I remember reading a short story at some time in the 1990s which featured a regenerating organism which was used for meat.  Workers would carve the meat off of it.  They may have sent the meat through a pneumatic tube style system.  I recall that one of the characters was in charge of the organism, and had to be careful about how fast it regenerated.
77853
I'm trying to help my mother find a short story that she remembers reading some, oh, 30 or more years ago.   I don't have a lot to go on, but apparently the main concept of the story was that the food that everyone was eating was said to come from “The Giant Chicken” or “The Great Chicken” kept somewhere (she read it in a Hebrew translation), but when the protagonists delve into the matter, they discover that this “chicken” (as it was translated) is actually a giant cancerous tumor, kept alive and growing for food.  I've established, probably, that this is not Harry Harrison's Make Room! Make Room! or Roommates, the basis for Soylent Green. That was my first thought. I also couldn't find a lead in the  section on wikipedia.  I don't know any more - not what the main characters were, what book it was published in or the actual decade it was written, unfortunately. It would have been read in the early 80's at the very latest.
64430
I read this book once as a teenager, I think it might have been written in the 1970s but could be late 1960s or early 1980s.  The protagonist is left to die hideously by enemies. He is paralysed and left on some planet (I don't believe it was earth) in the habitat of some kind of crablike creature, which injects him with its young, and periodically returns to force nutrient and a paralytic agent down his throat, as the larvae grows inside him.  He is rescued, and his body rebuilt to some kind of superhuman abilities, but he is traumatised and bent on indiscriminate revenge for his suffering. He proves hard to defeat.   He is eventually defeated by trickery, when he is shown (or demands to see) something by some kind of video link or remote TV/monitor - perhaps he is told that people he wants revenge on, are held captive for him, I can't be sure.   I think maybe he takes hostages or makes a severe threat, and his demands relate to the people he wants revenge on. But he can't be physically reached, so what can be done?  They set up a video feed, to negotiate, or more likely, to purportedly show him they have what (or who) he wants, and he looks to see.  When he looks at the video stream, it's actually an image of the crablike creature. The shock of repressed memories flooding back, renders him re-traumatised and perhaps catatonic, and defeats him.
41604
I was reading  and it reminded me of story I read somewhere in the mid 90s to the early 2000s in an anthology. A scientist finds a way to explode the iron in the Earth's crust. I want to say that it was something like a Fission bomb, but with iron rather than Uranium. At the time, it reminded me of the story I'd heard of how, in early development of fission bombs, they always did air bursts because there was a fear that the nuclear reaction wouldn't stop, and might consume the rest of the Earth.   Anyhow, he reflects that, once the process is available, sooner or later, someone was going to use it, probably not a major government but a fringe organization or country who didn't care about the consequences. He considers destroying his research, but then reflects on an unhappy childhood, including a fair amount of bullying, and decides to publish.
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.
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.
20917
Story about a planet-sized multi-celled creature collecting life to ultimately spread (seed)pods of life throughout the universe.  I'm looking to find an English short science fiction story that I think I read in a sci-fi anthology (possibly Asimov) as a child during the early 90's in England.  I remember nothing of use about the actual book or cover but the story details have stuck in my mind and the memory has often resurfaced enough to require help finding it so I can reread it.  The story is of a planet-sized smooth black object/creature appearing (close to earth?) and astronauts being sent to explore and find out what it is. They land and find they can push(sink) into the surface, far enough to pass through the outer skin and find themselves in an earth-like paradise with air, mountains, trees, rivers etc.   The astronauts find that they can also push through the floor of this first paradise into yet another 'bubble' or pod of this earth-like environment and find many more similar 'pods' in all directions and ultimately decide to colonise (maybe with unwanted earth prisoners at first) the expansive spaces of this new world/planet/creature thing.   During the story there is a narrative of an 'elder being' teaching its young about their own purpose (I always imagined 'story-time' around a campfire) and the story ends with the 'elder' exploding and all the child environmental 'pods' and their containing colony of humans being flung to the corners of the universe to populate it with the life that they now contained.      The details of the story are as follows:     Planet-sized object appeared in space that is smooth, shiny, and black. A male and a female astronaut sent to explore the object.  Detailed description of spacecraft landing badly on the object too hard and finding that the spacecraft sank into the surface without damage, leading to them trying to push through the outer skin.   The pods each contain a perfectly viable earth-like environment that is later colonised. Sub-narrative by an unknown consciousness somewhat like an elder teaching the young it's history or purpose. The 'elder' creature was conscious (possibly excited?) of being filled with life as humans colonise. The ending being that the 'elder' explodes and child pods split and fly off in all directions taking the human colonies with them for the purpose of populating the universe.   I remember picturing this object as a bunch of biological cells, each a copy of the original (possibly cell-division during the story itself) with a virus-like spawning in a host system (the universe) by splitting apart to repeat the process in other areas when they have enough (human) life to do so. Not a specifically stated part of the story but my own interpretation over the years since I first read it.  This story was part of an anthology which contained another short story about a metal bar appearing from nowhere (next to someone's armchair, of all places) and the metal is the hardest substance possible. Attempts to cut, shape or bend it fail, but when other metals are welded to the metal they take on the super strong properties of the original bar. This secondary short story ended with something along the lines that all metal becomes welded to the original bar and no metal can ever be formed into something useful ever again. This is a subject for another (unwritten) 'story-identification' question but hopefully answers to one will help find the other.     I would love to read this story and anthology again, and though I have chased suggested story questions on this stack, I am yet to find a similar question.
65670
I read this in the early 1990s when I was a teenager and I have no idea whether it was old or new at the time.  Changing your body involves going in to a tank of liquid. People wear bodies of many and various different types (probably chosen mainly for fashion reasons) but certain body types are prohibited although I don't really remember any of the reasons why.  The main character is persuaded by someone to change his body to an illegal type. Perhaps he becomes involved in some kind of secret underground organization. The new body is of a type that he has never seen before. The main thing that I remember about it is that it has a panel of lights built into the chest and after he has learned how to he is able to communicate with other people in bodies of this type at incredible speed by flashing these lights.  I've spent considerable time web searching with no joy whatsoever. I'd love to re-read this book... the image of the flashing-chest-array communication has been stuck in my head ever since I read it but I can't remember whether anything else about it was noteworthy.
49338
I'm looking for a science fiction novel that I would've read from a library in the early 2010s. I'm fuzzy on the plot, but it was in a setting with space travel, and I believe the view shifted around to follow the separate characters.  I do recall two distinguishing characteristics in particular:  Some people use a brain upload/backup to restore themselves to a new body after an accidental death, maybe retrieving the recorder if possible to include memories immediately before death. However, this may not be an accessible service for everyone due to cost/coverage, and I think a large corporation handled it. People might've kept identical clones on hand or opted for a brand new body, but I think it meant very little fear of death. At least one character, maybe an investigator/reporter/mercenary, died in an explosion (?) and was restored midway through the book.  Some others chose the (less common) option of linking several bodies together to form a group consciousness, where a single unified mind inhabited all of the bodies at once. They could purchase more bodies to connect, and gained similar immortality since any body dying would not affect the whole.  I remember that at one point, a character entered a store and was irritated when the employees carried on a conversation as she moved to the right aisle, only to realize they were a group mind and thought she'd noticed. She entered into a relationship with them later and, at the end of the book, ended up buying more bodies to become a group herself.  I've googled around for this book for a while and looked through Wikipedia's  and , but I didn't recognize the plot anywhere. Hope a detail stands out to someone out there, I'll try to answer any more questions!
114874
So the aliens sent down pods, maybe they were phones, requesting info and would give you things in return. I remember a guy asked for a device that could make anything you want using nanotechnology. It would make it by disassembling items near by. He was wanted I think and made guns or a ship or something like that. I'm pretty sure it was in a book of short stories I read like 3 or 4 years ago.
87325
I read this short story a few years ago but I cannot remember the title or author. It was about a human scientist on another planet who was studying the native flora and fauna, trying to find something edible for humans. Does anyone know the title of this story?
87050
It's been maybe twenty years since I read this, so please forgive me for not remembering if it was a novel or a short story.   It's the story of a girl whose father was either a Greek or Egyptian alchemist. He had concocted an elixir which, if drunk periodically, grants immortality. The problem was that in order for it to work, the person drinking it couldn't have gone through puberty.   He gave the elixir to his son and daughter, and taught them how to make more. The children live through many centuries, but the son eventually stops taking it. He ages normally and eventually dies. The daughter continues to take it, and the reader learns her story while she is being interviewed, either by MDs, or psychiatrists.
42648
In the early '80s, I read a story about a Terran man on another planet, where the natives develop skin lesions and eventually die, but are happy, as they become part of the planet they live on. I remember that the protagonist is not developing the lesions, because he hates the planet. Once he starts loving the planet, he starts having the lesions as well. In this story, the planet is "alive".  I have read about "" and "". They do not match my memory. Thank you.
59104
A scientist creates a virus (bacteria?) which, when encountering a woman, implants a fetal clone of him, which the woman is pregnant with.  Millions of his clones have already been born, and society is having a hard time accommodating them.  The man is in hiding, working as a teacher in a special class for his clones.  He is evaluating one particular young clone, who apparently suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome, which was detected based on his unexpectedly low test scores.  It's a short story, read in the 2000s or earlier.
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.)
17568
As title, seeking the title of a story I read in the mid 1970s. I'm fairly sure it was a novella in an anthology.  Plot details I can remember - I think main character's family name was Monk.   His father had apparently been killed when the space station he was aboard crashed on the Moon - it later transpires that the station was deliberately crashed to conceal contact with an alien starship, and his father was still alive. The crew of the starship included various races - one appeared to be a beautiful human woman, while another ( the engineer ) looked like a giant squid.  After the main character's father died of cancer, the engineer also turned out to be a microbiologist and was able to cure the cancer and bring him back to life. Other things include a vehicle which was able to go out-of-phase with normal matter and travel through solid objects like the earth.
85359
I remember a short story in which multiple generations of people being crammed into a small apartment in a city. The magical drink that either reduced or completely stopped aging was something like a soda that came in a six pack. The story focused on visual aspects of the drink at some point. The younger family members complained that their elders were living too long and apparently decided to water down the soda, I think that conclusion was ultimately left up to the reader. Many thanks for any help tracking down this story, might be one of Kurt Vonnegut's perhaps?
38553
I remember reading a short story a few years ago and I would like to reread read it again. As far as I remember it went a little like this:  You are in a car with your family and a truck hits it, but you are the only one to die. When you regain conciousness you are [in some place that I can't remember] and you see a person (I'm going to call the person as Bob from here, but it's possible the gender wasn't specified) and ask him about your wife/family, Bob tells you that you are dead and your wife/family are/will grieve for you for a time, but your wife get over you and marry someone else. Bob then basically tells you that you are not actually a human but a being like him and their kind created the concept of the universe, time, ethics, morality etc for you because you are young and it will teach you the above. Since the universe is made just for you, everybody in the universe is you. When you die you are reborn as someone else on Earth, but the past memories are blocked but you do start to gain them back if you stay in the place you are in, but Bob wants to send you back to experience more because you are not finished just yet.  One of the last things Bob says to you is that you will be born this time as a farm girl in China in X year.   I have tried Googling this, but I was only able to get results like "God did not create the universe, gravity did, says Stephen Hawking", "IS THERE A GOD?" and "Quotes About Universe". Any help would be great.