Idaho Science Fiction

This list does not include every reference to Idaho within each work. Each novel or story is listed only once, with a brief explanation or sample quote.

Neither Sam nor Loryn had ever gone skiing, and I thought how could htese two live in Idaho and never go skiing? So I saved my money and gave them a one-day ski trip for Christmas...

We'd sat for hours in the little observation deck of American Nicoji's station orbiting Earth. The snow in the Arctic had shone so brilliantly white we'd been amazed. But we'd thought--coming from Idaho--that we'd never miss snow.

"We were crazy," Sam said.

To think we wouldn't miss snow or to leave Earth? I didn't know what he mean. Both, maybe. I didn't ask.

I wanted to laugh because she was explaining to me, a guy from Idaho, how to grow potatoes, but I didn't laugh.

But we were Idaho farm boys--what did we know about avocados?

I merged back behind a couple of Idaho Meat-Packers' trucks...

A few years after we left Reddyville, Doctor Goodenough was drowned in the Portneuf river when his buggy turned over... Nothing was left of Reddyville. Everything had moved to McCammon or Arimo or Downey or Pocatello, looking for an easier life.

My grandfather, B. Y. Green, died three years ago, so I can tell this story now... what I remember most was star-gazing on Christmas Eve. He used to call me outside to look up at the furiously-cold Idaho sky...

Welcome to Oregon, he thought bitterly. And I thought Idaho was bad.

He sighed and looked awa. "There aren't any letters for you folks because . . . because I'm coming west out of Idaho, and nobody back there knows you, here in Pine View..."

"Maybe someone down there will write to us, if we send them a letter first!" Abby's eyes were bright. "Then, when you pass this way again, on your way back to Idaho, you could give us the letters they send..."

...Idaho, lakes to small; Great Salt Lake, no volcanic activity... As she studies the maps, Chris learned that Lake Bonneville disappeared about 50 million years ago, before the Cenozoic Ice Ages. Sometimes the lake was small and sometimes it was huge, even extending into Idaho and Nevada and connecting to the Pacific Ocean.

Heading north on I-15 towards Idaho...

"...that's about his fifth offense, and he'll be working it off in Idaho. Maybe the Aleutians! Maybe ten years!"

Albert appeared, to the few who met him, to be the very picture of an Idaho mountain man. He had a long white beard and white hair. His face was rough and red from the sharp wind and bring sun. In the early years, he'd only worn animal skins, but since the turn of the century, and the first real gold mining rush into this area, he'd worn regular clothes, bought at the store a week's walk away in the little town of Yellow Pine. He only went into town once a year. He never talked to anyone and no one had paid him any attention. Fifty years back, he had reported to the authorities that Albert Jonathan had died and left his land to his son, Albert Jonathan Jr. He had no son, but the little ploy had covered the fact that he was living so long.

"Daniel was in a very strange space in northern Idaho, a space beyond real possibility of contact.

He had put down roots here in Idaho. He had integrated himself into the depths of the Idaho landscape. He had become a genius loci, a spirit of place. Every tree, every bush, every flower, every caterpillar, genetically wired for sound. He didn't merely watch over this place--in some profound sense he had become this place. He had become a little piece of Idaho. In the winters, he hibernated.

"Sit down," Tana said. "I got your jail records from Idaho, and your records from the mental hospital from Arizona. The psyche profile looks consistent. So, tell me, how does God speak to you?"

"We can go up to Idaho and get lava--Max Morrison has acres of it--and spread it out on the salt flats. We'll make what--a fish? Something big enough to be seen from space."

"Why a fish, Grandpa?"...

"Early Christian symbol--fishers of men."

"There's a freeway junction up ahead," offered Chill. "This has got to be I-90."

...Recall... looked at the endless irrigated fields around them. Mobile sprinkler gantries sprawled across the landscape like giant metal centipedes, some of them spitting plumes of water with the force of fire hoses. "You think these are potatoes? I suppose, as Devo spud-boys," we should be thrilled."

"Famous potatoes." Chill repeated the slogan, which they had discovered on Idaho license plates even before crossing the line from Washington. "Sad when that's the biggest thing you've got to brag about."