Searching in Vain for Two Short Stories (Help Please)

[Omega]

Ok, well i've spent quite a bit of time searching for a few short stories I read as a child and I began to look for them again because the topics were pretty interesting. At this point, search engines have yielded little to no helpful results. So i thought why not come to a site where there is a high probability at least one Samaritan could most likely help me, if not more. If these short stories sound familiar to you, please, by all means, give me the titles.

Story one:
It's kind of a dystopian nightmare where the government has found a way to implant chips that control your occipital lobe. Some mathematicians developed complex pictures---algorithms that short-circuits the human mind and result in death. So the government blackens the entire world out for the children except their school and their homes so they do not see the pictures and die. Then there is a group of students who find a book with low-tiered or low-leveled pictures that only knock you out unconscious rather than killing you and so part of their initiation is to look at the pictures for prolonged periods of time while remaining cognizant of their surroundings. Then stuff happens, i forgot. But then the terrorist, oh yeah, terrorist use these pictures as a form of guerrilla warfare. They stick them on edifices and whatnot and kill people in the process with the pictures. so after the school ended, the janitor opened the door and died because one of the terrorist placed a picture on a door, but one of the student who had slowly decencitized himself to the pictures was able to tear it off the wall and shred it before losing consciousness. and the last pertinent detail i remember was the children saw an unpenetrable darkness. nothing could cut through it. i remember the author using the word "torch" instead of flashlight, so i assume he was british. but my memory is somewhat shaky since I was in 5th grade when i read this.

Story two:
this is fictional too. scientists are on Mars and they have digging equipment, drills, excavators, etc... But they have this one particular machine that floats above the surface and can carry staggering weights. i have no really definitive recollection of this one, but i think there may be an earthquake or a climactic disaster on the surface and one of the scientists or researchers perished. maybe he survived. but there were two in total.

story three:
I luckily found this story. it's pretty neat. it's about the the snowball/butterfly effect. i recommend reading it. http://www.lasalle.edu/~didio/course...of_thunder.htm

[Wraith]

The first one sounds like David Langford's Basilisk works. I don't remember reading anything about a dystopian type thing, but the stories in that sequence are generally about images that cause the human mind to crash, killing the person.

Free version of the first story, BLIT, here: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm

There were a few others that I haven't read, you're probably thinking of one of them. "Different Kinds of Darkness" maybe?

I've got nothing on the second.

edit: Here you go. http://www.greenfield.narod.ru/langf...ffer_kind.html

[wiggin]

The first story is indeed David Langford. The story in question was Different Kinds of Darkness, written as a later sequel to the original BLIT (there are a few stories in this vein). I believe it won a Hugo about a decade ago.

The second is rather vague, so I'm afraid I can't help you there. I've read lots of Mars colonization/exploration stories, but there's just not enough information to go on to give you something specific. Do you know if it was in a magazine? An anthology? Do you recall any other details on plot?

[Omega]

The first one sounds like David Langford's Basilisk works. I don't remember reading anything about a dystopian type thing, but the stories in that sequence are generally about images that cause the human mind to crash, killing the person.

Free version of the first story, BLIT, here: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm

There were a few others that I haven't read, you're probably thinking of one of them. "Different Kinds of Darkness" maybe?

I've got nothing on the second.

edit: Here you go. http://www.greenfield.narod.ru/langf...ffer_kind.html

Wow...Thank you so much. I'd use a knee-nosed bloodhound analogy, but i fear it may grant a great disservice to your abilities to hunt down short stories given little information. As repetitive as this it, thanks a bunch!

And,could you tell me how you searched for them? If I can possibly use your strategies in the future to find my own answer without resorting to asking other people for there help and wasting their time.

The first story is indeed David Langford. The story in question was Different Kinds of Darkness, written as a later sequel to the original BLIT (there are a few stories in this vein). I believe it won a Hugo about a decade ago.

The second is rather vague, so I'm afraid I can't help you there. I've read lots of Mars colonization/exploration stories, but there's just not enough information to go on to give you something specific. Do you know if it was in a magazine? An anthology? Do you recall any other details on plot?

thanks for helping! and Wraith found it somehow.

[Wraith]

Wow...Thank you so much. I'd use a knee-nosed bloodhound analogy, but i fear it may grant a great disservice to your abilities to hunt down short stories given little information. As repetitive as this it, thanks a bunch!

And,could you tell me how you searched for them? If I can possibly use your strategies in the future to find my own answer without resorting to asking other people for there help and wasting their time.

I did a search for 'basilisk image', which led to Langford's wikipedia entry, and pulled the story names off there. No magic strategy involved, I was just able to remember an important keyword.