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From: wildbill@ucbvax.ARPA (William J. Laubenheimer)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Story title request
Message-ID: <7418@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 23-May-85 03:44:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.7418
Posted: Thu May 23 03:44:17 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 24-May-85 03:44:23 EDT
References: <2048@topaz.ARPA>
Reply-To: wildbill@ucbvax.UUCP (William J. Laubenheimer)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 20

>     Our hero, after facing many problems and dangers, finally confronts
>the Ultimate Being whom he feels is the source of all these problems. The
>being is chortling about 'his toys', and at a distance we can see all the
>people in the world dancing on puppet strings which this being controls. 
>Then, our hero notices something.... strings leading from this Ultimate
>Beings limbs upward into darkness.

>/amqueue

This sounds to me as though it might come from Alfred Bester's long
novelette, "Hell Is Forever". The story comes in a number of segments,
each of which concerns itself with one of the principals. One character
seeks the Ultimate Truth, and is sent to Hell as being the place where
he is most likely to find it. The segment's conclusion depicts a reasonable
facsimile to the scene which you have described. My copy of this story is
in the Bester collection, \\The Light Fantastic// (Berkley/Putnam, 1976).

                                        Bill Laubenheimer
----------------------------------------UC-Berkeley Computer Science
     ...Killjoy went that-a-way--->     ucbvax!wildbill