Ray Bradbury Forums
Help me identify a story?
12 June 2011, 03:04 PM
WundergeckoHelp me identify a story?
Hi guys. I'm trying to find the name of a Ray Bradbury short story I read when I was a kid. I've been doing some web searching tonight but to no avail. In this story as I remember it, someone goes to another planet and sees a variety of life-forms laid out in a field, apparently dead or in suspended animation. He notices a machine of some kind going around collecting things and he's all like, "Oh no, it's going to get me too! I'm going down!" But somehow there's a happy ending and it leaves him alone or whatever it does isn't as bad as what he thinks it will do.
Any thoughts??
13 June 2011, 12:41 AM
dandelionUh, if it ends up not all that bad, probably not RB. The closest would be "The Scythe" and that's hardly happy.
13 June 2011, 04:26 AM
WundergeckoThanks for your response. I looked up The Scythe - not it. Sounds like an amazing story, though. The one I'm thinking of may well have been by someone else. It was in a school textbook. I remember us also reading another short story around the same time, about a society in which no one feels the need to go outside anymore and a guy gets questioned by the cops for taking a walk. Maybe that one was by RB and I attributed the other one to him as well.
13 June 2011, 12:43 PM
philnicHi Wundergecko. That story about the guy who gets questioned for taking a walk most definitely IS Bradbury's story "The Pedestrian". The first story you asked about DOESN'T sound like a Bradbury.
It's quite common on this forum for people to have remembered a story as Bradbury which actually turns out to be by Vonnegut, Asimov or Heinlein!
13 June 2011, 01:30 PM
WundergeckoThanks Phil! I was reading all kinds of sci-fi / fantasy at that time, in and out of school, and I obviously couldn't keep the various authors straight in my memory. I will continue the search for the other story elsewhere...can't be that obscure if it made into a textbook.
13 June 2011, 10:00 PM
dandelionTrouble is, "The Pedestrian" has made it into so many textbooks that doesn't narrow the search much.
14 June 2011, 02:10 PM
WundergeckoWell, that's a good point. Hopefully I'll track it down someday, though. I can SEE my imagination's rendering of it very clearly, but of course can't remember any Google-able phrases (or an author)!
Upside: this has inspired me to read more RB. What a dude.
15 June 2011, 08:11 PM
dandelionAt least it did some good.
Regulars, notice how once every five or ten times one of these stories is actually by Bradbury? And how, when it is Ray's I usually know it and when it isn't I usually don't?
16 June 2011, 01:45 PM
WundergeckoIt did do some good in that sense, definitely.
It'd be great if there were some kind of sci-fi / fantasy identification service. I've got all kinds of other stories lodged in my head that I think I have less chance of finding than this one. When I was a little girl my dad gave me a stack of sci-fi collections from the 50s and 60s that had some awesome stories in them, but of course, I only remember the dust jackets (vaguely), not the authors.
16 June 2011, 02:28 PM
philnicBack in the 1990s, I was the Information Officer of the British Science Fiction Association. One of the things I did in that role was try to answer questions exactly like this. Where I couldn't come up with an answer myself, I would circulate the questions to a team of expert volunteers. All this was before the WWW, but we had quite a good success rate.
Nowadays, posting on a forum like this is as good a way of seeking info as anything. At least here we're quite a friendly bunch!
16 June 2011, 07:08 PM
dandelionThere used to be several wonderful newsgroups on Usenet I recommended before it degenerated into a spam dumping ground.
The only place I can highly recommend is here:
http://forums.abebooks.com/abecom/start/1. Sign up
2. Make sure you are in the Booksleuth Forum
3. Post in the Science Fiction section of the Booksleuth Forum
4. Make sure you use a SPECIFIC title such as "blue androids attack earth," not just "looking for an SF story."
Good luck!
17 June 2011, 12:39 AM
philnic"Blue Androids Attack Earth" is one of my favourites. I especially like the bit where (spoiler alert!) the blue androids attack the Earth. Now, If I could only remember who wrote that story...
17 June 2011, 10:04 PM
dandelionquote:
Originally posted by philnic:
"Blue Androids Attack Earth" is one of my favourites. I especially like the bit where (spoiler alert!) the blue androids attack the Earth. Now, If I could only remember who wrote that story...
100% NOT Ray Bradbury! That's all the hint you're getting.
19 June 2011, 02:39 PM
Wundergeckoquote:
Originally posted by philnic:
Back in the 1990s, I was the Information Officer of the British Science Fiction Association. One of the things I did in that role was try to answer questions exactly like this. Where I couldn't come up with an answer myself, I would circulate the questions to a team of expert volunteers. All this was before the WWW, but we had quite a good success rate.
Nowadays, posting on a forum like this is as good a way of seeking info as anything. At least here we're quite a friendly bunch!
Sounds like a good system you had going on there. And you are a friendly bunch, which is appreciated!
19 June 2011, 02:40 PM
Wundergeckoquote:
Originally posted by dandelion:
There used to be several wonderful newsgroups on Usenet I recommended before it degenerated into a spam dumping ground.
The only place I can highly recommend is here:
http://forums.abebooks.com/abecom/start/1. Sign up
2. Make sure you are in the Booksleuth Forum
3. Post in the Science Fiction section of the Booksleuth Forum
4. Make sure you use a SPECIFIC title such as "blue androids attack earth," not just "looking for an SF story."
Good luck!
Thanks! I'll give it a try.