I need help locating a Short Story

[crazy_n_vegas]

Ok gang, be gentle, I am a nwbie to your forum...

I am looking for some help in locating a short story that I read several years ago. Unfortunately I am very short on information. I am unaware of the title or author so bear with me.

The story is about a group of people travelling in a starship, that crash lands on a habitable planet, that has no organized life on it. THey quickly use up their supplies and are forced to relearn all of the things learned by man in the early times. (i.e. build fire build houses etc.) This is basically an adam and eve thing... the stroy ends telling us that this may be how our civilization started.

I am not sure, but I think it was written in the late 50's or early sixties, and I know I read it in a compilation of other short stories, possibly edited by Assimov.

Unfortunately I lost my entire library in my last move from one coast to the other and have no idea where to find this story. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Ken Korczak]

Hey Crazy:

The story you're looking for could be one of hundreds, or possibly thousands with the same or similar plot.

But it does sounds like one Jack Vance's works. Very often, his stories are set on planets where human beings have crash landed or immedgrated to many eaons ago, and have all but forgotten their origins as earth people.

In some Vance plots, Earth is only a "legend" and no one really knows for sure where the human species evolved.

An excellent novel by Vance along these lines is "The Blue World." In this yarn, humans exist on a world that is all sea and no land. They live on giant lillypads, of sort. They have dim memories of their ancentral space ships which brough them to the Blue World, but they have long since "moved on" and become adapted to their new world of water, and sea monsters.

It's a super good book, which many of my friends thinks starts out slow, but is very satisfying if you follow it through to the end.

I think this book is out of print, but you can easily find a paperback version somewhere, especially from an on-line used book dealer. I'd lend you my copy, but I gave it to my brother and he never gave it back!

Frozen in Minnesota -- ken

[crazy_n_vegas]

Thanks for the reply Ken, I think tha helped a lot... I did run cross some Vance stuff in one of the books I flipped through, but the title was so foreign to me that i think I skipped it. I will go double check.

I hope you thaw ou soon, and you should come visit in Vegas if you get the chance, I will most definitely seek out the novel you recommended.. thanks again!