I will wager that anyone who has enjoyed reading from an early age can recall snippets of stories read long ago and mostly forgotten, but fondly remembered for all their incompleteness. This page is dedicated to such stories, starting with the ones I can partly recall but open to all with a similar experience. What I propose to do is post what I can remember of each story with a logical heading in the hope it will strike a chord in someone's memory and that then someone will send me the title or author or enough information to find the original. Readers can send contributions so that they too have a chance of recovering lost stories.
Good Luck to us all in our quest. The stories so far:
The Stone Ring
Lightship
Tesseract House
Toy Indian In A Canoe
This was a story of a scientist who found a "magic" ring that
could turn living flesh to stone and vice versa. Naturally enough, the scientist
works for a museum just loaded with statues of Greek gods, animals and such.
Also naturally enough, once he discovers the powers of the ring he starts
turning selected statues to living flesh. Unfortunately, he finds some quirky
personalities coming to life and this causes complications. Statues are
brought to life, people are turned to statues, it gets real complicated.
Sadly, I never got to finish this story, as it was a book my father had
once when I was visiting him. I never saw it again and I don't know the
title or author. I read it about 40 years ago, so this is not too surprising.
FOUND 2-12-02By David Fenger, a visitor to this site.
The book is "Night Life of the Gods", by Thorne Smith.
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This is a tale of an extraordinary inventor. I say this because in the
space of a single novel he invents: a method of converting random kinetic
energy in an object to linear motion and a projector which achieves the
same effect at a distance; a way to condense photons into solid matter which
can be either a perfect reflector or totally transparent and virtually indestructible
either way; a method of converting matter to antimatter and then using it
to produce limitless energy; a mechanism for storing vast quantities of
energy and coincidentally controlling the local curvature of space through
energy density; a way to use the controlled curvature of space to achieve
faster than light travel; and maybe a few trivial miracles I've forgotten.
I think you see my point. Obviously this man achieves great wealth and influence,
which he then uses to construct a nearly indestructible faster than light
ship using his reactionless drive, which he and his buddies then use to
go exploring the Andromeda Galaxy. Needless to say, they discover alien
life and have lots of adventures along the way.
This story and the sequel (yes, sequel) I read in their entirety, but
again, about 40 years ago. And again, I cannot remember the titles or author.
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Imagine a house with more room inside than out. Can you say space
efficient? This was the dream of a brilliant Mathematician/Architect
who found a way to construct a house as a four dimensional cube. Very handy,
indeed, at least until the inherent instability of such a construct became
apparent to him while doing a final inspection of the structure before turning
it over to the new owner. At first he thought it was an earthquake, then
he noticed that doors didn't lead to where they should. He couldn't find
his way back out, despite having designed and supervised construction of
the place. Then he discovered that the window of each room was apparently
located somewhere quite different than would be expected. One had a view
down the side of a skyscraper, others looked over vistas of endless dunes or
starry space. The only viable way out was into desert, and he just hoped
that he could get back to civilization before he died of thirst.
This was from a collection of short stories, 30 years ago, no names stayed
with me to date.
FOUND 4/9/1998 By Lois Stephens, an old friend
of mine. The book is "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag", by Robert Heinlein, and
the story is "And He Built a Crooked House".
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These are the first to come to mind, others may follow as memory serves
or as reader contributions arrive.
This is from a reader of the site. She says she thinks this story is from the 1950's or 60's, and may have been written by Graham Greene.
A small boy was playing in the street with his toy Indian in a canoe, the rain came and he sailed it along the gutter. The rain got worse and the canoe went faster and faster and finally ended up down the drain. The boy could not save it. The canoe and Indian sailed on along the drains and sewers and finally went to sea, he ended up in his home land.
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