What's the Name of That Book??? discussion

CONTAINS SPOILERS!
------------------

Hi friends
I would greately appreciate any sort of help you can give me on finding a sci-fi short story I've read long ago and since forgotten the title or the author. I'm originally from Sri Lanka, and I read a Sinhala (my mother tongue) translation of this story when I was a kid, at least 15 years ago. I can give you a brief description of the story as I remember and a few additional clues, so it would be great if you can tell me the story or at least point me in the right direction. I've been trying to find this one on the web for quite a some time to no avail.

Here goes.

1. I read it about 15 years ago, so the story has to be that much old at a minimum. (Let's say published before 2000 to be safe)
2. It was a short story and was printed on a one full page of a tabloid-size newspaper, though in Sinhala. Would be about the same size in English.
3. I have a vague feeling that the original was in English, but don't count on it.

Following is the story in brief.

The setting is a local pub or some such intimate joint friends gather for a drink. One evening few friends (four if I remember correctly) gather there for a drink, all of whom are sci-fi writers by profession. They talk about their profession, writing sci-fi, and their approch to it and all. The main character is the quietest person in the circle so the others ask him to chip in and tell them something interesting.

So he recounts something strange happened to him while he was writing his stories. He had tried to imagine a complete different world to this, as a base for his latest work. He had thought aboutt it very thoroughly, down to the tiniest details, the social and cultural aspects of it's people, it's history, so on and so forth. But then strangely, while writing, he felt like he was somehow able to go back and forth between these two world, the real and the imaginary. It happened involuntarily, out of his control. But it wasn't like he just appeared in his imaginary world out of thin air. By him imagining this world thoroughly, he had already created history of himself as well. As in, in the imaginary world too he has his own family, friends, a family history, all that. He's just part of it.

Now that he had started to spend a lot of his time in this imaginary world of his, he needed a way of living, and got to do what he does best; writing sci-fi. And as an easy way out, he started writing about his real world which was much more advanced; it helped that he had created his imaginary world much more primitive to this. But he later often came to rue it too, for the cruelty, unjustice and suffering in this imaginary world was much more compared to the real world, and had he knows that he'd spend such an awful lot of time there he would have made it a better place.

He doesn't have an explanation to how he's able to go back and forth between worlds, but the best guess is the new nuclear power plant close to his house. Perhaps somehow it elevated/accelerated his brain activity and made this imaginary world real in a sense. But then of late things had gotten worse and he had to really try hard to get back to the real world if not almost impossible. He was spending almost entire time of his in the imaginary world. Finally he was trapped in his own creation.

After he recounts this story, a silence falls, and then one guy asks, "so how did you get back?".

He replies: "I didn't, I'm still here."



I suppose you'll agree that this is a brilliant story which is why I think made such an impression on me. Unfortunately I've forgotten the name of the story or the author. It would be great if you could give me any clues.

Thanks in advance!

BUMP.

Nobody got a clue?

I've read it or another version of it. It's a natural concept for an SF writer.

First idea is Arthur C. Clarke, who lived in Sri Lanka and wrote a collection of bar stories called Tales From The White Hart. None of the titles look right, though.

Larry Niven had The Draco Tavern, but this story doesn't seem quite right for it. Nor do the Callahan's Bar stories of Spider Robinson.

The style makes me think of Isaac Asimov, actually. And I'm not sure whether bar stories is the right way to go, because it could well be another writer teasing a writer who writes bar stories.

And I also keep thinking L. Sprague de Camp.

In other words, not much help here.

Serendi, thanks for the suggestions!

I'm pretty confident it wasn't Clarke, I would definitely have remembered if it were him.

Will check out the other sources though. I really am looking forward to read it again should I be able to find it.

Tales From Gavagan's Bar possibly?

Ann, thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately it looks like this isn't it; I read the very helpful review there by Shawn Garrett and none of the descriptions fit.

Amusing coincidence - yesterday's blog entry by http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-...

It does sound a bit like the type of story Barry N. Malzberg would probably write.

Brian, am I missing something, or else what's the connection?

Gerd, thanks for the tip, let me check up on his work.

To me it sounds like a Neil Gaiman thing? Really curious, hope you find it!!

Just it was a real life occurrence if the sci fi writers in a bar riffing on a story idea.

This makes me of Michael Flynn's work, but I can't think of a title at the moment.

I've read a fair amount of Asimov, and think no. Same with DeCamp.

I've read almost all of Callahan's Bar's stories - and this is not in that tradition, nor with Draco's (which I think was compiled into one book, which I've read all of - they're mainly about aliens)

However, I do agree that this sounds like that set of writers (minus Niven who was later). Somewhere in there ((30s)-40s-50s), when most of the scifi tropes were given their first incarnations.

Here's a website http://www.nesfa.org/Recursion/index.htm all about recursive science fiction. Bet your story will be listed there.

Justanotherbiblophile, I too think this can't be by Asimov, because I read this when I was about 15 or so by which time I knew of Asimov's work well and would have remembered if it were him.

I will see if I can find this somehow.

Andy, WOW that's a daunting collection, I have no idea where to get started! I will look through it as time permits though, hope I'll be lucky this time! Thanks!

Hum, what about Fletcher Pratt--he did some work on his own. I'm trying to remember which of the "greats" haven't been mentioned yet, other than Pratt.

See, I don't think it'd be a great - or we'd've pegged it by now. But I'm willing to gamble that it was a Campbell, or in that time period if he wasn't the editor in question...

Btw, I went thru Andy's list - I did "L" by hand/eye, then did a search on 'bar' thru the rest. The only two that seem like they might be close are:

Lalumière, Claude, "The Lost and Found of Years"
McCollum, Michael, "Dream World"

I did, however, find the one bar story that I was going to ask about (edit: which is definitely not what you're asking about for your unsolved):

Niven, Larry, "The Fourth Profession"

Which wasn't a Draco story, iirc.

Ann, I went through the link you provided earlier, that is Fletcher Pratt's collection and it doesn't contain what we are looking for unfortunately.

Justanotherbiblophile, I checked out those three and doesn't fit the bill. Damn this is getting harder and harder to find, I'm starting to wonder if I really did read this or maybe it was in my real world...

Don't give up. You've not even spent 5 years looking for it yet :P Have patience, and bump it up once a month.

Btw, this sounds like a real story to me. I can't put my finger on it, and I don't know if I've ever read it (unlike this one, where I definitely had read the scene: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...). But it resonates correctly/feels right.

Haha, as a matter of fact, I have in fact spent about five years trying to find this! I posted this on several book clubs, writers' forums such as Ray Bradburry's forum, and many others and it's been about five years now.

But yeah, not gonna give it up, I'm looking through Andy's list now, going through each letter and doing a search for "science fiction", hopefully that will turn something up.

You might also want to search on 'story' as well. If you've got the patience, actually reading them all by hand/eye would be best, you never know how someone annotated/wrote those reviews...

Good suggestion.
I'm thinking of downloading all the pages and combining them into one document so I can do multiple searches.

BOOYA! I found it!

Here it is, from Andy's list:

Hamilton, Edmond, "The Exile"

Four science fiction writers are talking after dinner about creating worlds. One of them, Carrick, tells about a barbarous world he created that came into existence due to his proximity to a power plant. He imagined himself in this world and was transported there—Earth. Now, he supports himself with his old trade, writing science fiction.

Thanks Andy and everyone else too. You guys rock!

I'm a different Andy but I've been following this with interest. You've probably found it, but there's a copy of the story here:
http://www.scritube.com/limba/engleza...

Also, Sach? You can move this (by clicking the edit next to the subject - and selecting solved instead of the default unsolved) to the solved folder, and save our forum admins a bit of work :)

Oh didn't know that. Will do that right away!

Glad you found the story, Sach. Looks like it's been collected a lot of times (see list here http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cg...)

It looks like that, Andy. No wonder though because it is a really intriguing story!