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PrinceofLowLight posted: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. William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land. A seminal work in the Dying Earth subgenre, full of powerful imagery and, sadly, absolutely wretched writing. You may be interested in Awake in the Night, a shorter, more legible story by another author set in the same universe.
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Aug 30, 2008 20:16
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PrinceofLowLight posted: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. If you're planning on reading it be warned, the opening chapter is the most nauseating glurge you'll ever read in your life. Thankfully it's just unnecessary framing so you can skip it and go straight to the City. e:f;b. Should've looked at the next page....
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Aug 30, 2008 20:59
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Goons come through again! I thought the description might have been too vague, but bam. Thanks
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Aug 30, 2008 22:02
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PrinceofLowLight posted: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. The Night Land?
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Aug 31, 2008 02:40
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Hey, maybe it's that book called Night Land?criptozoid posted:You may be interested in Awake in the Night, a shorter, more legible story by another author set in the same universe. drat you for posting this, I want to know how it ends now 
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Aug 31, 2008 02:42
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Hughlander posted:Ghost by Pier's Anthony Ah! Thank you, that's the one!
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Sep 2, 2008 02:54
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hollowmoon posted: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. You don't mean Cart and Cwidder by Diana Wynne Jones, at all?
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Sep 3, 2008 08:56
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Here are a couple of books that have been bugging me pretty much ever since I read them back in 1994. They were both paperbacks and weren't particularly new.
Anyway, I can't imagine that I haven't gone into enough detail on this, so hopefully someone else out there has read these books.
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Sep 9, 2008 00:09
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Golden_Zucchini posted:The second book was at least the second in a series. A group of humans had been removed from Earth back in prehistoric times to live with some aliens while the humans still on Earth continued to develop to a point where they less warlike and more able to live peacefully with the aliens. The aliens couldn't understand human psychology, though, so they set their pet humans to guide the Earth humans' development. Consequently, the pet humans did all sorts of things to screw with the Earth humans' development. That's all backstory, though.
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Sep 9, 2008 01:23
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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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Thank you both very much! They've been bugging me (and the several people I've told about them without knowing the titles) for well over a decade now. Now I can go read the rest of the series. Yay!
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Sep 10, 2008 04:23
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The Tupac Shakur Commonplace Book thread led me to H.P. Lovecraft's Commonplace Book which is really interesting, but raises a question:H.P. Lovecraft posted:Italian revenge—killing self in cell with enemy—under castle. The editor notes that this idea was "used by FBL, Jr." So my question is: who is FBL Jr and what is the name of the book/story that he used this idea in?
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Sep 11, 2008 15:50
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We Are Citizen posted:The Tupac Shakur Commonplace Book thread led me to H.P. Lovecraft's Commonplace Book which is really interesting, but raises a question: I'm guessing it's Lovecraft's friend Frank Belknap Long.
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Sep 11, 2008 15:51
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I read this around 17 years ago...
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Sep 11, 2008 18:30
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There's a children's book series that I read ages ago and I just thought about it again and cannot remember the title, although I'm pretty sure it's stupidly obvious. It's a poor Jewish family living in I believe New York City probably early 1900s or so. The only things I really remember is there were several children (5? 6? 7?) and one of the books had a whole section about them building a Sukkot in their backyard, and having a little party with the neighbors. Or something. I know, this is horribly vague but hopefully someone remembers this series. At least, I'm pretty sure it was a series.
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Sep 11, 2008 23:09
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angelicism posted:There's a children's book series that I read ages ago and I just thought about it again and cannot remember the title, although I'm pretty sure it's stupidly obvious. I'd recognize this anywhere! It's the All-Of-A-Kind Family books by Sydney Taylor! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Taylor And I'm pretty sure the one with the Sukkah is the first one, simply titled All-Of-A-Kind Family. Boy, these are still some of my favorite books to read even as an adult. I have one now. I read a book a few years ago that was about a kid who's doing a report on Dickens' Great Expectations, and he opens the book to find an envelope or a letter or something, telling him that if he does something he'll come into a fortune, or something, and every step this kid takes to do so parallels something in Great Expectations itself, but I can't for the life of me remember the title or author of this book. What is it??? blinkeve1826 fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Nov 8, 2019 |
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Sep 16, 2008 16:05
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blinkeve1826 posted:I'd recognize this anywhere! It's the All-Of-A-Kind Family books by Sydney Taylor! Thank you so much! I knew it was a 'something' family and it was going to strike me as absurdly obvious when I saw it. 
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Sep 16, 2008 18:50
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Maybe you can help me, I read a book series when I was in middle school around 1997 it was part of a book series that was quite dated, probably earlier than the 80's I'd say, given how old I thought the book was then. It was about a spy or secret agent or something who was featured in a trilogy of novels called Operation: then something else, I think. The main character in one is stealing something from a train somewhere cold, I think Russia or Siberia and meets a Russian Secret agent. In the next one he is somewhere tropical and finds this cool oasis in this island and author really goes in depth into the fauna, then the guy sneaks around killing mercenaries. At one point I think he was in a mercenary hide-out and came out through a water fall, or was a prisoner and beating beaten in the mud. Sorry thats all I recall, I remember loving it as a kid, but who knows how trashy it is. All the novels were pretty short, about 400 pages or less.
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Sep 17, 2008 00:46
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All I can remember about this book is that the protagonist has some sort of little vampire creature that is hungry and he or she has nothing to feed it, so he lets it drink its blood. This saves the creature from dying. Any ideas what book or short story I remember?
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Sep 17, 2008 11:32
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OK, couple of moderately challenging ones I think. Read them both about 10 years or so ago when I was at school, they definitely fall into the very broad YA bracket, one sci-fi, one fantasy. 1. Starts with some sort of experimental research project into the 4th spacial dimension. Previous subjects who attempted to move extra-dimensionally were lost, dead or insane. I think the protagonist was a woman, but I can't be sure. The 4th dimensional creatures she encounters she perceived as weird swirly snowstorm type things. The book is in two parts, in the second part the role of protagonist is taken over by his/her son, who has been stepping into the 4th dimension since he was a little kid and right at the start of the second part he moves extra-dimensionally to take a shortcut down a hill/outside. I'm pretty sure they actually gave the additional 2 4-d directions names, ana and kata. After reading the first few pages on Amazon, I'm also really sure it's not The Boy who Folded Himself. I can't for the life of me remember what the central conflict of the narrative was, but it was probably the son trying to save his 4-d friends from evil greedy humans or something. Edit: There was an example of a tesseract/hypercube in the lab from part 1 of this book. 2. Vaguely Celtic myth flavoured, I remember that the protagonist's race wore golden/iron torcs around their necks as a coming of age thing (certainly there was a big deal made over them right at the start of the book). The other race, of whom they are poo poo-scared of or at war with, are an aquatic/amphibious culture pretty much regarded as monsters who will drag the unwary hunter to a watery gravy. Obviously, this is untrue. The setting is plainsland with scattered lakes and ponds, which actually all seem to link up underground (maybe) which is where the water folk live. I remember one of the aquatic guys was injured, so the protagonist tried to help him and it turns out that his silvery fish-skin was actually protective clothing, like a wet suit and the two races were pretty much identical after all. The deal with the torcs may or may not have been that the fish-people were allergic to them so they were protective, but I dunno. M_E_G. ADI. K fucked around with this message at 13:54 on Sep 17, 2008 |
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Sep 17, 2008 13:51
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The second one sounds like Power of Three from Diana Wynne Jones.
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Sep 17, 2008 14:21
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M_E_G. ADI. K posted:
Could be "The Universe Between" by Alan Nourse.
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Sep 17, 2008 15:45
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Oracle posted:The second one sounds like Power of Three from Diana Wynne Jones. Unkempt posted:Could be "The Universe Between" by Alan Nourse. YES and YES! <3 Edit: just found the ebook version of The Universe Between and so far it's holding up pretty well to how I remember it. OMG, the inside-out tennis ball! I remember that! M_E_G. ADI. K fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Sep 17, 2008 |
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Sep 17, 2008 16:03
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Childrens book. A Girl is on holiday, possibly in Scotland and meets a sea monster, possibly the loch ness monster. I don't remember much about the middle of the book, but the ending is fairly distinct. It turns out the monster is an alien, but was exiled to Earth for some crime or other and forced to change form. The real form of his species is a glowing ball of energy. Two of his people, a big red orb and a little silver orb come along for some reason, and I think at the end he saves the girl somehow and is judged to be virtuous and to have been rehabilitated, and allowed to take on his true form (a big gold orb) and return home. I guess I must have been 8-10 when I read this, so it was written probably some time before 1990-92. I live in the UK, and I *think* the cover was dark red, with a picture of the monster on a white background.
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Sep 19, 2008 00:18
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Ok, I have a short story that needs finding. It was about this kid who had a creature living in the back of his throat and he tried to lure it out onto his tongue using candy. For some reason this creature also causes his tears to turn into stone statues when they hit the ground. I also remember that he tried to pull out his nose hair to try and cry so that he could sell the sculptures. Any leads would help!
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Sep 19, 2008 21:50
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RyanNotBrian posted:All I can remember about this book is that the protagonist has some sort of little vampire creature that is hungry and he or she has nothing to feed it, so he lets it drink its blood. This saves the creature from dying. Runcible Cat fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Sep 19, 2008 |
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Sep 19, 2008 23:16
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M_E_G. ADI. K posted:OK, couple of moderately challenging ones I think. Read them both about 10 years or so ago when I was at school, they definitely fall into the very broad YA bracket, one sci-fi, one fantasy. yaffle fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Sep 21, 2008 |
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Sep 20, 2008 23:24
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Rocambole posted:The Great Ghost Rescue by Eva Ibbotson? It starts with a family of ghosts Thats it! thanks. It must have been about 25 years since I read that book, and for some reason that one scene jumped into my head the other day.
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Sep 21, 2008 11:25
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Geoduck posted:Ok, I have a short story that needs finding. It's by Australian children's author Paul Jennings, but I don't remember the name of the story. All of his stuff was bizarre and excellent. Edit: "Tonsil Eye 'Tis" in the book Quirky Tails Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Sep 21, 2008 |
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Sep 21, 2008 12:24
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This is killing me, I must have read this book about a hundred times when I was younger, but I can't remember what it's called and I'm worried it might be too obscure for anyone to have heard about it. I think it's a childrens or young adults book. Basically, three kids, two boys and a girl, get kidnapped/or abducted or something. They're travelling in a trailer and at one point, a female kidnapper tries to scare them into behaving by saying that her red nail varnish is acid. The most powerful acid in the world! One of the kids notices that a drop of the nail varnish has rolled down the bottle and onto her finger and figures out she's lying. The main part of the book is after the kids manage to somehow escape in the trailer. They end up in some valley, on their own. The girl and the boy (who's the leader and a jerk) end up turning on the younger boy, they keep him tied up. It's kind of lord of the flies-ish. I think the older boy wants to stay in the valley? They're worried about the kidnappers finding them again. I'm not sure how it ends, I think the girl decides that the leader boy is wrong at some point though and they possibly end up getting rescued when they leave the valley and a couple in a car pick them up.
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Sep 21, 2008 15:30
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I've been trying to remember the title of this book for a long time. I'm pretty sure it's a Stephen King or Dean Koontz book, and I'm probably going to feel really silly for having forgotten the title. I read it as probably a sixth grader (so about 14 years ago) and the only part I really specifically remember is that there were some characters that people either couldn't see or just never noticed, so much so that they can dine and dash and no one will really notice. There was a part where a character realized that no one could really see or notice him and he steals from a convenience store, and then another part where they debate whether they should eat at Jack in the Box or IHOP and they pick IHOP so they won't have to pay.
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Sep 21, 2008 18:17
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This is a long shot, because god knows if any of you saw this book. When I was little child, in England, in the late 80s and early 90s, we had a children's book about some mice. Here are some things I think I remember: - They had a toy train (or maybe a real train but small?). I think the book was centred on their adventures on this train. - One of the mice got unwell and had some chicken soup. - There may have been, at some point, a bit where they struggled to stop the train. Perhaps it was going too fast or the brakes weren't working. - They may have used the train to transport sweets. However, this may have been part of a different book. Does this ring a bell with anyone? Can you remember the name of it?
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Sep 22, 2008 21:47
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Anjow posted:Does this ring a bell with anyone? Can you remember the name of it? No, but maybe it's on this list?
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Sep 22, 2008 22:55
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I read this short story about six or seven years ago online, and I haven't been able to find it since then. The main character befriends an odd kid at his school because he feels sorry for him at first. Eventually he starts visiting the other kid at his house, where he's introduced to the kid's sister. The thing is, he never actually sees the sister. He spends hours talking to her in her room, but it's always pitch black. Her voice is really weird, and he thinks his friend is playing a joke on him at first, but he goes along with it. After a few weeks of this, he's not entirely sure what's going on. If I remember correctly, it ends with him opening the curtain and letting the light in and the room is empty. Of course, I could have it completely wrong. It was definitely very creepy. Any ideas?
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Sep 22, 2008 23:52
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Smeep posted:No, but maybe it's on this list? Holy crap! Man, whose brain works that way. Awesome.
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Sep 22, 2008 23:57
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I've been trying forever to find this book. When I was a kid, my dad had all of these old sci-fi books in the basement that I'd read all the time. There was one about some kind of enigmatic alien that comes to earth and has all these awesome powers. It generates radiation, is invincible, can increase or decrease its mass. At some point in the novel it's trying to get back to its ship and turns super-hot and melts into the ground and starts walking through solid rock to avoid an army or something. I'm almost certain it was called "Vor" or something like that, but Google never turns anything up.
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Sep 23, 2008 08:11
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Smeep posted:No, but maybe it's on this list? Good god, what a list. However, I can't say I saw it there
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Sep 23, 2008 09:03
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I seem to recall the book I'm looking for being a trilogy about a war between Heaven and Earth, and I'm fairly certain it's a Young Adult book. It's set in the future some time, and it has exoskeletons, and I recall about half the world being on fire, or behind a burning wall, or something to that effect. One of the characters is an angel who cannot return to heaven after consuming human food given to her by a teenage? boy from a tribelike community who is also one of the mainish characters. I believe that the tribelike community had an aerosol can and a doll of some kind as ancient relics, but I can't remember the other items.
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Sep 23, 2008 09:39
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TenMiddleTeeth posted:I've been trying forever to find this book. When I was a kid, my dad had all of these old sci-fi books in the basement that I'd read all the time. There was one about some kind of enigmatic alien that comes to earth and has all these awesome powers. It generates radiation, is invincible, can increase or decrease its mass. At some point in the novel it's trying to get back to its ship and turns super-hot and melts into the ground and starts walking through solid rock to avoid an army or something. I'm almost certain it was called "Vor" or something like that, but Google never turns anything up. James Blish wrote a book called Vor, though I haven't read it. Have a look at http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/b/james-blish/vor.htm
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Sep 23, 2008 09:49
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Fatkraken posted:Childrens book. A Girl is on holiday, possibly in Scotland and meets a sea monster, possibly the loch ness monster. I don't remember much about the middle of the book, but the ending is fairly distinct. It turns out the monster is an alien, but was exiled to Earth for some crime or other and forced to change form. The real form of his species is a glowing ball of energy. Two of his people, a big red orb and a little silver orb come along for some reason, and I think at the end he saves the girl somehow and is judged to be virtuous and to have been rehabilitated, and allowed to take on his true form (a big gold orb) and return home. The setting is completely wrong but the ending is Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones. He's Sirius the Dog Star, exiled to Earth for murder, and the other orbs (big red and small white) are the planetary bodies who framed him. However, it has nothing to do with sea monsters. Is this coincidence or could you be confusing two titles?
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Sep 23, 2008 15:54
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