[Shaun Gardiner]

As it says on the tin, I'm hoping someone'll be able to identify a science fiction short story I read when I was kid, around twelve or so (so it'll have been published at some point before the 1990s, maybe the 50s or 60s).

I have a feeling the story's by Ray Bradbury, but I'm not certain - I've trawled through many descriptions of his short works online and not found a match. From what I remember the story had a very elegiac mode and a highly dense, poetic manner dissimilar from the other Bradbury works I know.

(The following details are all hazy, I may have one or more of them incorrect.) The story concerns a man and a woman who live in a grand mansion, near a lake. Around the grounds of the house as they descend towards the lake grow strange flowers which, if I remember correctly, are crystalline in appearance. Whenever a flower is plucked it has the effect of altering the pace of local time, so that events beyond the lake occur at a much-reduced rate.

There is a rebellion or popular coup happening in the country wherein the story takes place, and a rampaging mob is approaching the house where the man and woman live. No doubt of their intentions - when the mob arrives both man and woman will be for the chop. They pick flowers at periodic intervals, so as to slow the mob's approach, but the flowers are running very low in number when the story opens, and the last one may be plucked during its narration, I'm not certain.

And that's about it. I'm so hazy on the details and I've been unsuccessful at tracking the story down for so long that I'm wondering if I actually made it up, or am confusing it with a dream or some such thing. To the extent that I'm thinking of taking a risk and (re)writing the damn thing myself...

So, can anyone help?

[Jayne Osborn]

Heck, Shaun, you've got me hooked with that précis!

I'm probably hoping as much as you are that someone has the answer to this...

Meanwhile, how am I going to sleep until we find out what this short story is/was??? And does a film version exist? If not, it ought to.

Oh, please don't say it was all a dream...

Jayne

[R. S. Gwynn]

"The Garden of Time" by J. G. Ballard.

[Jayne Osborn]

It's past midnight here, but I can sleep now thanks to you, Sam.

[R. S. Gwynn]

https://englishteachers.wikispaces.c...EN+OF+TIME.pdf

[Tony Barnstone]

Ballard--really a writer to be treasured. Swift meets Borges meets Phillip K. Dick.

[Shaun Gardiner]

Sam - you're a gem! God, that's a nigh-twenty-year itch you've scratched. (A sentence that sounded better in my head.)

[Jayne Osborn]

Shaun,

I saw just a bit of a gripping film one Saturday afternoon when I was fourteen, but at school on the Monday I couldn't find anyone who'd watched it; I was dying to know the dénouement!

Channel-hopping late one night - seventeen years later - I tuned into something that all of a sudden seemed familiar.

It turned out to be that film, which was Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (from 1956 and starring Dana Andrews) and the twist at the end was worth waiting for (maybe not for all that time though).

So I can relate to a nigh-on twenty-year itch as well!

Jayne

[R. S. Gwynn]

You're welcome, Shaun. I'd actually never read the story, but your description immediately brought Ballard to mind. The search took only a few minutes.

[Susan Breeding]

This same exact thing happened to me a few years ago. One summer after my freshman year in college, my cousin told me about a story called "They." It sounded great so when I got home, I found it in an old Afred Hitchcock collection; and sure enough, it was something.

Then, years later, I remembered it and wanted to read it again. But I didn't know the author, so it took awhile to find it. Turns out it's an old story by Robert Heinlein. Stranger in a Strange Land had been a big hit with me and my friends in college at that time, too.

Now because of this thread, I will look into Ballard. Wheee.

Sue