What were those stories?

[RoryCloud]

Anyone up to trying to help me remember the titles of 2 old (pre-1970) science fiction short stories that have been rattling around in my head?

If this is the wrong forum or not allowed please let me know.

1st story:

Aliens have control of the world. Humans reduced to vermin-like condition. Aliens live in domed [?] cities and control with their minds colored forces with which they do all their work. Humans reduced to squalor and scurrying in terror from aliens, who think so little of human intelligence that they don't even bother exterminating the 'pests'. UNTIL ... one day one of the humans finds that he too can control the colored forces! Eventually, the aliens acknowledge humans as intelligent and take a friendly interest in them.

2nd story:

A time story with an agency whose job is to send repairmen back to somehow repair cracks in time so that it doesn't all collapse into a chaotic mess.

Any help would be appreciated! I'm ALMOST certain these were both shorts but might be wrong about that -- maybe novels?

Thanks, Rory

[che2000]

The first one sounds an awful lot like Fantastic Planet, but that was an animated film rather than a novel (though it was based upon the French SF novel Oms en s?rie/ Oms by the Dozen by Stefan Wul.

Haven't a clue about the other one, though.


"That blackguard Flashman, who never speaks to one without a kick or an oath--"

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[RoryCloud]

Thanks for the reply, che2000.

I remember Fantastic Planet vividly -- not received well by my friends [boring, they thought], but I thought it was neat.

But, nope, the story rattling in my brain was definitely paper and ink, probably from one of the many 'Best of' anthologies I read voraciously back in the 60s [or possibly early 70s]

And I'm 90 percent sure it a short, not a novel. [The time story, I'm only about 70 percent sure was a short.]

Thanks again for the effort!

[RoryCloud]

1st story identified! ------

"The City of Force" a 1959 novella by Daniel F. Galouye appearing in Galaxy magazine, later expanded into the novel LORDS OF THE PSYCHON

[Frank]

Now you've made me want to find this story and read it so I tracked down a printing history of the story on ISFBD. It's a wonderful site. When I first started using it years ago it was still under construction and so in many cases information was incomplete. They've come a long way now. I highly recommend them.

But back to the story in question, it was only reprinted in Bodyguard, one of H.L. Gold's paperback anthology series of reprints from Galaxy magazine, a book which itself was only printed three times between 1960 and '62. There were only two Galouye story collections published, both during his lifetime, neither of which included The City of Force. As far as I can tell so far no small press is planning to bring Galouye back into print, surprising since he was named the Rediscovery Award winner at ReaderCon in 2007.

This means that for me to read this story I'll have to find and buy a tattered old copy of Bodyguard online, or a used copy of the original Galaxy issue but pulp magazines, for obvious reasons, tend not to hold together well over long years and often fall apart in your hands when trying to read them decades later.

Lord of the Psychon is actually a prequel to the original story and contains some reworking of the aliens and their invasion of Earth.

[luci2also]

On the time stories you might try looking at Andre Norton's time agent series.