THANKS! nemonowan
"Armaments Race" by Arthur clark is one of the stories, I mentioned, boy has my memory drifted, hopefully it just because of the many fanfic ideas I have loosely based on what I remembered, but "Armaments Race" is definately one of the stories from the collection that I think holds what Classicdrogn described.
"Allamagoosa" by Erik Frank Russel isn't something I think I've seen before, it had me laughing especially at the end, but all the stories I remember from the anthology or collection had a supposedly fictional or fake devices turned out to be actual working inventions.
The story Classicdrogn mentioned seems very close, but I'm also pretty sure the fake invention actually worked in the story I read in another collection.
I don't think "Allamagoosa" would have been in that collection of "real" fake invention stories, it didn't have the right ending.
Classicdrogn mentioned something that jogged my memory and I've been doing a little searching on the internet and another of the stories I remember being in the collection was "Waldo" by R. A. Heinlein published in 1950
Classicdrogn now is your chance to return the hate for me.
Unlike you for about 8 years In the late 80's and early 90's thanks to two libraries and several book stores I had access to a huge collection of science fiction classics and most all modern science fiction published in the english language during that period.
Back in the late 1980's and early 1990's the local University Library had a huge and slowly growing collection of hard back science fiction books, mostly from 1985 back and while it was 60 miles from our farm there was a public library at the halfway point that was the central office library for several local county librariess and I somehow became a friend to the head librarian and the several other librarians that worked there and were in charge of finding books for it and most of the other libraries for a large area.
The head librarian knew of my interest in science fiction and the fact that I regularly hit close to a dozen new and used book stores every month.
It started out with me doing her a favor and hunting out replacement books for westerns, romance novels and mysteries after some barbarian back in 1985 started slicing out carefully selected pages and passages leaving the reader with what they considered to be the key parts missing.(I can't stand most westerns, Mysteries and romance novels, but mutilate or burn books and I have about the same reaction to that as any true librarian.)
Soon I was also helping the librarians find/pick what science fiction to purchase and helping them to create a far larger collection of modern science fiction by finding libarary quality books for half price or less in the new and used book stores I regularly visited.
Yes, Classicdrogn during the late 1980's and early 1990's between the public library I was helping and the University library as well as the several new and many used bookstores I essentially had free or quarter price access to every english science fiction book published during that eight year period and before. (Sadly I never had enough time to read more than a fraction of the science fiction that passed though or very close to my hands.)
Starting in late 1993 I had to focus almost completely on the family farm for a period of 3 or 4 years and during that time things changed radically in the local book world.
My library cards lapsed, there were several deaths, retirements and many store closings to the point when I "came back" the University library and public library had few of the book collections I remembered and 3/4 or more of the used books stores were closed or pale shadows of what they had been.
The University library had fully switched from card catalogs to digital during this period and it looks like some group took the chance to gut the universities collections and leave no record of what it had held.
It had lost an appalling number of books across every section not just in the science fiction section.
Thinking about what vanished still makes me really angry at the University. Some of the best written history books i'd ever read most of which had been publushed in the 1880's to about 1910 had vanished. The classic fiction works were gutted including what I remember as being one of the most complete set of Mark Twains writing I had ever heard about and it was all signed by him.
Thanks Classicdrogn for your fiction search post , it has at least led to me to finding some works I'd not seen in years and just as importantly it has highlighted to a really funny science fiction story that I had missed.
HMelton
"Armaments Race" by Arthur clark is one of the stories, I mentioned, boy has my memory drifted, hopefully it just because of the many fanfic ideas I have loosely based on what I remembered, but "Armaments Race" is definately one of the stories from the collection that I think holds what Classicdrogn described.
"Allamagoosa" by Erik Frank Russel isn't something I think I've seen before, it had me laughing especially at the end, but all the stories I remember from the anthology or collection had a supposedly fictional or fake devices turned out to be actual working inventions.
The story Classicdrogn mentioned seems very close, but I'm also pretty sure the fake invention actually worked in the story I read in another collection.
I don't think "Allamagoosa" would have been in that collection of "real" fake invention stories, it didn't have the right ending.
Classicdrogn mentioned something that jogged my memory and I've been doing a little searching on the internet and another of the stories I remember being in the collection was "Waldo" by R. A. Heinlein published in 1950
Classicdrogn now is your chance to return the hate for me.
Unlike you for about 8 years In the late 80's and early 90's thanks to two libraries and several book stores I had access to a huge collection of science fiction classics and most all modern science fiction published in the english language during that period.
Back in the late 1980's and early 1990's the local University Library had a huge and slowly growing collection of hard back science fiction books, mostly from 1985 back and while it was 60 miles from our farm there was a public library at the halfway point that was the central office library for several local county librariess and I somehow became a friend to the head librarian and the several other librarians that worked there and were in charge of finding books for it and most of the other libraries for a large area.
The head librarian knew of my interest in science fiction and the fact that I regularly hit close to a dozen new and used book stores every month.
It started out with me doing her a favor and hunting out replacement books for westerns, romance novels and mysteries after some barbarian back in 1985 started slicing out carefully selected pages and passages leaving the reader with what they considered to be the key parts missing.(I can't stand most westerns, Mysteries and romance novels, but mutilate or burn books and I have about the same reaction to that as any true librarian.)
Soon I was also helping the librarians find/pick what science fiction to purchase and helping them to create a far larger collection of modern science fiction by finding libarary quality books for half price or less in the new and used book stores I regularly visited.
Yes, Classicdrogn during the late 1980's and early 1990's between the public library I was helping and the University library as well as the several new and many used bookstores I essentially had free or quarter price access to every english science fiction book published during that eight year period and before. (Sadly I never had enough time to read more than a fraction of the science fiction that passed though or very close to my hands.)
Starting in late 1993 I had to focus almost completely on the family farm for a period of 3 or 4 years and during that time things changed radically in the local book world.
My library cards lapsed, there were several deaths, retirements and many store closings to the point when I "came back" the University library and public library had few of the book collections I remembered and 3/4 or more of the used books stores were closed or pale shadows of what they had been.
The University library had fully switched from card catalogs to digital during this period and it looks like some group took the chance to gut the universities collections and leave no record of what it had held.
It had lost an appalling number of books across every section not just in the science fiction section.
Thinking about what vanished still makes me really angry at the University. Some of the best written history books i'd ever read most of which had been publushed in the 1880's to about 1910 had vanished. The classic fiction works were gutted including what I remember as being one of the most complete set of Mark Twains writing I had ever heard about and it was all signed by him.
Thanks Classicdrogn for your fiction search post , it has at least led to me to finding some works I'd not seen in years and just as importantly it has highlighted to a really funny science fiction story that I had missed.
HMelton