When you find yourself trying to remember a show (or any works) that's on the tip of your tongue but just out of reach, come here - the collective brain of the TVTropes community can probably help. Post all the details you can remember (examples help). If you're looking for a trope, head over to Trope Finder. Have general questions about tropes? Visit Ask The Tropers!
Bananaquit
Since: Jan, 2001
2011-08-22 11:59:52
It kind of sounds like The Moonball
by Ursula Moray Williams, only the ball wasn’t made of metal (I don’t think).
71.227.35.42
Since: Dec, 1969
12.107.188.5
Since: Dec, 1969

When I was a wee lad I read a book that sparked my lifelong interest in Sci-Fi. It was about a boy who found what turned out to be an alien artifact, a marble-sized metal ball. There were bad guys (either aliens or government agents) who were trying to retrieve it. The ball responded to the kid's mental commands (for instance he could make it levitate and I recall that he instructed it to become red-hot in a bad guy's pocket after it had been taken from him). There was another small artifact, a cube with bristles like a brush (I think) but I don't remember much more about that. This book was probably written in the late '50s or '60s. I got it from my grade school library (in about 1975) and it seems to me like it might have been fairly old even then. Does this sound familiar to anyone? It's been bugging me for years. Thanks in advance!