I'm looking for a story I read about 40 years ago in which there is memory retaining glass... At first people place sheets of the glass in lovely places, so that it can be fitted into a window frame and give the house's owners a lovely view, with e.g. birds flying over, weather, etc.  Later in the story the uses turn a little more sinister and particles of the glass are used to spy on people - one thing I remember is a woman brushing her husband's shoulders for glass to see if he's been unfaithful! - but I think the implication (if it wasn't stated) was that once all privacy is gone, how we live changes radically. (Implications for social media and tracking technology... I'd love to read this now! Some ideas just haunt you...)   Does anyone know this story and where I can find it?
123268
Sorry I don't recall much about this at all. A friend, who had recommended many other books/authors I ended up liking, told me about a story in which a scientist develops some kind of special glass, that had some property like slowing down light by a factor of a trillion, or something else odd like that, adventure ensuing. He's since moved away, and now I'm wondering what this book might have been.
64529
A friend of mine has some very old photos where the deterioration process seems to have increased in the past few years, and the owner is worried about the preservation of these old memories.  They have been stored inside an album within plastic sleeves. The owner is not aware of the display method prior to that.   I have been informed by the owner that since being in their possession, they seem to be looking worse than when first viewed and seem to be falling apart.   He is looking for the best way to preserve these photos inside an album, but not really sure what would be the best method. I have suggested for the albums as a whole to be stored in vacuum sealed bags for now, but I'm not even sure if that is good!  I am looking for any suggestions or personal experiences from anyone who has had to deal with such photos and what they did to preserve their memories.
83833
As a child, I read a book that I can't seem to remember. All I seem to get from my memories are pictures and scenarios from my imagination while reading the book. I remember the book including Bastet, the cat goddess, a type of tunnel where they went to an underground place (I think), a boy and a girl (possibly) walking in a type of room or something, and a part where there might be an owl involved. I read the book definitely after 2010 but I am more than sure that it was written before that, possibly. In the part where they were in a type of room, I think I remember hieroglyphs floating around in the air. That is kind of all I remember from the book. Some of this information may be wrong and confusing but I think that is all I remember from the book. I really want to read it again because as I remember, it was an amazing book.
97824
A group of people are exploring a huge spaceship. They are worried about supplies until they find cubbies that duplicate anything put into them. They discover this by someone placing their hand inside one of the cubbies and it duplicates their hand. Specifically, once something is placed in the cubby, whenever it is removed it is immediately replaced. So there's now always a hand in the cubby.  Definitely True   Everything in the above paragraph Read it more than 10 years ago.   I think...   I read it approximately 15 years ago. I have no idea how old it was when I read it. The ship was discovered in a glacier, or the arctic or something, which was reflected on the cover. It may have not been a spaceship exactly. I think there may have been interdimensional/tranporting doors and they were unable to go back the way they came.   I did not finish the book and would like to now, so I will not be able to answer clarification questions about later plot points and would prefer to avoid spoilers.
53019
I read a short story as a child that revolved around the people of earth observing a distant object in space approaching.  Over time as the distant speck got closer it was observed to be a giant bird and the earth itself began to tremble and quake as if our planet was the bird's egg.  Does anyone know the name of this story?
90583
I am looking for the name of an older sci-fi short story (read about 40 years ago) about genius kids who disappear (possibly into another dimension) and their father feels they ran into trouble there and is worried when they don't return. The story ends with him preparing to attempt follow them and rescue them wherever they might have gone. I read this as part of a Sci-Fi short story collection/anthology in the late 1960's but can't seem to find this story now.
106386
A malevolent computer with AI takes over a woman's house with the intent of hybrid computer/human procreation. The evil computer seals off the house with the woman in it and keeps her prisoner while it prepares. I read the tale sometime in the late 80's or the early 90's. It was one of many of my missing books that got yardsaled by my in-laws when I wasn't looking. It may also have been made into a movie, but I didn't see the film.
43322
Media: Short story collection When I read it: 2011 but the story itself was much older (unsure how much) so this information only serves to clarify that it is by no means new. Plot summary: A futuristic home with household robots that help around the house (cooking, cleaning etc.), we learn about their routines and behaviour and later on it's revealed that nobody is home, in fact everyone is dead, and a description of the outside seems to imply post-nuclear apocalypse. Setting: I seem to remember snow or winter What it isn't: with Google I stumbled upon  by Ray Bradbury, and  is very similar, and the beginning made me think "Bingo!", but I do not remember there being a fire in the story I read, and I also remember a view from a briefly opened door, or window, of a snowy setting, so while it may be that I am confusing elements of another story, or my imagination, with There Will Come Soft Rains, I would still like to run this through here as a question, because I'm not convinced. Additional info: The short story collection had other short stories that I will include as I remember them, details will be fuzzy:   Meteor, by John Wyndham , by Charlotte Perkins Gilman A short story about a man who is driving a car and it is revealed in the end that he was dead the whole time , by Charles Dickens
67539
I'm trying to find an short story I read in a collection about ten years ago. Publication date before 1980.  Here's everything I remember:   The story is about kids who found an old book with stories about schools in the 20th century. In this future, kids study at home with a robot teacher. They don't know how to study with other kids. These kids (maybe sister and brother) run away from their teacher to read this book in a loft or cellar. They liked those stories about schools.
81566
I read this story in middle school or high school and I cannot for the life of me remember the name of it. I think it started off in a small clan of people, there was a young boy who had just come of age and he had some kind of gift that related to the books? Also I think the injecting was illegal, because I vaguely remember the boy encountering an old man who had a bunch of books that he had to keep hidden. There was also a city and he met a girl there that was Special some how. I may just be merging memories but I think at some point the boy and girl went to an underground city?  Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
26016
It may be called The Gleanors, or something.  They each have a strip of land to glean, with neighbors doing the same. the story is hard to remember, but it was totally interesting. When I think back, I can only say that they must have been an excellent writer, to be able to do so much with so little in the story.
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.
81551
Trying to find a short story. I first read it approximately five years ago. It was part of a short story collection from various authors. I can only guess at the original published date, but the paperback I read it in was in good condition and seemed fairly new. Written in English.   Story focused around a woman, who for some reason had been injected/infected with a form of nanotechnology (I think that was the term used). These nanobots initially repaired any injury or damage the woman received. However as the years pass the nanobots have repaired so much of the woman that little or no flesh or blood exists, even replacing elements of the brain. The woman is still lucid and self aware.   The consequence of the repairing is the woman is now unable to die, and immortal (I think). As the years pass by she witnesses the end of the earth and the death of the sun in a supernova.   This is as far into the story as I can remember. If an answer was to include where I can read the story again that'd be great.   I'm familiar with many of the works of classic sci-fi authors, and I believe if I'd heard of the author before I would have remembered their name, and therefore found the story myself.
22366
In the 1960s I read book--an older children's book, I think--which I loved, and still remember, roughly.  I have no idea what the title is or who the author is, and I'm wondering if anyone knows this one:  Scientists had invented a device which they didn't fully understand, and which had puzzling effects.  For example, when a pencil was put into the machine, it disappeared, and then reappeared inside out: The lead was on the outside.  When people went into the machine, they came back dead, having died from fright.  Finally they sent a very open-minded person into the machine.  She was an artist, I think.  She was able to return alive, and described an alternate universe in which geometry was very different.  I distinctly remember that there were supposedly square triangles or four-sided triangles--or was it three-sided squares?  (This is, of course, a literally contradictory claim, but I didn't see the matter as clearly then.)  Thanks!
45378
It might be a short story or it might be a novel. It must be before 1972 because I read it in my youth and I am OLD.  The following is very impressionistic.  There is a multidimensional/not of this Earth/alien artifact-like tunnel.   Picture a long, perhaps transparent, storm drain like structure sitting in a field but with an opening on only one end.  It is the subject of a lengthy investigation/exploration that has cost many lives. An instrumented investigator enters the "tunnel" and makes the exact movements that his predecessors have made, advancing until he must do something original at which point he survives and a new "move" is added to the list of correct moves or he is destroyed and a "move" is added to the list of things to be avoided at that point.  I remember absolutely nothing else about the work except that (I hope central) feature.
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.
83993
I'm trying to recall a story I read in the 1960s or 1970s, but which I suspect was older than that.  It was about a quasi-immortal family in the twentieth century who lived in a rural area and kept a low profile. It was a stand-alone story and only the family, and perhaps distant relatives, had unusual powers. I don't think they were aliens, just some offshoot of humanity.   They were of varying ages, ranging from relatively young to thousands of years old. They had lived in Europe before immigrating to the American colonies. Each person had a distinctive set of psi powers, ranging from the grandpa, pa, ma and son. I believe the youngest, just called Baby, was the most powerful and least human looking, and lived in the attic. He slept most of the time.  Nothing remains in my memory of the plot.  As I recall, the story had a Theodore Sturgeon feeling to it, with a humorous, ironic touch, but it probably wasn't his. I haven't been able to identify it from looking at a list of his works.  I probably read it in an anthology, but I might have seen it in an old magazine. I'm just not sure.  If anyone can help me identify it, I'd be grateful. Then I can scratch that mental itch.