Author Archives: admin

239C: Family gets rich but then they get fed up with the money

Me and my brothers were read this when we were growing up in the 1980s and none of us can remember the title. It is a children’s picture book with great graphics. The parents became wealthy being rock stars (or famous at least, if not rock stars) and they moved to a house with a gold bath plug in it and had an ice cream machine that made rainbow coloured ice-cream but then they got bored of the money. I remember that the mother complained about the bath plug being scratchy. The mother had a really cool hairstyle which came forward in a point on her forehead. It wasn’t a long book – for bed time reading- but we all think about it a lot and would love to find it.

239B: Mirror World (Solved)

I am trying to remember a book that I read in elementary school in the mid to late 80s. I don’t remember the title but it was about being trapped inside another world inside a mirror and anytime they showed mirrors they used holographic stickers. I remember it being a large picture book with great (Victorian style?) artwork.

239A: A boy with wings

I’m looking for a trilogy the second book hardcover has a skeleton metal android on it and has a yellow background its at least a trilogy. It is about a winged boy, named Del, living in what sounds like a castle or a temple. He dies at one point and becomes a room but escapes the room. In another part his body is possessed by some spirit, I think it was a god, the God in Del’s body tore off his wings. I also remember that his eyes could change color. Right after the possession he, Del with the god in him, was in a room being tortured by someone. The girl that Del had been traveling with commented on his eyes being white with rage. After the god in Del’s body and the girl escape the god rips off the now damaged wings. After he dies he was in a room that was his soul it was painful for him to become a room. After he rips himself free he grounds up and devours some pictures which represent the souls. He did that because someone with him told him to. They said that it wouldn’t be as effective but should still help. There’s people riding something that the android is carrying someone sets the android free.

Thank you for at least trying to help,
Jessee

238A: Benjamin B., who is he?

Taught myself to read in first grade with a book of forgotten title. The main character is Benjamin B. (or Benjamin B––) (not Bee or any other variation). The book was published before 1966, which is when I read it. The book was not new when I read it, so possibly published before 1960. It is my faint impression (which could be incorrect) that he was a British boy, so perhaps written by a British author. I’m sorry, but that’s all I have. I have been looking for this book for about a decade, so any help appreciated.

237D: Aliens with moss-like reproduction

This was a novella contained in a large edited volume of Sci Fi short works. Since I read it in the mid 1960’s to 1971 time period and it had a library binding, it probably dates from early 1960’s.
The plot is as follows:
Humans underwent a diaspora throughout the local galaxy; then at some point colonies lost contact with each other and with Earth and cultures evolved on their own pathways. At the point in time when the story takes place, an interplanetary Human government is trying to locate old Earth colonies to bring them back into the fold. This is apparently a very desirable event for the other cultures, as they get all sorts of economic benefits by being in the human club. Thus, many civilizations of near-human look-alikes also try to get into the human federation (Yes I know, what are the chances? Convergent evolution can only do so much. )

So inspectors investigate new applications to the federation to determine if the people really are descended from ancient earth colonists. The lead character in the story is an inspector/investigator. He is following up on the investigation and mysterious disappearance of an earlier investigator. He has a copy of the previous investigator’s rather cryptic journal, which mentions “Musci” in relation to the people of the planet. Musci? Is he talking about houseflies (Muscidae)?

Turns out, the people look much like humans, but clearly are not; they reproduce by alternation of generation, like mosses and all other land plants (though it’s only really obvious to the naked eye in mosses and ferns). “Aha! Not houseflies, but mosses!” the narrator of the story thinks. (“Muscinae” is an outdated name for the mosses, now called Bryophyta.) There is a diploid generation that gives birth to a batch of haploid babies (plants do it with spores). These babies are spirited away (out of sight of nosy humans), and grow up to be either pure haploid males (one set of chromosomes plus a Y-chromosome) or pure haploid females (one set of chromosomes, one X-Chromosome). The author describes them as very handsome/beautiful, the essence of the ideal male or female. These people have sexual reproduction, give birth to diploid babies, and die. The diploid adults raise the diploid babies (if I remember correctly) and the haploid people raise the haploid offspring of the diploids.

I really would like to locate this work, to use as a side note in teaching introductory biology lectures on plant reproduction and how strikingly different it is from animal reproduction.