Please help me find a short story!

Quiet Storm

Quiet Storm

Joined
May 17, 2002
Messages
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This was inspired by the thread spoonrobot posted here.

Way back in school, I read a "post-apocalypse" sci-fi short story on people living in tiny apartments inside a giant biosphere on earth (which has become uninhabitable), watching rockets take off to haul lucky people to Mars on TV all night. Everyone who happens to find one of the randomly distributed green cards (or something) on his of doorstep in the morning can take part in the exodus, leaving earth to live a better life on Mars. One night someone notices that the rocket take-offs are staged, they just repeat the same clip over and over again.

That's all I remember about it, and I know that it ain't much. And please keep in mind that it's been many years since I read it, so I might have gotten some details wrong. Maybe someone can still tell me the title and author.

Thanks in advance!
 
Sounds interesting. A bit of Soylent Green, mixed with Silent Running and Logan's Run. Obviously I'm more of a film fan, but I'd like to read that story too if anyone knows the name.

-Bob
 
silenthunterstudios said:
by Philip K Dick?
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Hm, don't remember the name of the short story's author at all, but judging from what I know about Dick's works (not that much because I usually don't read science fiction stuff) it could be his story.
 
FullerH said:
Hmmm, sounds a lot like Cyril M. Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons".
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That's not the one I'm looking for. Just googled that title and a found a short summary of the story, it sounds nothing like it.

Thanks anyway, Hugh.
 
Philip K Dick's short story, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was made into the movie, Blade Runner.

This sounds like it could be Dick work, but I don't know it for sure.
 
OT:

shgeo,

How the weather over in Aztec? I'm a neighbor to the east in Raton. Not too many N.M. folks here... An archaeologist I know used to live in Aztec.

By your name, you aren't a geologist are you? I am.

-Bob
 
Tim, it's more likely someone like Frederic Brown or Frederik Pohl. I know the story you mean. I seem to remember it being Venus that the non-existent spaceships were taking people to, if they won the lottery for seats.

Bob W said:
How the weather over in Aztec? I'm ... you aren't a geologist are you?
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Got e-mail? :D
 
shgeo said:
Philip K Dick's short story, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was made into the movie, Blade Runner.
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Also, his stort story "We can Remember It For You Wholesale" was the basis for the movie "Total Recall."

I haven't read alot of PKD, but he has some great work.
 
Also "The Minority Report" and "Paycheck".

I've heard the latter movie sucked, but it sounded like a really interesting premise.

Sorry I can't help you on the story. :)
 
If you have the chance, I forget the name of the book, but PKD wrote a very good book about what could have happened if Japan and Germany had won WW2. The Japanese Imperial Army controls western US, and Germany controls Eastern US. Smack dab in the center of the US, there is a little zone run by rebels. Just Googled it, it's called "Man in the High Castle". I read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", and, while it was entertaining, I thought it did not hold a candle to Blade Runner. I got a book of PKD short stories, they were interesting, not bad, but out there. Also read one where these alien blobs are landing all over Earth, and this crazed messiah type nutjob is trying to rally the world to help fight them.

Thinking about that story, it wasn't by Ray Bradbury was it? Really the only SF I've even picked up has been by PKD, William Gibson and some Terminator and Star Wars novels.
 
silenthunterstudios said:
If you have the chance, I forget the name of the book, but PKD wrote a very good book about what could have happened if Japan and Germany had won WW2. The Japanese Imperial Army controls western US, and Germany controls Eastern US. Smack dab in the center of the US, there is a little zone run by rebels. Just Googled it, it's called "Man in the High Castle". I read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", and, while it was entertaining, I thought it did not hold a candle to Blade Runner. I got a book of PKD short stories, they were interesting, not bad, but out there. Also read one where these alien blobs are landing all over Earth, and this crazed messiah type nutjob is trying to rally the world to help fight them.

Thinking about that story, it wasn't by Ray Bradbury was it? Really the only SF I've even picked up has been by PKD, William Gibson and some Terminator and Star Wars novels.
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Man in the High Castle was a great novel. I think it was his best.

Bob W, Email sent.
 
Man, that reminded me of "Marching Morons" too. That was the first thing I thought of.
 
Quiet Storm said:
Just googled that title and a found a short summary of the story, it sounds nothing like it.
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I should have said that apart from the "pseudo-emigration-to-another-planet" theme, the details of the story I gathered from the review doesn't resemble the one I remember at all.
 
Anybody remember the Outer Limits episode, To Serve Man

Aliens make friends and allow large numbers of people to emigrate on their ships to their homeworld. Everyone thinks their book, To Serve Man, is a book civic service until at the end someone figures out that it's really a cookbook.
 
The Last Confederate said:
Quit Storm, I will e-mail your post out to the members of my sci-fi reading club and see if anyone remembers this one.
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Hey, that's great! Thanks a lot.
 
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