Farmer - Ruins of my mind 
Vrsta: Seminarski | Broj strana: 7 | Nivo: Filološki fakultet

Memory as the basis of social and individual identity in the story “Sketches Among the Ruins of My Mind” by Philip José Farmer
Author’s biography
He is best known for his Riverworld series (which follows the adventures of diverse characters through a bizarre afterlife) and for the World of Tiers series (set within a number of parallel universes). His works often contain sexual themes: his short-story collection Strange Relations was a notable event in the history of sex in science fiction. But his work also sometimes contains religious themes: Jesus shows up in Riverworld series and in Jesus on Mars.
Essex House, publishers of pornography, commissioned Philip Farmer to write three erotic fantasy novels.
He received many awards. Some of them are:
1953 Hugo Award for most promising New Talent, for novella The Lovers
1968 Hugo Award for best novella, Riders of the Purple Wage
1972 Hugo Award for best novel, To Your Scattered Bodies Go
2001 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement
He was also nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards many times.
Plot
On June 1, 1980 the whole world awoke and started their daily duties thinking it would be the day same as every other. But it wasn’t at all. It was the day that changed their lives completely.
Mr. Mark Franham was a lawyer, and his wife was Carole. They had two sons: Mike, aged ten and Tom, aged eight. Mr. Franham didn’t notice anything unusual until he saw on the morning newspaper that it was Sunday instead of Saturday. Then he felt the first panic. But he talked with his neighbour and with the paperboy, and reassured himself. They thought that the night staff had fallen asleep for a couple of hours, and that some joker had diddled with the computers. He took the papers for the last four days, and then he realized that he didn’t remember the past four days at all. And this happened to everybody all over the world. He remembered Tuesday’s newspaper where he read about a strange object that circled around the Earth. They called it “The Ball” because it was completely round and it looked like a huge billiard ball. They supposed it was artificial because it often changed its direction. No radiation was emitted from The Ball and no response was made to the radio and laser signals sent from the Earth. Many scientists believed that there were no living passengers because no being could live long enough to travel between the stars. It was probably unable to land on Earth because of its size and weight, so they supposed it would only survey Earth, take some photographs and return to its home planet. But it wasn’t that way. The president was optimistic, too. He said that the beings who had sent The Ball must be more advanced than we, so they couldn’t be hostile. Many people went to church and they listened the improvised sermon of Dr. Boynton, which he didn’t have time to prepare in Saturday, because of memory loss. He said that God had sent The Ball and the beings as sharers of Peace, Love and Prosperity. Nobody knew what The Ball was, but they knew that their memory loss was connected with it. Mr. Franham tried to think reasonably as a lawyer. They completely lost memory from May 31 to May 28. If the same thing happened tomorrow, they would lose all memory of yesterday, June 1, and three more days of May, from May 27 to May 25. The next day they wouldn’t remember June 2, and the days from May 24 to May 22. And so on, and so on…

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