starting a collection

Sci-fi short stories are so efficient; they take 15 minutes to read and then you think about them for the next 5 years

Hey guys, what if *puts the most horrifying mindblowing concept into your head with about 15 pages*

I tagged this with:

To which @taxchurchesfundhealthcare countertagged:

I had completely forgotten -- or possibly repressed -- "Inconstant Moon" until you mentioned it and I looked up the Wikipedia entry. Hoo, boy, yes, that one hit hard and stuck with me for years.

The main reason I turned this into a reblog, though, is that I discovered that it got adapted into an episode of The Outer Limits (1995) -- I need to hunt it down!

Not to "well actually", but the Niven story I was referencing was "For a Foggy Night"; "All the Myriad Ways" is a far more distressing take on the infinite worlds premise. I always get the two mixed up myself, in part because the short story collection where I first read them took its title from the latter tale.

I'm having little luck finding Larry Niven short story collections right now -- there's a copy of N-Space in the library in the next town over, but Amazon's Kindle section only seems to have Niven's novels. I may have to go to my storage unit to see if I still have my 50-year-old paperback copy of All the Myriad Ways.

Sizes and Shapes

“You’d think they’d have a walkway here,” Mur grumbled as we kept to the edge of the giant-sized road.

“I guess they haven’t gotten to that part yet,” I said. “The spaceport seems new.” Under the warm sunlight, the smells of construction materials were strong. Asphalt, fiberglass resin, and alien materials I couldn’t name.

“The normal sized area is new, at least,” Mur agreed.

I smiled. “Don’t let the locals hear you call it that.”

“Oh, like they can hear us down here.”

“Good point.”

We were keeping to the edge of the road, despite the light amount of traffic, because any one of the locals here could squish us without noticing. Probably they wouldn’t notice. Maybe they’d grimace at the squish, and only then wonder if the thing under their foot had been sentient.

I reminded myself that the Sizers were in fact very good about watching where they stepped, and I tried not to worry about it. Each time one rumbled past on giant elephant feet, the ground vibrated. At least they were amusing to look at. It’s hard to be scared of people who look like pink elephants with two trunks, and who call themselves “Those Who Are The Correct Size.”

I wonder if there would be laws against discrimination according to daemon in the HDM/Golden Compass world, by the modern era

“Her daemon’s a snake. Pass”

“Why”

“All snakes are liars”

“Suzanne, this is the biggest, yellowest snake I’ve ever seen. Suzanne, there is no way this giant banana has a deceptive bone in his body. Suzanne. Suzanne he has a hat”

“We can’t hire someone with a badger daemon”

“It was cute!”

“Badgers eat baby rabbits.”

“For FUCKS SAKE Suzanne”

“Yeah, but, an orca???”

“I know, we don’t have the facilities for a water tank. It’s just not feasible.”

“No, I mean orcas are really problematic”

“Suzanne we will get sued.”

I'm dying to know what daemon herself Suzanne has. (What animal has the most bigoted Karen vibes? Purse Chihuahua? One of those angora guinea pigs that look like a mobile wig?)

I can clearly remember the moment I first realised my mother and I were living on completely different planes of existence. I was 7 years old and I came home from my school's first track and field day having placed second or third in every event. the teachers had been making jokes all afternoon about how many times they had to call my name. my friends thought I was cool as shit. my enemies thought I was cool as shit too, come to think of it. I was proud as hell. so I get home with the entire front of my shirt covered in ribbons like I was a military dictator who'd awarded himself every medal, I walk into the kitchen and tell my mum all about my day, and she goes "oh, that must be disappointing not getting any firsts." and I'm like no?? first of all the first place ribbons are red and I don't like red. second of all look at me. there's literally nowhere left on my body for accolades. I am fucking Jacked of All Trades. how could this possibly be a disappointment.

Finally broke down and looked up "67" on wikipedia today, and i love that wikipedia had to include the fact that people are using the meme as evidence of "brain rot" in younger generations because of how low-effort it is. And like, i have no horse in this race, i'm clearly out of touch enough with what the kids are saying that i have to go look up memes on the internet to understand them, but brain rot? I'm pretty sure kids have been saying random numbers as memes since... like, the beginning of language. the beginning of numbers. I'm guessing that some time around 15,000 years ago in hunter-gatherer tribes all around the world a scene played out where one kid shouted "hey look, four rocks!" after seeing a few rocks on the ground, and every other kid in the tribe shouted "four rocks! four rocks!" and the adults just stood around like "what the fuck are the kids on about now?" and then had to live with the kids saying "four rocks!" every time they saw four of literally any object together. Like, this does not seem like a new phenomenon.

You make a compelling point. Especially because "four rocks" IS hella fun to say. Thanks for the new way to confuse my friends when hiking!

four rocks!!!

four rocks!!!

The high geologist strikes again.

@shirecorn

do you ever think about how if you dive into the ocean and go deeper and deeper you will pass through layers of darker and darker blue until everything is black and cold and the pressure will be so intense that it will kill you without protection but if you keep going you will find little glowing specks of light, and if you go up into the sky and go higher and higher you will pass through layers of darker and darker blue until everything is black and cold and the pressure will be so intense that it will kill you without protection but if you keep going you will find little glowing specks of light

sometimes a post makes you get out of bed at 230am to spend a quick hour on something like this

[Image description: A color image in portrait orientation. The background transitions smoothly from a starfield on black at the top, through dark blue, medium blue, lighter blue, then back to medium, dark, and another starfield at the bottom. In the very center is a black silhouette of a human figure, appearing to float on its back as on the surface of water. Above it in the blue "sky" area are a curved, thin white line like the contrail of a jet aircraft, and two small black silhouettes of seabirds. Below in the deep dark blue, just before the starfield, are some silhouettes of fish. /end description]

A big reason why I think I became a marxist is bc I read A LOT of Calvin & Hobbes and Bill Watterson really went out of his way to lay the groundwork for teaching people critical analysis. Like take this panel for example:

EVERYTHING one knows about American/Western culture, especially in the late 80's/early 90's, would lead to the logical next line being some form of "Kids These Days Are Succumbing To The Evils Of Satan" or some likewise cheap Reaction™ But then Bill pulls the rug out

He criticizes the "satanic" bands not for some lack of christian morals but because theyre a byproduct of hyperconsumptionist culture. Bill takes no issue with the subject matter bc his issue is knowing its only being done to sell rebellion as a consumer product rather than to say anything truly provocative or inspired.

>see bird creeping up and down a tree trunk >look it up >common treecreeper

can't make this shit up

did you know that not all salmon die after fucking. it's only like 90%. imagine going home to the ocean after that

"being a human is so boring why can't I be one of the COOL animals" okay hey. I hear you. but I actually really super love being an omnivorous persistence hunting primate with a stomach capable of dissolving many literal poisons and the ability to smell geosmin (released in the soil after it rains) at five parts per trillion. I super enjoy being a bipedal terrifyingly agile mammal with some of the most efficient sweat glands in the animal kingdom. I find a lot of joy in being an endotherm with mimicry abilities that rival most other animals with vocal chords. it's sick as hell I'm having a lot of fun

I want a humans are weird fic where aliens realize humans will try to romance/sleep with anything. I want colossal aliens getting blushy by a human whispering sweet nothings in there ear. Eldritch level horror of aliens that most of the galactic can't stand to look at be blatantly flirted by a human. I need thissss

Interaction witnessed at post office today:

Elderly lady mail clerk and young customer are chatting. Customer says, "oh! I'm wearing my boss's coat right now, give me something weird to put in the pocket!" Others within earshot all start looking for something because, hey, important quest. Mail clerk finally reaches under counter, pulls out a large roll of labels, and tears one off.

Twas this