SW in Mainstream Fiction

[foreverlurk]

"The Sisters Grimm : The Unusual Suspects", by Michael Buckley

Shrinking scene starts near page 213, 2 girls and 2 boys basically have the Alice In Wonderland "Drink Me" (shrinking potion) / "Eat Me" (growing cakes), they use it to get tiny (bug-sized), they explore some vents and get almost eaten by a mouse. They all manage to get back to normal size quickly enough, except one girl who loses her growing cake in the chaos and end up lost in the grass with no way of getting back to normal size. She almost gets crushed / mistaken for a cockroach and poisoned by bug spray, until her friends finally find her the next morning.

https://archive.org/details/sistersgrim ... k/mode/2up

[lbh]

The Micronauts, The Microcolony, Revolt of the Micronauts...by Gordon Williams
This is a trilogy of books in which scientists are playing around with the idea of miniaturizing people to save on resources and living space. There is no "shrinking" - instead they clone a smaller version of your body and transfer your mind into it. In the first book a team is sent in to rescue some scientists who were lost in the wilderness. In the second book they actually try to form a colony of little people (see book cover) but are menaced by a fox. The third book is later on in the colony's life and this time a human (unaware of their presence) gives them fits. Throughout all of it you get the occasional glimpse of what's going on back in the real world but nothing ever comes of it...making you wonder if there were going to be more books that never got written. (I would love to see this same setting revisited a couple hundred or even thousand years later, perhaps after giant society has collapsed and mini people are slowly expanding and prospering.)

[foreverlurk]

"Full Moon Fever", by R.L. Stine

https://archive.org/details/fullmoonfever22stin

R.L. Stine has written a few stories involving shrinking ("Night of the Giant Everything", "How I Got My Shrunken Head"), here's another one that ends with a witch casting a curse on two sisters, causing them to gradually shrink out of their clothes:

[pokonota]

"Asunrath", by Marie-Thérèse De Brosses, 1967

Note that the author (Marie-Thérèse De Brosses) was successfully sued for plagiarism for Asunrath, and many of the physical books were destroyed as a result.

It'd be most interesting what she was plagiarizing and if it was a SW novel as well, maybe even better than Asunrath. Can you investigate?

[dalekguy]

i have not read this in years it was a kids book it was mostly sm but there was a little sw in it The Attack of the Two-Inch Teacher

from what i can see it has had a reissue now being called Sixth-Grade Alien I Shrank My Teacher

it was a kids book so nothing to dark but there were some cute bits with the teacher being mad about being shrunk there was a tv version of these books

but no teacher getting shrunk

dang it

[rscholar]

Here's another variant cover.

[foreverlurk]

Note that the author (Marie-Thérèse De Brosses) was successfully sued for plagiarism for Asunrath, and many of the physical books were destroyed as a result.

It'd be most interesting what she was plagiarizing and if it was a SW novel as well, maybe even better than Asunrath. Can you investigate?

Right, I've read that and tried to find more details - basically she received the manuscript through a friend (an editor), and submitted the text to her own editor. Sadly, I can't find the real author's name, but he was an older gentleman which makes more sense because of the writing style.

My source for this info is in French but can easily be translated (check the nota bene at the end) :
https://www.noosfere.org/livres/niourf. ... livre=3763

I did find another good illustration by Claude Serre, showing the SW falling / dangling upside down:

[foreverlurk]

but no teacher getting shrunk
dang it

Shrinking scenes in books:
Long, good description of characters getting smaller and smaller, gradually losing their clothes, enventually ending tiny and naked, along with detailed accounts of their perception on the world from their new size, etc.

Shrinking scenes on TV/movies:
*crickets*
*crickets*
*crickets*

[foreverlurk]

ВОЙНА С ЛИЛИПУТАМИ / "War of the Liliputians" by Russian science fiction author Kir Bulychev

http://www.rusf.ru/kb/stories/vojna_s_l ... ext-01.htm



Found this story, part of a series for teenagers called "Alisa Selezneva". It hasn't been translated, but using AI translation should give you good results. It's about the adventures of teenage girl Alisa and her friends Pashka and Arkasha with a size-changing gas that can make them three inches tall (another gas makes them normal-sized, too).

While tiny, they meet "Liliputians", who are actually space pirates/slavers from another planet, they are captured and they befriend Zauri, a slave girl and who help them escape. They go back to normal and shrink a few times (in Zauri's case, grow and shrink back to normal). Only living matter can change size, so they have to remove all clothing, hairpins, earearings, etc. avoid being hurt or buried under their clothes when entering the device (as per the cover art), and then use doll/makeshift clothes when tiny.

There's been a few TV and movie adaptations in Russia, but not this one. Some more scans from the book :