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angelicism posted:I'm in awe of how you managed to figure this out from my haphazard description. Well, cats in fantasy are pretty common (insert tired and clichéd crazy cat lady joke <here>) but Norton is always my go-to cat writer, and the salt/wound reference sounded familiar. And as I said, the more I thought about it, the more I suspected I'd read the same story; then it was a quick leap to an AN bibliography, a scan for promising titles, a right-click google of "Mark of the Cat", and Bob's your uncle, as they say.  I'd actually like to read the sequel(s?), as I remember liking MotC, but the anthology with them in is going for silly money on Amazon. Sigh. Glad I could help, anyway. 
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Feb 22, 2010 19:42
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angelicism posted:I'm in awe of how you managed to figure this out from my haphazard description. Your description was way more detailed than most of the posts in this thread (or similar groups around the internet). "I read this book, and it was blue. I think there was a boy in it. I really liked it, do you know what it was?"
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Feb 22, 2010 20:40
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Mnemosyne posted:Your description was way more detailed than most of the posts in this thread (or similar groups around the internet). "I read this book, and it was blue. I think there was a boy in it. I really liked it, do you know what it was?" Lonesome Boy by Arna Bontemps
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Feb 22, 2010 21:16
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I'm trying to remember the title or name of the author of a book. female author Spanish/mexican family told through the eyes of one girl, then she becomes a mother and the story continues with her as a mother than grandmother. There is a black horse that she describes liking a lot. The whole premise is about the multiple generations and the connection in her family. I even asked a librarian, then I thought hmm esteban, esteban trueba, doh, "House of Spirits" Isabel Allende thanks me! Slick fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Feb 22, 2010 |
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Feb 22, 2010 21:29
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Sci fi short, probably 60s/70s as most of what I read is in older collections. Group of (male) astronauts on a long voyage. Start going space crazy. Eventually, they come to the conclusion that one of their number is pregnant. They attempt to deliver the baby by caesarian.
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Feb 23, 2010 01:33
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Trying to remember the name of a scifi short story. Sorry if it's been mentioned before I think I read it in a highschool english class. It starts off with a group of humans heading south to escape a glacier, just to find that there is another glacier coming from the south. Fastforward a few hundred years. An spacefaring alien reptilian race. Finds the earth, (covered in ice) and discovers the belongings of the humans mentioned above. One of the items found was a Disney film real. The alien race wastes alot of time trying to "decipher" the real.
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Feb 25, 2010 18:24
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Hixson posted:Trying to remember the name of a scifi short story. Sorry if it's been mentioned before
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Feb 25, 2010 18:29
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Action Jacktion posted:"History Lesson" by Arthur C. Clarke. Thats it! thanks
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Feb 25, 2010 18:42
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The details of the book I'm looking for are as follows; Read in my teens, so around ten years ago - 2000 or possibly earlier. Science fiction/Horror - possibly teen fiction - could have been a Point Horror or similar? Cover of the book was a skull with a translucent dome in the cranium. About a British town (with a bad past?) which is suddenly enclosed in a impenetrable dome (to stop evil from escaping?). People can enter the dome but not exit it - I think it was a fog or mist surrounding the town. I think there was quite a dramatic rape scene quite early on - violence is rife - can't remember if this was before/the cause of the dome, or because of it. Story lines run simultaneously - one inside, one outside the town. The story line outside involved a older male researcher who is in a wheelchair - he might be ex-army or similar. Toward the end of the story, he decides to enter the fog in his wheelchair - on the end of a rope & with radio communication with people on the outside. Both fail quickly. Over time the dome begins to shrink, and will eventually disappear the whole town leaving a blank space (crater?). This is revealed near the end of the book to have happened elsewhere before. I've checked the story lines for "James Herbert - the Fog" & Stephen King "Under the Dome" - it is neither of these. Southern Heel fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Feb 25, 2010 |
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Feb 25, 2010 23:19
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Jagtpanther posted:About a British town (with a bad past?) which is suddenly enclosed in a impenetrable dome (to stop evil from escaping?). People can enter the dome but not exit it - I think it was a fog or mist surrounding the town. Hmm, looks very familiar to me. Some elements remind me a lot of The Wyrm, by Stephen Laws. Very dense fog surrounds an English village, lots of horror/violence (because some evil thing was woken up). Pretty sure a man tries to enter with a rope and radio too. I *think* the village disappeared at the end too, but I haven't read it in, oh, 10 years also. I may have the book in a storage bin somewhere in my shed, I will try to find it over the weekend and try to find some more clues. Haven't been able to find any substancial synopsis on the web yet. Jeece fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Feb 27, 2010 |
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Feb 27, 2010 01:47
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I can't for the life of me find a quote in Atlas Shrugged I need. It's Fransisco talking to Hank, telling Hank that he is the ship that his family uses to weather the storm of life. Does anyone have the complete quote? I tried googling and I've been skimming pages like mad but I can't find it. If anyone has an E-book version if you could do a quick ctrl-f and search storm or something and let me know what page it's on or just copy paste it all in, it'd be much appreciated. Sorry, this is a bit of a reversal of the spirit of the thread, but if the book wasn't so drat long winded I wouldn't ask.
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Feb 27, 2010 03:10
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Hello there y'all. I was hoping someone could help me identify this particular book. My brother has been tearing his hair out trying to remember what it is called. After regaling him with threads of goons finding incredibly bizarre things, he firmly believes that this can be done! Onto the book he is trying to find... This is rather vague, but hopefully someone can at least throw something out there for him to look at and check" -Towards the end of the book (approx. last third), characters are flying around in silvered spheres and battling it out. They are (perhaps unintentionally) traveling through time during combat. Possibly as a side effect of the battle. This time travel is part of what the spheres can do, but the characters are not intentionally doing this. -The characters are most likely primitive humans, or primitive humanoids. -It is either earth or a very earth-like planet. -He read this either in middle school or high school, drawn from the school library. So perhaps classified as a childrens/young adults book. It was not brand new, but likely in the 90s. In the last 20 years perhaps. At least before 2002. Any help on this particular book would be fabulous, as it seems to be eating him up. As an easier "assignment", another book that he can actually describe in detail is as follows: -It takes place in Greyhawk. -The characters have dice bracelets that actually roll/spin when they perform actions. They are part of a wizards geas -There is a beserker, with a miniature drake familiar that is usually on his shoulder -He is met by someone else in a bar in the beginning of the story -There is a river within the first 20 pages of the story. This may have been where they first notice the dice spinning during their actions to attack and so on -Later on they are traveling through a desert and find ruins, whereupon they fight a bronze or copper dragon. This one seems easier to identify, possibly easy for a DnD Greyhawk fan. I'll attempt to see if I can help anyone else identify something in this thread, but even if I don't I hope someone helps me out!
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Feb 27, 2010 09:08
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Synnr posted:-It takes place in Greyhawk. A google search for "Greyhawk dice bracelet" suggests these: http://www.amazon.com/Quag-Keep-Andre-Norton/dp/0765313022 http://www.amazon.com/Return-Quag-Keep-Andre-Norton/dp/0765351528/
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Feb 27, 2010 10:06
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Alright, I've checked this whole thread, and google isn't helping. I'll recall details as best as possible, things in parenthesis are my best guesses The series (I think it is a series) is about a (chubby) kid that goes to live with his wizard uncle. The first chapter starts with him getting off a bus with a bag that's really heavy cause he packed his toy lead soldiers with him. He kinda regrets it after his uncle makes some straining noises lifting the bag. Anyway I think he starts to learn some magic. He has an older female relation (grandma/aunt/?) whose magic might manifest as purple or lavender. There is a female that lives nearby around his age that eventually does some karate or some girl scout stuff. They end up fighting evil (witches or spirits.) I remember one of their tactics they used once against evil was to cross running water (like in dresden files). My best guess for a timeline is about 12 years ago. That's the best I can come up with @ 5 am. **edit** Apparently my google-fu gets better the more tired I get. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_with_a_Clock_in_Its_Walls odinson fucked around with this message at 11:13 on Feb 27, 2010 |
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Feb 27, 2010 10:53
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Synnr posted:
Kind of reminds me of The Peace War by Vernor Vinge although only in the limited tech, time travel & silver bubbles bit. There are two sequels, a novella & a novel too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peace_War
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Feb 27, 2010 10:57
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This one is a short story and it should be pretty easy because I seem to recall it being written by a big author, but for the life of me I can't recall who wrote it or what it is called. The narrator tells the story of a man (I think he is retarded) who everyone teases, and then his house (or barn or wherever he lives) burns down and the narrator makes up a story about how he got out in time and left somewhere to live out his life. It turns out that the man was inside and was killed, and I believe the narrator has to help carry his body out.
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Feb 28, 2010 02:28
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deety posted:A google search for "Greyhawk dice bracelet" suggests these: I don't know how I didn't find this myself for him... He says thinks it is this! Thank you very much! branedotorg posted:Kind of reminds me of The Peace War by Vernor Vinge although only in the limited tech, time travel & silver bubbles bit. There are two sequels, a novella & a novel too. I already tried running this past him, since I obviously made the same connection as you. He doesn't think it is and the wiki description didn't seem to ring any bells when I showed it to him the other day. Thanks though 
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Feb 28, 2010 11:34
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Reverend Werewolf posted:This was a story from a collection of short horror stories for children, published in the nineties (Note: It was NOT one of the Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark series) Responding to an ancient post here, but this sounds like "Mama Gone" by Jane Yolen. It's been reprinted in a bunch of anthologies, so I don't know which one you would have read it in. You can read it via Google Books here: http://books.google.com/books?id=f-...%20gone&f=false
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Mar 1, 2010 01:05
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 I will give a forums upgrade of your choice to the one who can find this book! All right, here we go: I read this book that I borrowed from a rack of books in my 5th grade classroom in 1996-7. My teacher had a bunch of sweet fantasy and kids books, some dating from the 80's (Lone Wolf ftw!). This book was a sort of dark semi-fantasy tale about a boy and girl, who had become orphaned, going to live with their aunt and uncle (?) in their big scary mansion. The aunt and uncle were, of course, fairly abusive and had the kids spending their days doing intense manual labor. For the boy's birthday, he received nothing but a pair of work gloves (which he was actually pretty thankful for, because he was always tearing his hands to ribbons doing manual labor). The boy's bedroom had this really creepy washbasin in it with a hideous battle scene (possibly Napoleonic); he was scared of the gruesome cavalry deaths on it. One day, he gets tired of looking at it, so he flips it over, whereupon he discovers a secret passage. This passage leads down to a log cabin in the center of the house (I swear to god that's what it was!) where a nice old lady lives who helps the kids. Also, the boy has to swing over a snake pit or something along the way (always a classic). I have searched for this drat thing for so long... asked so many people... but I've always come up empty-handed. Seriously, I'll give a forums upgrade if you so desire (I would not complain about pro bono sleuthing )
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Mar 1, 2010 05:09
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I feel like i've read that too, although i have no idea who it's by or what it's called.
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Mar 1, 2010 06:00
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Fatkraken posted:Sci fi short, probably 60s/70s as most of what I read is in older collections. SPOILERS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%94All_You_Zombies%E2%80%94You're welcome.
Teketeketeketeke fucked around with this message at 08:42 on Mar 2, 2010 |
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Mar 1, 2010 10:27
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SimianNinja posted:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%94All_You_Zombies%E2%80%94 Did you even read the description of that story?
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Mar 1, 2010 17:44
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SimianNinja posted:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%94All_You_Zombies%E2%80%94 um....OK If you were attempting to shock rather than making an honest mistake, I have actually read the story you linked to :P
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Mar 1, 2010 18:18
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Fatkraken posted:um....OK I read it a couple years ago, it's a good little story. The link to the Wikipedia page should have some spoiler warnings though.
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Mar 2, 2010 01:37
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That's not it?  You mentioned a man getting pregnant and giving birth by c-section in space, so I honestly thought that that Heinlein story, involving a weird hermaphrodite man giving birth by c-section in space, had to be the only one. Also the date it was written matches.I guess it was an honest mistake. How could there be multiple stories like that?  EDIT: Oh goddammit I guess it didn't mention anything about this taking place in space... but still... it seemed like a fairly unique situation Teketeketeketeke fucked around with this message at 09:11 on Mar 2, 2010 |
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Mar 2, 2010 08:47
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I read a short story a few years ago, it was about people on earth or maybe the moon, when a dead sun came into the solar system and its gravity field pulled earth (or the moon) with it, away from our sun. Anyone know what I'm talking about?
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Mar 2, 2010 11:08
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Biplane posted:I read a short story a few years ago, it was about people on earth or maybe the moon, when a dead sun came into the solar system and its gravity field pulled earth (or the moon) with it, away from our sun. Anyone know what I'm talking about? 'A Pail of Air'
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Mar 2, 2010 14:03
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SimianNinja posted:That's not it? ah, sorry. He's NOT pregnant. He's fat. The rest of the crew DECIDE he is pregnant because they are space-crazy. The "C-section" kills him. sorry, I should have been clearer with my description.
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Mar 2, 2010 14:28
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fritz posted:'A Pail of Air' Nice. Thanks a lot, broheim!
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Mar 2, 2010 14:53
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Fatkraken posted:ah, sorry. He's NOT pregnant. He's fat. The rest of the crew DECIDE he is pregnant because they are space-crazy. The "C-section" kills him. Hahaha~! That sounds amazing! I will redouble my efforts!
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Mar 2, 2010 16:08
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It's actually a poem but it's in the form of a story and I couldn't find any other place to post it. I read last year it in a college level english literature book, it was probably written later 20th century, but there's a chance it was written early 21st. It's about a young adult, I'm almost certain he was 17 (and that may have been in the title) driving down the road, a truck driven by an old man swerves and his dog falls out the back. The young adult, pulls over, chastises the old man, points out the dog is dying, and the old man leaves it up to the young man to kill the dog. He does so with a rock in a field. It's about coming of age and such.
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Mar 4, 2010 20:01
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Two science fiction questions: 1. About the world that is very cold where they have to scoop out air and bring it inside to breathe. 2. About a future time when Kids are raised to be be fighters trying to drive some being from the galaxy. Includes a story where a charcter learns how to make a maneuver which keeps the opposing forces from reading their intentions by dropping out of space momentarily (though he dies in the process IIRC). But this also makes another character double himself somehow. There is an ongoing things about how when the ships drop out of space, they return marked up with what turns out to be an attempt at communication from being that live in that space. (How this happens I will never know, but writing that description gave me enough search terms to finally find it: Exultant, by STeven Baxter.) kapalama fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Mar 9, 2010 |
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Mar 9, 2010 05:41
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ABOUT IT.
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kapalama posted:Two science fiction questions: fritz posted:'A Pail of Air'
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Mar 9, 2010 05:52
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a very recent sci-fi short story it's about earth (or earth-clone) and a sister colony which have long been separated and forget about each other. they discover and use different forms of math, the second colony uses their tech to create a hedonistic society that eventually attacks earth. I remember the techs being called "numathics" or "nu"- something the sections chapters are distinctly broken up, like I, II, III, etc. at one point the attackers capture one of the 'good' guys and begins negotiations with him. when he asks "why don't you just torture it out of me," she replies "oh, i've run you as a simulation thousands of times, with each torture worst than the last, all results were unacceptable, so i'm trying it this way" (or something along those lines) when the enemy is confronted with defeat, the only reason they give for their attack is "you will never understand" I was just reading Egans "riding the crocodile" and the simulation part at the end reminded me of this and it's killing me that I can't remember. edit: managed to find it, it was "the far end of history" by john c wright, from "new space opera 2" Omegauo fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Mar 10, 2010 |
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Mar 10, 2010 20:43
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I read this sci-fi book probably a decade or more ago, it was based around this procedure that could extend the human life, bringing an aging human essentially back to their 20's or so and adding another 80 years to their life before the effects started to fade. The catch was that the person receiving the procedure had to give all of their earthly possessions to the company performing it, and would start their "new" life with nothing. They had to have at least a million dollars (or something like that) worth of assets to be eligible, so each time they started again they had 80 years to build up enough money from scratch to pay for it again, or else they would die. I remember that the procedure basically consisted of ripping out and rebuilding every part of the human body one at a time and then reimplanting them, and for some reason they couldn't knock the patient out during the procedure, but instead would give them a drug afterwards that would make them forget that they had just gone through this horrific process while totally conscious. I think there was some sort of conspiracy going on where they realized the company had the technology to extend life for much longer than 80 years but were suppressing the information to make more money.
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Mar 11, 2010 04:38
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Adam Bowen posted:I read this sci-fi book probably a decade or more ago, it was based around this procedure that could extend the human life, bringing an aging human essentially back to their 20's or so and adding another 80 years to their life before the effects started to fade. The catch was that the person receiving the procedure had to give all of their earthly possessions to the company performing it, and would start their "new" life with nothing. They had to have at least a million dollars (or something like that) worth of assets to be eligible, so each time they started again they had 80 years to build up enough money from scratch to pay for it again, or else they would die. Buying Time by Joe Haldeman - Though it was 10 years not 80...
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Mar 11, 2010 05:01
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Hughlander posted:Buying Time by Joe Haldeman - Though it was 10 years not 80... Is correct, Holy Fire by Bruce Sterling is another in a similar vein.
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Mar 11, 2010 14:27
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That's it, thanks! I don't know why but I was positive about the 80 year part.
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Mar 11, 2010 17:43
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I've been trying to remember the titles of some books I read when I was a kid (we're talking early nineties) about two brothers who roam around the world collecting rare and dangerous animals for their family's zoo/wildlife sanctuary. That's all I have to go on. Anybody have any ideas?
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Mar 12, 2010 15:48
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Oberleutnant posted:I've been trying to remember the titles of some books I read when I was a kid (we're talking early nineties) about two brothers who roam around the world collecting rare and dangerous animals for their family's zoo/wildlife sanctuary. That's all I have to go on. Anybody have any ideas? The "Adventure" series by Willard Price. Amazon Adventure, Safari Adventure, Volcano Adventure, there was a whole lot of 'em, and I remember reading most of them as a kid.
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