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short stories - IChing and space travel identification question




There was a short that I read in an anthology, when I was on my anthology kick about 8-15 years ago. I am fairly positive that the story was from pre-1995, if that helps anyone. I know it wasn't a novella, but it wasn't a short-short if I recall that too.


The premise:


A group of super-bright scientists are selected to go on a (experimental?) space craft from Earth.


The details I'm firm on:



  • One of the astronauts was a young chinese man who recreated the iching as a set of tokens and used them to setup a form of horoscope since the constellations didn't match the familiar ones anymore.


The details I'm pretty sure about:



  • They end up diverting from their pre-assigned flight path and flying into space forever.


  • They all went mad.

  • That the young chinese man was indeed a young Chinese male. He may have been a she, and she may have been from another oriental country, but I know it was about the iChing. That always stuck out to me.



Answer



My best guess based on hazy recollections (read the short story in about 1981, when I was 12) and some Googling is that Frederik Pohl wrote the short story "The Gold at Starbow's End" first around 1970, and then expanded the themes into the novel "Starburst" in 1983.


The form of the story was of dialogue between people on Earth, and increasingly cryptic communications back from the space travellers, as they "transhumanise". The "I Ching" toe bones were actually cut (with permission) from at least one of a couple who were having sex at the time, and the dispatch from the ship claimed they did not feel anything, with the implication that they had achieved that level of control over their bodies. The toes did grow back. The whole "I Ching bone" thing is quite the most distinctive image from the story.


The ship was not diverted, I am pretty sure of that. Don't want to be a spoiler, so I won't say more.


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