Help to find a book.

Well, there was a period in the Eighties where Harry Harrison and Martin Greenburg did a boatload of themed anthologies; they were limited run and never reprinted. Used bookstores, Abebooks, and Add All.com are my go-to for hunting these kinda things; I'll keep an eye out!
Thanks. Hope you find it. I've asked in forums every few years, but haven't had any luck so far. Starting to think I dreamed it, lol.
 
Stanislaw Lem wrote "The Futurological Congress"; it's a potential maybe as it is listed as a 149-pg novella. And, it was published in 1971. Penguin Books did it as a 129-pg paperback in their "Classics" series. And many of the sci-fi anthology collection books from that time period would feature one or two novellas, so.... ?

From various synopsis on the web, it ticks many of the memory points you described.

 
Stanislaw Lem wrote "The Futurological Congress"; it's a potential maybe as it is listed as a 149-pg novella. And, it was published in 1971. Penguin Books did it as a 129-pg paperback in their "Classics" series. And many of the sci-fi anthology collection books from that time period would feature one or two novellas, so.... ?

From various synopsis on the web, it ticks many of the memory points you described.

Looks like an interesting story, but unfortunately not the one. The story I remember was set in a suburban setting. Picket fences and cook outs. No politics or war going on. And definitely no all girl orchestra strip tease, ; )

 
Searching over at scifiStackExchange yields the short story Cocoon by Keith Laumer.
You found it ! Strange I skimmed through it and it's so different from what I remember, except for the ending. I really think I dreamed about this book, and added a bunch of stuff, lol. Oh well, almost 40 year mystery solved. Thanks to everyone who replied. Glad that's over. It was like an earworm for the brain, ;

Here's the story on Internet Archive. Starts on page 31.


And here's the book I had. All I remembered about it was it was Blue, lol. Now seeing it again, I should have remembered the cocoon. Oh well, at least I know it was real, and not just a glitch in the Matrix, ; )

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Yay! A victory!

I treasure those alot these days :cool:

Seriously, I've been helped by so many folks over the years, I do enjoy helping out in return!
Yea man, I sure appreciate it. It's horrible to have something bouncing around in your gourd like that. I need to rebuy the book, and see if there really were any other good stories in it. Thanks again !
 
Keith Laumer also created the Bolo series and the awesome Reteif series and wrote Galactic Odyssey and the mind-blowing Dinosaur Beach, so yeah, the dude could write!
 
Yea man, I sure appreciate it. It's horrible to have something bouncing around in your gourd like that. I need to rebuy the book, and see if there really were any other good stories in it. Thanks again !
Awesome!!! Glad to see you got one solved. Now I just have to find that other book someone asked me about...
 
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