[CaseyFronczek]

Sorry if this is OT but I am trying to identify a science fiction story I recall from my teenage sci-fi phase 30-odd years ago.

It was about someone/ something who was collecting (or making?) specimens of every creature, and by the end of the story you realise he/she/it is creating life on earth. I only really remember the fact that at the end you realise it is about the creation of life, the rest is sadly vague, which is why I'd like to find it and read it again!

Does this vague plot ring a bell with anyone?

I have tried internet searches to no avail. I thought it might have been an Asimov but I can;t find anything similar in lists of his stories. I also searched for Bradbury, and Arthur C Clarke, but it could be any author that was around before the 70s really.
I mostly read collections of short stories, which is why I think it was a short story rather than a novel - but I could be wrong. (Maybe I imagined the whole thing?)

[RogHammon]

I suspect I read the same one- as the plot does ring a bell

however I am coming up blank on the author as well...

(so no you arent imagining it)

thats one option gotten rid of at least...

[qzgCVHex]

The Bible?

No?

Well, that's two crossed off the list

[CULTDIAMONDS]

TV Tropes might have the answer, if you're willing to sift through it and not get distracted.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpeculativeFictionTropes


Edited to add: I apologise in advance to anyone who ends up spending the next three days in that labyrinth of links.

[Patgaepx]

I doubt its Asimov, Arthur C Clarke wrote a few strangely almost religious stories not necessarily from a christian perspective. But as you say it could be from any number of obscure writers.

[Buyingtime]

I don't recognise it. You could try a scifi forum such as http://www.coolscifi.com/forums/

[Reatclaplen]

has this story have a reference to para-Dise? the persons home planet was called Dise.

[CaseyFronczek]

Just emerged from Helix's mesmerising tropes website - no luck there. I am now venturing into mollwollfumble's scifi forum, and I'll have another go at Clarke, and check out that "Dise" suggestion too.
Thanks for the suggestions - if all else fails, Boppa and I might have to write such a story ourselves based on our shared hallucination of the plot!

[CULTDIAMONDS]

Just emerged from Helix's mesmerising tropes website - no luck there. I am now venturing into mollwollfumble's scifi forum, and I'll have another go at Clarke, and check out that "Dise" suggestion too.
Thanks for the suggestions - if all else fails, Boppa and I might have to write such a story ourselves based on our shared hallucination of the plot!

When (if!) you find the title, please let us all know what it is.

[moopogyOvenny]

Hmm it wasn't one of the early attempts at Riverworld by Phillip Jose Farmer, was it? The original Riverworld story was titled Owe for the Flesh and ended with the protagonist (called Richard Black in this version) finding the tower at the end of the river. Farmer entered a sci-fi contest run by Shasta Press and subsidized by Pocket Books, submitting his 150,000-word entry. He won the contest, but received no money. The work was never published and was lost in its original form. A later, revised manuscript (itself lost for decades) was discovered and published in 1983 as River of Eternity.