Requesting the title of a science fiction short story my dad told me about twenty years ago. The general gist was that there was a human and some kind of alien (I seem to remember it as red and arrow-like but I'm not sure if he described it or that was just my imagination) on opposite sides of some kind of barrier or bubble. They were completely unable to communicate, but they both gradually realized that the atmosphere was harmful to them and they needed to switch places. Whether or not that's the whole story or just a fragment of it, I have no idea.My dad was a big classic sci-fi nerd and everything else he read was from the 40's or 50's so I assume this one is as well. I've read quite a bit of sci-fi from that period but never encountered it, so I guess it's an obscure story. I don't really know anything else, I just always remember that one time he told me about it while driving. And today, I'm missing him, so I'd be delighted if I could find it.
>>1555943try:-Arena by Fredric Brown-Enemy Mine by Barry B. Longyear-The Pod in the Barrier by Theodore SturgeonAlso, does the Star Trek episode "Arena" ring a bell or is it similar?
>>1555974Thank you so much for your response. I read the summaries of those three stories and then read "Arena" and I'm positive that's the story my dad was talking about. I remembered it a little differently, or maybe my Dad told it differently, but that is 100% the plot he described. The other stories had too many other aspects that I wouldn't have failed to remember. The alien was even red! And I or he probably confused a "bad atmosphere" for the intolerable heat. My Dad was a Trekkie, so I'm sure he knew that episode, but he never mentioned Kirk or Spock or anything like that. I couldn't possibly tell you why that story came up in conversation.Thank you so much. This meant a lot to me.
Maybe it's The Gods Themselves by Isaac AsimovThe humans and aliens are in 2 different universes with different laws of physics that allows them to send energy to each other.In the human's universe this ends up being harmful. So they end up finding a way to cmmunicate.
