Help Needed Locating The Title Of A Book Please!

[May]

I am new to the 5MV forums, although I have been reading and enjoying 5MV for several years now. However, I have decided to post today because it is obvious that as a group of very intelligent peole interested in science fiction, you would be able to help me find the title or author of this book.

The book (or actually it could just be a short story, I actually don't know) is about a man who used to be a motorcyclist or was in a motorcycle accident, who was frozen and then reawakened in the future. In true science fiction fashion, the future is of course very different from what he was used to, specifically because a formula has been developed that eradicated all death from the world. The rest of the book is concerned with how the hero and everone else deals with a world without death. For example, people like the elderly have to volunteer for suicide etc.

Please tell me if you have any idea what the title or who the author of this book is. I would really really really appreciate it.

[Captain Proton]

Sounds a bit like Asimov's "Pebble ib the sky".

[May]

Nope. I read all of Asimov's Foundation books and the prequels and it's not Pebble in the Sky. THe book I'm looking for, the person wasn't transported but reawaken from a frozen sleep, and the idea of no death in the world is what drives the book. But, thanks for trying Captain Proton.

[PointyHairedJedi]

It sounds almost a little like a short story (or two) by AC Clarke, but that couldn't possibly be what you're thinking of.

[mudshark]

It also reminds me somewhat of the movie Freejack, which was based on the 1959 Robert Sheckley novel Immortality, Inc. That's probably not it, though; hardly anybody seems to be interested in reading stuff that's more than 20 years old, anymore.

[Zeke]

Not while I'm running this place, chum! I love classic sf, especially Ray Bradbury's short stories, and movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Thing. Nor are the other staffers spring chickens sf-wise; for example, IJD's a big enough fan of Philip K. Dick to recognize what was changed for the movie Payback.

That said, I don't recognize the story May's talking about, and my usually-mad Google skills haven't turned anything up. However, I post at a forum where I can almost guarantee someone will have read it. I'll ask about it there.

[evay]

It actually sounds vaguely like a short story from Read magazine, but in that one the guy was a real jerk (and a funeral director) and had himself frozen to wake up in the future to meet prettier and less-demanding women than the "present" offered, or something. (I read it over 25 years ago, sorry.) The kickers were that not only was society more egalitarian and the races more intermingled (so that the woman who greeted him upon his defrosting was "mannish" and café-au-lait skinned rather than the Swedish bikini team captain he was expecting), but that death was eliminated so he was completely out of a job.

Has anyone on staff has read Frederic Brown's short stories? The Brown books I have, from my parents, are so old that they're mostly held together by the other books on the shelf pressed against them.

[mudshark]

Originally Posted by Zeke

Not while I'm running this place, chum! I love classic sf, especially Ray Bradbury's short stories, and movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Thing. Nor are the other staffers spring chickens sf-wise; for example, IJD's a big enough fan of Philip K. Dick to recognize what was changed for the movie Payback.

Of course, that's one of the main reasons I keep coming back here. Unfortunately, with the exception of those here, and of a few people at TBBS who are about the same age as I, most seem to view science fiction as something that began with Star Wars. For them, there's nothing but an impenetrable void prior to 1977.

[PointyHairedJedi]

Well, I don't think I can be counted among that particular group.

Incidently today I bought a second-hand hardback volume of John Wyndham novels. Ah, no-one wrote a good apocalypse quite like he did...

[MaverickZer0]

Originally Posted by mudshark

It also reminds me somewhat of the movie Freejack, which was based on the 1959 Robert Sheckley novel Immortality, Inc. That's probably not it, though; hardly anybody seems to be interested in reading stuff that's more than 20 years old, anymore.

Ooh, I love that book! Must see the movie some day. Anyone here see it?

[Zeke]

Sorry, May, it looks like no one at this other place recognized it either. I'll let you know if that changes, though.

Re: John Wyndham... Word. He writes a mean short story too. Pick up "The Seeds of Time" if you can find it.

[PointyHairedJedi]

Yeah, I've read that one. My absolute favourite book of his (co-authored, so it says on the cover, by a fella called Lucas Parkes, in reality an alias of Wyndham himself) is called The Outward Urge, a series of thematically linked short stories. Space, as they say, is a province of Brazil.

[NAHTMMM]

Originally Posted by May

people like the elderly have to volunteer for suicide

*lightbulb goes off in NAHTMMM's head*

Ooo! Ooo! We were talking about a story like that just the other day in utopia class! What was the title...oh, wait...motorcyclist waking up in the future? Hmm, no, I don't think there was anything about a person from the past experiencing the future. Sorry. Will look it up anyway I think...


But welcome to the forums anyway!

[Katy Jane]

Likely the story NAH is remembering is one of Kirt Vonnaget Jrs short storys, though i can't remember the name, but like he said, no motercycles or getting frozen people wakeing up in the future.

[mudshark]

Vonnegut? Hmmm, the only stories of his dealing with time travel/shifting that I can think of, off the top of my head, are Slaughterhouse-Five, The Sirens of Titan (chrono-synclastic infundibulum, heh ), and Timequake, all novels. Some re-reading may be in order.

[May]

Wow guys!! Thanks for all the suggestions. I am a little surprised that no one knows exactly what the book is, but I think one or two of your suggestions may be right. Since everyone finds the motrocyclist the most problematic maybe I'm wrong about it, so I'll check it out.

Seriously you guys are great with the scifi. I've been checking out each suggestion slowly (very slowly) and found some new titles to read although they do not match what I'm looking for. So thanks for playing, although this isn't so much a game as a nostalgic search.

[May]

Incidentally NAHTMM, is the book your reading in class PD James Children of Men and are you reading Bellamy's Looking Backward or Gilman's Herland? I too took a utopia class as an undergraduate and these books have some interesting scifi themes you may all be interested in (although I actually read Children of Men for a very strange highschool class).

[PointyHairedJedi]

You know, it has just come to me - there is a short story by J.G. Ballard very like what you are looking for, but I can't remember what it's called at the moment. I'll have a look and see if I can't find the name for you.

[NAHTMMM]

Originally Posted by May

Incidentally NAHTMM, is the book your reading in class PD James Children of Men and are you reading Bellamy's Looking Backward or Gilman's Herland? I too took a utopia class as an undergraduate and these books have some interesting scifi themes you may all be interested in (although I actually read Children of Men for a very strange highschool class).

Reading Herland, but neither of the other two. It was...interesting, as I recall.


Oh, and the story I was thinking of was not by Vonnegut, Katy.

[Anonymous]

Originally Posted by mudshark

Vonnegut? Hmmm, the only stories of his dealing with time travel/shifting that I can think of, off the top of my head, are Slaughterhouse-Five, The Sirens of Titan (chrono-synclastic infundibulum, heh ), and Timequake, all novels. Some re-reading may be in order.

it doesn't have any time travel, it takes place in the future and people have to volenteer to commit suisied... still can think of the name.