 2011 3:22 AM EDT |
I know the story as well.......the last sentence in the story is, if I recall: "And the city screamed." It may be a short story in one of Asimov's collections. I'll keep looking. |
| tracyanne Jan 30, 2011 5:04 AM EDT |
I keep thinking it's the city of Diaspar in the Arthur C Clark story "against the fall of night" or "City and the stars" |
| Ridcully Jan 30, 2011 5:13 AM EDT |
Yes, it's a pest isn't it ? Nope, Diaspar as you say, is the city in "The City and the Stars" and it's on my shelf. Love it !!!!! But no, Diaspar really is benign compared to the city in Tuxchick's story. Moreover, in the City and the Stars, outsiders from another location on Earth enter Diaspar without any problems of noise or light because Diaspar is actually really lovely - if you like an unchanging environment.....I have searched on a number of aspects, but so far no dice.......I don't think I have read the story since the 70's at the latest, so it is going back quite a way. |
| tracyanne Jan 30, 2011 5:20 AM EDT |
Yes I know it's not city and the stars, it's anoying. I can see scenes from the story, which in itself is amazing because I read years ago. |
| Ridcully Jan 30, 2011 5:25 AM EDT |
I have sent Tuxchick's synopsis to the Queensland coordinator for the science fiction association of Australia. With a plea for help. Might work, if they are our vintage..lol........Cross your fingers ! |
| dinotrac Jan 30, 2011 7:40 AM EDT |
@tc - You're getting old, girlie. That's not sci-fi at all, but a fairly accurate description of Washington, D.C. |
| Bob_Robertson Jan 30, 2011 12:48 PM EDT |
Darn, Dino said it before I did. |
| tuxchick Jan 30, 2011 12:57 PM EDT |
Dino, one of the reasons I'm trying to find it is to compare to modern cities! I'm collecting prescient stories, like Forster's 'The Machine Stops' and a bunch of others. |
| tuxchick Jan 30, 2011 1:08 PM EDT |
See, this is a lesson in why it's better to own squillions of books, and build a special wing on your house to hold them, because you never know when you'll need to know something like this and your small town library is closed more than it's open, and who knows if they even have the story you're looking for. |
| dinotrac Jan 30, 2011 1:36 PM EDT |
@tc: Prescient. Fancy word. And only two syllables. I'm impressed. Wish I knew the story, but I don't. Please enlighten us when eureka! hits. |
| jdixon Jan 30, 2011 2:32 PM EDT |
> See, this is a lesson in why it's better to own squillions of books, and build a special wing on your house to hold them,... Been there, done that. :) 32x16 shed. Currently 5000+ books. |
| cr Jan 30, 2011 4:17 PM EDT |
@tc: Add to your prescience-fiction list: The Shockwave Rider, by John Brunner. An Internet-centric novel released in 1971 IIRC. |
| tracyanne Jan 30, 2011 6:05 PM EDT |
Quoting:The Shockwave Rider, by John Brunner. An Internet-centric novel released in 1971 Introduced Hackers, Viruses (Worms), Internet TV (and a family fun way to view ads, by modifying the stream in realtime and making the ads do and say something quite different). |
| Bob_Robertson Jan 30, 2011 6:13 PM EDT |
It's been a long time since I indulged in short stories. I like Marc Stiegler's _Earthweb_ for what could become of a network-pervasive world. Does it have to be science fiction? Or can it just be "the writing on the wall"? I recently heard about an essay published in 1992 about a military take-over of the US in 2012... http://www.uwec.edu/sfpj/Origins.pdf http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/76774.html |
| phsolide Jan 30, 2011 6:42 PM EDT |
tuxchick's description sounds like something that Phillip K. Dick Phillip Jose Farmer Alfred Bester Harlan (ickk) Ellison might write, in descending order of probability. I can't quite bring the story's name or author to mind, either. |
| herzeleid Jan 30, 2011 10:32 PM EDT |
Wow these are some true sci fi fans here - I'll have to check out Shockwave Rider - thanks for the heads-up - I still think Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984) was one of the all time greats, the flagship of the cyberpunk genre - I still have servers named after entities in that book. |
| rsevenic Jan 31, 2011 12:01 AM EDT |
Tuxchick ... I think the title was "Dome and Domer". |
| tuxchick Jan 31, 2011 12:54 AM EDT |
IfounditIfounditIfoundit! AAAAUUGHH!! "Jesting Pilot" by Lewis Padgett, in Joan Kahn's most excellent collection "The Edge of the Chair". "The city screamed. It had been screaming for six hundred years. And as long as that unendurable scream continued, the city was an efficient unit." |
| tuxchick Jan 31, 2011 1:12 AM EDT |
I would not have remembered the title ever, and Lewis Padgett is not really Lewis Padgett. Sometimes a good brute force search is the only way. (Flipping pages of books!) |
| tracyanne Jan 31, 2011 1:55 AM EDT |
Jesting Pilot EDIT: Sorry drive by posting. All fixed now |
| Bob_Robertson Jan 31, 2011 9:28 AM EDT |
Wow. A working URL with comma and spaces. ...ick. |
| cr Jan 31, 2011 12:26 PM EDT |
Oh good, you found it. I was starting to think it sounded vaguely like Kaye & Godwin's Masters Of Solitude but I knew that wasn't close enough just from vague recollection. Wow these are some true sci fi fans here Yeah, kinda. I literally cut my teeth on Unknown Worlds and Astounding. |
| dinotrac Jan 31, 2011 12:50 PM EDT |
@cr -- Don't be fooled. TC is really making that hoity-toity literate sci-fi crap up. The story she was REALLY thinking of was Tom Swift meets the Tele-People in the Noise-a-Dome. |
| bigg Jan 31, 2011 1:03 PM EDT |
I'll bet you guys watch Star Trek too. Ick. |
| cr Jan 31, 2011 1:07 PM EDT |
@dino: You sure that wasn't a Doc Savage story? |
| dinotrac Jan 31, 2011 1:22 PM EDT |
@cr ... Doc Savage stole it from Tom Swift. |
| jimbauwens Jan 31, 2011 1:48 PM EDT |
@traycanne : If you edit your link and replace the spaces with %20 , it should work. |
| skelband Jan 31, 2011 3:12 PM EDT |
Sounds like a cross between "They Live", Blade Runner and Soylant Green. :D |
| ComputerBob Jan 31, 2011 3:33 PM EDT |
Quoting:I literally cut my teeth on Unknown Worlds and Astounding. http://theoatmeal.com/comics/literally |
| skelband Jan 31, 2011 3:53 PM EDT |
@tuxchick Does that sound familiar to anyone? Perhaps if you dreamed it, it could be your next book! |
| cr Jan 31, 2011 4:50 PM EDT |
@bob: What I meant. When I was old enough to appreciate the anecdote, my father still had an issue or two of the large-format Street & Smith's Unknown with the toothmarks and gummed-out crescents. Nowadays I satisfy my voracious reading habit with O'Reilly funny-animal books, Linux sites and fanfic. |
| Bob_Robertson Jan 31, 2011 5:35 PM EDT |
@cr, http://www.baen.com/library/ |
| tracyanne Jan 31, 2011 5:45 PM EDT |
@jimbauwens, anybody. I've edited that post, the link is fixed. Drive by posting is to balme, I didn't bother to check that it was ok. |
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