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Leporidae
Since: Mar, 2016
30th Jun, 2017 01:31:10 PM
Anything in the Food Pills trope for the first story?
TheGreaterFool
Since: Jan, 2013
6th Jul, 2017 02:20:04 PM
That's one Trope I didn't look at, thanks — but no luck. I think this one might be too old and obscure to solve.
I'm looking for the title of a book of science fiction short stories that I borrowed from my middle school's library in the mid to late 1980s.. I think it was a new book at the time — I remember the school librarian made a point of mentioning it to us. (Though it could just as easily have been a reprint or, since it was a public school library, a much older book that was just in good condition.)
I remember two of the short stories vividly. In one, a family's spaceship crash lands on an uninhabited planet. The parents die, so four siblings have to figure out how to survive. The biggest challenge is food — on Earth, everyone eats processed cubes provided by the government. The end of the story jumps to many years later. The family figured out how to farm, hunt and fish. The younger siblings flourished and grew to be much taller than their older siblings, who are revealed to be just four feet tall. The narrator explains it's because the older siblings had grown up eating the processed Earth food, which was laced with chemicals to stunt humanity's growth. They switched to natural foods too late to reverse the process, but the younger siblings were able to grow to their full potential.
The other story I remember is a first-person story about a boy who is going to meet the robot that determines everyone's role in society. He goes into the room and is surprised how lifelike and grandfatherly the robot is, except for its red eyes. After a brief chat, the robot asks the boy what he wants to do with his life. The boy honestly answers that he desires to kill things. The robot essentially says, "OK," and has someone escort the boy out of the room. The story then ends... the last thing we learn is that the boy sees the robot "power down," and realizes it's nothing more than a machine after all. There's no clue about the boy's ultimate fate.
You'd think with this much detail, there'd be a relevant Trope or Google result somewhere. I'm hoping these stories appeared in other works, so even the title of just one could send me in the right direction.