First off I want you to know I hate you...
This is much worse than mentioning a song that you can't get out of your head.
This is as bad as a mentioning or playing a snippet of a incredible song I heard once on a AM radio station that faded out mid way through the song and I have never heard the song or any part of it since or even been able to get a hint of a name or other detail to search with.
Come to think of it, but it might have been your fault the last time I spent quite a few hours searching for that science fiction collection.
I have not thought of this story and several other short stories I think were grouped with it in the anthology for several years, now you have brought the memories back and I'll have to start hunting for it all over again.
I'm pretty sure I read them in a hard back version of the anthology back in the early 90's or possibly the very late 80's. I can even tell you which library the book was at at the time and I know for a certainty that it isn't there now because someone checked it out and never returned it.
I am very sorry that I don't remember the name of the anthology.
The two short stories I think I remember best along with the one you describe are very roughly(it has been over 25 years.) listed below.
FIRST
Was a story about a movie house filiming a series of "Flash Gordon" style shows in which two famous actors were playing rival parts. One was the villian and the other was the good guy and both were very competitive. One of the actors that was slightly less well billed convinced the prop department to give him a ray gun that had an actual "flash" even before post editing. This led to a "arms race" between the two for the bigger "FLASH" until finally one actor and the prop department went all out and built a "real" looking disintagrating ray gun that was wheeled around in a modified little red wagon and had a hidden power cord going to one of the studio's plugs usually used for 1000 watt spot lights.
The only thing that saved the Hero and the film crew was the standard villian monolog and demonstratiion of what his "death ray" would do before he actually attempted to use it on the Hero.
They released smoke because this raygun had a built in spotlight, the villian gave his speech and used the knife switch to "fire" the raygun.
The resulting flash had everyone seeing spots for several minutes so it was a several seconds before anyone notice the "Light Beam" had removed a 8 foot diameter section of the painted wood and cardboard scenery along with an equal amount of the brick wall behind it followed by parts of both "stars" cars length wise followed a few hundred feet later by the bottom 8 feet of several dozen trees before drilling quite a ways into the rook of a hill.
The show folded a few days later when the military paid for the damage and dissapeared the studio's entire prop department and the Actor playing the villian.
SECOND
Was a story about a group of science fiction writers and physic professors approached by the military during world war two. They were worried about HItler's talk of super weapons and wanted to distract the Nazi's researchers with stolen fictional super weapons that looked real, but couldn't possibly work.
The group created plans for a death ray, antigrave and a homing plasma antiaircraft weapon, the military fed the "stolen" fictional plans to the unspecting Nazi's.
A year later the narrator along with all other members of the group were called back in by a very grim faced general who questioned them heavily about the death ray, seems a spy flight over a known Nazi research center showed a large "contraption" very much like the fictional death ray, but the crew also noticed that the nearby mountain it was pointed had several new HUGE smooth notches sliced out of the peak.
There was a desperate bombing raid ordered, but all the aircraft returned reporting that the site was already a very large crater in the location of the research center.
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I hope these two additions help, I would really like to find that anthology as well
H Melton
God Bless
This is much worse than mentioning a song that you can't get out of your head.
This is as bad as a mentioning or playing a snippet of a incredible song I heard once on a AM radio station that faded out mid way through the song and I have never heard the song or any part of it since or even been able to get a hint of a name or other detail to search with.
Come to think of it, but it might have been your fault the last time I spent quite a few hours searching for that science fiction collection.
I have not thought of this story and several other short stories I think were grouped with it in the anthology for several years, now you have brought the memories back and I'll have to start hunting for it all over again.
I'm pretty sure I read them in a hard back version of the anthology back in the early 90's or possibly the very late 80's. I can even tell you which library the book was at at the time and I know for a certainty that it isn't there now because someone checked it out and never returned it.
I am very sorry that I don't remember the name of the anthology.
The two short stories I think I remember best along with the one you describe are very roughly(it has been over 25 years.) listed below.
FIRST
Was a story about a movie house filiming a series of "Flash Gordon" style shows in which two famous actors were playing rival parts. One was the villian and the other was the good guy and both were very competitive. One of the actors that was slightly less well billed convinced the prop department to give him a ray gun that had an actual "flash" even before post editing. This led to a "arms race" between the two for the bigger "FLASH" until finally one actor and the prop department went all out and built a "real" looking disintagrating ray gun that was wheeled around in a modified little red wagon and had a hidden power cord going to one of the studio's plugs usually used for 1000 watt spot lights.
The only thing that saved the Hero and the film crew was the standard villian monolog and demonstratiion of what his "death ray" would do before he actually attempted to use it on the Hero.
They released smoke because this raygun had a built in spotlight, the villian gave his speech and used the knife switch to "fire" the raygun.
The resulting flash had everyone seeing spots for several minutes so it was a several seconds before anyone notice the "Light Beam" had removed a 8 foot diameter section of the painted wood and cardboard scenery along with an equal amount of the brick wall behind it followed by parts of both "stars" cars length wise followed a few hundred feet later by the bottom 8 feet of several dozen trees before drilling quite a ways into the rook of a hill.
The show folded a few days later when the military paid for the damage and dissapeared the studio's entire prop department and the Actor playing the villian.
SECOND
Was a story about a group of science fiction writers and physic professors approached by the military during world war two. They were worried about HItler's talk of super weapons and wanted to distract the Nazi's researchers with stolen fictional super weapons that looked real, but couldn't possibly work.
The group created plans for a death ray, antigrave and a homing plasma antiaircraft weapon, the military fed the "stolen" fictional plans to the unspecting Nazi's.
A year later the narrator along with all other members of the group were called back in by a very grim faced general who questioned them heavily about the death ray, seems a spy flight over a known Nazi research center showed a large "contraption" very much like the fictional death ray, but the crew also noticed that the nearby mountain it was pointed had several new HUGE smooth notches sliced out of the peak.
There was a desperate bombing raid ordered, but all the aircraft returned reporting that the site was already a very large crater in the location of the research center.
-----------------
I hope these two additions help, I would really like to find that anthology as well
H Melton
God Bless