I remember reading a short story, but I cannot remember what it was called, or who wrote it.
I'll describe it in two parts: the first part only gives away information from the first part of the story, and the second part has spoilers for the conclusion.
First part:
Some student is working on a thesis/dissertation about old black magic customs/rituals, when he comes up with a new idea. He puts pentacle for summoning a demon not on the floor, but on the wall. He then, mostly as a joke and out of boredom, performs the ritual he has been studying. Viola, a demon appears on the pentacle shackled to the five points of the pentacle -- head, arms, and legs.
So the guy has summoned a demon, and now he gets something in return for his soul that he just lost. He has 24 hours until he has to do something (which I cannot remember). He wanders around, and finds that he is physically unable to enter any churches. IIRC, it even mentions a Mormon temple.
End Game spoilers: I can't recall why, but toward the end of the 24 hours he draws another pentacle for the demon to transfer to. He draws the new pentacle on the belly of the demon. The demon starts shrinking in order to try to fit on the new pentacle, but as he does so, the pentacle starts shrinking. He keeps shrinking trying to catch up with the pentacle until he shrinks himself out of existence.
******END SPOILERS********
Since I think it mentions a Mormon Temple, I thought there was a pretty good chance that it was OSC, but nobody on Galactic Cactus had heard of it. It sounds like something that Asimov would have written, but I don't think I read any Asimov during the period that I think I read this story.
Help me faitful readers, you'r my only hope...
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
It's definitely a Larry Niven story.
Not sure of the title, possibly "Convergent Series."
I like the ending--an original conflation of math and magic.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
You might try Larry Niven. Seems like I read a story like that by him, maybe in N-Space or Playgrounds of the Mind.
Edit: Well, there you go. Instant confirmation!
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
That makes sense. I read the entire Tales of Known Space stories a couple of years ago.
*checks*
Ding! Ding! We have a winner!
Convergent Series by Larry Niven.
Thank you very much, kind sir. Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
Glad to help, Porter.
It's available online at [edit link deleted because it was a pirate site that fooled me]
PRESUMEABLY for free, and with the authors permission.
quote:[deleted].org is a free site dedicated to the difusion of culture. It contains over 30000 free books from the Project Gutenber, the Internet's oldest producer of free books (eBooks or eTexts).
Card has some titles there too, also I presume with his permission.
[ June 13, 2005, 04:22 PM: Message edited by: Morbo ]
Posted by Spaceman (Member # 8107) on :
Confirmation, that story is one of the best short stories ever written, IMHO. Convergent Series by Larry Niven.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
"PRESUMEABLY...with the authors permission"
More likely, piracy Posted by Randy (Member # 8181) on :
Now that that is solved, here's a short story that I've lost track of. Who wrote it?
Again, as with mr_porteiro_head, it includes the main spoiler.
At a soccar game, the referee makes a bad call, enraging the fans. However, the fans, knowing this would likely happen, all came prepared with a mirror, and each focusses sunlight directly onto the referee, vaporizing him. I really thought it was one of the "Tales from the White Hart" by Arthur C. Clarke, but it seems to not be in that collection.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Yeah, that's definitely a pirate site. AFAIK, there are no authorized digital (well, text, not audio) versions of whole Heinlein or Card works, much less ones available for free download.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
The typos in that quote spell "pirate" or at least "one man operation." :)
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Perhaps, though the proliferation of them and the owner of the site apparently being in europe suggest non-native english speaker.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
That site could very well be one of the most pathetic things I've ever seen.
Many of the books are pirated. Even without asking I feel confident in saying that OSC has not given permission to any site to post a good chunk of his career online, for free, without formatting (or line breaks) of any kind, under a misspelled name.
The domain name is registered to someone in Uruguay. Dunno if their copyright laws prohibit this, but it's worth looking into.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
fugu13 - there are OSC and Heinlein e-books. Not many, but they're there.
Although OSC has said that he wasn't concerned with people reading his stuff online, just that they were reading it. Remember, he used to have a lot of his novels here in their entirety.
I know that this is a different scenario, but I'm saying he's not Metallica.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
Still doesn't mean blatant piracy should continue unnoticed. Going after them tooth and nail may not be his style, and good for him, but a kindly cease and desist letter wouldn't be out of line. I love the fact that people pass around my work -- I get mail from people who read one of my columns after it was e-mailed to them, for example -- but if I found a site that was archiving them all, I'd ask them to knock it off.
Saw where this site has already been mentioned on other author sites, so it may be addressed anyway. I went ahead and reported it to the Science Fiction Writers Association piracy page: http://www.sfwa.org/epiracy/incident.asp .
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Has anyone reported one of these posts to bring it to the Cards' attention?
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Here's the hosting company's website, someone who can read it should determine if there's an acceptable use policy or the like: http://amberconcept.com/ Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
Sorry, Cards.
I should have checked on that site more... I saw that "project Gutenberg" mention, which is a real free online book site, and assumed this site was affiliated.
So should I delete the website from my post, or what?
Randy, I remember that story! But not author or title. I think it was in a scifi collection or magazine in the late 80s.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
Could just edit it to say "site deleted" but leave the post intact.
The versions of the books are so difficult to read I don't see thousands of people rushing to grab 'em, and it may not be up much longer anyway.
I got a response back from the SFWA saying they've been working on this one for a week or so now (but still thanking me for the heads up).
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
I didn't mean to report it to get anyone in trouble, Morbo. Just so that if the Cards don't know about the site they can take legal action. I think you're blameless here.
Chris, does the SFWA represent OSC in any way? If so, I won't worry about it.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I think they wouldn't be upset with you, particularily since you tried to correct it as soon as you realized there was a problem
They seem like VERY reasonable people...at least they did for the whole 10 min I got to talk to them....
![[Hat]](graemlins/hat.gif)
![[Blushing]](graemlins/blushing.gif)
Sorry, Cards.![[Wink]](wink.gif)