I'm looking for a story I read a long time ago (and in translation, back when I didn't speak English).

It was about a little town where people start disappearing after handling fake objects (a milk carton which looks like the real thing but the label is misspelled, etc.). Children disappear too but come back without remembering anything that happened to them. The implied explanation being of course fly-fishing.

For the life of me can't find the title or the story. Help?

I'd say this ISN'T Bradbury. It sounds more like a Henry Kutter type of thing.

Does sound rather Kuttnerish.

quote:

Originally posted by philnic:
I'd say this ISN'T Bradbury. It sounds more like a Henry Kutter type of thing.

Or Kuttner, even!

quote:

Originally posted by dandelion:
Does sound rather Kuttnerish.

Kuttnerish is a good word.

quote:

Originally posted by Doug Spaulding:

quote:

Originally posted by philnic:
I'd say this ISN'T Bradbury. It sounds more like a Henry Kutter type of thing.

Or Kuttner, even!

You say potayto and I say potahto...

Thanks guys! I'll look amongst those.

Weird though - I could have sworn that the only collection of sci-fi short stories I was able to lay my hand on in comi-censored USSR was Bradbury (of the home-retype variety, ever seen those? people were retyping whole books on typewriters and passing them around)

quote:

Originally posted by litzo:
Thanks guys! I'll look amongst those.

Weird though - I could have sworn that the only collection of sci-fi short stories I was able to lay my hand on in comi-censored USSR was Bradbury (of the home-retype variety, ever seen those? people were retyping whole books on typewriters and passing them around)

Sadly,I recall those times in the early seventies when verboten, purple-inked Roneo'd copies from the Soviet regime used to land on my desk here in central London. MI6 were heavily on our backs. Tales of gulags and repression were not to be countered and I still have a copy somewhere in my desk. Ray Bradbury hit it spot-on. The brave authors of those pleas for help most probably "disappeared". Ray Bradbury had a point...

quote:

Originally posted by robertp:
MI6 were heavily on our backs.

Never heard of them; are they a level above MI5?

MI5 (aka the Security Service, and most likely akin to your Homeland Security/FBI) is an intelligence agency dedicated to protecting the UK against national threats.

MI6 - possibly equivalent to the CIA - is our Secret Intelligence Service, whose remit is to gather intelligence OUTSIDE the UK in defence of our country against terrorist or foreign attacks.

"The name's Bond...James Bond"

NB We spell defence with a 'c' and not an 's'. Like it or lump it!

Of course, now that robertp has revealed this information he will have to eat this message board and self-destruct.

quote:

Originally posted by philnic:
Of course, now that robertp has revealed this information he will have to eat this message board and self-destruct.

LOL!

quote:

Originally posted by philnic:
Of course, now that robertp has revealed this information he will have to eat this message board and self-destruct.

S-P-A-M

Now you can destruct me yourself!

quote:

Originally posted by robertp:

quote:

Originally posted by philnic:
Of course, now that robertp has revealed this information he will have to eat this message board and self-destruct.

S-P-A-M

Now you can destruct me yourself!

Oooooh, you said a four-letter word!

quote:

Originally posted by robertp:
S-P-A-M

Now you can destruct me yourself!

No, that just sounds like a reasonable expression of a bizarre opinion. Now, if you were to turn it into a link to an New Zealand upholstery supplies company, I would wield my deputy sheriff's scalpel* in a trice!

*Mixed metaphor.