Since there are a lot of science fiction fans here, I'm hoping that one of them may be able to tell me the author and title of a short story I read years ago in an anthology. FWIW, it was the last story in that book, introduced by the editor's comment that the author enjoys playing around with story structure.
My guess is that it's from around 1970, from an American writer. (Jack Vance's name came to mind, but I couldn't find anything that looked like it among his story titles.)
It's in three sections. The first begins with the line "this is the end of the story".
(Or something similar; Googling those words didn't help me). It's a brief section in which we see our hero save his girl and get rewarded with an executive job by her grateful and wealthy father.
The next one, by far the longest, begins, "this is the middle of the story" and begins with our protagonist in a fortune-telling booth at a carnival or some such. The individual in the booth brings us up to date on who the guy is and his situation; he explains to our man that he has a psychic connection to someone from the future that may be able to help him deal with the problem. Our man does so over the rest of the section, getting us (of course) to the point where the final section begins.
Then we get the twist: the beginning of the story. In that future time period, the man our hero was channeling is preparing to go back in time to retrieve his runaway robot. He programs his own arrival to the proper time and place -- and he finds himself in a fortune-telling booth, where the robot somehow wipes his identity and provides him with the name and background that began the middle part.
Anybody here recognize it?
Thanks, Eric
No it doesn't sound familiar...
But I darn sure want to read it. Sounds like an interesting premise I like story formats that play with time and structure. When and if you find out what the name of it and who the author is let me know.
Upon my liar's chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
Same here
I'd love to read it as well. Now that you've wet our appetite be sure to share the tittle when(hopeful thinking) you find out.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
Non TG story search
I don't completely recall it myself, but remember long ago reading something similar if not the same story.
I believe it was in one of 'Astounding' Science Fictions monthly collections. The bit that seems familiar is the fortune tellers booth and the broken into parts. Wherever I read it, there was only one part. I also vaguely think it might have been in one of the multi-author collections bannered under Asaic Asimov's name by ?????.
Sorry, I just can't quite place it. I'll give it more thought and look through some of my old books (if they don't turn to dust when I try) to see if I can find a reference to it.
Renae
A guess
Like the confused boyfriend said when he tried to steal third base, it feels like Dick. Philip K. Dick liked to explore questions of identity in his stories.
Looking For a (Non-TG) SF Story
Have you thought about perusing the shelves of a used book store such as The Book Rack Bookstore or http://thebookrack.com/pages/StoreLocations.aspx the public library?
May Your Light Forever Shine
Hard to Do That, Stan...
Thanks for the suggestion, but it seems a bit overwhelming, with nothing more to go on than my recollection that it was in a multi-author compilation with story introductions by the editor, and that it was the final story in the book -- unless I'm confusing the latter point with another anthology (that I have here) that ends with a Jack Vance story ("The New Prime").
I was hoping to at least get a clue as to where to start.
I'm really not THAT obsessed with this. An ongoing serial on this site brought it to mind and without a title or author, I was reduced to asking the author here "did you ever read a story where...?" The answer was no, but now I'd like to re-read it myself.
Eric
Might be
Might be "Happy Ending" by Henry Kuttner.
Probably
I searched for it, but based on your comment I found this:
http://mynethome.net/tag/henry-kuttner/
That's It!
Thanks very much. As you suggested, not exactly the way I remembered it (no girl at all, for one thing) -- and so many clues about the key fact that it almost screams out at you on a second reading -- but I had the basics of the story structure right.
For those interested, here's an online copy of it, albeit on an Asian site with a whole lot of distracting ads (not popups, but they interrupt the print): http://www.docin.com/p-436656615.html . It's supposed to be available elsewhere as a free PDF, but I couldn't get it to work.
It's from 1948! Thinking it over this morning, I realized the background was more like the 1950s than 1960s, but that's even earlier than I'd have guessed.
The Wikipedia entry for the story describes it as "frequently anthologized" but doesn't say where. Given the age of the tale it was probably in one of the handful of collections that came from mainstream publishers in the mid-to-late 1950s, that I would have taken out of the library as a teenager. (If so, I read it 45 to 50 years ago: makes me feel better about getting so many details wrong.)
Much appreciated, Annachie.
Eric
Might be ...
Aparently he has another story that uses similar plot points, or at least that same end first and time travel, but I didn't find it.
Hooray!
A quest. Now I'm gonna go try and find it in print. There is something about old books that just gets me gooey inside.
Upon my liar's chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair