Story about rooms or buildings contracting/reshaping/resizing

[J-Sun]

I'm currently reading a sort of surreal science fictional story that's reminding very strongly of another but I can't place it and it's driving me nuts. Lines like "Most obviously the living space had been reduced by at least a third. The corner where his closet had been was subtracted," "Selected images of his family, his wife, had been moved to the ceiling," "There was still that wide color band in the middle where you weren't supposed to put anything, meant to allow for the temporary contractions that occurred throughout the day," and "Sometime during the night [a chair] had been caught between closet and bed during a contraction and snapped into pieces" all remind of some other story but I don't even know if it's a recent story or one done years or decades ago. I suppose it's even possible it's a piece of a novel but I'm almost positive it's a story of some shorter length. Does this remind anyone of any story published prior to this month?

 

[Toby Frost]

I remember J.G. Ballard writing a story about a man whose world contracted into just his kitchen, and one about a space station that grew and grew until it occupied all the universe.

Shirley Jackson and H.P. Lovecraft used the idea of geometry that didn't add up, but I think it was more in the sense of rooms looking wrong rather than getting bigger or smaller.

 

[J-Sun]

The Ballard sounds about right, but I don't think the one I'm thinking of was by him. On the Jackson/Lovecraft, there may have been "wrongness" aspects or maybe not but the focus was just on morphing and shrinking or rearranging. The thing about leaving things clear of especially dangerous regions so they (including people) wouldn't get "folded up" is a particularly vivid similarity.

I wish I could at least narrow it down. It may be a famous classic someone will come up with in a minute or it may some webzine story I read a year or two ago that few people have seen or anywhere between.

Anyway - thanks for your reply. I appreciate it!

 

[hitmouse]

There is another Ballard ss, The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista, in the Vermilion Sands series, with a house which responds to the inhabitant's moods, moving and resizing. The problem is that when someone new moves in they discover the way the house responds has been dangerously compromised by the damaged personality of the previous inhabitant.

 

[J-Sun]

Nope, never read that one. I'm pretty sure that the one I'm thinking of isn't in response to anything about the inhabitants but comes from something external that just happens to them. Thanks for trying, though.

 

[Vince W]

This one is tweaking my mind. I want to say it might be a Bradbury, but I can't come up with a title.

 

[hitmouse]

He Built a Crooked House by Robert Heinlein, possibly? Years since I read it, and I cannot remember the plot beyond the fact that someone builds a 4d tessaract house, with interesting results.

 

[NannyOgg]

I was also thinking of the Heinlein story. However, I can tell you now that that doesn't have the bit about leaving things clear of dangerous regions; in that story, the house folds into four dimensions as a one-off due to an earthquake (having initially been in the shape of a tesseract net) and the story explores the consequences in terms of what the house is then like inside. Other than that, I got nothing.

 

[J-Sun]

Thanks all. It's not "Crooked House" and I'm pretty certain it's not Bradbury. I appreciate all the efforts, but I'm going to give up. The review of the story's been posted and I just left it basically as "it reminded me of something."

 

[CassFrank]

Unlikely but possibly John Shirley’s “What Cindy Saw” from early 1980s.

 

[J-Sun]

Unlikely but possibly John Shirley’s “What Cindy Saw” from early 1980s.

That got me excited because I have read that story and it seemed like it could be it but I don't think it is. The one I'm thinking of is surreal, but it's more rational for all that and sort of geometrical whereas the Shirley is sort of amorphous, organic, and trippy. Still, I appreciate the suggestion and it did refresh my memory of that cool story.

 

[tinkerdan]

He Built a Crooked House by Robert Heinlein, possibly? Years since I read it, and I cannot remember the plot beyond the fact that someone builds a 4d tessaract house, with interesting results.

Yes just recently re-read this one.
An architect suggests to a friend building a house as a tesseract and draws out the plan as it would look if unfolded into three dimensions.
The friend decides the house idea is interesting however can't quite wrap his head around it ever working since when folded properly it would put all of the rooms in the same space. He asks the Architect to build the unfolded version for him. The architect builds it and before he has a chance to show his client the house, there is an earthquake that causes the unfolded tesseract to fold into the small version that contains all the rooms within the same space.

Once they enter the house---the fun begins.

 

[Orcadian]

I'm currently reading a sort of surreal science fictional story that's reminding very strongly of another but I can't place it and it's driving me nuts. Lines like "Most obviously the living space had been reduced by at least a third. The corner where his closet had been was subtracted," "Selected images of his family, his wife, had been moved to the ceiling," "There was still that wide color band in the middle where you weren't supposed to put anything, meant to allow for the temporary contractions that occurred throughout the day," and "Sometime during the night [a chair] had been caught between closet and bed during a contraction and snapped into pieces" all remind of some other story but I don't even know if it's a recent story or one done years or decades ago. I suppose it's even possible it's a piece of a novel but I'm almost positive it's a story of some shorter length. Does this remind anyone of any story published prior to this month?

Try this one, @J-Sun : A Space of One's Own from Clarkesworld magazine: Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 141

 

[Ravensquawk]

This isn't an indubitable description of "The Empire of Ice Cream" by Jeffrey Ford , but close enough to be one of that type of stories.

It's long and a long time since I read it, but:

The narrator goes through experiences that include synesthesia. While eating ice cream he has "hallucinations" (?) of a woman he argues with. They each tell each other that the other person is a product of their own imagination.

The woman argues that she is an artist, very good with a pencil, and can erase him anytime.
He, of course, imagined her whenever he went to the ice cream parlor and ate ice cream.

Near the end, he and his cat are the only living things left, in a disappearing corner of his kitchen.

Another room has disappeared each day I have been trapped here. I sit in Stullin's chair now, in the only room still remaining (this one will be gone before tonight), and compose this tale—in a way, my fugue. The black-and-white cat sits across from me, having fled from the dissipation of the house as it closes in around us. Outside, the garden, the trees, the sky, have all lost their color and now appear as if rendered in graphite—wonderfully shaded to give them an appearance of weight and depth. So too with the room around us: the floor, the glass panels, the chairs, the plants, even the cat's tail and my shoes and legs have lost their life and become the shaded grey of a sketch.

Twenty years ago, Science Fiction Archive of stories became SyFy. Web Archive Wayback Machine has saved a few things. This could eventually become a dead link, hence the description.

So far, this story is still available here.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Don't know it but I've read something similar. Can't remember the title or even if it was a book versus short story. But what I do remember were the colours on the floor which changed according to whatever change was coming. So if part of the floor turned orange or red (guess) he had to move everything in them before he went to bed. That was the last thing he did at night. The chair was a mistake - he had forgotten to move it the previous night.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Ravensquawk]

Well, now that we've heard from posters that it 'seems familiar', here is another story title.

I just read "Cold Friend" by Harlan Ellison, some time after seeing it as an answer about one person left with all but a tiny chunk of the world gone.

The room he is in doesn't distort; the hospital he is in and a small bit of city are on a piece of earth that is an undercut divot taken off the world. He looks over the edge at the dirt torn or chipped out like a wedge, surrounded by void.

Very weird things happen. Ellison even wrote that it was one of the stories he created by letting his imagination run wild and observing where it went.

Everything happens in that isolated-piece-of-the-world setting, rather like Jerome Bixby's "It's a Good Life".

 

[Orcadian]

@J-Sun Not sure if you spotted this earlier? I'm sure A Space of One's Own by Steve Rasnic Tem is what you're looking for. It was published in Clarkesworld Magazine. It contains the text you quote. Some - possibly all - of the story is here: Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy.

 

[Ravensquawk]

@J-Sun Not sure if you spotted this earlier? I'm sure A Space of One's Own by Steve Rasnic Tem is what you're looking for. It was published in Clarkesworld Magazine. It contains the text you quote. Some - possibly all - of the story is here: Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy.

That is definitely the story. Even the question quotations are nearly verbatim.

It was such a hard story to read for someone concerned about overpopulation -- and who observes fewer people now concerned about overpopulation now when the world population is twice what it was when people were discussing it when I was a kid -- that I fidgetedand squirmed the entire time I read it.

Horrible stuff.

That story is it.

 

[J-Sun]

@J-Sun Not sure if you spotted this earlier? I'm sure A Space of One's Own by Steve Rasnic Tem is what you're looking for. It was published in Clarkesworld Magazine. It contains the text you quote. Some - possibly all - of the story is here: Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy.

Yeah, I guess my initial post wasn't clear. I remember realizing awhile ago when this thread came up again that I'd forgotten not only the story I was trying to think of but the one that made me think of it. You've recovered the story I was reading when I made this post but that was the one that made me think of the other story I was wanting help identifying. The quotes came from the then-current story, which is the Tem story, but that's not the one I couldn't remember at the time.

If that makes any sense.

Perhaps I dreamed it and it never existed. I'm content to give up, myself. (But thanks to Ravensquawk and everyone else for the suggestions.) But I think, from all those suggestions, we have uncovered a previously unknown micro-genre.

 

[Ravensquawk]

Yeah, I guess my initial post wasn't clear. I remember realizing awhile ago when this thread came up again that I'd forgotten not only the story I was trying to think of but the one that made me think of it. You've recovered the story I was reading when I made this post but that was the one that made me think of the other story I was wanting help identifying. The quotes came from the then-current story, which is the Tem story, but that's not the one I couldn't remember at the time.

If that makes any sense.

Perhaps I dreamed it and it never existed. I'm content to give up, myself. (But thanks to Ravensquawk and everyone else for the suggestions.) But I think, from all those suggestions, we have uncovered a previously unknown micro-genre.

It makes perfect sense!

Thank you; I thought I had distorted and misinterpreted your question in my mind: I kept thinking you wanted stories like the story you described, and got embarrassed thinking later that I'd misread the question.

So back to similar stories.

There is yet another one: "Mariana" by Fritz Leiber.

Mariana, in an unhappy life, finds a breaker box of switches and turns off the one labeled "TREES". By doing so, she turns off the holographic trees surrounding her house.

Her abusive husband gives her some abuse for it. It continues with more switches. Eventually she sees a labeled with her husband's name. She flips it to turn him off -- and he is gone. It continues with more swtches. . . . .

"Mariana" was the first story of that kind I read, possibly followed by some others not recalled yet, then "Empire of Ice Cream" and after this post, "Cold Friend" and "A Space of One's Own".

It has set me on the search for more stories of that definitely existent micro-genre.