SOLVED. Sci Fi Short Story anthology from the Late 80s/Early, possibly a YA, with a human sized duck on the cover [s]

[Lucas]

Hi Goodreads, I have been racking my brain for weeks. Attempting to do google searches for this book.

I remember it having a human sized duck coming through and intervene signal door with a kid on the other side.

Two stories I can remember from it were:

A kid defeats aliens with his imagination, using either a coin toss or his finger as a gun.

A boy lives in the future where plastic is in everything, he wakes up one morning to find his face malleable and twists it about. His family thinks he's someone else and he gets chased out of the house.

thats all I have as it's easily been 20 years. I read it in middle school.

[Lucas]

After some searching I found the short story of the boy.

"Playing for Keeps" by Jack C Haldeman, but it seems the only book it was published in was here

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

So that leaves me still roughly at square one with the duck book. Though I read th story again and it was a nice revisit. I'm afraid the other one is going to be from elsewhere too. :/

[Andy]

Here's a link to a list of where "Playing for Keeps" has been published http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cg... . One of the places is "Tales from Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine" Tales from Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine: Short Stories for Young Adults which has a duck on the cover (see here ) (and according to this list http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?3..., the book contains a story called "Things that Go Quack in the Night" - which is probably the cover story).

[Lucas]

Well that's it!

The list of published places I found only had the magazine and "Aliens and Outworlders" on it

[Andy]

Lucas wrote: "Well that's it!

The list of published places I found only had the magazine and "Aliens and Outworlders" on it"

Glad to help. I recommend the isfdb site as the go-to place to find complete listings of publication locations, by the way.

[Lucas]

I can't seem to figure out how to change this to solved. Derp.

[Yvonne]

Lucas wrote: "After some searching I found the short story of the boy.

"Playing for Keeps" by Jack C Haldeman, but it seems the only book it was published in was here

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1640..."

Hi, Andy,

How about the story about the boy with the plastic face? I'm searching for that myself, and haven't had a good lead.

[Andy]

I looked through the table of contents of "Tales from Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine" and didn't see anything likely to be the "plastic face" story, so I'm temporarily out of ideas.

[Andy]

There's a story called "The Plastic Age" in an anthology called "Adrift in Space and Other Stories" published in 1974. Adrift in Space, and Other Stories that could be a possibility - an excerpt of the story I found online starts like this:
" When he awoke, Paul was unaware of the change that had come over him. He was a little groggier than usual, but otherwise, he felt fine. It was only as he began to dress that Paul noticed the change. His skin. Somehow, it was different. It felt smooth and pliable— like the plastic toys that lay scattered about the room."

You might want to open a separate thread to continue searching for this story though.

[Lucas]

Thanks Andy, I bought "Adrift in Space and Other Stories" from Amazon and I will let you guys know.

[Lucas]

I got the book and it is most definitely it! Thanks.

On the other side of the coin, the story isn't quite as good as when I was 12 :D

[Andy]

Lucas wrote: "I got the book and it is most definitely it! Thanks.

On the other side of the coin, the story isn't quite as good as when I was 12 :D"

Ah, well. That is the risk we always take when finding a book we loved back in the day.

[Lucas]

It's the journey not the destination. :)