older short story search, drug addict becomes off world gladiator.

[Brynn]

Thirty odd years ago I had a slim paperback collection of short SF stories which I'm trying to identify. It wasn't a new book then.

It included a story about a long time 20th century junkie whose search for an elusive 'ultimate high' brings him to a mysterious drug pusher. The pusher is revealed to be an alien talent scout for a gladiator school on a different planet. The junkie enlists and fights in the games, the other combatants (mostly non-human) are collected down-and-outs too and also alien to the planet.

There is perhaps a rebellion, followed a downer of a return to earth.

The collection may also have included a story about a news service whose teletype starts to recieve news from off world. The narrator, an editor whose job mostly involved changing the spelling and punctuation in the news reports from British English to American English and vice versa, tries to follow the reports as they seem to describe a descent to war, the reports stop suddenly. Normal service is resumed. I may well be remembering this from an entirely different source.

Any ideas on the title of the short story or the collection?

Thanks

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Glory Road, Robert Heinlein? The first part sounds about right. But not a gladiator - a soldier.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Well, the teletype one is likely The Night Wire by Henry Ferris Arnold.

Finding a book that includes it and the other story might be an interesting task.

 

[Brynn]

Thanks for the replies chaps.

I'll be nipping round to the library tomorrow to make sure, but unless Glory Road started out as a short story it's too long and though it seems to share some elements it doesn't seem to be it.

Sadly, The Night Wire isn't the story I'm reaching for either, though it is similar in its main device. The story I'm remembering has the news printed out on a teletype machine not typed by a human operator, the 'action' also doesn't occur on Earth but off world (Mars?). I'm not remembering fog.

Thanks again,

Brynn

 

[PaulMmn]

Glory Road is NOT about a junkie!!!

--Paul E Musselman

 

[Brynn]

I've been trying to remember and the addict has a conversation with the pusher during which peyote and yage are mentioned as being trifling. The addict is dismissive of the new drug (yaru, yuru?) as it is not injected and he has been 'mainlining' for years.

As for the second story, I think one of the received teletype reports may have been about an explosion at an arms manufactory, followed by a censors interdiction not to release the story. The war I think, was to be an invasion of Earth from Mars?

Cheers

Brynn

 

[Brynn]

Bump.

 

[Brynn]

The collection is Time out for Tomorrow by Richard Wilson.

The copy I read was the 1962 Ballantine edition.

The story about the junkie gladiator is The Big Fix (1956), the teletype story is QRM (1957).

Phew!

 

[Ray McCarthy]

QRM of course is Radio "Q" code for "interference". A term still used, probably since before WWI.
1912 Definition
QRM Are you being interfered with? or I am being interfered with.