Looking for the title/author of a short story about a groundskeeper at a university and a female student who has an affair with a professor. At the end of the story, the groundskeeper picks the girl up while he is plowing snow. Read in an undergraduate creative writing class circa 2002.
I’m looking for a short story that was published in a compilation of sci-fi stories, probably somewhere between 1995-2005. Sci-fi short story was about wizard and a plant that was taking over the earth. The wizard was trying to kill the plant to save the world, but no matter what he tried, he couldn’t do anything about the plant and it ended up taking over the world. Wizard also had a globe or orb that was an exact replica of the earth. The orb displayed live and the wizard could zoom in and see anything and anyone and what they were doing. The only thing that didn’t show up on the globe was the globe.
I am looking for help in trying to locate a short story or essay that describes what happens to books, letters, and other written words once they vanish from this world. I kind of recall that the author might be Jorge Borges, but a superficial search of his work doesn’t show anything. And I might be barking up the wrong tree entirely.
This book is fiction, and could be a novel, short story, or novella, but set in the current time and real world when the book was published (sometime between 1960-1985). A famous night-time talk show (along the lines of The Tonight Show during the Carson age) hosts a segment featuring a guest who is a man with a very smart dog; the guest claims the dog can understand spoken conversation, beyond just verbal commands. There are a number of conflicts that arise; the main conflict is the sponsor of the show (a dog food company, I think) wanting to use the dog in advertising, but the dog’s owner refusing. I think it is set in Manhattan, and the book culminates in a dog fight on the ice of a pond in Central Park (between the smart dog, I think a golden retriever, and a doberman pinscher).
Looking for a science fiction novel which starts with an older man on a park bench having a conversation with two or three youths (I think young men, teens). It is a philosophical conversation, mostly about economics and society. The interaction is recorded via a smart device, and uploaded to the worldwide network; it becomes enormously popular, the old man becomes quite wealthy and the teens are viewed as somewhat famous (infamous?) for their part in the conversation as foils, even decades later. This may have been a novella or short story, as well, and may have been by Vernor Vinge or David Brin; it would have come out after 1990 or thereabouts.
I’m looking for a short story from about 10-15 years ago, title was something like “The Return Trip”. The flight of a famous M.D. is grounded in Boston for weather. In the airport, he receives a call from a young woman, the daughter of an old girlfriend who is dying of cancer. Story ends with his burning the unopened DNA lab results of the (his?) daughter, ordered years ago by the mom. Published in the July issue of an airline magazine (USAir?) about 10-15 years ago.
I realize it’s not a book, just a short story. I recall Googling the author when I knew his name, he had several collections of short stories, but none included this particular story. Not sure if it was ever published anywhere other than the airline magazine. I don’t recall the airline, but United and USAir were the most likely. I do know that it was a July edition of the magazine.