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I've got two, and just to shake things up, they're both science fiction. The first one, I read in the mid-to-late eighties, but it was probably written in the fifties or sixties. It was my introduction to my favorite SF sub-genre: the generation ship. Like pretty much every generation ship story, the inhabitants of the ship have been in space for so long that they don't even know that they're on a spaceship. I believe the ship is sort of tubular and there are two factions, one at each end of the tube. One faction is composed of mutants as is known as "muties" and I specifically recall one character speculating as to whether the name was derived from their mutant status or that they were descended from mutineers. So, I guess maybe one faction knew that their world was a vessel of some sort. The two factions fight with knives, but at one point, a character finds and reads a copy of The Three Musketeers and figures out what swords are and his faction is all like, "ZOMG tactical supremacy!" and they make a bunch of swords. Even though you would think that over generations, the size of knives would creep up to sword-like lengths if it was an advantage. At or near the end, I think someone who does know that they're on a ship takes someone else up to the front of the ship where there are windows, apparently, and shows him the stars and he thinks it's a trick. The second book is more of a cyberpunk book, but I feel like it was not as cookie-cutter as most cyberpunk from the late-eighties/early-nineties. For one thing, I think it had more of a noirish spin (first person narrative, at least) and the main character was a PI. For another, a lot of the book had to do with people getting sex changes. (At least it seemed like a lot to my adolescent mind.) In the story, it's totally normal and fairly common for people to change sexes. It may even be like a phase some people go through, like, a dude might be a girl for a few years and then switch back. I'm pretty sure the main character's girlfriend was a male-to-female. I specifically remember a scene where he has a one-night-stand with a young lady and says something to the effect of "it's been a long time since I was with a real girl." The young lady says something that suggests that she is naive or provincial enough to not know what he's talking about. Then, the next morning, the protagonist awakens to find himself alone and the young lady has left a note that says how kind it was for him to act like she was a natural female and her real name was Robert or something. The protagonist says something about how he can usually tell by the hands and feet. There is some sort of middle eastern element. Maybe it's set in the middle east, but it's largely westernized. Maybe the main character is an Arab or goes to the middle east as part of his case or something. The main thing I remember was the sex-change stuff because it was so weird and while it may have wound up being essential to the plot, it didn't seem like it at first. It kind of felt like the author was inserting his weird sexual fantasies into the book for no reason like Piers Anthony and Robert Heinlein do. Other than that, though, I remember it being a pretty good book. I think there was a sequel or possibly even a series. There was almost definitely another book by the same author in the same universe, even if it wasn't a proper sequel. Finally, and this seemed weird to me at the time and still seems weird to me, I think there was an RPG sourcebook for the book/series. This was back in the early nineties when there were sort of third-party rule books for role playing games so you could, for example, set your D&D campaign in the Thieves' World universe. Anyway, this book or series had a book like that and I think it was for Cyberpunk 2020. It might have been for GURPS or something, but I think it was Cyberpunk 2020.
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Jul 28, 2008 09:50
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I think the first one is Robert Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky; at the very least I remember it having the mutants/mutineers ambiguity. And the second sounds like George Alec Effinger's When Gravity Fails. e: for synopses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphans_of_the_Sky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Gravity_Fails Runcible Cat fucked around with this message at 10:02 on Jul 28, 2008 |
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Jul 28, 2008 10:00
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Wow, that was fast. Thanks.
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Jul 28, 2008 10:06
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A book or story in which a son is forced by his (rich) father to eat strawberries wrapped in gold foil. I think it's something I've read within the last few years. I'm not really looking to re-read it or anything, I've just been bugged because I can't remember what the hell it's from.
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Jul 30, 2008 23:41
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Runoir posted:Also, and forgive me if I've asked this before (darn search!). I read a short story about some astronauts that land on a planet and find an abandoned city. They search the city, and near the end of the story, the city kills them and replaces their internal organs with machines, then sends them home to spy on earth. O.o That's The City by Ray Bradbury, from The Illustrated Man, but the city doesn't send them back to spy on Earth...
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Aug 1, 2008 17:13
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I've got three. All of these are short story/novela length young adult books that I read about 10 to 15 years ago. Sorry for the wall of text. 1. Coming of age style story dunked in fantasy. The protagonist is under a curse that makes him a wolfman. He can't talk and uses a chalkboard to communicate until his younger female sidekick teaches him sign language. One thing that sticks out vividly is them signing "have BIG fun" to each other. There's also a pretty  chapter describing awkward anthropomorphic sex. I remember a lot of adult style themes, like the characters living like punk squatters, and them being friends with the bouncer of some kind of fairy/goblin nightclub.2. Kid discovers that he's got the ability to shift between dimensions. He finds a lower 2-d dimension filled with beings that look like the letter B. (may or may not have been given custodial care of the 2-d dimension by a wise old man). I remember this really awesome description of what higher dimensions look like to us (slice by slice view of someone diving into a pool). And I remember him being able to change ketchup packets into chocolate when he shifted back to our dimension. Wacky hyjinx ensue when he gets noticed by some kind of "beings" in the upper dimensions. 3. Brothers (maybe twins) find a cabin/bunker behind a house where time moves faster once you close yourself in. There's a really descriptive chapter where their dog gets himself trapped inside and they basically watch him starve to death in 30 seconds, time lapse photography style. One of the kids decides that he wants to be different from his brother/twin and locks himself in the cabin to age himself a year. Then the book goes into this drawn out explanation of how he passes the time locked in a bunker.
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Aug 2, 2008 04:41
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jeaves posted:I've got three. All of these are short story/novela length young adult books that I read about 10 to 15 years ago. Edit: 2 is The Boy who Reversed Himself and 3 is Singularity I feel like I might have read 1 as well, but I can't remember what it is. mystes fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Aug 2, 2008 |
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Aug 2, 2008 05:18
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mystes posted:I think 2 and 3 are by William Sleator. I will try to remember which books. Ho-lee-poo poo! Thanks! If it helps at all, the first book had a picture of the wolf-boy on the cover.. very Stainless Steel Rat style. I'm pretty sure the title was one word, and I *always* want to call it "Neverwhere", but I know that's not right.
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Aug 2, 2008 05:43
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jeaves posted:Ho-lee-poo poo! Thanks!
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Aug 2, 2008 05:50
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mystes posted:Was there something about a river whose water was important for some reason or am I confusing two books? Maybe? There was certainly a distinction made between the "real world" and the "magic is real LOL" world that the characters lived in. Like, a barrier that you had to cross or something. I could be pulling the name "Old Town" out of my rear end. Some more that's come back to me: - The fairy people were the vaguely evil kind of fairies.. so more Hellboy and less Tinkerbell. - The fairy that curses the main character turns out to be some alternate time line version of his sign language sidekick buddy he's been running around with. - HAD to be written in the late 80s or early 90s. They talked a bit about the characters wearing grunge style clothes and the sex had a condom involved.The more I remember about it the less I want to read it, actually. jeaves fucked around with this message at 06:14 on Aug 2, 2008 |
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Aug 2, 2008 06:11
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jeaves posted:The more I remember about it the less I want to read it, actually.
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Aug 2, 2008 06:12
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jeaves posted:Maybe? There was certainly a distinction made between the "real world" and the "magic is real LOL" world that the characters lived in. Like, a barrier that you had to cross or something. Wild guess: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Borderland_Series
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Aug 2, 2008 06:26
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fritz posted:Wild guess: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Borderland_Series Edit: Or Elsewhere which comes before it. Also, the river's water was apparently addictive, so my last post wasn't just crazy. mystes fucked around with this message at 07:30 on Aug 2, 2008 |
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Aug 2, 2008 07:22
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fritz posted:Wild guess: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Borderland_Series mystes posted:If jeaves read the same book I did, it was probably Nevernever from that series. Holy crap, that's the one. I don't know how people lived their lives before the internet, I really don't.
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Aug 2, 2008 08:45
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mystes posted:I think 2 and 3 are by William Sleator. I will try to remember which books. Definitely sounds William Sleator-ish, but I read The Boy Who Reversed Himself and I don't remember any of those details except "boy can travel to another dimension". I think he reused that theme a bunch, so I think it's a different book. (I could have just forgotten a whole bunch, but it really feels wrong to me.)
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Aug 2, 2008 18:26
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JoeNotCharles posted:Definitely sounds William Sleator-ish, but I read The Boy Who Reversed Himself and I don't remember any of those details except "boy can travel to another dimension". I think he reused that theme a bunch, so I think it's a different book. (I could have just forgotten a whole bunch, but it really feels wrong to me.) quote:But the ketchup--the ketchup! It was the most exquisitely delectable substance I had ever tasted. It was irresistible, as dark and luscious as the most expensive chocolate... Edit: Also, I don't think he had any other book that had travel through dimensions in the same way as this book. I remember the other details and am confident that they were from this book. mystes fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Aug 2, 2008 |
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Aug 2, 2008 20:39
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JoeNotCharles posted:Definitely sounds William Sleator-ish, but I read The Boy Who Reversed Himself and I don't remember any of those details except "boy can travel to another dimension". I think he reused that theme a bunch, so I think it's a different book. (I could have just forgotten a whole bunch, but it really feels wrong to me.)
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Aug 2, 2008 20:41
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mystes posted:I'm pretty sure those details were from that book, though. I just searched the book on amazon and found this: Turns out I've never read that book - I was thinking of The Revolving Boy, by a completely different author.
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Aug 2, 2008 21:34
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My friend told me about this great, relatively new book on the globalization of crime, has anyone heard of this? I can't remember the title
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Aug 4, 2008 19:55
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I've got 2 for identification please! This one's old school - probably came out of those Scholastic Reader catalogs they used to send home in school. Anyway it involved a kitchen boy/stable boy and a girl who ran off with a captured unicorn whose name was like Beldar or something. They met up with a wizard and the only plot detail I can remember was that they needed a unicorn horn for a magic potion, and instead of chopping it off they figured they could just have the unicorn dip it in and it worked. If I remember correctly there was more than 1 book in the series. The other involved a brother and sister whose Mother was ill (another of the Scholastic fantasy books). They were on their way to see a Duke with a lute with a crest on it. They get waylaid by bandits and one of them gets imprisoned in a tower. In the end the crest on the lute is the same crest as the Duke's and the two kids mother turns out to be the Duke's long lost sister or something. Any ideas? Edit First one is Escape of the Unicorn, followed by Return of the Unicorn by Suzanne Lord. Would still love some help on the second one though. hollowmoon fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Aug 5, 2008 |
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Aug 4, 2008 23:48
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hollowmoon posted:they needed a unicorn horn for a magic potion, and instead of chopping it off they figured they could just have the unicorn dip it in and it worked.
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Aug 5, 2008 00:03
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hollowmoon posted:This one's old school - probably came out of those Scholastic Reader catalogs they used to send home in school. Anyway it involved a kitchen boy/stable boy and a girl who ran off with a captured unicorn whose name was like Beldar or something. They met up with a wizard and the only plot detail I can remember was that they needed a unicorn horn for a magic potion, and instead of chopping it off they figured they could just have the unicorn dip it in and it worked. If I remember correctly there was more than 1 book in the series. Did something similar to this happen in A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'engle? I kind of remember something like this happening, but I don't remember any details and it's driving me crazy.
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Aug 5, 2008 18:15
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Kid's book, written in the mid-nineties. Similar plot to Labyrinth, in that it involves a teenage girl and her baby brother being transported to another world, but the baby brother is captured by a guy named the Kingfish. She stops at a hotel called the Starlight Hotel or the Moonlight Hotel or something like that (which is in the title of the book) which travels across the desert. She gets a pendant that can summon the hotel at any time, and does battle with the Kingfish who turns out to be a normal guy with a giant bionic tail he built himself. Very weird prose, kind of like The Van Gogh Cafe, which I think also has a Moonlight Hotel, coincidentally.
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Aug 6, 2008 01:46
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I read this compliation of short stories at least 10 years ago I would think. One of them was about a world where Vampires had pretty much taken over, but a bunch of humans were holed up in a church. At the end, the Vampires get in and a human tricks the main one into drinking consecrated wine from a pop can, which kills him since its the blood of Christ. Another one of the short stories was about a guy that started molding his wifes skin like clay and ended up horribly, might have been called something like Softer? There were a few others in the book as well, but those are the two that I can remember.
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Aug 6, 2008 22:00
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I was told of this a few years ago when the movie "Them!" came up in conversation-it was basically the story of a man who had lost his family to a giant ant invasion, though really it was something to the effect that the idea was all in his head as a way to deal with the loss of his family that he either blamed on himself (or possibly killed them?). It seemed like such a good pseudo sci-fi premise that I am killing myself for not remembering. Does anyone have a clue to what this story is and where I can find it?
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Aug 7, 2008 10:19
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Thatoaklandkid posted:My friend told me about this great, relatively new book on the globalization of crime, has anyone heard of this? I can't remember the title McMafia: Crime Without Borders http://www.amazon.co.uk/McMafia-Without-Frontiers-Misha-Glenny/dp/0224075039
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Aug 7, 2008 23:04
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I was just watching one of the Duggar's specials (that family with 17 children in Arkansas) and it reminded me of some books I read growing up. Can't remember the author or names. Was a series of books about a family with a ton of kids, like the Duggar's. Each book in the series is written by a different one of the children. It's general kids fare, sorta like Babysitters Club stuff I think. I am 26 so it would have been written in the 80's/90's. Any ideas? Much appreciated, I realize its vague.
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Aug 15, 2008 00:24
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Cheaper by the Dozen would be my guess if it was set in a kind of Victorian/early 20th century era.
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Aug 15, 2008 00:41
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Inle-rah posted:I've been trying to find a book I read maybe fifteen years ago. It was fantasy, possibly young adult. One of the opening scenes involved the main character, a girl, getting her period for the first time and wading into the sea. Then a woman, possibly a relative, comes to take her away to be trained in magic or something similar. Her mundane relatives didn't want to let her go. I think it was one of those "one girl in every generation must go" sort of plots, and I think time moved differently for the magical women (they didn't age as quickly, perhaps). The thing that sticks out most in my mind from the book was that those women all had a pair of diamond-shaped earrings, and that the girl eventually got a pair of her own when her training was finished. I hope this book isn't too obscure... I feel like I read this too, I hope someone can identify it - sorry I can't. A google search yielded nothing but eventual porn results. 
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Aug 16, 2008 07:33
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onceling posted:I was just watching one of the Duggar's specials (that family with 17 children in Arkansas) and it reminded me of some books I read growing up. Can't remember the author or names. Sounds like the A Family Apart series. It's the mid-1800s, mom can't afford to raise her kids, so they're sent off on orphan trains across the midwest and South and split up. Each kid is the protagonist of a book in the series.
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Aug 20, 2008 19:30
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1) Illustrated children's book I read in grade 1, a boy is turned into an owl by a witch for some reason, I think there was a girl that had to do something to turn him back but she doesn't know the owl is the boy. 2) A novel about a young boy who shares his hotdog with a homeless man on a park bench. Some time later he gets a letter in the mail saying he's inherited this incredible fortune. A millionaire was pretending to be the homeless guy to find a kind person worthy of his inheritance. Later in the book once the kid is in the rich guy's mansion and some bad people are plotting to get all the riches from him, it's revealed that the rich guy's brain has been uploaded to this computer wired throughout the house that talks to the boy and helps him.
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Aug 23, 2008 03:04
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Here's a wierd one. Short story. Teenage boy, works on a farm, but modern day setting. His clone comes up and tries to kill him, they wrassle, start talking, and it's actually him from a different dimension, using a little "dimension-shifting" belt. He steals the belt, uses it, decides to try and find something that hasn't been patented yet like the Rubik's Cube or whatever, make some money off it; eventually wants to go back and realizes that the belt-thing only goes one way, so he can't ever return to the same dimension again. I think he ends up killing his other self in dimension #12376 and replacing him so that he can "be with his parents again" or something kinda creepy.
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Aug 24, 2008 07:50
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I haven't actually read this, just heard about it: Mankind develops some kind of portal through which they can (inexplicably) see through the eyes of a member of an alien race. Can't communicate or travel through it, just observe. The plot probably develops from there, but that basic premise is all I know. (I thought maybe Arthur C. Clarke's "Light of Other Days" but, reading the synopsis on Wikipedia, that doesn't sound like it. Also I might have even imagined this plot up from that small moment in John Wyndham's "Chocky" where Chocky shows the kid a glimpse of its own world.) Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Aug 24, 2008 |
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Aug 24, 2008 16:16
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Quad posted:Here's a wierd one. The Man who Folded Himself by Gerrold?
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Aug 24, 2008 20:25
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Help me ID this children's book- Very creepy illustrations, and the story follows a little boy with a monster/creature for a mother.
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Aug 28, 2008 20:50
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The story that’s bugging me is about a bunch of people on a space ship headed out on government orders. I’m not sure, but I think they’re going to investigate something. The captain of the ship is a guy that has a photographic memory and can’t forget anything. His girlfriend killed herself a while back when a law was passed that people of the same ethnicity could no longer get married/have children. Once the people get where they’re going, they see a cloud or something out in space? The captain also accidentally kills one of the crew members. Everything they imagine appears in the cloud, and since the captain doesn’t tell them the chick is dead, they still hear her voice. It ends with them all being able to discorporate? Not really sure, it’s driving me crazy. I thought it was by Piers Anthony, but I don't know any more.
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Aug 29, 2008 15:24
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Skittles n Bugs posted:The story that’s bugging me is about a bunch of people on a space ship headed out on government orders. I’m not sure, but I think they’re going to investigate something. The captain of the ship is a guy that has a photographic memory and can’t forget anything. His girlfriend killed herself a while back when a law was passed that people of the same ethnicity could no longer get married/have children. Once the people get where they’re going, they see a cloud or something out in space? The captain also accidentally kills one of the crew members. Everything they imagine appears in the cloud, and since the captain doesn’t tell them the chick is dead, they still hear her voice. It ends with them all being able to discorporate? Not really sure, it’s driving me crazy. I thought it was by Piers Anthony, but I don't know any more. Piers Anthony wrote the "Tarot" trilogy. Apparently it's also in the same timeline as his "Cluster" series. Does either one of those ring a bell? God of Tarot Vision of Tarot Faith of Tarot Cluster Chaining the Lady Kirlian Quest Thousandstar Viscous Circle
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Aug 29, 2008 15:37
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Skittles n Bugs posted:The story that’s bugging me is about a bunch of people on a space ship headed out on government orders. I’m not sure, but I think they’re going to investigate something. The captain of the ship is a guy that has a photographic memory and can’t forget anything. His girlfriend killed herself a while back when a law was passed that people of the same ethnicity could no longer get married/have children. Once the people get where they’re going, they see a cloud or something out in space? The captain also accidentally kills one of the crew members. Everything they imagine appears in the cloud, and since the captain doesn’t tell them the chick is dead, they still hear her voice. It ends with them all being able to discorporate? Not really sure, it’s driving me crazy. I thought it was by Piers Anthony, but I don't know any more. This reminds me of a George R. R. Martin story, Nightflyers, but a couple of the details are different.
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Aug 29, 2008 22:41
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Skittles n Bugs posted:The story that’s bugging me is about a bunch of people on a space ship headed out on government orders. I’m not sure, but I think they’re going to investigate something. The captain of the ship is a guy that has a photographic memory and can’t forget anything. His girlfriend killed herself a while back when a law was passed that people of the same ethnicity could no longer get married/have children. Once the people get where they’re going, they see a cloud or something out in space? The captain also accidentally kills one of the crew members. Everything they imagine appears in the cloud, and since the captain doesn’t tell them the chick is dead, they still hear her voice. It ends with them all being able to discorporate? Not really sure, it’s driving me crazy. I thought it was by Piers Anthony, but I don't know any more. Ghost by Pier's Anthony
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Aug 29, 2008 23:01
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I've never read this book/series/short story, but I've read about it. It's supposed to be very important in the history of a certain kind of sci-fi/fantasy. It's basically about a massive arcology on a planet where it's always night.
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Aug 30, 2008 20:08
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