I'm working from a half-remembered description, so there may be errors. I don't know if it's a short story or a novel, or when it was written, but I think I heard about it at least fifteen years ago.  The world is run by a central computer that makes all economic decisions. The protagonist is dissatisfied and becomes involved in a plot to destroy the computer. However, when the protagonist enters the room that was supposed to contain the computer, instead the computer's programming team is there to applaud his "success", and they invite him to join the team.
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.
61000
I'm hoping someone can help me as this is driving me nuts! Context and Chronological info I'm trying to find the title/author of a short story that I read in some or other anthology ages ago. I couldn't give you an exact date but I'd say it was probably 50s/60s. Plot The human population has increased to the point where input and output of resources on Earth is in exact equilibrium. As such, no other living matter can be permitted to exist, as its use of resources would throw this equilibrium out of balance. One man in a vast tower block has managed to hide some flowers, and, I think, one or a few small animals - perhaps a mouse. These are detected by the relevant authorities, and the story ends when an official arrives at the apartment and requires the man to destroy them - the last non-human living things on Earth.
59228
The book is written in the 1980s. The storyline is about an early 20th century level technology planet getting visited by a spaceship which causes quite a stir. The visitors start helping to consolidate all of the countries on the planet. Everyone thinks this is good but some people accidentally find out they're actually being conquered by using the planets own people to do the fighting.   They also find out that when all the planet's countries are defeated and under the control of a single government, the planet will be colonized by a space federation that is reclaiming long lost planets.  Through trickery they learn that if they can somehow get space travel they wouldn't be colonized and would have rights and a higher place in the federation. They start sneaking around trying to make a spaceship with their early 20th century tech.
21354
In the story I'm trying to recall, everybody on their thirteenth birthday (?) is assigned by some kind of brain analysis method a profession and given some kind of pill (?) that instantly (?) grants them the required knowledge and skills to start working immediately. Some professions are more sought after than others, especially in view of the olympic (?) games regularly held on a profession-by-profession basis.  The protagonist, however, is turned down from this system and dismissed with some general reason and has to work his way to adulthood the boring old way: studying from books. Eventually he rejects from his status as a "special" student and goes on the run, hiding from the teachers and envying the normal people.      Eventually, it turns out that the protagonist was actually smart enough that being spoonfed premade information was a waste. What he actually was assigned to was advancing the bundles of knowledge themselves, as well as being front line in the technological progress.  "Somebody has to write those textbooks! You can infuse knowledge about how to use today's technology, but you can't do that for tomorrow's - people that get assigned a profession become tied with their assigned technology and are only as relevant as that. If you want more, you must learn how things actually work, and there's no shortcut for that." (not an actual quote, but a specific passage as I remember it.)  The troubles the protagonists underwent were actually planned and necessary for him to acknowledge and accept his role in society.   This story was certainly longer than a couple pages, but it wasn't very long either. If it's a short story, it was probably written by Asimov, but I can't be sure. It rings me of Brave New World given the theme of government-issued population planning, but it certainly doesn't fit with anything else in the actual plot. Any idea?
46074
I read this while up at my grandparents somewhere around 1990ish. Given how many books they had from when my dad was growing up, there's a decent chance that it's older. It was a novel where the government kept pretty strict control of society. They had some sort of mass entertainment covered because I remember a reference to the government giving the citizens "their bread and circuses" as a reference to the Roman practices. The biggish twist is that the resistance isn't so much actively fighting the government as that they're producing a pressure valve by using their hackers to set up telephone relays which act as support lines. Anyone can call and talk about their troubles. The telephone technology was relatively old — I think I remember them talking about mechanical relays — and they advertised the changing numbers (they had to keep going to new ones as the government shut down the old ones) on flyers that they posted all over the place.  The one bit of imagery that really stuck out to me was where a female member of the resistance was explaining to the male protagonist that, no matter how bad things got, they had to stay on the line, and she recounted one of her first calls involving a mother who'd locked her baby into a high-chair and was flinging spoonfuls of vitriol (acid, but they specifically used the word "vitriol") at the baby as she talked.  I don't think I ever got to finish the book, so I have no idea how it ended.
23414
Plot Summary/Details  The sharpest memory I have of this one is that it was unusually dense reading. Much more difficult going than most of the sci-fi stuff I'd read by that time (I was 10 or 11, I think).  What I remember in terms of plot is that there is a starship, sent either to explore, or colonize, a distant star system.  I don't remember the names of any of the characters, but I think maybe they discover they are clones?  In any case, something happens to the computer system that the onboard AI becomes sentient and develops a measure of omniscience and omnipotence.  It effectively becomes a god of sorts.  The next part I can remember, and I'm not sure this is the same book or not, is that the ship has forcibly settled the crew on a hostile planet.  All sorts of nasty indigenous life forms live here, and guards are post on the wall outside the settlement to destroy them as they try to enter.  I remember there is a female character standing watch, and she goes over the bestiary in her mind.  One particularly nasty creature paralyzes you, and then burrows up your spine into your brain (or something like that) if it gets a hold of you.  That's all I can recall.  Not a lot of detail, unfortunately, but I'm having a tough time remembering much about this one.  I never finished the book(s), as they were mostly "over my head" at that age.
70594
I am looking for a short story I read online a few years ago, about artificial lifeform, with a hard sci-fi taste.  A couple of software engineers were trying to identify a strange program behavior on a new system in development, but digging through the outer layers of software source didn't explain the seemingly random issues they observed. After hours of debugging, they identified unexpected output at the compiler level.  One of the developers manages to craft a workaround, only to see additional issues appear around the fixes, and he begins to fear a backdoor might have been planted in the compiler, which seemed tainted much like the Ken Thompson hack. As this might eventually jeopardize the entire project, they spend more and more time on the issue itself, but as time passes, the deeper bugs they discover and fainter they become.  In the end, it seems like some artificial intelligence tried to emulate evolutionary pressure by establishing a form of communication channel, and having groups of humans around the world fixing the most obvious software outer layers. Even computer-assisted hardware design could be contaminated at this time, but in such complex a way they might go undetected for a long time, now adapted to the silicon environment.  I've been literally searching this story for months, and begin to believe I dreamt of it and should start writing myself.
16211
My dad has been trying to find the title of a short story for ages. According to him, the story goes like this:  A scientist who works on an island manages to create a miniature population with whom he can communicate. As time is proportional to their size, it goes way faster for them than the scientist, which allows the creatures to be able to make inventions humans can't yet.   The scientist, whom the creatures worship as a God, starts asking them to reveal how to make these inventions humans are unable to create. At one point, his miniature people end up developing the transport of wireless energy.  Because of the industrial lobby of the human world, the scientist and his people are under a death threat. He asks the creatures to develop the absolute protection, which they do, but this stops the communication between the scientist and his people. He can only see a grey dome in his microscope.   At the last moment, as missiles have been fired towards the island, a breach opens in the dome. The scientist gets a message from his creatures: they ask for forgiveness as they were not able to reach him anymore until then. He responds that if they want to be forgiven, they must amplify the action of the dome.  In the end, the whole island is covered with an indestructible grey dome that no one can see through.  Some parts might be added by my dad's imagination but if you find anything similar to this plot, we would be really grateful!
63222
Novel written before 2000.  The story begins on a planet which has been so environmentally damaged that the atmosphere is too toxic to breathe, forcing the population to live in air-tight domes or modules connected by tunnels.  Near the beginning, the protagonist working as a low-ranking gang or mob member. He's assigned to either kill or collect money from someone; when he confronts them, they taunt him about how the floor is electrified, how their body weight is shifted forward so shooting them will cause them to fall against an alarm button, and various other reasons why he can't possibly do anything... they continue right up until they're blown apart by some kind of miniature rocket launched from the protagonist's shoe.     Afterwards, I believe, his superiors in the organisation attempt to kill him because they deem him as "too dangerous", which causes him to retaliate by blowing up one of the passages, suffocating the people who were threatening him. From this point, or shortly after, he begins his own organisation which quickly grows in power until he is virtual ruler of the planet; eventually he cleans up the planet's environment to the point where people can live outside, again. At some point he meets a woman, courts her, but ultimately leaves her abruptly, telling her he swore never to let anyone have power over him, and since he's starting to fall in love with her, she's starting to have too much influence over him.   &nbsp;     The society in this universe has ranked legal and illegal citizenships, with either 50 or 100 being the lowest rank, and rank 1 being the highest... after the protagonists becomes a level 1 illegal citizen, he sets his sights on becoming a legal citizen, which requires him to (at least in appearance) divest himself of all his criminal ties and assets, which he does by creating a complex nested structure of ownership between himself and the illegal organisations he controls.   &nbsp;     As his influence increases in the legal world, he begins doing business with an alien race who, in order to trust him, give him the chance to let them implant him with some kind of organism that will kill him if he even thinks about betraying them.   &nbsp;     Near the end of the story there is a part where someone close to him is trying to figure out why he's amassing so much money and military power, when he's not intending on using it against the human race, and can't use it against the aliens.
98744
The novel centers around a man living a comfortable existence in the pretty distant future.  To support himself, he is occasionally asked to enter a box which will copy his entire body, and send it out faster than the speed of light to some developing world, to work.  His copy on this world wakes up and realizes what a big mistake he's made.  The copy does grueling work, feels lonely, and eventually just dies of radiation sickness.  Back on earth, the man never realizes how bad it is out there, and keeps sending out more copies.  I think the story is probably 80s or earlier - not sure if it's a short story, or the beginning of a novel which I lost &amp; never finished.
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!
90768
I can't remember the title of a story that I wanted to read lately. I know the plot was as follows: An AI controls the last few remaining humans and later they are forced to live in a cave. One of them tries to escape and he is turned into some kind of goo by the AI.   Do any of you recognize it?
98342
A visiting science fiction author, James D. Macdonald, showed a writing group at my school this story when I was in 7th/8th grade (around 1996-1997) and I can't remember the title or the author but it's always stayed with me and I'd love to find out more about it.    The gist of the story is that someone starts a job working for a news service, receiving telegrams or teletypes or similar written communiques. Pretty soon he starts receiving telegrams from a city that doesn't show up on any map, name kinda reminds me of Xanadu or something similar. The employee reads these telegrams as they describe a kind of mist enveloping this city; and to cut a short story short, the city is ultimately destroyed and no more word is received.    Really sorry if this is vague, doesn't leave much to go on.
19180
I'm trying to track down the title/author of a novel I read some time back.  I read the novel sometime between 1998 and 2004; not sure when it was printed.  The novel itself I originally found in the YA section at my local library.  The setting of the novel is an interstellar generation ship outbound from earth, several generations into the journey.  The plot loosely runs something like this - Several students undergoing what should have been ordinary virtual reality training at school suddenly instead find themselves inside a completely unfamiliar scenario (one which resembles the stereotypical 'you all meet in a bar' RPG intro).  As time goes on, not only are the students drawn back into the 'game' simulation, but they actually begin to disappear from the ship itself - they discover that, in order for everything to go back to normal, they have to win the game.  The whole thing was revealed, in the end, to be the result of a set of embedded programs in the ship's master computer, if I recall correctly, with the programs having been placed there by a programmer who realized that the inhabitants of the ship were effectively breeding the spark of creativity and imagination out of themselves.  Said programmer had taken it on herself to leave them a legacy that would ensure that, by the time they got where they were going, that all-important spark wouldn't have died completely away.  Any suggestions?
40541
I am trying to identify a short story I once read in a science fiction anthology. It resolves around a father and his children playing a new board game. The originator of the board game is some country or alien race that was recently defeated in a war. The game is wildly popular and addictive, and everyone is playing it.  Apparently, the game is very simple to play, so no one bothers to read all the rules, including the father. You just launch into the game, where you acquire properties and businesses. The father is close to winning the game (he thinks) when his son, who has bothered to read the rules, informs him that the goal is to LOSE all of your businesses and die broke. The children are now brainwashed by the game. The defeated enemy crafted the game to destroy the economy of their conqueror, or something along those lines.
48511
I'm looking for a story I read in the late 1960s or early 70s about a future in which so much stuff is produced (by machines?) that people are obligated to work very hard to wear it all out.   The main character attends a group therapy session which consists of half a dozen analysts and himself. I think he eventually figures out that he can get robots to do his job of using up stuff.
82646
I'm sure it was a book, but it could have been a film, or even a video-game plot element. Apologize if I've mixed up any facts – I don't think I've come across this again in the last 20 years!  I read this "book" a long time ago, and a small part of the story refers to the Earth being visited by aliens, who (IIRC) told us that they were disappointed in how we had progressed as a species, and gave humanity the chance to repair their culture…  I believe, they left the Earth and came back after a time to be told that humanity had worked hard and had now declared a full and lasting world-peace and equality. However, the aliens wanted the opposite, they wanted us to be even more vicious to be used as soldiers or something along those lines.  I believe that they then promptly destroyed either the planet or the species!