|
I remember reading a short story in a horror anthology in about... 1980 something. It was a about an eastern European nobleman who had basically issued an open challenge to any takers to duel to the death, the winner taking the losers estate. The protagonist is a doctor I think who comes to have a go because he's nearly ruined and is so piss poor a duellist the guy decides to teach him a bit before letting him try again. As with the majority of eastern European noblemen the duellist is actually a vampire. Ring any bells with anyone?
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2009 23:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 22:10 |
|
|
Hey, I'm trying to remember the name of a story I read in high school. It's about this train conductor, who goes through a particular town every day for his entire career, waving to the same people, etc etc. He begins to fantasize about how nice this town is and how perfect one particular family must be. On the day he retires, he goes to the town for the first time to visit a particular family, and it's a very awkward conversation, which makes him realize that they never really cared as much about him as he did them, they just saw him as the train conductor. Anyone know it?
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2009 05:30
|
|
|
I think that is "The Far and the Near" by Thomas Wolfe
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2009 22:18
|
|
|
That's it, thank you. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2009 23:01
|
|
|
Nm, just found what I was looking for. about to post in worst books thread.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2009 02:00
|
|
|
I'm looking for a short story I found in an anthology a few years ago. In it, a person meets a stranger on a park bench, and the stranger begins telling the person how he is a refugee who was exiled from his homeland, which he can never return to because it is being run by a tyrant. The tyrant is insane and cruel but since he controls all the propaganda that gets out, he has misled everyone badly. It turns out that the exiled stranger is actually Lucifer. Anyone know what I am talking about here? I may have some of the details wrong but I remember loving it when I read it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2009 04:45
|
|
|
I'm trying to find a short science fiction story in which the clouds became sentient and began attacking human civilization. I think I read it in an online magazine (possible scifi.com's old "Sci Fiction").
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2009 10:24
|
|
|
I remember reading a book as a kid, it was a fantasy about a young boy who is part of a tribe and for some reason wanders around or goes on a journey, and there's a big scary black dog-like monster called Sebbarat or Sephiroth or S-something. I can't remember anything about it past that, but every year or so it'll pop up in my mind and bug the poo poo outta me that I can't remember. If it's any help, I recall him trying to flee from the black wolf thing along rivers and whatever in woods at night. The book was one word, the name of the creature, starts with S. Also another one was young fantasy/sci-fi in which a kid goes on a carnival ride that takes you back in time to see prehistoric humans, and a dinosaur hits their ship/bus and he gets left there. He eventually becomes part of the tribe and helps kill mammoths and all this cool poo poo, falls in love with a girl in the tribe and there's a scene where she teaches him to bite fish between the eyes to kill them painlessly instead of letting them asphyxiate. Children's books were kind of badass. DriveMeCrazy fucked around with this message at 11:30 on Oct 15, 2009 |
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2009 11:16
|
|
|
This is a book I read when I was about 12, but I have no idea if it was a kids book, adult book or what. It's almost certainly scifi/fantasy, but may be horror. What I can mostly remember is that there was this bunch of normal people by day, who turned into superheroes at night in their dreams, fighting off these evil dream things that'd cause bad things to happen to people if they weren't stopped. I think one of them was a cripple in real life too. They meet each other, join up as a sort of powerrangers like evil busting group and save the dreamworld or something.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2009 13:53
|
|
|
Masonity posted:This is a book I read when I was about 12, but I have no idea if it was a kids book, adult book or what. It's almost certainly scifi/fantasy, but may be horror. This is by Graham Masterton. Could be Night Wars, Night Plague, Death Dream or Night Warriors (the last 2 are at the bottom of the page). I found them a lot of fun and typical Masterton fare - fantasy elements, consistent plots, some horror novel sex an lots of action. I think they are aimed at adults, but I read Night Warriors as a young teenager and loved it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2009 14:11
|
|
|
LGBT War Machine posted:This is by Graham Masterton. Could be Night Wars, Night Plague, Death Dream or Night Warriors (the last 2 are at the bottom of the page). I found them a lot of fun and typical Masterton fare - fantasy elements, consistent plots, some horror novel sex an lots of action. Wow. That sounds like it's probably it. I'll have to look for ebook versions to go on my soon to arrive kindle. If not, I may even splash out for dead-tree versions. edit: Bah, Kindle Store only has the latest one. 
Masonity fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Oct 15, 2009 |
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2009 14:24
|
|
|
OK, I have two good ones... I would say around 1988-1990 I ran across two books in the young adult section of our library. Book 1: Named something like "Seven Stars to Sunday" and was about a magical mailbox that a bunch of misfit kids pass on their way home from school every day. I can't remember what they receive from the mailbox but there's definitely something star related going on. If I recall the town was really depressing and these kids had crappy lives. Or maybe that was just my own life being projected as memory. Hah! Book 2: About large cats who walk through walls. Technically it's about something else, but I remember the girl involved lives in this super technologically-advanced world and would go to school for something like 8 days and then have 3 days off, and her mother would let her ride the hovertrain or some such to visit friends, which happened to be this giant cat couple who were professors or something. They had the ability to merge with solid mass then pass through it, slowly. They taught the girl how to do it too, and describes in detail how it felt. I remember being captivated at the thought and actually trying it too. I've tried to find these books since the wonderful interwebs was born, but no luck. Even my own library's website/search function finds nothing (not surprising since it's been so long). The stupid book The Cat Who Walks Through Walls trips me up every time and that is so completely not it. These were young adult books, darnit!
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2009 01:49
|
|
|
A friend of mine is troubled by a book from his youth:quote:oh, there was one author i liked, but i read her book years ago and i don't remember her name anymore. she's the daughter of a famous author, and her only book was the one that continued the story after the "happily ever after". it was about what happened to the villains after the "happily ever after" of an unspecified epic story, sort of a humorous book. been looking for it forever. not as intelligent as pratchett, but still amusing. i read it ~10 years ago. oh, there was a black knight who never spoke. Any ideas?
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2009 06:29
|
|
|
creamyhorror posted:A friend of mine is troubled by a book from his youth: Villains by Necessity. Unfortunately, out of print and very hard to find.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2009 01:30
|
|
|
mania posted:Villains by Necessity. Unfortunately, out of print and very hard to find.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2009 16:39
|
|
|
Someone brought this up in a GBS thread, some time ago, but I can barely remember the details now. From what I can remember, its a dark sci-fi story. Hard science I think, or at least not the pulpy dashing hero and green alien chick type of nonsense. The planet they live on is a dark, desolate place, like they only get sunlight once every 100 years or something stupid like that. Cities seem to live in big ziggurat-like structures (sort of like those archeologies from sim city 2000) I can't really remember much else, other then it was posted in one of those "Pictures/Stories of things that scare/disturb you".
|
|
#
?
Oct 20, 2009 12:06
|
|
|
William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land? Not what I would call hard science fiction, though. Maybe you saw one of the images in this site?
|
|
#
?
Oct 20, 2009 20:17
|
|
|
criptozoid posted:William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land? Not what I would call hard science fiction, though. I think that may just be it. Thanks!
|
|
#
?
Oct 20, 2009 21:11
|
|
|
I'm trying to remember a short story I read once a few years ago. It was part of some 'Best of Science Fiction' collection. The premise is this man inherits an android. He makes money by loaning the android to various companies. Only problem is, whenever the temperature rises above a certain point, the android goes psycho and kills people. Because the android is the man's only source of income, he always takes the android and runs away to some new place to set up shop. What made this story stand out in my mind was that it changed from first person to third person a lot, sometimes within the same sentence. As an example "I looked up and he saw a bird." It confused me when I first started reading the story, but by the end I found it really made the story unique. Appreciate the help.
|
|
#
?
Oct 20, 2009 22:20
|
|
|
Ghost Hat posted:The premise is this man inherits an android. He makes money by loaning the android to various companies. Only problem is, whenever the temperature rises above a certain point, the android goes psycho and kills people. Because the android is the man's only source of income, he always takes the android and runs away to some new place to set up shop. Alfred Bester's "Fondly Farenheit".
|
|
#
?
Oct 20, 2009 22:40
|
|
|
^^Christ this thread deserves all the praise it gets. That's it, thank you.
|
|
#
?
Oct 20, 2009 22:44
|
|
|
The Swinemaster posted:I read a story when I was 8 or 9 that I took from my uncle's massive sci-fi collection. I don't remember if it was a brief novel or a short story. Any theories on this one?
|
|
#
?
Oct 20, 2009 23:13
|
|
|
My Dad always talks about a short story by an Irish an author. A kid rides his bike home from school excited to tell his mother he got good grades. He's riding down a hill his mother's chicken runs into the street in front of him. He swerves to avoid the chicken, crashes and dies. His mother mourns his death and wonders why he didn't just run over the chicken. The story then goes back in time, and the kid is riding down the hill again. This time he runs over the chicken instead of swerving. His mother get angry with him, they fight and he leaves forever. These plot details are second hand, but I know I got the gist of the story right.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2009 17:16
|
|
|
I scanned through and didn't see it mentioned, but there was a children's book I used to love about a kid running around at night urging other children to come out and play. He was hanging out with a mythical creature of sorts, I think maybe a gnome. All the kids dance in their pajamas, there's some bread for everyone, a possible boat ride, and everyone goes back to bed. It's driving me insane not knowing the title. Edit: Ok I found more info on the book. It's basically a beautifully illustrated hardcover book to this nursery rhyme: Girls and boys, are come out to play, The moon doth shine as bright as day; Leave your supper, and leave your sleep, And come with your playfellows into the street. Come with a whoop, come with a call, Come with a good will or not at all. Up the ladder and down the wall, A halfpenny roll will serve us all. You find milk, and I'll find flour, And we'll have a pudding in half an hour Even with all this information, the book eludes me. It's not in a collection of fairy tales, but a book all it's own. Please help! YesBoyIceCream fucked around with this message at 08:47 on Oct 23, 2009 |
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2009 07:50
|
|
|
I think I've tried this one before but didn't get anywhere. I read it maybe 25 years ago. It's a sci-fi short story about a criminal of some kind who is critically injured when his stolen spaceship crashes on an uncharted planet. As his body, paralyzed except for partial movement of one arm lays there, it becomes an object of worship for a bunch of teeny tiny aliens who live at 100x speed, use the peeled skin from his sunburn as roofing material, his hair for strong rope, etc. At one point he is able to lift his arm and bring it crashing down on the enemies of the tribe that worships him. At the end, they have evolved to the point of spaceflight and they build a statue to him. If this isn't a real story, I want to know so I can write it and win a Hugo, cause in my brain it was awesome!
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2009 05:41
|
|
|
Telemaze posted:I'm looking for a short story I found in an anthology a few years ago. In it, a person meets a stranger on a park bench, and the stranger begins telling the person how he is a refugee who was exiled from his homeland, which he can never return to because it is being run by a tyrant. The tyrant is insane and cruel but since he controls all the propaganda that gets out, he has misled everyone badly. It turns out that the exiled stranger is actually Lucifer. It sounds similar to a story from "Smoke and Mirrors" by Neil Gaiman about a hobo on a park bench telling a story about being the Angel of Vengeance about the first murder in Heaven, which then causes Lucifer to fall. Maybe you're mixing up that one with something else.
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2009 05:49
|
|
|
navyjack posted:It's a sci-fi short story about a criminal of some kind who is critically injured when his stolen spaceship crashes on an uncharted planet. As his body, paralyzed except for partial movement of one arm lays there, it becomes an object of worship for a bunch of teeny tiny aliens who live at 100x speed, use the peeled skin from his sunburn as roofing material, his hair for strong rope, etc. At one point he is able to lift his arm and bring it crashing down on the enemies of the tribe that worships him. It's Alan Dean Foster's Gift of a Useless Man.
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2009 12:42
|
|
|
Ok so this has been bothering me for a while and all my searching has been for naught so I come to you. The book I'm looking for was about a torturer's apprentice. He lives in a big keep. Over the course of the part of the story I remember he is the apprentice assigned to some important 'guest', a young noble lady if I recall correctly. Also he finds a dog in some hidden courtyard which he tries to raise. He spends a lot of time with the important 'guest', bringing her books and food. At some point in the story he does something (something related to the woman) that gets him exiled from the keep (even though they promote him to a Journeyman Torturer) and he goes off into the world. There was also a fairly important scene involving a graveyard and a coin. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2009 20:17
|
|
|
^^The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe? I haven't read it, but Google turned it up and the Wikipedia entry is extremely similar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_of_the_Torturer
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2009 21:00
|
|
|
criptozoid posted:It's Alan Dean Foster's Gift of a Useless Man. AWESOME!! Thanks!
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2009 22:07
|
|
|
Now, I read this back in Junior high, so bear with me. The setting was medieval or pre christ at least. there were 2 sons and one son was the main guy of the book. For this guys birthday, his dads concubine was hitting on him, trying to sex him up. He thinks about it and refuses. his dad finds out and is all " thats a good boy. if you had done it I would have kicked your rear end. now do her anyway. thats your present" Blah blah a bunch of poo poo happens I don't remember. Now at the end , this guy is broke, alone and everything. He runs into his brother, who is gabbering all this religious sounding nonsense(guy is clearly insane) and he has a pregnant wife. Anyway, she gives birth on the side of the road(she is probably insane as well) and the main guy is thinking " poo poo, I could spin all this into a major story and get huge dolla bills off this" The main guy is kind of a scheming Machiavelli type character. I've been trying to think of this for years. I even went back to my junior high and browsed through the library to see if anything sparked a memory, but no dice.
|
|
#
?
Oct 25, 2009 04:52
|
|
|
This has been driving me nuts for so long, so hopefully someone knows it. It is a play, has some humorous elements, and not set in modern times. The biggest thing I remember is that there is a feared leader of a gang of thieves that wears kid gloves and I am pretty sure they mention his gloves when describing him multiple times. Some vague things that probably aren't so useful are that he gets married to or tries to marry to a girl in a warehouse that his gang furnishes with stolen things and said gang members have no manners and are rude/mess up/or something during the ceremony.
|
|
#
?
Oct 25, 2009 05:42
|
|
|
That's The Threepenny Opera by Bertold Brecht & Kurt Weil. Or The Beggar's Opera by John Gay, on which The Threepenny Opera was based. Now hum Mack The Knife in penance.
|
|
#
?
Oct 25, 2009 17:06
|
|
|
Sir Nigel posted:Ok so this has been bothering me for a while and all my searching has been for naught so I come to you. The book I'm looking for was about a torturer's apprentice. He lives in a big keep. Over the course of the part of the story I remember he is the apprentice assigned to some important 'guest', a young noble lady if I recall correctly. Also he finds a dog in some hidden courtyard which he tries to raise. He spends a lot of time with the important 'guest', bringing her books and food. At some point in the story he does something (something related to the woman) that gets him exiled from the keep (even though they promote him to a Journeyman Torturer) and he goes off into the world. There was also a fairly important scene involving a graveyard and a coin. Yeah, it's definitely The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2009 03:52
|
|
|
I want to say that I read this book sometime between 8th grade and my sophmore year of highschool. I am pretty sure that it was from the 80s though. It was a scifi story where the US and the Soviet Union had gotten space stations and mining the astroid belt. Anyway, one day the Soviets develop an effective missle shield. This is tested by a French sub captain who launches a missle at Leningrad only to have it shot down. As a result the balance of power is shifted and the US is forced to withdraw from space operations under the threat of nuclear war. In the following years, the US starts to slide towards being a poor third world country. The story focuses on a group of americans who take to space and illegally gather resources. I don't remember if it is a good book or not,but its been bugging me for some time.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2009 21:41
|
|
|
theangryamoeba posted:I want to say that I read this book sometime between 8th grade and my sophmore year of highschool. I am pretty sure that it was from the 80s though. It was a scifi story where the US and the Soviet Union had gotten space stations and mining the astroid belt. Anyway, one day the Soviets develop an effective missle shield. This is tested by a French sub captain who launches a missle at Leningrad only to have it shot down. As a result the balance of power is shifted and the US is forced to withdraw from space operations under the threat of nuclear war. In the following years, the US starts to slide towards being a poor third world country. I haven't read it, but it sounds like Ben Bova's Privateers.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2009 06:38
|
|
|
Book 1: Short book, I read this 10 years ago for lit class, pretty sure it was published before 1980. I don't remember anything about the story, except that the main character is a young girl, there's bird of some sort - either a goose or a swan and I think it takes place in Europe. Book 2: It was a cheesy fun book. Cover was blue and I think the author was female though the name on the book was gender neutral. It felt like it was part of a series. It was about 4 special forces guys who work together in some super secret group. At the start of the book, they were all on leave and pursuing their own stuff. One guy was in the jungle somewhere on a revenge mission. Throughout the course of the book, they meet girls and fall in love with them and at the end the guys get revenge on some big bad of theirs. Thanks!
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2009 14:01
|
|
|
farraday posted:I haven't read it, but it sounds like Ben Bova's Privateers. Thank You! This is exactly it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2009 15:33
|
|
|
I read a short story in high school about a kid whose mother bought him these really, really bland crackers or something and she made him eat them every day because they were good for him or something, and the package had pieces of a buildable house thing, and he built it and it was some magical thing that he could walk into (even though it was tiny). The story ended with him coming home not being able to find it, asking his mother where it is, to which she replied something about her throwing it away in spring cleaning, and then him posting adverts for the crackers for the rest of his life. Second one was in the same literature book for high school (I think) was about this guy that had surgery to make him really smart, and there was a mouse that had the surgery a little bit before him and he fell in love with the female doctor and the mouse died and he revealed that to the scientific community. I later found out that the entire love sequence was edited out of the story, and I think it was actually a whole book. I think there was a movie too, because I'm remembering the part where he shows the dead mouse at the conference in a black and white film style from the 50s or something.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2009 05:52
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 22:10 |
|
|
Cortel posted:
This would be Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2009 06:06
|
|