This story still haunts me.

I still feel the cold of this "short" SF story.
As an Aussie who Never feels the cold, I sometimes
half remember this story and shiver. What is it?

Man goes to a moon of the outer planets.
Sun expands and is seen by explorer.
Partner dead?
Lake of "liquid nitrogen/methane?"
Walks in taking of "mask" because... of life...

As I said it haunts me. I can almost feel him walking into that pool of liquid gas.

Sorry, I still shudder, Guido

Larry Niven short story "Wait it Out." It's in his collection Playgrounds of the Mind.

Thanks Carnophile,
I just ordered that book from Amazon.com
I couldn't find it in my collection. In fact I was surprized the story was by Niven. Over the last few decades his writing no longer attracted me.
Guido.

Augh, Just Got Niven's book from The USA, and that story "Wait it Out" is NOT the one I was thinking of. It does have most of the features I mentioned But...

I am now fairly sure He landed on a moon of Jupiter/Saturn. not Pluto
He saw the Sun expand to cover half? the sky, and thus realized the Earth was destroyed. in Wait... he expects ultimate rescue
He purposefully opened his face mask to walk into a pool/lake of a liquid gas. in wait he is frozen solid on the ground

In my story, he does it for the hope that LIFE might evolve from his complex molecules he leaves in the liquid gas pool. And he dies.

Maybe my version was an earlier version that Niven rewrote and changed the setting/ideas?

Now this is becomming a puzzle I do want to solve.

Thank, Guido.

Crap, sorry Guido! And I was sure it was the right one! (Wince.)

I've read something like that - what is the timeframe - when did you read it? That's always useful information in cases like this.

#7, Just a very rough guess but it feels like the mid '70's.

Ok, well it is quite possibly Arthur C. Clarke's Transit Of Earth then.

Thanks Mate, err... bluetyson,

Once again I have ordered THE book from Amazon. Even it isn't the exact story some of the Authors look interesting. I'll let you know in the next few weeks if it is THAT tale.

Your cobber (or am I bunging it on too thick?)
Guido.

PS. Just going by the titles, it could be written by Clarke. That seems much more reasonable than Niven. I also noted a tale by Frederick Brown, I used to enjoy him. Thus this copy will be worth it alone for his story. I dare not look up you library to find out your Brown holdings, ...loading..loading... but are there any of his books/short stories you particularily remember/enjoy.

Nah, she'll be right mate.

Depending if used or not (that one is likely in plenty of collections) you want to check out abebooks.com of course, and to avoid the postage charged by monopolistic seppos, try thebookdepository.co.uk.
Free shipping, from poms no less!

Also, exchange rate vs pound better than vs the monopoly money - back about to where it was vs the former before crashing, now.

Sorry, bluetyson, Not in this Anthology. Back to the drawing stone.

Dear Bluetyson,
I still haven't found THAT particular short story, but
I must thank you for putting me onto "the book depository" I have saved at least $300 in book costs and delivery fees since you pointed me to them. Plus some Amazon sites won't deliver to Australia or Latvia. They DO. Thanks.

Yours, Guido.

PS. I felt I should clarify that Latvian "thing"

I recently sent a couple of "Astronomy" books,
very large (at least 450mm by BIG) to a relative in LAtVIA (now a part of of the EEC)
In Aussi they would have costed me $100 each and the shipping (a total of 7.5Kg) would have been impossible from Aussi.

The BookDepository did it!

If you're still looking for this story, guido47, perhaps the people in the Name That Book forum can help. They are occasionally stumped, but their success rate is pretty good.

>2 guido47: Lake of "liquid nitrogen/methane?"
Walks in taking of "mask" because... of life...

I just picked up As On A Darkling Plain by Ben Bova and this is pretty much the opening scene. It occurs on Saturn's moon Titan. (But Earth has not been destroyed as far as I know).

It isn't a short story though (although I don't know if it might not have started out as one) - and I haven't gotten to anything about
"Sun expands and is seen by explorer.
Partner dead?"
yet. But I am only on page 52 of 287.

I have another possibility!

While this is not a short story or from the 70's (1997)... Stephen Baxter's Titan ends almost exactly the way you described.

The last two left from the mission to Titan... one ends up dying and the other gives up the struggle while drowning on purpose in a methane lake. They are resurrected in the deep future by the expanded sun's influence in creating native cultural Titans from the original Earth bacteria.

It's one of my favorites! Maybe this is it? If not there is some serious plagiarism going on. :-)

16>

Maybe this is it? If not there is some serious plagiarism going on.

No, there's not.

Use of the same concepts, even in deliberate homage, isn't plagiarism. (If it was, Tolkien's estate could have sued all the "Tolkien with the serial numbers filed off" imitators.)

I know you had a smiley, but there is a persistent belief that plots are copyrightable, and I didn't want anyone to see your comment and get the wrong impression.

17>

Yeah, it was meant more in jest than than anything else. I am just surprised sometimes at how closely plots have mirrored each other in cases like this.

Thanks for the clarification though. I probably should not have put it just like that.

Dear Carnophile, I specifically moved from "name that book" group to SF fans because the SF people are MUCH more turned ON on SF stories. The other mob is OK re. general stuff, but for SF, this group is the best.

Err... Bump

It reminds me of a short story I read a thousand years ago.
Can't remember the author or title, alas.

This guy is an astronaut on the moon, all by himself if I remember correctly.
The Earth is about to be hit with a massive solar flare(?) but he moon won't be damaged.
The astronaut has some last conversations with his colleagues as they die off.
He can't stay forever on the moon, of course, and eventually he goes back to Earth to see if it's possible to survive there.
Well, no, it isn't. Then he realizes that the environment is pretty much the same as when life first started, and he remembers the bacteria in his gut.
He figures that they may have a chance to evolve into something, but what will they live on?
Ah, right... there is his (soon to be) carcass...
So he opens his helmet...

There seems to have been a lake of methane or something.

Is this your story, Guido?

I've been searching and searching and I think I may have found it:
It could be "The Windows of Heaven" by John Brunner, a story from the 1950s.

I found this mention of the story, actually two mentions, in the google books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=SQMQQyIaACYC&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=john...

If it is the story, then it can be found in:
The Penguin science fiction omnibus
edited by Brian Aldiss

#21 by Selliers> Funny, that one has a lot of similarities with Adam and No Eve by Alfred Bester (but not the same one).

Well almost 1.5 years, and since we have had a 'goodly' influx of refugees from another book site :-),
I thought I would try yet again.

Well, another year and a half :-)
Thought I'd try again with the new blood rushing into LT.
Although a lot seems like people who just join to ask about a book (in Name That Book, if we are lucky, or at random otherwise)

Only mentioned that ços I was flagged (out of existence) when I complained about them. Political correctness?

Well, I would probably critize the header for this thread, but since it shows the Age of my initial enquiry, I wont rework and repost it.

Guido.

I do think about this one sometimes, and if I ever run across a good candidate story, I'll post here. Think of it as the Great Moldywarp of sought stories!

Thanks >25 dukedom_enough: But you have already helped me. I had to lookup Moldywarp.
Even though I am slightly ambivilant about Meville I will get Railsea

er. I do own but have not yet attempted to read Moby Dick

good luck Guido. Give this a bump now and then. one day one of us will come across the story. Action Comics #300 still haunts me. Your story does sound familiar to me.

>26 guido47:

I love everything China Mieville writes, and Railsea is fun, though not his best.

Whats 3 or 4 years amongst friends.

BUMP

It's sort of like the conclusion of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, as depicted on the cover of Alien Landscapes. But ... not an astronaut, no partner, and doesn't walk into the sea. A similarly haunting scene though. All I got.

It still seems naggingly familiar to me, but I haven't figured it out either!

Hello group and a happy "2023".

Not that interesting a number, but we gets what we gets

I am still interested in finding this story, BUT how many years now?

And yes, I have still not yet organized my SF Anthologies properly.

Bad Guido...

Forgive me. I'm new to this group and writing messages in general.

I'm looking for the title of a book:
A woman invents a grass that is so hardy that when an unscrupulous salesman plants it,
the grass takes over the world.
SPOILER: The book ends with the last, few remaining people on a boat in what's left of the ocean---all the continents are now covered in grass---with the inventor saying that she has a cure that should be developed tomorrow. This is the last we hear of anyone.
The book was very old when I read it, probably in the 1970s.
I keep thinking of it when I think of climate change.

That sounds like The Death of Grass in reverse.

You should probably try the Name That Book group rather than asking for help here, more attention that way.

Probably Greener Than You Think by Ward Moore. I've never read it, but it has the all-conquering grass and the ending on a ship.

>35 dukedom_enough:

Funny. I wonder if Moore was deliberately playing on the title of Jack Williamson's Darker Than You Think. (Darker was published in book form a year later, but had run as a novella in Unknown in 1940.)

>36 paradoxosalpha: Could be; sff was a much smaller world then.