I read this story in the late 60s/early 70s.   It’s about a lone astronaut who lands on a planet (I think) and sees plants, like in a garden but each plant is minutely different than the ones around it.   Then he stumbles upon a workshop/lab and some sort of written record that he deciphers, which tells him that human beings are a failed experiment due to be terminated by the owner of the lab, which I assumed to be God or some kind of supreme being.
10457
Can anyone offer any help with this..? I read it at school around 1976 but cannot remember the title nor the author. Thank you in advance!  A lone astronaut called - I think- Steve is stranded on a distant planet when his ship runs low on fuel.   His only companion is - again I think - a parrot. The fuel his ship uses is a filament or wire which is kept on a spool.   On exploring the locale he has landed in he discovers a huge building half-buried in a mountainside. He enters the building and discovers it is a museum filled with thousands of glass cases containing preserved specimens of various life forms as well as machines.   There is a robot curator that does repairs and, as the astronaut finds out, prepares cases for new exhibits.   On analysing the wire in one of the machines he discovers that is suitable as fuel for his ship so he winds a length of it onto his ships spool and leaves the planet just ahead of the robot collecting him and his parrot as museum exhibits...
69588
I am looking for the name and author associated with a story that I read in a magazine (probably Analog) in the mid 1990s.  The primary conceit was that there exist certain people around whom machines, computers etc. simply fail more often then they do when these folks are not around. There is a log-scale for denoting how strong the effect is.  Other useful tidbits:   It may have been one of a running time-line. It took place at a special facility on the moon---out of the way of others who might come to harm---with heavy redundancy of simple systems to provide atmospheric services, food, etc . and where these people have been (voluntarily, I believe) concentrated for research purposes. The narrator notes that everyone in this select group owns their own crowbar (using it to achieve egress from their own cubicle after a failure of the door...) It involved a nanotech spacesuit design. There is mention of a no-fly zone around the facility.
80466
The plot is about:   A spaceship travelling through the universe Earth is a rogue planet whose inhabitants have been cut off and don't realise that their true purpose is to be part of the spaceship   The reason earth was in turmoil (wars etc.) was that they didn't realise that their true role was to fit into the ship  The ship contained 3 or 4 beings that made the thing work Planets throughout the universe are populated with the various beings which are components of the space craft   I seem to remember like an eye shaped being Each of them fulfil their role Humans are part of that as well.  There are loads of planets with humans on but earth has gotten overlooked so it never realised that's what they were designed for The story concludes with the ships picking up someone from Earth   and with the "human" realising that this is what they should really be doing  Humans have a different name that explains their role in the ship.   I probably read it around 30 years ago in English in a sci-fi collection book.
4821
Trying to find title/author of story I read many years ago, around 1964. Story was written from the point of view of a snail like creature. The central character describes (stream-of-consciousness?) himself and other characters moving along a path in a constant search for food. The story ends with the main character falling into what turns out to be the fuel tank of a space ship.
61769
I'm looking for a story that was probably written somewhere from the 1940s to the 1960s. I think I read it in an anthology, possibly in the 1970s.  A group of human explorers landed on a planet with primitive aliens, living in hunter-gatherer villages. They hoped to make a profit from trading our goods for—well, I'm not clear on what they wanted from the aliens.  The native people learned the human language before the explorers could learn theirs. Then the natives suddenly started producing technological innovations far beyond what they originally used. I remember that wooden sailing ships suddenly replaced their canoes. All the natives had to do was hear a story once from the explorers before copying the technology in the story.  Finally, the explorers realized that the natives were much, much smarter than us and that Earth faced a serious problem.  I'm fairly certain that it wasn't a Heinlein story, but I remember that it had some qualities similar to his work.
51099
Please help me identify this story.  I think it is a short story, not a novel but I could be wrong.  A scientist works on genetically engineering super intelligent cells.  He has some successes.  I don't recall the details but his research comes under scrutiny and the funding agency decides to end the experiment and destroy the test cells.  The scientist decides to save his intelligent cells by ingesting them.  The protagonist first comes down with a terrible illness.  From here on out, the writing is in the style of someone in and out of lucidity.  Essentially the cells are battling the scientist's immune system.  Eventually the intelligent cells win and begin re-engineering the human body for their needs.  Using the human body as a reservoir of resources, they expand, change the human body into more of an amoeba structure and eventually invade the city water supply through the protagonists kitchen sink.  At one point one of his colleagues checks on the scientist and the intelligent amoebas capture him/her (I think it's a her).  The implication is that the cells will eventually destroy the entire human race this way.
90952
I read a book once where an agent of a futuristic multi-planet government was sent on a mission, and in doing so, used a machine to impress copies of his mind on other people to send them. I remember no names, of people or locations, but I can describe what I do remember. The place the copies of this man were sent was a planetary system that was used as a prison. The planets were used as a prison because of a unique type of bacteria or virus that lived there. Whenever that bacteria would go too far from the planet, it'd die, and take any organism that it was inside with it. There were 4 planets in the system, and copies of this man were sent to each one. Each planet granted the copy one &quot;power&quot;, unique to the planet, through the bacterium.  In one world the bacteria would break down everything man-made remarkably quick, but some people could control them enough to stop, and even create things for you. Another gave people the ability to swap minds during sleep, waaking up into a different body altogether. A third gave the man &quot;adaptive DNA&quot;, so to speak. He subconsciously would change his DNA to match the environment, which could've meant a sex change, if he lived in an all-male environment. And sadly, I dont remember the 4th well at all. I just know someone became a dragon at some point, and that someone was blind.  Anyway, I read this book at my high school library. That copy was a plain brown cover, no title or anything, and although the name was inside, I have forgotten it. I have forgotten it and the author and  all the unique names to search for, and all my searching for the things in this description have yielded nothing. If anyone knows this book, please tell me its name, or anything that could lead to me finding this book again.
2526
In the 70's or 80's I read a short story in which 2 astronauts looking for a nice place to eat lunch choose a spot at the pole of a small desolate planet, overlooking the world's only pool of surface water.  Due to the harsh extremes of heat, and lack of water, this is the home of the planet's single living organism, which has grown slowly over eons,  surviving the daily extremes, moving slowly over the bare rock, dissolving it with acidic digestive juices to get the nutrients it needs for survival. The men watch the organism while eating their lunch, then depart, unknowingly leaving death behind them in their garbage - cigarette butts, tin cans, wrappings - a bonanza that the creature moves over to dissolve and ingest, along with the human-based microscopic organisms that will destroy the alien being. The theme of the story is that although we reach out to the stars to seek life, we are much more connected to the lowest forms of life on Earth, than to any life we may find on other planets. I don't remember the author and title.  Can someone identify the story?
80984
I know this is going to be a long shot but my father read a book around 1965-1967 about a space explorer who goes to a planet (he believes it is Mars) where he meets two warring alien tribes. One tribe is short and fat and one tribe is tall and skinny. He also remembers part of the story where the explorer believes one alien is urinating into the water supply and contaminating it but the alien is actually purifying it. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Thank you in advance.  ETA: He says this is not the novels with John Carter in them.
90048
I'm hoping to identify an SF story (read it at least 20 years ago, I think), where Earth has set up a base on a distant world, and when the locals see how advanced they are, they quietly give up on themselves, and stop having children.  The governor (or similar) from earth has conversations with the earth military commander, talking about how they really wish they could get earth to leave the natives to themselves, but it won't happen. The military commander thinks the system is broken, but the governor suggests the there are ways to "make the system work for you".  Some time later the governor privately suggests to the commander that maybe teaching the locals about ships and piloting might encourage them to take new interest in life, and the commander requests permission for this from the military.   At some meeting, the governor somehow gets the locals (the locals may be slightly telepathic?) to express interest in some very fragile art form he has one of, which prompts someone to request shipment of many of them as gifts for the natives.  Because they're so fragile, this gets a lot of huge transports ships to the planet, and since meanwhile the natives have learned how to fly, they steal them and emigrate en masse, vanishing into the void.  The military guy accuses the governor of setting this all up (to the reader this is clearly true), but there's no proof, and the story closes with the governor reminding the commander of what he had said about making the system work for you.  What is the name of this story?
117487
I'm looking for the title of a Sci-Fi story (probably pre-1990) where a group is sent off into deep space and I believe unbeknownst to them it's a one-way journey.  In the course of the journey they all become very intelligent, they make psychoactive drugs from the plants on board, I recall that they discovered it's a one-way journey to test the affects of space travel, and they redesign/refit their engines and return to Earth.  Lame recall, sorry, that's all I got. Any help appreciated.
25379
I am looking for a short story I read a long time ago.  In it, a man dies and finds himself in a dark and featureless afterlife with a disembodied voice that calls itself god.  That god reveals that there is indeed life after death, but only for a selected few, and it consists of nothing more than this void with no contact to others.   Faced with the prospect of eternity alone in that void, the man states his intent to find a way to end his own existence for good. The god answers that it will do anything in its power to prevent that.   After some more back-and-forth the man resolves to find a way to destroy god. God reveals that this is indeed the only reason for the existence of the universe and that afterlife: Because god wishes to find a way to cease to exist.  The story ends, I believe, with something akin to     "The man started to think about the problem. He knew he would succeed eventually; after all he had infinite time"
17039
I remember a story I have read buy could not remember the author the name or anything apart from the basic plot. The story is about some future where humanity has to fight with some aliens (not 100% sure). The story tells about a guy who was some kind of activist and who was in a prison two or more times and somehow helped humanity by being held in a prison (can't remember details). I think the story starts by saying that there is a statue in his honor that is not very well known but he did more to help humanity than famous politicians.   The story is most likely written by some famous English-speaking author, though I read it in a translation.
98652
I once read a sci fi novel where the protagonist was a boy with one different colored eye, maybe gold colored.   It must have been sometime in the 70's. It was written in English. Unfortunately I have no recollection of the cover.  The time was in the not too distant future.   Actions, relationships and all other aspects of life were controlled by a central computer. As the boy grew he heard stories from his grandfather about how the central computer was built. When he became an adult he joined a group of free thinking rebels that planned to destroy the computer, but were foiled when they bombed the fake computer that was set up as a display/decoy.  One scene sticks in my mind. The group used to meet in a museum where one of the displays was an "antique" car and the people marveled that drivers had control over their own vehicles. One person remarked "I don't think that accidents happened as frequently as we have been told" or something like that. Another detail that I remember is the referral to an aluminum manufacturing plant, specifically an ALCOA factory.  He was captured and offered a chance to become of the "programmers" but eventually found and destroyed the real computer, which was right where his grandfather had said it would be.   The story ends with the now young man heading home in a helicopter as rain begins to fall during daylight hours, a sign that the central computer had relinquished control back to nature.
35847
I read this short sci-fi story some time ago:  The story is about an abandoned colony of military engineer corps that crash landed on a planet. They still know all about repairing equipment (they don't have any).   The other part is about the empire that is losing the knowledge about repairing the ships and equipment. One day, a ship reach the colony.
9424
I'm looking for a book of science fiction short stories. One of the stories describes the experiences of a man who finds himself in a corridor with a dead body. The corridor turns out to be a Möbius strip. I must have read that late 1970s.
85338
I remember once many years ago reading a short story about how the Human Race established contact with an alien race. One of the exchanges involved one alien and one human meeting in orbit on a space station for the purpose of collecting what the alien would extrude from it's pores. This "elixir" would extend life expectancy in a human who ingested it. The problem arose that the alien was so "foreign" and grotesque that if one was to "view" it, one would go mad. This story is a narrative of the man sent to the station for the collection and his encounter with the alien.