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I remember reading a collection of Sci-fi short stories, in the 90s... sometime between 92-98, in India. the book was in English, but not by an Indian author. the stories i can recall are below:

  1. There is a story about a Female AI (Robot) who falls for her owner, but he is in love with another lady... {EDIT: not "Helen O'Loy" :)}
  2. a story about 2 pen-pals, one on Earth, who is paraplegic & another in a prison on a death row, on a distant planet which is really hot. both parties do not tell the other of their predicament & want to escape their lives & secretly want to switch places with the other finally do it
  3. A story about the world in an eternal winter & nearing ice age. 1 man helps save the world
  4. I cant recall the story at all, but i recollect one scene where one of the main characters is skinned alive and left in the snow to die.. sorry, cant recollect anything else from this story

etc... there are many other stories that i cant recall. it was a wonderful book... i am desperately looking for it... anyone has any clue please do let me know...

this book was a paperback, it had about 10+ stories in it

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    The second story is "Dear Pen Pal" aka "Letter From the Stars" by A. E. van Vogt. Stay tuned.
    – user14111
    Sep 25, 2015 at 19:16
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    hello User14111, thanks a ton.. its is the Dear Pen Pal story :) it was such a joy reading it again...
    – Karuna
    Sep 26, 2015 at 6:29
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    Hello user14111, i just read the Helen o'Loy, but it doesnt seem to be the one i remember reading. i clearly remember the fembot feeling jealous of this other lady her owner likes
    – Karuna
    Sep 26, 2015 at 6:57
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    Its been close to 20 yrs since i read the book  so forgive  In the third story, as far as i remember, the scientist would have already predicated that due to global warming and CO2 emission, the earth will form a protective layer, which will cause cease the green house effect & the cold isnt able to escape the earth & eventually causes ice-age like situation. but later this scientist devices something that helps bring about a change in the environment. the last line is something like "for the first time in years, he could feel beads of sweat on his forehead" or something like that :)
    – Karuna
    Sep 26, 2015 at 6:58
  • The ISFDB page for the one story identified so far (isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?70706) lists a few dozen titles under which it has been published. Do any of them look familiar?
    – Otis
    Oct 23, 2015 at 20:48

2 Answers 2

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I have a feeling that the OP might be talking about two different books.

There is an anthology of science fiction stories by Indian authors called "It Happened Tomorrow", published in 1993. Here are the stories from that collection which have similarities to 3 of the OP's stories

  • Female robot falling in love with her owner who loves someone else - "Ruby" by Arun Mande.
  • A story about the world in an eternal winter & nearing ice age. One man helps save the world - "The Ice Age Cometh" by Jayant V. Narlikar.
  • One of the main characters is skinned alive and left in the snow to die - This might be "Second Coming" by R.N. Sharma, where a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp is skinned alive and dies, while it is snowing.

The only one that does not match is the one about the pen pals.

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    thank you soooo much.. "It Happened Tomorrow" is the book... thank you, thank you :)
    – Karuna
    Jun 28, 2018 at 10:02
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The first story sounds like "Helen O'Loy" (1938) by Lester Del Ray, and User14111 says the second is "Dear Pen Pal" by A.E. Van Vogt.

And if you figure out how to searche this site

[1]https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi

You should find lists of the anthologies in which each has been reprinted.

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  • Doing a google search with site:isfdb.org and "Dear Pen Pal" and "Helen" shows no listing of an anthology containing both stories, so the first story probably wasn't Helen O'Loy.
    – Hypnosifl
    Sep 26, 2015 at 5:22
  • @Hypnosifl Fembot falls in love with owner? Naturally "Helen O'Loy" is the first thing that comes to mind. But there is no "other lady" in the story, and Helen ends up marrying her owner.
    – user14111
    Sep 26, 2015 at 6:29
  • Hello Hypnosifl & user14111 - i read Helen O'Loy, it doesnt seem to be the story I read in that book... but thank you..
    – Karuna
    Sep 26, 2015 at 6:40

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