|
This just came up in the PKD thread and now it's bugging the poo poo out of me. A Dick short story, probably early but I cannot confirm this, in which he espouses the idea that paranoia is really just ESP and a paranoid is picking up the negative thoughts people have about him. No idea what the actual plot of the story is, although I have confirmed that it is not Retreat Syndrome. VVV That sure sounds right, and until I can verify I'm willing to call it right, thanks. Ballsworthy fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Feb 9, 2009 |
#
?
Jan 30, 2009 00:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 12, 2024 21:52 |
|
|
Ballsworthy posted:This just came up in the PKD thread and now it's bugging the poo poo out of me. A Dick short story, probably early but I cannot confirm this, in which he espouses the idea that paranoia is really just ESP and a paranoid is picking up the negative thoughts people have about him. No idea what the actual plot of the story is, although I have confirmed that it is not Retreat Syndrome. Was it Recall Mechanism from the Minority report Collection? If so Sweet, cause i was pissed that i was late to make the John Bellairs answer first. As i recall the basic plot was he has horrible fears of falling, goes to a hypno/psychaitrist who causes him to relive his memories only to discover his memories are of his future and someone will kill him that way.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2009 06:45
|
|
|
Story I read in elementary school. Probably as assigned reading. An adolescent boy and his sister have a younger adopted brother they refer to as "Sucker." The story opens with a description of how they convince him to attempt to fly off the roof of their house like Superman. I think he breaks his leg. The plot is some afterschool-special-type cautionary tale, detailing how the main character gets a girlfriend, feels good about himself and starts to treat the adopted brother better as a result. Then the girl dumps the main character and he takes it out on the brother, driving them apart permanently. The story ends with adopted brother maturing into something of bully, hanging around with tough friends and exiling the main character from their shared room. I want to say the story was called "Sucker" but Google and Amazon have nothing to offer.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2009 11:37
|
|
|
King Plum the Nth posted:OK, this is way to vague for me to expect an answer but I have to try. My elementary school library collection (c. 1985) had a trilogy (or, at least three books from series) of juvenile mystery novels. They were hardbacks of the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew verity with wraparound cover art done all in purple tints. Probably from the 50's (early 60's at the latest) they were about the adventures of 3 children; there was an older (early teen) boy and girl and a small boy -- the younger brother of the girl, I think. The adventures were all New England-y; the one I remember most vividly took place on the coast with lighthouses and a cove that you could only enter at low tide. Proto The Goonies, sort of. its possible you're think of Enid Blyton's "Adventure" series, although that featured 4 children rather than 3. The period and description of the dust jackets possibly fits though, and i vaguely remember something about a cave. Give it a shot I guess.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2009 23:44
|
|
|
Fascist Funk posted:Story I read in elementary school. Probably as assigned reading. I think it's a short story called "Sucker" by Carson McCullers. Let me see if I can find a book that contains it. edit: Collected Stories of Carson McCullers, ISBN 0395925053 "Sucker" is the first story in the collection. Noisycat fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Feb 10, 2009 |
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2009 02:49
|
|
|
Khisareth posted:I think it's a short story called "Sucker" by Carson McCullers. Let me see if I can find a book that contains it. Carson "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" McCullers? Whoa. And yep, that looks like the one. Thanks man.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2009 09:09
|
|
|
I'm thinking of a kids/young-adult science fiction book. There are at least two characters, a boy and a girl. They travel around in space after hollowing out an asteroid and attaching a hydrogen scoop to it. At one point, they get stuck on a planet and have to hunt for survival. At first they use a ray-gun, but the boy goes a bit native and makes a bow and arrow to hunt with instead. There might have been other people on the planet too. Anyone know what I'm talking about?
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2009 17:32
|
|
|
ShardPhoenix posted:I'm thinking of a kids/young-adult science fiction book. There are at least two characters, a boy and a girl. They travel around in space after hollowing out an asteroid and attaching a hydrogen scoop to it. At one point, they get stuck on a planet and have to hunt for survival. At first they use a ray-gun, but the boy goes a bit native and makes a bow and arrow to hunt with instead. There might have been other people on the planet too.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2009 19:19
|
|
|
A book that I think was in a recommendation thread around here, but I don't remember which thread it was or if it was even a recommendation. The basic plot synopsis is that a father was a writer in some capacity, but he mysterious vanished/died, leaving a son. However, it soon becomes apparent that the son may simply be a work of fiction. Does this ring a bell in anyone's head or did I just dream this up?
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2009 14:57
|
|
|
GrandpaPants posted:A book that I think was in a recommendation thread around here, but I don't remember which thread it was or if it was even a recommendation. The Land of Laughs has a *kinda* similar premise, though it's not the same book unless the description got garbled or you're mis-remembering. in this the dead author has a daughter, who is real, but the town in which she lives and all its inhabitants is what is fictional, after the writer "retired" he spent the latter part of his life writing the town. However, time is running out as they come to the point he reached in his writings, and things are starting to go wrong. A young man comes to town with the intent of writing a biography of the late writer, and is caught up in various nastiness as the townspeople decide he is the one who can save them. It's kinda a contemporary fantasy/horror. Even if it's not right, it's a pretty good read.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2009 19:21
|
|
|
Morlock posted:The hollowed-out asteroid sounds like Nicholas Fisk's Starstormers series - were the kids called Vawn, Ispex, Tsu and Makenzi?
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2009 07:36
|
|
|
Fatkraken posted:The Land of Laughs has a *kinda* similar premise, though it's not the same book unless the description got garbled or you're mis-remembering. in this the dead author has a daughter, who is real, but the town in which she lives and all its inhabitants is what is fictional, after the writer "retired" he spent the latter part of his life writing the town. However, time is running out as they come to the point he reached in his writings, and things are starting to go wrong. A young man comes to town with the intent of writing a biography of the late writer, and is caught up in various nastiness as the townspeople decide he is the one who can save them. It's kinda a contemporary fantasy/horror. Even if it's not right, it's a pretty good read. Nah, it's not Land of Laughs. I don't remember the whole details, but I think the book was really focused on the fact that the main character begins to realize that he's a work of fiction written by his "father." I imagine it was sort of a Pinocchio story, but for the life of me I had no idea where I read the synopsis. Thanks, though!
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2009 12:28
|
|
|
King Plum the Nth posted:OK, this is way to vague for me to expect an answer but I have to try. My elementary school library collection (c. 1985) had a trilogy (or, at least three books from series) of juvenile mystery novels. They were hardbacks of the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew verity with wraparound cover art done all in purple tints. Probably from the 50's (early 60's at the latest) they were about the adventures of 3 children; there was an older (early teen) boy and girl and a small boy -- the younger brother of the girl, I think. The adventures were all New England-y; the one I remember most vividly took place on the coast with lighthouses and a cove that you could only enter at low tide. Proto The Goonies, sort of. It may also have been one of the Famous Five. I vaguely remember a cave that was only accessible at low tide.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2009 11:00
|
|
|
mania posted:It may also have been one of the Famous Five. I vaguely remember a cave that was only accessible at low tide. They went to Cornwall in Five go down to the sea and have an adventure involving smugglers, illiterate retard kids, undercover cops and carnies.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2009 17:12
|
|
|
Dead Alice posted:They went to Cornwall in Five go down to the sea and have an adventure involving smugglers, illiterate retard kids, undercover cops and carnies. There's also a lighthouse (and a cave/underwater tunnel) in Five Go To Demon's Rocks. I'm not sure it's a good or a bad thing that I can still remember most of the plots 25 years after I last read the books.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2009 17:35
|
|
|
mania posted:It may also have been one of the Famous Five. I vaguely remember a cave that was only accessible at low tide. They go to Kirrin Island a lot, which is owned by George (kinda). In one book - the one with the evil housekeeper - they pack up some supplies and run away to live on the island for a bit. That was always my favourite FF book. Ugh Enid Blyton why must your formulaic and prissy books still occupy my headspace decades after I read them!
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2009 21:40
|
|
|
EvilMoJoJoJo posted:They go to Kirrin Island a lot, which is owned by George (kinda). In one book - the one with the evil housekeeper - they pack up some supplies and run away to live on the island for a bit. That was always my favourite FF book. There is also one where they go stay with a friend who has a secret passage to a network of underground caverns in their toychest, and another (may be the same one?) in which a secret passage is blocked by a caravan in a nature reserve. The other ends of either could be underwater, I don't remember.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2009 02:16
|
|
|
Trying to remember a book I read nearly 20 years ago. It's a thriller about a group of killers who are seemingly killing targets at random. It's not until the cop in charge of the investigation sees a traffic light and realizes each kill is based off a color and that they are using some kind of board game. The only other thing I remember is that they take trophies from each kill, and that one of them is a rookie cop who they take the badge from. If anyone could help it'd be greatly appreciated.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2009 17:06
|
|
|
I'm looking for what I think was a short story. In the seventh grade one of my English teacher read it to us for Thanksgiving... An abusive rear end in a top hat husband and his wife find this hole and begin communicating with these underground creatures. The wife throws a dictionary down the hole so that they can learn to communicate with her, and the creatures grasp the language almost immediately. She begins sharing food with them with a bucket she lowers into the hole. Eventually the creatures ask for turkey; they understand it to be the most delicious food. Now, before this the husband has been described as being very turkey like in appearance (I have a hazy memory that his name was Calvin). So the story ends with the wife pushing her husband into the hole and the creatures returning a thank you letter for the delicious turkey. It was a neat little story, hopefully someone else has heard it before.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2009 17:51
|
|
|
oh uckfay posted:I'm looking for what I think was a short story. In the seventh grade one of my English teacher read it to us for Thanksgiving...
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2009 18:19
|
|
|
Morlock posted:Hey You Down There! by Harold Rolseth. There's a pdf including it at http://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/download/pdf/engunitsamp.pdf Haha thanks! You are quite prompt sir.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2009 21:24
|
|
|
Morlock posted:Hey You Down There! by Harold Rolseth. There's a pdf including it at http://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/download/pdf/engunitsamp.pdf That was a pretty awesome story.
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2009 22:52
|
|
|
I read this back in 2005 and it was a paperback. My aunt gave it to me and she was pretty big into Christianity at the time so it may be considered a religious book in the style of Left Behind. One of the main clues I remember is that it was marked on the cover it was formally known as (I believe) "Redemption" It's a story about the apocalypse and one of the main characters is some type of religious person (priest?) who's trying to figure out what's going on. Here's some random things I remember 1) Starts with a ebola like disease. 2) Pope gets blown up on a boat. 3) The second or third prophecy was red rashes breaking out over most of the people. I think this part took place in Italy. 4) Lots of talk about Iraq being Babylon and a miliant there. 5) Turns out it isn't a religious thing but a secret group that was planning to reduce the population by 94% to protect the Earth. 6) They were using cell sites(?) to release the thing that caused the rashes or maybe the final virus? 7) Something at the end about rainbows from the cell sites? Maybe that was the signal to call off the plan and another twist that maybe God was responsible for us being saved? - edit spoilered 2-7 just in case Call Me Charlie fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Feb 15, 2009 |
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2009 06:52
|
|
|
I read this in elementary school and I'm pretty sure it's a "young adult" novel. This is the best I can remember it: This boy is growing up on his family farm in the Midwest, for some reason I want to say early 1990s. They default on their mortgage, and the kid explains it as going to the bank with his dad over many months, and watching some number (crop payments? account balance? IDK) get smaller and smaller. So they pack up and move to the big city. They don't have any money so they have to move into a sty of a tenement; an absentee slumlord is mentioned, and life is really hard. Then a fire breaks out in the building and him and his dad are separated from his mother and sister in the chaos. I think they might have died in the fire. Then him and his dad are homeless for a while. Near the end of the book, his dad comes up to him and says there's good news, he found a job on a construction site. To celebrate the dad takes his son to McDonald's. Pretty glum eh? It's been probably ten years so some details might be a bit off. Good luck.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2009 21:05
|
|
|
I read this book probably 8-10 years ago and only have a vague recollection of it. The cover is a desert-ish area with a blue column (a scene from early in the book). This kid is going hiking in the desert/a canyon/somewhere similar and he sees a column of blue light and for some reason guesses it's a collision of matter and antimatter, and he got this idea from one of his teachers. He runs toward it taking pictures, and then he trips or something, falls into it, and wakes up in jungle. He meets some locals and then [I've forgotten the whole book] he's in a sword fight with the major villain or something and he gets zapped back to his own world in the middle of a mall wielding his sword the end.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2009 02:00
|
|
|
This one's a long shot, but I've been trying to track it down for a while. In the early 80s at junior (middle) school in the UK I read a collection of short stories. I know one of the other stories in the book was Saki's "The Unrest Cure" but that's not the one I'm trying to find. Anyway, in this story there are three boys, who play with toy boats on a lake in a local park. They work out a way to fire a torpedo from their boat to sink other peoples' boats. I remember there was secret signal described as "something to do with elbows" to signal one of the boys to fire the torpedo. Their boat is referred to as "a long, low, rakish craft" at one point. After a few successes they start referring to the lake as "The Spanish Main", but soon the narrator starts worrying that someone has realized what they're doing and they're following him. The story ends when they try to sink another boat belonging to someone that they've sunk previously - it turns out the target is remote controlled and has guns fitted to it, which destroy their boat. It's annoying that I can remember so many details of the story but not the title, so any help would be appreciated.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2009 19:13
|
|
|
Cortel posted:I read this book probably 8-10 years ago and only have a vague recollection of it. The cover is a desert-ish area with a blue column (a scene from early in the book). I am making a guess. Is it The Transall Saga by Gary Paulsen?
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2009 00:42
|
|
|
Khisareth posted:I am making a guess. Is it The Transall Saga by Gary Paulsen? Yes! Thank you! I'm off to see how awful this book was!
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2009 02:17
|
|
|
I'm looking for a book I've read about 18 years ago, so it might be even older than that. I remember that it took place on a spaceship flying lots of people in cryostasis through space to find a planet to live on. The main character would be woken up by a computer from time to time (can't remember why) and would be thoroughly questioned about his dreams. There was also a cold (blue?) light involved somehow. I also remember that their cryosuits where only made of some kind of silver mesh. It all ended when they finally reached their planet after many hundreds? thousands? of years just to discover they were back at earth (I think)
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2009 18:56
|
|
|
Hobnob posted:This one's a long shot, but I've been trying to track it down for a while. That's such a weird premise for a story. I was Googling "Spanish Main" and "long, low, rakish craft" and got numerous historical accounts, apparently the phrase was borrowed from earlier works.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2009 04:33
|
|
|
I am trying to remember the name of a scifi book which had a similar premise to the new show Dollhouse. People could be implanted into bodies, called 'skins' I think. The skins were usually criminals who were forced to give up their bodies for the period of their incarceration. The personalities each retained their muscle memory and special neuro-enhancements. The main plot dealt with tracking down the assumed assassin of a multi-billionaire. There was a sideplot about how hotels were automated and there were no attendants, simply a gun turret in the lobby to keep unwanted people away.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2009 03:34
|
|
|
nemotrm posted:I am trying to remember the name of a scifi book which had a similar premise to the new show Dollhouse. People could be implanted into bodies, called 'skins' I think. The skins were usually criminals who were forced to give up their bodies for the period of their incarceration. The personalities each retained their muscle memory and special neuro-enhancements. That's Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2009 03:37
|
|
|
Hobnob posted:That's Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon. Thanks.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2009 03:47
|
|
|
Alright, I have tried Google to no avail. This was a short story (I think) that was even recommended here at SA a couple years ago. The story is an online sci fi thing. It's basically about how a computer AI takes over the world, but doesn't kill anyone. Following Asimov's Laws of Robotics, it has to do everything humans want it too. After the AI more or less becomes God, people start asking for things, wishing for anything, and they of course get it. The main character was like the 6th oldest woman in the world at the time the AI became God. Since no humans are allowed to die due to the AI's inaction, the main character gets saved. Since she actually kinda wanted to die then, she participates in these "death games" and likes the sting of pain. The story goes on from there, but I really loved it. I like to find it again to recommend to some friends. Anyone know where it is / what it is called?
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2009 02:55
|
|
|
XenoXiaoyu posted:Alright, I have tried Google to no avail. This was a short story (I think) that was even recommended here at SA a couple years ago. that would be The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect . (some guy from kuro5hin wrote it)
|
|
#
?
Feb 25, 2009 23:39
|
|
|
roffles posted:that would be The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect . (some guy from kuro5hin wrote it) Thank you both for that; it was amazing.
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2009 02:19
|
|
|
roffles posted:that would be The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect . (some guy from kuro5hin wrote it) YES! That's what it is. I knew it had an 'm' word in the title somewhere. Well, now I'm gonna read it again. Thanks!
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2009 05:23
|
|
|
Was browsing at Barnes and Noble a couple years ago and I found a book in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section but forgot to write down the title. This was 2 or 3 years ago and from what I can remember it was a trade size book. If I remember right, the plot was about this farmer guy who gets some sort of summons to a school of magic and I think he enters though a door he shouldn't have been able to. He seemed to have some sort of druid like magic but never seemed to acknowledge that he did. There was also some plot about political intrigue and possibly a street fair where some Punch and Judy kind of show puts some sort of spell on one of the female main characters. Also the guy might have been old, I think he was married and then his wife died or something.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2009 22:21
|
|
|
Hmmm, all the books solved but no one knows what I am talking about with the dreamers book?
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2009 15:45
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 12, 2024 21:52 |
|
|
Looking for the name of a book read in the early 80s ... Probably teen fiction, a mystery about somebody murdering kids in a school. The first kid who gets killed is killed by an exploding piano. It turns out that the piano was meant for the teacher. Somebody is hung halfway through the story too. That's all I've got to work with, although I think the exploding piano is probably a pretty distinguishing element.
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2009 16:15
|
|
