Many years ago, I checked out a thin, tan-colored book of short
stories authored by who I thought was Leo Tolstoy. The short stories
turned out to be bizarre science fiction.

The only things I know about this book:
-One story was about a lake of mercury
-One story was about a man who believed that if the sun hit the right
kind of rock in the right way, it would preserve an image of
everything around it; at the end of the story, he sees an image of
prehistoric plants and animals on the rock.

Please identify this book and provide a link to the text of it online.
If it is not online, please find it on alibris/etc.

Thank you!

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Request for Question Clarification by juggler-ga on 19 Mar 2003 19:06 PST

What is your best guess of the year in which you encountered this
book? Any estimate would help.

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Clarification of Question by seamusabshere-ga on 19 Mar 2003 22:46 PST

I encountered this book sometime between 1995 and 2000.

Rather than Leo Tolstoy, I believe the author may be Alexei Tolstoy,
who wrote science fiction and horror stories, among other things:

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/atolstoi.htm

Alternate spellings: Aleksei/Alexsei/Alexei/Alexi/Alexis and
Tolstoy/Tolstoi

Alexei Tolstoy's son, Nikolai Tolstoy, also writes science fiction.

I hope another Researcher will be able to find the book you want.

I do not like to be critical of Google's fine team of researchers, but
in my opinion this is a plainly inadequate answer.

It looks to me as if hedgie-ga has not offered anything that resembles
an actual answer. He took the information first posted by pinkfreud-ga
as a comment, and added nothing particularly useful to it.

I do not think a researcher should post an answer to a question that
asks "What is this book of science fiction short stories" by merely
identifying the book's possible author (with information that he got
from another researcher, in this case). At the very least, the
questioner could have been asked "If I can suggest who MIGHT have
written your book, shall I post that as an answer?"

Hedgie, I suggest that you withdraw your answer unless you can come up
with more than this.

seamusabshere

       The question can be withdrawn for several reasons,
       and I do not know which was was operational in this case.

       In the case you did not run out of patience
       and are willing to cooperate in the search
       I would like you to look at the page below.

 It is tan and has sickle&hammer on the cover. 
 Do you remember anything on the cover?
 It was published in 2001 which would fit roughly into
your range.  It is called : Soviet Short Stories.

The cover is shown here:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=2WXJH0FS2N&isbn=0898756529&itm=1
 


 I have identified several other books of the short stories
  which could fit, and am willing to continue the search
  (and you wil not be expected to read all 8 volumes of his
   Collected Works  in Russian :-)  )

   So - if you are interested to continue, please
   indicate that, preferably in question clarification.

hedgie