Prof Sai wrote: ↑Sat Feb 15, 2025 11:26 pm
Sadly, it is rather slim pickings for this topic. I could make some, but I am rather unpopular.
Join the club...
How about the entire human population of Earth shrinking? From the final EC comic book,
Incredible Science Fiction #33 (February 1956). Minor SW content:
No guarantee of SW content:
http://www.camelotbooks.com/masters-of- ... rgent.html
("A Smaller Government" is also in her collection
Puss in D.C. and Other Stories and in the anthology
Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge, edited by Lou Anders, I'm sure at a cheaper price. I'm not going to be the sucker who buys the book to check for worthwhile SW content this time.)
The short story "Laboratory of the Mighty Mites" by Gilbert Rae Sonbergh, the cover story for
Amazing Stories, June 1943, is about a well-paying government job involving assembling bomb sights. At the beginning of each work day, everyone is knocked out. They wake up naked, and have to put on "work clothes". After a day of assembling bomb sights, at the end of the day, everyone gets knocked out again, they wake up naked again, they put on their regular clothes, and go home. Supposedly they get knocked out because it's top secret government work. But they're actually getting shrunk at the beginning of the day, and restored to normal size at the end of the day. Apparently repeatedly being shrunk and restored to normal size eventually is fatal. That's why the job pays so well. A worker finds out the truth, and stages a revolt.
There's an episode of
Superfriends in which an entire city gets shrunk. The Wonder Twins are in the city when it happens. ("I feel like I'm shrinking!" "The whole city is shrinking!") But I can't remember the episode title.
And there's the Underdog episode "The Big Shrink", in which Simon Bar Sinister puts his "shrinking water" in a rain making machine, causing mass shrinking. But that probably isn't of interest here because of the crude animation, which was "outsourced" to Mexico. (Supposedly the cels were painted with house paint instead of special animation cel paint.) Though according to a comment on the MeTV Toons Fans Facebook group. Underdog puts the shrunken Sweet Polly Pure Bred in a toaster to dry her off after she gets wet. And I remember her being kept in a bird cage. All four parts are on YouTube, posted by multiple members.