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 - 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 !...

Is there good canon evidence for the "Nightmare Matrix"?

On the Matrix wiki, there's an article about the Nightmare Matrix which says: The Nightmare Matrix was the second prototype Matrix, designed by The Architect after the massive failure of the Paradise Matrix in the hope that human minds would more readily accept an imperfect world with suffering. Unlike the first version, this Matrix instituted a basic cause-and-effect programming and forcibly made those connected to it accept the program. Vamp Prime, a possible remnant of the Nightmare Matrix. It also featured programs that resembled mythical evil creatures in various human mythologies such as vampires, werewolves, zombies, aliens, etc. It also failed, but many of the programs who were designed for it survived deletion in exile. The Merovingian and his wife, Persephone may have had their roots in this version of the Matrix. Upon its failure, the Merovingian started a smuggling ring of programs and information to provide a haven for exiles that would last for 6 cycles in the final ...

story identification - Anime with a boy hiring a creature from a stone, meets a man named Dante and starts a journey to collect crystals

I am from India, this anime or animated series (I can't remember this was made by the Japan or other countries) was aired between 2009 and 2012 probably in Jetix/Disney XD (but I'm not sure). This anime starts with a boy (the main character, I forgot his name) who find a stone (or crystal like thing) in his dad's property, his dad was missing that time. Some day he accidentally hire a creature/monster from that stone. Other day some creature attack him and he was saved by his creature and the story begins. In his journey to solve the mystery he meets a middle aged man 'Dante' (probably that was the name; this is the only character name I can remember). He had also some stone. After that they meet with one girl and a women (one of the girls is same age with the main boy character and probably will become his partner as the story goes on). Another women probably Dante's partner. Four of them started their journey to collect all the stone/crystal. They are collecti...