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Bazanga posted:Shot in the dark: I read this book back in the late 90s in my middle school English class. It was a young adult SciFi book about some kids that got these gloves from their school janitor that shot little ball bearings whenever they tensed up one of their fingers. The kids made games of practicing with it and then one day an alien came down to Earth and told them that they had been training for the real gloves. The alien then gave them the real gloves which shot balls of energy whenever they tensed their fingers. The janitor was in on it the whole time. The alien had this weird chameleon hair and didn't have to eat or sleep. The end of the book was the kids acting as bodyguards for the alien as he went to The White House. The Dark Side of Nowhere by Neal Shusterman
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Jul 12, 2011 04:44
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Reposting from about six months ago, because this is still driving me nuts: I read this book a few times, starting probably fifteen years ago, give or take. The book had two novels (novellas?) under one cover. The stories were probably just common pulp, but I really liked the first one. The book may have been published by TOR or a similar imprint. The first story in the book was a spy tale about a guy who gets mixed up in some sort of plot involving super-secret good guy and bad guy groups. Think KAOS and CONTROL, but slightly more serious. I remember the main character was a jogger or a runner, I think he was out running when he accidentally got involved in the spy business. The "good" guys basically gave the protagonist the choice of joining them or dying, so he joined them. I think there was a scene where the hero had to create a distraction involving a lobster in a casino or restaurant. I think one of the spy organizations was called "WEB" or "WEBB" and the story may have had a title like "Web of Deceit" or "Webb of Deception." Edit: Oh, yeah, there was also a scene with the good guys being handcuffed and left somewhere, and by the time they got free, there was concern over the tight cuffs/manacles/shackles/whatever having caused permanent damage to at least one of the characters because of restricted blood flow. The second story was about a ninja-style assassin, lots of mystical overtones. The assassin in question had a number, like "Agent 13." I'm pretty sure there was a ring with a "13" on it, and maybe that ring was used to leave marks on dead people as a sort of calling card. Agent 13, or whatever his name was, may have been getting framed for things he didn't do. I'd love have someone tell me what book this was. I've tried searching for variations on the Web and Agent 13 themes with no luck.
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Jul 13, 2011 01:25
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Saw this on TVTropes, figured I'd throw it on here.quote:In a book whose title I can't remember, a wizard gets rid of his shadow, thinking this makes him perfect. However, it turns out that the shadow has become a monster which, among other reverse-of-normal things, travels through solid ground instead of air, and eats people's bones instead of their flesh. Sounds like it'd be either really bad, or really, really awesome.
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Jul 14, 2011 07:11
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Lprsti99 posted:Saw this on TVTropes, figured I'd throw it on here. Wizard of Earthsea
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Jul 14, 2011 18:33
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Flatscan posted:Wizard of Earthsea So I don't think so. I would like to know what it is though.
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Jul 14, 2011 20:19
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Hedrigall posted:
Can't anyone get this? It's driving me nuts as well...
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Jul 14, 2011 21:17
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lllllllllllllllllll posted:This one was cast on the radio and I only caught two series years ago and wondered since what it was. It was about a Castle inhabited by strange but generally friendly creatures who all went about their business. At one point I think a burglar or so entered and the gargoyle bit his head off. It was narrated like a children's book but with a serious undertone. Written by a prolific English author. All in all very British. Sorry, that's all I remember. Sounds kinda like The Trap Door.
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Jul 16, 2011 03:31
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funkybottoms posted:Sounds kinda like The Trap Door. Yeah, it does actually. Perhaps the radio cast was inspired by it or something. In any case thanks to bringing this series to my attention, it's great.
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Jul 17, 2011 11:41
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Well, if it wasn't it, I'm glad you liked it- it had been bugging me ever since you asked and that only came to me yesterday. I've not actually seen it, but rather stumbled across it when trying to confirm that "berk" is not something said in polite company in England.
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Jul 17, 2011 14:10
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I'm trying to find a couple of paranormal romances for my niece. I doubt many of you read that genre, so I know this is a long shot, but I'm trying for her sake anyway. The common thread between the two books, which are NOT part of the same series, is a female protagonist who doesn't know she's a shapeshifter. In the first one, the protagonist is a were lion, she thinks. The details she (my niece) remembers are that she's Southern, her parents are dead or her mom is alive but didn't tell her, and she has to go to Las Vegas to learn about her lion heritage or something. The second one is a bit darker, and the protagonist is a wolf but doesn't know it. She is apparently quite powerful, would be the leader of a pack or something. She is physically scarred in some way, my niece thinks. The remnants of the pack come to her town and she falls for one of the wolves. They're pissed off that she doesn't know about her heritage. Any help would be appreciated.  edit: Found the first one for her (it's "Walk on the Wild Side" by Christine Warren if anyone desperately needs to read it  ), so it's just the second one we're trying to figure out now.edit 2: Found the second one too. I've been searching for these books for her for weeks. Apparently it just took posting here for me to hit paydirt. Second one is "Pack Challenge" by Shelly Laurenston, again for those of you who are just dying to read about wolf sex. Fire In The Disco fucked around with this message at 08:08 on Jul 18, 2011 |
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Jul 17, 2011 14:50
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funkybottoms posted:trying to confirm that "berk" is not something said in polite company in England. /off topic/ 'Berk' is fine. Ignore anyone who tells you it's a euphemism for oval office, that's just not true (except etymologically). It's slightly ruder than 'twit', not as rude as 'pillock', it's just a slightly humorous way to say 'idiot'.
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Jul 17, 2011 22:03
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Ok this is going to make me look dumb because I think it's a really famous book. There's a guy after some trouble at home goes to live on a Greek island somewhere. Weird stuff happens, there's an old guy who lives on the island in a fancy house. Goats are involved somehow. There is a pretty lady there (maybe related to the old guy?) and some sort of spy / kidnapping thing going on.
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Jul 19, 2011 04:46
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RyanNotBrian posted:Ok this is going to make me look dumb because I think it's a really famous book. The Magus?
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Jul 19, 2011 04:53
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Dead Alice posted:The Magus? That's the one, thanks! It was a great book by the way, don't let my crappy synopsis turn anyone off it.
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Jul 19, 2011 05:41
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Trying to remember a book i read a year or two back about a boy that is expelled from school and goes to a school full of the worst kids in London and they train/learn to do a big heist. The teachers screw them over and set up the kids. Was pretty funny couldn't remember the author or the title
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Jul 19, 2011 13:17
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Short story about a guy that happens to see some creepy dude walking across his lawn carrying a coffin in the middle of the night. The creepy guy looks up and the man gets a good look at him. Later on he starts seeing the guy around, and eventually sees him as an elevator conductor. He refuses to get on the elevator, which crashes afterward and kills everyone inside. I want to say the story was written in 1930s or so.
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Jul 21, 2011 11:32
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Detective Thompson posted:Short story about a guy that happens to see some creepy dude walking across his lawn carrying a coffin in the middle of the night. The creepy guy looks up and the man gets a good look at him. Later on he starts seeing the guy around, and eventually sees him as an elevator conductor. He refuses to get on the elevator, which crashes afterward and kills everyone inside. I want to say the story was written in 1930s or so. I'm guessing it's some version of Room For One More, but unfortunately there are a lot of different versions.
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Jul 21, 2011 14:06
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Polka_Rapper posted:The Dark Side of Nowhere by Neal Shusterman You, sir, are a wizard.  The name didn't ring a bell but the book cover certainly did.
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Jul 22, 2011 01:46
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Been trying to find the name of a book for a while, just decided to pop in here and found this thread. What luck! The book is from a series, but I don't know which book in the series it is. I do know it isn't the first, and it isn't the last. It's set in a future cyberpunk universe where religion and government have combined, and people are connected to the internet directly with an implant in their brain. The main character is a priestess who meets and falls in love with a man who, it turns out, is the devil (the reader knows this long before she does). There's an overarching plot which I don't totally recall, but it involves hackers and AI routines.
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Jul 23, 2011 18:40
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imnotinsane posted:Trying to remember a book i read a year or two back about a boy that is expelled from school and goes to a school full of the worst kids in London and they train/learn to do a big heist. The teachers screw them over and set up the kids. Was pretty funny couldn't remember the author or the title School for Scumbags.
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Jul 24, 2011 07:25
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I think this is a children's poem because I remember it from primary school but I can't find it anywhere or remember the name of it. A husband and wife are sitting on the couch watching tv and that's all they ever do but the TV blacks out and they don't know each other... they start a conversation and the tv comes back on. Something like that. Any help?
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Jul 25, 2011 08:22
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MacDougall posted:I think this is a children's poem because I remember it from primary school but I can't find it anywhere or remember the name of it.
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Jul 25, 2011 08:57
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I don't suppose it could be "Television" by Roald Dahl? http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/television/ Probably not, since there's not a husband and wife, only those hideous children. But it's the only poem decrying the evils of television I could recall off-hand. I'll keep looking, though.
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Jul 26, 2011 04:09
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Harrison Bergeron came to mind, but if you're certain about the TV blacking out, that wouldn't be it. There's the same theme of the couple sitting and watching television who have forgotten something.
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Jul 26, 2011 06:33
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I read a sci-fi book some years ago but forgot the name. It was a post-government nanotech society (on earth) where people belonged instead to societies (e.g. victorians?). The main plot seemed to be about a girl who had a nanotech book that taught her how to be awesome - and her "mother", the person who narrated it.
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Jul 26, 2011 09:11
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Myotis posted:I read a sci-fi book some years ago but forgot the name. It was a post-government nanotech society (on earth) where people belonged instead to societies (e.g. victorians?). The main plot seemed to be about a girl who had a nanotech book that taught her how to be awesome - and her "mother", the person who narrated it. Definitely The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
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Jul 26, 2011 09:39
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Disappointing egg posted:Definitely The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson Ah yes, great stuff! Thanks.
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Jul 26, 2011 18:49
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My physics professor in college once mentioned to us that he read a really insightful but difficult to follow book once where the speed of light was fifty or sixty miles per hour and it changed human perception. I'm really interested in reading this book now - anyone ever heard of it?
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Jul 26, 2011 19:24
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There was a series of books (or possibly a single book with several stories) set in a near-future dystopian UK. They were very technology-heavy and virtual reality programs were inprinted on feathers. Androids gained sustenance by putting these feathers into a special 'mouth' on their stomachs. I think the feathers were blue, and turned brown once they were used. I think androids and humans could interbreed, and possibly dogs too? And... something about a DJ with a hand made of butterflies. I hope someone can help, this is bugging the hell out of me.
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Jul 26, 2011 19:41
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Popular Human posted:My physics professor in college once mentioned to us that he read a really insightful but difficult to follow book once where the speed of light was fifty or sixty miles per hour and it changed human perception. I'm really interested in reading this book now - anyone ever heard of it? Sanford posted:There was a series of books (or possibly a single book with several stories) set in a near-future dystopian UK. They were very technology-heavy and virtual reality programs were inprinted on feathers. Androids gained sustenance by putting these feathers into a special 'mouth' on their stomachs. I think the feathers were blue, and turned brown once they were used. I think androids and humans could interbreed, and possibly dogs too? And... something about a DJ with a hand made of butterflies. I hope someone can help, this is bugging the hell out of me. Not sure about the details, but Jeff Noon's Vurt (and sequels) has the feathers-VR thing, though I don't remember any androids (but it's been a long while since I read them). Hobnob fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Jul 26, 2011 |
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Jul 26, 2011 19:50
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Looking for, I believe, a short story; I believe it was in a book of stories by one author, but I may be wrong about that, might have just been a collection of multiple authors. I remember only one about it: It included, several times, the word "bumped" printed using subscript and superscript, to make the word look bumpy. Based on when I saw it, it can't be newer than about 2006, but it could well be much older.
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Jul 26, 2011 22:10
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Sci-fi short story. Could be from any time period bar the last few years, I've read a LOT of anthologies in my time Guy and a girl traveling in a post apocalyptic waste. They come to a city/town and compete in some kind of tournament involving computers/VR. The thing I specifically remember if the guy somehow finds an area of forgotten memory in the computer, and finds something like a sprite sheet for a snowman character. The Snowman has some degree of AI and him and the guy become friends, but at some point the tournament organizers find out and the snowman character is deleted.
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Jul 26, 2011 23:46
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Fatkraken posted:Sci-fi short story. Could be from any time period bar the last few years, I've read a LOT of anthologies in my time How We Got In Town and Out Again by Jonathan Lethem. It's in Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse.
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Jul 27, 2011 00:03
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funkybottoms posted:How We Got In Town and Out Again by Jonathan Lethem. It's in Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse. Awesome. Though I must have read it in the Dozois anthology from 1997, as that's the only book in it's bibliography that I own That's the problem with short stories, I must have over 50 anthologies and collections, each with 10-20 stories in, and I've read a bunch more that various family members currently have. Chasing down a specific story from a vague description is almost impossible even when I know the drat thing is most likely within 10 feet of where I'm sitting.
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Jul 27, 2011 02:31
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One from my Sister:My Sister posted:There is a poor and mean village built on the top of a sleeping dragon. A self sufficient and possibly promiscuous (?) girl there gets into some trouble think perhaps with a jealous lover and is persued by men intent on killing her. She flees into the mouth of the dragon. It's full of stuff growing. The inside of the dragon hosts a village of imbecilles, among whom she lives for many many years, learning stuff about the sleeping dragon and how it works. I think the imbecilles might destroy parasites. The dragon maybe speaks/communicates somehow... and a second: quote:The last of the dragons has been sleeping for many generations under some mountain, together with the memories of his forebears, which live on in the gemstones their bodies become upon death. Modern man starts drilling down. The dragon takes action to take to the sky and seek out people with whom to negotiate. Somehow a deal is struck in which the stones of the old dragons are left untouched in exchange for him dying himself and giving the precious stones to the humans, including one to the woman (a musuem curator) who he has befriended. This means all the parts of him will be separated so his soul will not live on. But eventually the stones call to all their owners and people start to trickle back to the museum... Both short stories I believe
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Jul 28, 2011 15:35
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Alright this has been on my mind on and ofIf for about 10-15 years now. I saw this book briefly at a charity booksale, but I think it was new so probably published in the early 90s, though I can't be sure. Illustrated childrens book (aimed I think between 10-12), all I can remember about the story was that a child's grandfather just died and he was a sailor, always away at sea. A big part of it was going into his house and looking at his stuff - the illustrations were the most interesting part. There would be the illustration of the room but on all the furniture would be much smaller than life real things i.e. a ship would be sailing in the sink and a book would have a ladder against it etc. I know it's very vague but any help would be appreciated. I seem to recall the fact that the child realising that the grandad would always be there with her. Beautifully illustrated children's book dealing with bereavement. Thanks in advance!
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Jul 30, 2011 00:51
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I'm trying to remember the name of a book I got around 1992, when I left first school at around 7 or 8 years old. I think the book had a laughing/sniggering fox on the front cover, and it may possibly have been a joke book, or a book of funny short stories. The thing I distinctly remember is, that at the bottom right corner of each right-hand page, there was a picture of a frog. You could flick through the bottom right corner of the book, and watch a flickbook animation of this frog eating a fly, and I believe the frog turns into a wizard. I also remember the last two frames of the animation had the frog/wizard thing saying something in a speech bubble, something like, "And Now" ... "For my final trick", and the page after the last frame was a page that simply had the text "The end", within the centre of the page.
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Aug 3, 2011 00:37
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Alright so, a good few years ago, (perhaps 5-7?) I read a bit over half of a science fiction novel that also had some suspenseful/slight horror in some of the stories, that I can't remember the title of. I couldn't finish it, due to it being borrowed from the library (besides, I don't think I wound up being all that keen on it, then, since I was quite young - although looking back on what I remember of the stories/'books' in it, I find it quite interesting, and would quite like to be able to re-read it, and perhaps look up the author and see if there are any sequels, or something. (I doubt it do to the format of the book, but I can hope) Anyway, so what I remember about the book was that it was divided into multiple related stories. They were all set in the same period, and I think were all linked to lesser or greater extents. (I think one of them involved the characters of that story finding a ghost ship, then a later story being about the crew of the ghost ship itself, long ago, and what happened to them, etc) So firstly, it's set in a galaxy/cluster of systems that are ruled pretty iron-fistedly by a faction that I think was at war with another one fighting for their freedom, etc. (similar to 'Firefly' on the TV, a bit?) Anyway, I think one of the stories/books was on a snow planet, and it mainly followed a deaf and mute(?) thief (I think he was in a sort of 'class'/category of thief/burgular. Something-runner, possibly.) and he broke into a particular house to steal a certain gem or something (his fence/mentor/whatever-else had been sort of contracted to get it, I think it turned out) and wound up encountering a 'siren' that was the owner of the house (she winds up being the 'star' of a later story, about what happened after this one) with her husband, but of course, seeing as the thief was deaf, it didnt' really have an effect, and he successfully legged it. Also, I remember there being a guy called/nicknamed 'Blackjack' (I think it was in the siren's book) who incidentally favored the blackjack as his weapon. Finally, in the book involving the soon-to-be ghost ship, the turrets on the sides were operated by the people like, putting on a sort of virtual-reality helmet, I suppose, so they see through a camera (or whatever) above/between the guns, and swivel the guns around by just looking around/swiveling their eyes. Also, there are a few things like the fact that although there were energy weapons and the like, (called something different to 'laser' or 'plasma' though, I think, possibly) but they could only be fired irregularly, as the laser/whatever shot drained a lot of power, and it had to slowly recharge. (although they might've been able to switch out the batteries, or something, in order to get shots off quicker? Can't remember) So in the end, people would generally either try to get their shot/s off quickly, then resort to melee weapons, or just use melee weapons and keep their guns for last-resort. drat, didn't think it'd wind up being quite that much of a wall-of-text, but ah well, I thought I'd give you all as good a description of the book as possible, so I can hopefully find it again! 
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Aug 3, 2011 01:47
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Major Isoor posted:Alright so, a good few years ago, (perhaps 5-7?) I read a bit over half of a science fiction novel that also had some suspenseful/slight horror in some of the stories, that I can't remember the title of. I couldn't finish it, due to it being borrowed from the library (besides, I don't think I wound up being all that keen on it, then, since I was quite young - although looking back on what I remember of the stories/'books' in it, I find it quite interesting, and would quite like to be able to re-read it, and perhaps look up the author and see if there are any sequels, or something. (I doubt it do to the format of the book, but I can hope) (Ed: It was titled Twilight of the Empire in the States, now I look.) Runcible Cat fucked around with this message at 12:15 on Aug 3, 2011 |
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Aug 3, 2011 11:56
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Engelbrecht posted:I think this might have been Simon Green's Deathstalker Prelude - it was an omnibus reissue of 3 related novels; 'Mistworld', 'Ghostworld' and 'Hellworld'. And if it was that you're in luck, because the Deathstalker series it was reissued as the prequel to is something like 8 books long and brings some of the surviving characters back for walk-ons. (It's better than it sounds from the title - it's fun melodramatic space opera.) Yes! 'Deathstalker Prelude' (I'm in Australia) instantly rang a bell, and this bit alone confirmed it for me: wiki posted:The last refuge of fleeing rebels is attacked using an esper plague, in an attempt to bring down the planet's psychic shield - its only defence against the empire. I remember that section, since they were also trying to set up all these salvaged turrets, etc. or something, as I recall. Thanks for that! Also, do you know if the other books in the series (link) are 'clustered' into a single/multiple novels, like how the Prelude ones, are? Or are they all seperate? Either way, thank you for that - that had been constantly on the edge of my mind for weeks, and I finally cracked and decided to find a thread like this
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Aug 3, 2011 12:28
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