Searching for Story

[RezD]

Hi Everyone,

I wonder if you can help me, I am searching for a story I read a few years ago.

It was a short story and was about two men who discover some sort of secret to improving their intelligence exponentially. As the story proceeds they come into conflict and through a series of encounters and using various increasingly complex means to affect one another one defeats the other.

I think there is some reference to a concept something like verbally transmitted "virus" that infects the mind or something in that area.

My recollection is quite vague but I remember it being excellent and would love to find it again.

Can anyone help?

Many thanks

RezD

Edit: My Brain is telling me that it may be A Greg Bear Short Story but this is by no means certain.

[Erfael]

This one sounds really familiar. I had a very fast look through some of my old F&SF magazines, feeling like it came from there, but I didn't see anything right off. I'm not sure about the Greg Bear thing....I'm pretty sure I've read this, but I've read very little of him lately.

I'll try to poke around my shelves a little more and see if I can come up with it.

[RezD]

This one sounds really familiar. I had a very fast look through some of my old F&SF magazines, feeling like it came from there, but I didn't see anything right off. I'm not sure about the Greg Bear thing....I'm pretty sure I've read this, but I've read very little of him lately.

I'll try to poke around my shelves a little more and see if I can come up with it.

Thanks so much for looking into this for me.

The thing that comes over most prominently is the sense that the narrator and his adversary's minds are running at blistering speeds, and although not much physically happens in the story you get a really strong sense of two superhuman intelligences battling it out.

I wish I could remember where I read it.

Thanks again!

RezD

[Erfael]

I also, for some reason, feel like the one who won did so with something very simple...still stumped, though.

[RezD]

I also, for some reason, feel like the one who won did so with something very simple...still stumped, though.

Yes that definitely rings a bell!

Well we seem to be talking about the same story even if neither of us have figured it out yet. I'm heading home now so will have a good rummage again myself.

[Erfael]

This has been bugging the crap out of me for hours. Try this: Ted Chiang's "Understand"...appeared in a 1991? Asimov's and in his book Stories of your Life and Others.

I think that's got it....at least, that's the one I was thinking of.

Looks like it's legally available here: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/under.htm

[RezD]

This has been bugging the crap out of me for hours. Try this: Ted Chiang's "Understand"...appeared in a 1991? Asimov's and in his book Stories of your Life and Others.

I think that's got it....at least, that's the one I was thinking of.

Looks like it's legally available here: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/under.htm

You beauty!

Thats it!

Thank you SO much for finding that for me.

Thanks again you are a star!



RezD

[B5B7]

Another, much older story that seems somewhat similar to that which you have actually found is the novel The Power by Frank M. Robinson (1956), which was made into a movie starring George Hamilton (1968).