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ActionPhilosopher posted:I recently saw the movie "I Am Legend", and it reminded me of a book I read in high school (but not the book by Richard Matheson). It might just be a short story or novella. Anyways, its about a man, who is locked/sequestered in a garden. He is allowed to request, and will receive any book or material he wants, but he isn't allowed any human contact. He is totally isolated. The story follows the various stages the man goes through as he goes insane from the lack of human interaction. I think the story was written around the turn of the century, but I could be wrong about this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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# ¿ Dec 23, 2007 23:27 |
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# ¿ May 15, 2024 04:06 |
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Alan Smithee posted:1) During the Destination Saturn thread in GBS some people mentioned a character from a Kurt Vonnegut book who's basically a hack science fiction writer who spends his days writing mediocre stuff similar to the one in the thread, anyone know which book that is?
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# ¿ Jan 29, 2008 03:34 |
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Astarael posted:2. This one was about a boy and his younger sister dealing with their mom paying less attention to them I think? I know at the end she shows them what she's been spending so much time on, which is painting illustrations for kids books, and the boy is really impressed at how beautiful they are. I think at one point the little sister gets lost and they have to go and search for her. One image I remember is they were making dinner, and the boy cuts himself, and thinks that his body, made by god, is less durable than the man-made tin can he cut himself on. He then feels guilty about this thought.
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# ¿ Mar 8, 2008 01:39 |
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Golden_Zucchini posted:The first one had to do with an alien race (possibly referred to as Turtles, though that could have been the alien race in the other book) whose home planet had suffered some sort of disaster. Unfortunately, since the home planet was 75 light years away, the ship they sent was a bit late in investigating (they traveled at c by converting the entire ship into energy). When they arrived they found that the planet had been swallowed by a black hole. The crew decided to follow the planet into the black hole (or maybe fell in accidentally) and wound up in a different universe where all the stars had been encased in Dyson Spheres. After escaping an attack by the beings who lived there, the people in the ship dropped into another black hole and into a third universe which was just collapsing. That black hole brought them back into the universe they started from only several million years in the past. Eventually, they just tooled around at the speed of light for a while until the Turtles evolved on their home planet, picked up a few females, and continued on their way until they caught up to when they started, ready to repopulate the species. Not a terribly good book as I recall, but interesting enough.
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# ¿ Sep 10, 2008 03:24 |
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Meeper posted:Okay, this is one I read years ago; it's about an (English?) couple in the 50s(?) who are in a nuclear blast and slowly get sick from radiation poisoning? It was a cartoon book, sort of, and I specifically remember them building a shelter inside their house which was just a plank sloped against a wall with a mattress on top? Ring any bells?
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# ¿ Sep 30, 2008 04:19 |
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nathanthekiller posted:Alright, this has been on my mind for a while. I read a fantasy book about 4 to 5 years ago, but it may have been several years older. It involved a young man who I think failed his rite of passage which was to be able to do magic, and he was exiled. I remember one of his enemies could conjure swords out of thin air. Also I think there was quite a bit of sex in it, if that helps. I know its not much info, but its killing me.
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# ¿ Jan 2, 2009 18:41 |
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ModernDayDiogenes posted:First series was a tween/teen horror series, if I remember right. Kinda struck me as being published in the 70's, had that kinda vibe. There were three main characters that I remember - a kinda pudgy boy, maybe in his early teens, a girl (same age, maybe a little older), who I remember was always described as really thin, wore glasses, and had long black hair that (I think?) was described as parted down the middle. The third one was the girl's grandmother/great-aunt who usually was the hero of the books, because she was able to exorcise/fight off the demons that the kids encountered. In one book, the boy came to acquire a medallion that was possessed by a demon, and it gradually got more and more control of him as the book went on. I think the girl was more of a background character in this book, but the old woman helped him fight off the demon of the medallion. I cannot remember the plot of the second book, but I do remember that the girl and the old woman are the main characters, and in this one the boy's a background character. About the only detail I can remember about the other book is when the girl and the old woman are at the gas station, and the author writes that the girl always likes to go to the gas station, because she likes the smell of gasoline and she likes to see the numbers on the pump spin around. Then, as they're driving back, the old woman falls ill (possibly because of demon attack?), and the girl has to drive her truck back, and there's a snippet of her struggling with the gears of the truck.
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# ¿ Jan 26, 2009 03:56 |
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Dr. West posted:Looking for a strange sort of zoology book from at least twenty years ago. I remember it had a nice, leather binding and everything was done so professionally it felt like a field guide, but rather than any earthy creature inside there were just these incredibly detailed drawings and dissections of these prehistoric alien things. I remember one in particular that looked like a jellyfish around the size of an island that floated on the surface of the water and caught birds trying to land on its gigantic top. Also, if I remember correctly, there were two volumes: one for these prehistoric creatures and one for aliens. I honestly wish I had the gall to steal that thing in the third grade, because it was a real triumph in style.
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# ¿ Mar 2, 2009 07:51 |
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Jack the Lad posted:Ugh, this is driving me crazy.
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# ¿ May 14, 2009 20:55 |
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Saeka posted:I was reading Wikipedia one day and came across the description of a book in which everyone on the planet's consciousness jumped back in time 10 years. However, instead of being able to change events, like in a traditional time loop story, everyone is forced to relive the same events that had happened. The book deals with the fallout of the entire human population having essentially relived their last 10 years on autopilot, and the shock of being in control again.
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# ¿ Dec 23, 2009 02:46 |
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Hixson posted:Trying to remember the name of a scifi short story. Sorry if it's been mentioned before
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# ¿ Feb 25, 2010 18:29 |
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Flaming Condor posted:My boyfriend saw a book in Barnes and Noble a while ago that we haven't been able to find since. Here's what I know about it:
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# ¿ Apr 4, 2010 18:26 |
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superv0zz posted:I've been trying to find this short story forever.. it's about a kid living in the future and people have stopped going outside.. they use these teleporters to get from point A to B and he's scared that the power will shut off and he'll be half here and half there.
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# ¿ Jul 24, 2010 22:30 |
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MisterBibs posted:Basically it was a (fictional) story about a school where a caste system was implemented, denoted by arm bands. I think blue was the upper-tier one, there were two middle-tier castes, and a yellow caste of the lowest. You had to be nice to the castepeople above you, and you could demand stuff from a lower-caste person. Because this was a child's book, I vaguely remember it being only simple things.
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# ¿ Jan 6, 2011 02:51 |
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Adar posted:About a year or two ago, someone in LF posted a link to a forum with one of the worst stories I've ever read. It was about Hell invading the Earth and the world's combined militaries counter-attacking Hell back. Yes, every bit as bad as this sounds (obviously not published so it's also full of spelling errors). What set this apart from the usual fanfic was that it was probably a few hundred pages long and full of military jargon.
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# ¿ Feb 2, 2011 03:35 |
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regulargonzalez posted:Trying to remember a children's series of books. They were predecessors to the Encyclopedia Brown style of books that were big in the early/mid 80s where each chapter had a problem to solve. I remember one puzzle in the first book was how to get a golf ball out of a gopher or rabbit tunnel. I swear the series was called Tack or T.A.C.K. but I can't find anything by searching for that + "children's book"
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# ¿ Feb 2, 2011 18:12 |
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fritz posted:I'm trying to remember the title of a book I saw a few times over the last couple years.
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# ¿ Oct 14, 2011 02:29 |
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Zoinker posted:There's this sci-fi story I read in an anthology a while ago that I want to track down again. Can't remember the author, but the premise was pretty interesting and creepy.
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# ¿ Oct 23, 2011 06:25 |
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dhkx posted:I've been trying to locate a sci fi book I read when I was a kid about 10 years ago. All I can remember was that it was set primarily in space and the characters had to deal with tiny (I think) insects that could attack their ships and eat through the hulls. I think the first word in the title was "Deepspace" or "Backwater" but I could very well be wrong.
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# ¿ Dec 1, 2011 01:46 |
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eating only apples posted:e: Oh, and another one for you guys. Another YA thing from 6-10 years ago. Teenage girl gets captured by demon man and taken to his castle. He's the typical beautiful demon guy, only he can't heal his wounds, and at one point he gets lacerations right through his cheek that never heal. He has dogs guarding the castle steps. In the garden there's a cave, in which there's a river I think and a man lives there, he helps the protagonist. There's something about apples with this guy.
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# ¿ Dec 22, 2011 23:48 |
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Detective Thompson posted:Which Asimov book/story has a super computer that, if I remember right, is a large glass sphere filled with some sort of gaseous substance.
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# ¿ Mar 20, 2012 16:58 |
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DaGr8Gatzby posted:I remember reading this book in 7th grade about a war with Streetcars. They used pea shooters to shoot out the tires. That is all I remember about this book. It was one of the weirdest books I have ever read.
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# ¿ Jun 27, 2012 16:49 |
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miryei posted:In either the movie that you remember, or in the book that Lyon's trying to find, was there a museum involved? Either the kids ran away and were hiding in a museum, or the old guy owned a museum, or something.
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# ¿ Jul 5, 2012 19:29 |
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ClearAirTurbulence posted:This is an odd one, as I already know the book (or think I do) but I think it's a different version from what I've read. Action Jacktion fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Aug 4, 2012 |
# ¿ Aug 4, 2012 16:49 |
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Sanford posted:I remember a short story from a sci-fi anthology (that seems to be a theme in this thread). It was written in the first person, with the main character fleeing through space from a group he called the Usurpers, until he finds a world that seems totally untouched by them. He hides there and realises this is the place he first met them, and shared his knowledge. He hides but they find him and run him to ground, declaring that the world is a sacred place and he may not be there. Resigned to his fate he asks, in a pitiful fashion, "But why? I am God!". The Usurper replies "Yes. But I am Man. Now come". End of story. Any ideas?
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# ¿ Jan 30, 2013 23:46 |
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BattyKiara posted:Book for older children, posibly from the 90s. A large book about goblins. Written as a scientific work, by someone who studied goblins. It had annotations by goblins in red ink. Brian Froud's The Goblins of the Labyrinth, also known as The Goblin Companion: A Field Guide to Goblins. It's actually a tie-in to the movie Labyrinth.
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# ¿ Mar 14, 2013 20:01 |
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Astrofig posted:This book was one I read at camp ~15 years ago. I don't recall the title or author; all I recall distinctly was that it was a collection of separate stories about young people dying in horrible ways----one chapter was called 'In Love's Blood: Malaria' and it told how these two friends were vacationing somewhere tropical but one of them forgets to take his antimalarial pills and guess what! An infected mosquito bites him! The text described what was happening inside his body as he was swimming and making out with cute girls. Last Breath by Peter Stark.
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# ¿ Apr 23, 2013 16:58 |
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Korgan posted:Read this probably over a decade ago. Collection of short sci-fi stories, the one that's bothering me is when an alien race of squat humanoids with high melanoma take up orbit over earth, then demand all humans leave to the southern hemisphere so they can colonise the northern hemisphere. Leaders of the world all panic, one of the aides then broadcasts every single human war and a lot of fictional movie war scenes at the alien ships, basically telling them 'gently caress with us and we'll fight you to our dying breath.' Aliens revise their plan, saying they'll just take the population to work as slave soldiers due to a war they're fighting, and they won't colonise the planet after all as ..."we don't want to lose you." Aide is horrified, military bloke who worked with them is elated, story ends.
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# ¿ May 5, 2013 02:25 |
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scaper exile posted:I saw a made for T.V movie years ago that a acquaintance told me was based upon a classic book. A brief synopsis without the ending is provided below:
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# ¿ Jun 13, 2013 15:05 |
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AreYouStillThere posted:Asking this for a customer, as I was completely stumped. The Programme Guide?
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# ¿ Jul 5, 2013 17:35 |
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Butch Cassidy posted:Anyone know the title of Steinbeck's book about a man trying to unionize orchard workers and regularly stopping by a diner for hamburgers? I started it back in middle-school and never finished because my already tattered copy fell apart and lost a bunch of pages. In Dubious Battle.
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# ¿ Sep 30, 2013 18:47 |
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Linnear posted:It was a short story about two of the last people on Earth. One was a vampire, and the other was... something else, I don't remember. They had a conversation, which ended with the other agreeing to let the vampire have a drink. The vampire couldn't control himself, however, and drained the other completely. "Opening a Vein" by Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini.
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# ¿ Jan 10, 2014 02:22 |
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BattyKiara posted:Science fiction novel. The language was sort of 1950/60ish. A father is concerned that his 10 year old suddenly starts having imaginary friends. The son starts asking weird questions abou the Earth, claiming his invisible friend needs to know these facts. In the end we fnd out the imaginary mates are really aliens interogating the boy to prepare for an invasion and colonisation of Earth. Sounds like "Zero Hour" by Ray Bradbury.
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# ¿ May 18, 2014 20:00 |
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Centripetal Horse posted:A couple of decades ago, I read a book (I think) about a young man who wins the lottery. The following is what I think I remember: Uneasy Money by Robin F. Brancato.
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# ¿ Aug 4, 2014 17:52 |
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Centripetal Horse posted:Hah, thanks. The title doesn't really ring any bells, but that is definitely the book. Did you find this for me, or did you know the answer off the top of your head? I read it a long time ago, and somehow I remembered the title.
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# ¿ Aug 4, 2014 23:10 |
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SerialKilldeer posted:e: And one more! "The Two Stepsisters" by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen.
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# ¿ Aug 31, 2015 19:40 |
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Pork Pie Hat posted:1) A non-fiction book I read about 15 years ago. It was presented as a series of Sherlock Holmes short stories in which Holmes and Watson investigated mysteries that were all based on modern scientific things, so the reader could learn about modern science (I want to say it was just physics, but I'm not 100% on that) in the guise of fiction. One of the mysteries involved a heavy metal sphere dived in half, and it turned out that when the two halves were joined together a nuclear explosion occurred. That sort of thing. The Einstein Paradox by Colin Bruce.
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# ¿ Jan 17, 2016 20:29 |
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SereneCrimson posted:Thanks to a discussion with a friend about books we read in high school, I am struggling to remember the one I read that I really liked. Maybe Brian's Return or Brian's Hunt, sequels to Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.
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# ¿ Apr 30, 2016 04:02 |
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Chairman Capone posted:There's an Isaac Asimov (I think... maybe Arthur C. Clarke, but I'm pretty sure Asimov) short story about a rabbi being called in to determine if a genetically engineered pig with cloven hooves and which chews cud can be considered kosher... tried hard to find it today but even Google is failing me. "The R-Strain" by Harry Turtledove.
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# ¿ Jul 27, 2016 15:30 |
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# ¿ May 15, 2024 04:06 |
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mr. unhsib posted:Okay, longshot but here it goes. I read a weird sci fi short story about a couple who have a baby that's born as an oblong rectangle. The reason given is that the baby is partially in another dimension (or something). Eventually the parents are able to visit the baby in its dimension (also appearing as weird 3D shapes in our universe), and ends with both parents staying in the child's world permanently. Does this ring any bells for anybody? "Tomorrow's Child" by Ray Bradbury.
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# ¿ Aug 17, 2016 15:54 |