I remember what I believe is a short story, possibly by Isaac Asimov, where in a not-so-strange human (?) civilization bureaucracy suddenly goes over efficient at performing its duties. This results in a Kafkaesque nightmarish life for all citizens who face constant harassment, something which is not too far from what many of us experience in modern all-connected world.   E.g., they suddenly receive unwanted benefits which get removed in the following day (early in story) or hour (later), if I remember correctly. It seems to me the pace of that all was going exponentially, but the end was rather an anti-climactic one, where everything returns to the "normal" state of things of not being able to get things done from administrations.  I believe this was in the style of Asimov's short stories, it could be Ray Bradbury or even French writer Marcel Aymé though. I've read it in the 90s, but I'd say it was written long before that, in the 1920s-60s range.
122974
I read a sci-fi novel or novella about a man that worked for a government department whose job it was to slow things down so the people didn't get run over by the government. Any ideas of the title? I think there was a lot of subterfuge between the agents. It's on the edge of my memory.
28106
Many years ago I remember reading a short story about an advanced civilization at war that rediscovers how to do math mentally. The reason I remember it is the guy tells it to government officials who are delighted because it means they can put people inside bombs or missiles instead of computers, which were thought to be more valuable.  I believe this is one of those stories I read in a science fiction anthology my father brought home on one of his business trips in the sixties or seventies.
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.
30486
I was reading  and it made me suddenly remember another story I read in a book somewhere in the 90s to the early 2000s. Rather than being about a sighted man showing up in a community of the blind, this involved a hearing man (for some reason, I want to say he was either a reporter or an encyclopaedia salesman) showing up in a community for the deaf. They were socially isolated, the result of the government or society trying to eliminate hereditary deafness. I don't remember if the theme was of eugenics or simply that deaf people were kept from meaningfully interacting with society. While there, the protagonist notices that the children (all of whom are deaf) spend time standing in fields, holding hands, and swaying to music he can't hear. He comes to realize that, by being completely isolated from sound, the community hears something more fundamental to the universe, and the story ends with the community using this to move to another world, possibly a higher plane of existence.  One of the odd details that I remember was a member of the community communicating that when they started out, they were preyed upon by men who assumed they would be easy targets due to their deafness, and that they had both trained to defend themselves and also kept a number of guard dogs on the premises.
111163
This is a fairly long SF story, probably a novella. I read it in the 80's in Spanish in a multi-author collection book. It's probably much older, maybe from the sixties. I remember lots of details about the story but I can't remember the author or the title.   The title might have been "A Midnight Summer Dream", "A Long Summer's Lost Love" or something like that. I'm positive that the title included the word "Summer". Maybe I'm way off with the title and that's why I can't find any information about it.  The protagonist is a contemporary lone inventor creating a new type of radiotelescope that by his calculations should be revolutionary, but can only catch local stations. He climbs into it to see if he can find a defect, slips and falls in. The world fades around him and he finds himself to a cave in the distant future.  His mind has been projected ages into the future, and has been captured by a machine that serves as an oracle of sorts for a primitive species of human. The machine is a terminal for another larger computer that hosts an advanced mind that has gone a bit crazy, called the "Quint" or something similar. Now the machine hosts both and they compete for control.  Throughout the story we learn that the world has evolved and birds have taken control as the primordial sentient species.  The protagonist learns how to let his mind escape out of the machine into the mind of humans and to control them. He uses this to escape the terminal and physically travel in a long journey to the main computer to defeat the "Quint".  Eventually he gets there and mentally battles the "Quint" and finds the way to win and takes over the main computer. He intends to use it to help humans rebuild civilization.  He finally learns over millennia that the Quint was the fifth cycle of sanity/insanity for the other mind. The other mind's purpose was to maintain civilization but eventually would lose its sanity and let civilization decay for long periods. Any mind in his situation will go through those cycles as well, including the protagonist's. But now that there are two minds in the computer, they alternate - with the "sane" mind taking over and keeping the "crazy" one in check while it recovers. The combined. entity is able to protect civilization continuously bringing a continuous age of prosperity.
102172
This is a short story that I read several (5?) years ago. I don't believe it was new, but I don't remember how old it was, either. If I had to guess based on style, I would say that it was probably written sometime in the 80s or 90s.  The protagonist comes across an old coin that isn't from anywhere -- at least, not from anywhere that he or coin dealers or historians can identify. Somehow, he gets the idea that the coin is from another, parallel reality, and he decides that it would "want" to go home, if it could. He starts to travel, and whenever he comes to a decision about where to go next, he lets a coin toss (using that coin) decide the issue. The transition from one reality to another is gradual, not sudden like going through a portal, more like elements of reality being gradually replaced as he goes from one place to another.  Eventually, he does get to the place where the coin originated, at which point the plot (if I'm recalling correctly) devolves into a rescue-the-princess-from-the-clutches-of-the-evil-king/sorcerer/vizier scenario.  The parallel universe that the coin came from is full of deserts and has an "Arabian Nights" flavor. I think the protagonist meets a djinn/genie in the desert when he first gets to the right universe, but that could be something I'm mixing in from a different tale.  I'm drawing blanks on more specific details, but hopefully someone will recognize it from the above.
50970
I read this book between 1980-82 but it could have been written earlier.  It's about a girl who is dissatisfied with her life, as her parents have her on a diet and she wants to be able to eat what she wants. Someone offers her a solution: to come live in this large building where she can eat all the chocolate eclairs and other junkfood she wants, while a robot doppelganger android version of herself will take her place at home and at school.  The girl agrees, but finds that after week of eating mainly eclairs, she is sick and wants to eat a decent meal. But she is not allowed to eat anything else and has found herself to be a prisoner, so she sets out to get rid of the android and get her life back.   I don't recall the ending but it seemed the 'people' behind it all might have been aliens and the building might have been a kind of ship that then disappears.
71912
I don't remember when I read this. At least 20 years ago but maybe more. Nor the length. Probably not a very short short story but whether a novelette or a full length novel I have no idea.  It was at the same time SF and fantasy, because the only thing I remember is that one of the characters, while in a spacesuit in the vacuum (SF!) was able use his "phantom-hand" (Fantasy!).  I think that at some point he had lost an arm and developed this strange telekinetic power which he interpreted as a "ghost arm". Later he was grafted an artificial arm, but retained his telekinetic power as a "third" arm that could penetrate matter and for instance wipe his sweat from his brow while in his space suit. I don't remember anything more, alas.
20945
I lost my sci-if book collection in a flood, and I'm trying to trace down one short story from an anthology.  I remember it starting with a boy who can slip through time. He is being mentored by his future self which he doesn't recognize. Later the story plays out in the future where he's leading a group of rebels.
107543
The only thing I remember about the story (or possibly novel) was that the main character (and possibly some of his colleagues) could temporarily speed up.  I think it took a toll on them, and they needed a period of recovery afterwards.  It was probably a story by a very good writer.   I understand the need to give you more to work with.  I just remembered this a few minutes ago when I read this question on English Language and Usage   Possibly I will remember more after my subconscious works on it.  It was almost certainly a man.  The story is probably from 15 to 25 years ago, maybe more.  Most of the SF I read was from Analog; some was from Galaxy and F&amp;SF.  In other words, it definitely was not from a comic book or a TV series.  The character was a good guy.  I think something had altered him so he could flip into the hyperspeed state at will.
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.
80438
This story is about a man that is able to live every day of the week, while everybody else has a single day of wakefulness assigned to them. Due to overpopulation, each human spends 6 out of 7 days of the week in stasis, and has jobs assigned to them in daily shifts. 1/7 of the population works on Monday. 1/7 works on Tuesday, &amp; so on. The main character has found away to circumvent the process and illegally live out his days consecutively by skipping the stasis program that is imposed on the general population and by working a different job everyday. Can somebody name this scifi story?
37887
It'd be great if anyone could remember the source of this short story I only dimly remember, but recall finding quite haunting back in my youth.  I read it maybe 20 years ago in a paperback that probably dated from the '80s.  It begins with the protagonist (a young man) being being woken by a deafening noise coming through his cochlear implant.  He's on a spaceship, and has volunteered to be put in a capsule and fired off to a remote part of the solar system.  Once in place in their capsule, the volunteers are visited by what is (presumably) a highly intelligent alien life-form, and gifted with some artefact containing priceless knowledge, like, for example, the cure for cancer.  The (unexplained) encounter leaves the them completely and irrevocably insane, perhaps terrified out of the minds.  Yet despite this, volunteers still clamour to be chosen for the mission.
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.
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.
106490
I am looking for the name of a  short story, maybe from the early 1950's. I tried most famous authors without success.  Plot: all humans are extinct after a great war (decades ago). Fighting robots are rusting, wearing out, running down, etc. They try to build new robots, but fail: their giant metal claws cannot assemble the tiny parts of a new "brain". One robot tries to touch a butterfly, but crushes it. One by one they all "die".
63542
This was a 'young-adult' SF novel I read in the late 1970's, about the same time I was reading Voorloper by Andre Norton, Madeleine L'engle's Wrinkle In Time books and the Dragonfall 5 young adult novels. so I am not sure if it is actually one of the Dragonfall 5 stories, but I can't confirm it is or isn't by reading available synposes online.   As I recall, the story went something like this...    * SOME SPOILERS BELOW *  A young person and sibling - I think female protag and younger brother, but not sure - is scheduled to visit their aunt and uncle on another planet but to make the voyage in a timely fashion, must utilize this new consciousness transference technology to transmit their consciousness across the cosmos to a host replica body at the destination. After arriving at the destination the protagonist is impressed by their new body and is aware of the only way to tell they are in a replicant body is a small seam, scar or patch on their back, I think near the top of their spine, just below the collar of whatever clothing they wore.  The mystery begins when the protagonist realizes their hosts also sport the same scar when they should legitimately be in their real bodies.  The plot thickens when the protag or sibling finds a room of people in stasis when their replicant counterparts are roaming the same planet, and is subsequently caught in the act.  Sadly, I do not remember anything else, including the reasoning behind the deception.  I was quite young when I read this novel, so I probably got some of the details mixed up, but would love to know the name and author of the novel if anyone remembers.