My internist eschewed SF a long time ago but–of course!–read it enthusiastically as a pre-adult. And now he’s getting interested again.
He’s been thinking about a story he read as a kid, in one of the magazines of the day (I’m guessing 50s), something like Analog or Astounding (he thinks it began with an A). But he doesn’t remember the title or author.
He’s asked me to help him identify it. So I’m asking you.
Here’s the plot as he remembers it:
A ship crash-lands on a planet. The damage is so bad that it will take a long time–generations–to repair. The inadvertent colonists immediately set about the task. The problem? Each generation lives shorter lives than the last. And the rate of reduction in lifespan accelerates. He remembers lots of tension: will they get the ship aloft before they become extinct?
Do you recognise any part of this? If so, please drop a comment, or tweet, or email me. This doctor has gone above and beyond for me and mine; I’d like to return the favour.
That sounds like “Frost and Fire,” by Ray Bradbury.
That looks like a great candidate! Will pass along the info and let you know. Thank you.
Roughly similar to Brian Aldiss' “Non-stop”, 1958. Inhabitants of a multi-generational starship are no longer aware of being on a starship and have diverged into warring tribes. Mysterious “Giants” shape events from hidden spaces. At the end it is revealed that the ship has returned to earth after being damaged. The ship inhabitants have evolved to short lives and reduced size. The Giants are normal-sized earth people trying to figure out what to do with a ship load of short-lived little people.
Frost And Fire is one of seventeen short stories Ray Bradbury put out in 1962 in a book called R IS FOR ROCKET by Bantam Pathfinder. I just re-read it quickly to see if it matches your friends story. While there are differences between what your friend remembers and the actual story, they are close enough. If you asked me to remember the plot of a story I read 40+ years ago, I doubt it would be very close to the original. :)
Me too! I'm hopeless at recounting plot unless I've read/seen something more than once. But some people remember well that way.
I vaguely remember that one. But I don't think it's the one my doctor remembers. But we won't know til he gets back to me on that.
Sorry no but I did enjoy thinking about that big blank space that is my memory of the past.
In the mid-sixties I read a memorable short story in a year's best anthology about a small band of humans, descendants of a starship crew, living in a cave. They made runs across the open plain to a ship they were repairing. The radiation from the local sun reduced their lifespans from years to weeks or days. Babies were born after very brief gestation telepathic and already knowing the language and the mission and could join the work crew when they were one or two days old. I believe they succeeded in fixing the ship at the conclusion. But by Aldiss? Pohl? I don't recall.
I do know that that thick book of short stories radically shifted what I thought science fiction could be. There was another story (by Aldiss?) about a peasant farmer hoeing a field who morphs sideways through dimensions into a different kind of creature with a different kind of hoe on a planet with very different suns. I think that *was* the plot. May the new wave ever break upon our shores!~
It does sound very like the Bradbury story, “Frost and Fire,” that Mark very helpfully identified. There's a PDF here.