Trying to remember the title of a short story about a robot who survives several generations of a family, and at one point stows away on a spaceship. It was an older story — I want to say pre-1970 — part of an anthology. There was some reason why he stowed away. Maybe he was trying to get home? His longevity figured into the plot somehow. He might have been facing obsolescence.
67124
I'm looking for a short story from about 50 years ago about a robot who escapes after being slated to be melted down and discovers while in hiding that it has evolved to have some supernatural powers.
113273
I don't remember much about it, but I remember reading it about 5-8 years ago while on an Asimov kick. It may be one of his stories, but I can't remember names/places.  All I can remember is that the main character, a robot, decides that he wants to become an author and experiences opposition to his claims that a machine can be creative.  Any help?
22096
I'm trying to find a children's/YA book.  I remember it being about a family's robot that is about to be either destroyed or have its mind wiped.  The boy that it belonged to orders it to run away to save it.  I think it was thought to be defective for not following some of its prime directives.  The story is set on either the Moon or Mars and the people live in domes.  During the story, the boy meets up with the robot and both helps and is helped.  I don't believe it was I, Robot.  It wasn't a short story or stories, but a children's book.  At a guess, I'd say it was written for 10-14 year-olds. I keep thinking the book was called "Run, Robot, Run" but I can't find it by that title.    I don't know if it had a positronic brain, but it may have been something like that.  I mostly remember that the book started off almost immediately with the child yelling "Run, robot, Run!" and most of the rest of the book being about the robot trying to escape/hide with the boy's help and a growing sense of self.  Thank you!  It is the Runaway Robot, I remember that book cover.  Greatly appreciated!
32277
I remember reading a short story (or short book?) that was at first set around the 1930s (maybe?) and an experiment goes wrong creating a very fine beam which increased in width the further out it got from its source. Whatever was hit by this beam was transported into the distant future. This included a man (the protagonist) who finds himself on Earth but an indeterminate time in the future where he has to relearn the language and reconnect with this future humanity. He's viewed as an oddity as he still has bodily hair so they permanently remove his beard. It feels like an Asimov era story. Can anyone help with this?
71143
I think this grim little short story is by Lester del Rey, but I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure it was published in the 1940s/50s.   The story: Earth's very last starship is coming home after searching the galaxy for life. Exploration began with high hopes due to the discovery of a Martian civilization which, for reasons unknown, died out. The crew of this last starship, however, has discovered what the Martians discovered; life is a freak that exists on only Earth and Mars - there is no life anywhere else in the Universe. The Martian race lost its will to live after that, and now it seems the same is going to happen to humanity.
78920
I'm looking for a classic science fiction story where a man disguised as a robot is send to investigate a robot uprising on a mining/factory planet.   He is found out to be a human and brought before the robotic overlord of the planet who offers a deal, we will not kill you if you pretend to be a robot for the rest of your life. He agrees.  He later finds out that in fact all the robots on the planet are humans that made similar deals. We all think everybody else is a robot, but in fact nobody is.   Possibly from Lem or Asimov.
31042
Trying to find a story I read a couple of years ago in an anthology, not sure when the story dates from but likely to be recent - the last decade or so.   The story has passengers travelling between stars via a series of jumps. The calibration of the drive is affected by a special metal, any of which has to be stored in a shielded compartment (I think the jumps were measured in 'degrees'). One of the passengers unwittingly takes some of this metal on board, which throws off the calculations for the jumps, and they jump into an alternative universe where there are no signs of any humans ever existing. They start to try to reverse their steps to get back to the known universe, but the reverse calculation seems impossible.  That's as much as I read of the story before I lost the book. After many dreams (feverish nightmares!) re-living this story, I need to know how it ends. I know it's not much to go on. The story name, author, or the anthology it appears in would be fantastic.
7143
I'm a huge fan of SF from the golden age of SF, so this could be a fairly old book.  It was a story about a "generation" starship or sublight starship.  I believe most of the story was about their journey and some of the problems and difficulties.  I believe that something strange is observed along the way which later turns out to be them being passed by an FTL starship which was developed, on their long voyage, after they left Earth.  When they arrived at their destination they were amazed and, I believe, disheartened to be greeted by people from Earth.
119449
I read a story in a sci-fi short story collection (about 35 years ago) in which the POV character is fleeing invading aliens with his child in his arms (I think the wife is dead).  He knows he's about to be caught and killed by these rapacious, violent aliens who just want to destroy. Finally, the alien emerges from the trees and the story describes how the hero looks - feline, with a tail.  The hero confronts the killer - man!  It was a cool story that blew my 8th grade mind.  BTW, its not Frenzy.
86750
I'm trying to figure out the name of a sci-fi short story I read a while back. Hours of Googling were no help. Can anyone figure this out?  The punchline of the story is that all of humanity was created for the purpose of providing a missing tool which is required to fix a broken alien spaceship was stranded somewhere in the solar system (Jupiter?). In the end, a child with a toy, which turns out to be the requisite tool, stumbles into a spaceship launched to that planet, and it all turns out to have been designed by the aliens to get them their missing tool, so that they can fly back home.
63215
I am looking for the author / title of a short illustrated story about a robot (humanoid form) that crash-landed on planet earth and a boy finds the wreck. He climbs into it and goes up to the head and meets with the alien kid. Shortly after, the "mother" robot finds and rescues the stranded robot and the story ends.  The robot's control station is the "head".  I remember the cover having a yellow border and depicting in a grey tones a forest. In the centre of the cover there is a golden humanoid robot wreck, mainly the "face" is shown.  The book should be of the mid-80s and no more that 25-75 pages with a couple of illustrations and in english language.
41979
For years, I've been looking for a short story about a boy who discovers alien pods in a field that are growing replacement people. If I remember right, he sees the pod creature eat his mother and then become her, and no one believes him. The story ends with him going in to see his dad, one of the few real people left until that point, and seeing something (an empty pod maybe) that lets him know his dad has been taken and he's next. I'm thinking that the title was something like Father Figure, but I may be remembering wrong.  The story was part of several collections of classic science fiction stories that we had on our bookcase when I was growing up, so I'm guessing that the story could be from the 70's or any time earlier.
111033
This story as I recall it was a short story in a compilation book of the 1980/1990s. The plot has a Martian cruise ship suffering a disaster in space. Only a handful of people get into a lifeboat and it is damaged enough they cannot get to Mars. They crash land somewhere in Europe at the time of the Neanderthals.  Using firearms and weapons they had on the ship they fight off the Neanderthals who in the story are not friendly at all. I do not recall why Mars never comes to the rescue but as the story progresses they have children and one by one the original people die off. And of course their children are the basis for the Cro Magnons.    I have been racking my brain for the title of the story or the title of the book it was in. Guess either my PTSD from Desert Storm is fogging my memory or maybe it's fading due to age. I know sooner or later I'll get the name of it. Thanks for the assist in any case.
110075
I read a sci fi short story sometime between 1974-1980 but it may have been written long before that.  I believe it was in a paper back anthology of sci fi stories, but I'm not certain.  I think the protagonist is facing the final climactic conflict when we meet him.  Most of the story is memories and flashbacks.  The first flashback is to his childhood.  He and his younger brother are sled riding.  His brother crashes, ruptures his spleen and dies.  He feels responsible and is wracked with guilt.  Much later, as an adult, he is exploring a long-deserted alien base on the moon.  There are unfamiliar artifacts on the base, including a time-travel device/vehicle, and a tool with an anti-matter tip.  It carves neat holes and eliminates matter simply by moving it through matter.  He accidentally drops the tool, which plummets unimpeded to the center of the moon.  He realizes that over time, it will consume and destroy the moon, which will be catastrophic for Earth.  He uses the time-travel device to travel to the moon at an earlier time so that he can prevent himself from dropping the tool.  He makes bigger problems for himself, forcing him to travel back further and further in time.  He travels so far back that he encounters the original alien inhabitants of the base.  Now we are at the present time in the story.  This is his final conflict, he has to escape, travel forward in time and resolve all of the problems he created.  Unfortunately, the alien inhabitants capture him, and the story ends.  Can anyone identify the story and author?
1093
A magazine connected with (Boy) Scouting, possibly "Boys Life", in the early 1950's ran a short story in which a group of interplanetary explorers on an extraterrestrial planet, which may have been postulated to have a breathable atmosphere, encountered a functional alien transport designed to travel across rough terrain.   The machine was half hidden or buried when a member of the team discovered it and when he reported back was asked to "roll it out." He replied, "It, 'er, walks."   The alien inventors turned out to be long gone. The machine resembled a large multi-legged insect. There may have been a drawing accompanying the story.  The link I'm attempting to add here may not work, but if it does it's the only source to the Boy's Life image of the alien walking machine that's currently accessible. Boy's Life issues from 1950 are not to be found. If the link works, open Boy's Life November 1950 issue and scroll down to page 21.
14365
More than a decade ago, I read a short story about a small group of people at the end of the world. The story was premised on some sort of mass-produced device which took ambient heat and turned it into power. The devices had been overused, and now the world was freezing.   I think the people were essentially bandits; the main character may have been a woman who lured men to her house and killed them for their body heat? There was also a strong implication that one person she had done this to was an alien who had come to warn that the devices were destroying the world.  I think the story was in a hardbound collection, and I think the collection was from the late 70's or very early 80's.  (Calling it a "short story" is just meant to distinguish it from a full novel — it may have actually been a novella or similar.)
53251
I read this story in an anthology in the eighties or early nineties.  It was about an old man who lived outside a western-like town, though that might have just been how I imagined it.  He goes to town and some ex-military thugs are there causing problems.  Flaunting some odd interdimensional military tech of some sort.  He doesn't want to intervene as doing so would be bad but in the end he must.     By intervening, his military identity is revealed and that causes him (some paradox or causality law) to have to go back and fight the war again.   The war is at the end of time or the universe.  The man is maybe a colonel of the sky something... Not much to go on; I have been searching my collection and wracking my brain for years trying to recall the story.