Skip to main content

story identification - Person falls into radiotelescope and his mind gets transported to the far future


This is a fairly long SF story, probably a novella. I read it in the 80's in Spanish in a multi-author collection book. It's probably much older, maybe from the sixties. I remember lots of details about the story but I can't remember the author or the title.


The title might have been "A Midnight Summer Dream", "A Long Summer's Lost Love" or something like that. I'm positive that the title included the word "Summer". Maybe I'm way off with the title and that's why I can't find any information about it.


The protagonist is a contemporary lone inventor creating a new type of radiotelescope that by his calculations should be revolutionary, but can only catch local stations. He climbs into it to see if he can find a defect, slips and falls in. The world fades around him and he finds himself to a cave in the distant future.


His mind has been projected ages into the future, and has been captured by a machine that serves as an oracle of sorts for a primitive species of human. The machine is a terminal for another larger computer that hosts an advanced mind that has gone a bit crazy, called the "Quint" or something similar. Now the machine hosts both and they compete for control.


Throughout the story we learn that the world has evolved and birds have taken control as the primordial sentient species.


The protagonist learns how to let his mind escape out of the machine into the mind of humans and to control them. He uses this to escape the terminal and physically travel in a long journey to the main computer to defeat the "Quint".


Eventually he gets there and mentally battles the "Quint" and finds the way to win and takes over the main computer. He intends to use it to help humans rebuild civilization.


He finally learns over millennia that the Quint was the fifth cycle of sanity/insanity for the other mind. The other mind's purpose was to maintain civilization but eventually would lose its sanity and let civilization decay for long periods. Any mind in his situation will go through those cycles as well, including the protagonist's. But now that there are two minds in the computer, they alternate - with the "sane" mind taking over and keeping the "crazy" one in check while it recovers. The combined. entity is able to protect civilization continuously bringing a continuous age of prosperity.




Answer



That sounds like Midsummer Century by James Blish. I don't have access to my copy just now, but one online summary (which fits with my memories) says:



In the year 25,000 A.D . . . When John Martels returned to consciousness he found himself the Delphic Oracle of a world far different from the Twentieth Century. Humanity had risen and fallen three times and was back once again in a semi-primitive state. He shared his oracular powers with a mind and a device left over from the last Rebirth . . . but the real problem was not rebuilding civilization, it was that another genus of creatures had arisen to claim inheritance of the world--the evolved, strangely intelligent birds, whose priority was the elimination of the world's former masters.



It's not a perfect match, but there's a lot of similarity. (And Martels does start things out by falling into a radio telescope.)


An online copy is sometimes available at https://archive.org/details/midsummercentury00blis


There's a short review at http://www.troynovant.com/Franson/Blish/Midsummer-Century.html and another at https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/james-blish-9/midsummer-century/


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

harry potter - What is the difference between Diffindo and Sectumsempra?

In the Harry Potter books, Diffindo is called the 'Severing Charm' and it’s most commonly used to cut ropes and the like. However, in the last book Hermione uses it on Ron but misses, creating a 'slash in his jeans' and his knee gets cut, causing him to 'roar in pain'. We've only seen Sectumsempra used once on screen when Harry directly uses it on Malfoy in the sixth book, but there it's mentioned that he is 'waving his wand wildly'. Wouldn't Diffindo, if used in such a fashion also cause a similar effect? Similarly, if it was able to cut Ron, it would also be able to, say, chop off an ear (George's)? In that case, how are these two spells different, except for Sectumsempra seemingly used exclusively to hurt humans? Answer While Diffindo and Sectumsempra both can be countered by other spells, Diffindo is far more easily countered. Reparo, a relatively common spell, can completely reverse its effect when used once. “He pulled the old cop...

aliens - Interstellar Zoo story

I vaguely remember this story from my childhood: it was about an interstellar zoo that came to Earth with lots of bizarre and unusual species, and humans would file through and gape at all the crazy looking creatures from other planets. The twist came at the end when the perspective shifted to the other side of the bars and we discovered that the "creatures" were traveling through space on a kind of safari. They thought they were the visitors and we were the animals. Neither side knew that the other side thought they were the zoo creatures. Answer Got it. Zoo, by Edward D. Hoch. Published in 1958. Link to Publication History Link to PDF

harry potter - How could Expelliarmus beat Avada Kedavra?

I want to be very careful about how I ask this question – I am not asking How did Voldemort die? [CLOSED] Below the text is the relevant passages from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows if anyone wants to review them (I'm sorry for the amount of text). How did Expelliarmus beat Avada Kedavra and kill Voldemort? I feel the reason Harry's Expelliarmus overpowered Voldemort's Avada Kedavra curse has to do with who was master of the Elder Wand and how the Elder Wand works. I've always had trouble understanding fully how the Elder Wand works, though. How much did the fact that Voldemort never truly won or mastered the Elder Wand factor into how Expelliarmus reacted to Avada Kedavra and caused Avada Kedavra to rebound and kill Voldemort? An answer based in book canon would be especially welcome, but any canon source really is fine. Harry heard the high voice shriek as he, too, yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco’s wand: ‘ Avada Kedavra !’ ‘ Expelliarmus !...