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Zoinker posted:There's this sci-fi story I read in an anthology a while ago that I want to track down again. Can't remember the author, but the premise was pretty interesting and creepy. This sounds an awful lot like one of James Alan Gardener's novels -- are you absolutely sure it was a short story?
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Oct 23, 2011 03:50
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Zoinker posted:There's this sci-fi story I read in an anthology a while ago that I want to track down again. Can't remember the author, but the premise was pretty interesting and creepy.
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Oct 23, 2011 06:25
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Action Jacktion posted:That sounds like the Isaac Asimov story "Green Patches," except in that the alien life form is green, not red. Yes, That's it. I must have mixed it up with the fungus from Alpha Centauri, though, hence the color confusion. Been a while since I read it.
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Oct 23, 2011 16:36
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Zoinker posted:Yes, That's it. I must have mixed it up with the fungus from Alpha Centauri, though, hence the color confusion. Been a while since I read it. In this same vein, I remember another (I think) Asimov story about people going to Venus and discovering extraterrestrial life for the first time, but unwillingly killing it when they leave their crap (literally) on the planet before leaving to report back to Earth. Anyone know this?
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Oct 23, 2011 23:44
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computer parts posted:In this same vein, I remember another (I think) Asimov story about people going to Venus and discovering extraterrestrial life for the first time, but unwillingly killing it when they leave their crap (literally) on the planet before leaving to report back to Earth. Anyone know this? This is "Before Eden" by Arthur C. Clarke.
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Oct 24, 2011 00:34
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I remember reading a book that may have been part of a trilogy or series, probably published in the late 90s or early 2000s. One of the books at least was about a girl and her family who were living during a really long winter, where it was snowing during June. I thought it was the Laura Ingalls Wilder book The Long Winter at first, but after looking at the summary of that I'm positive it was something else. Either in that book or a sequel, the girl's mother dies, and I think it might've been based on a real winter like that.
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Oct 24, 2011 02:14
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Ok... got a tough one. I dunno if it was a short story or a book, but I know it was something I read in the last 5 years or so. I think it was relatively new as well. All I can remember was a guy getting stuck in a water tower. Like those big town sized water towers. I think some boards broke and he fell in. I can't recall the rest of the story, or any real details other than that, and I can't be 100% sure it was a breaking board or something that led to him being stuck. I just remember the situation, and now it's driving me nuts. If it helps, I tend to read sci fi and horror.
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Oct 28, 2011 01:53
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Ok... got a tough one.
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Oct 28, 2011 10:05
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Nah, not that one  This was an old abandoned or for some reason dry one. I remember thinking "I wonder if the author got this idea from watching Wild Wild West?"
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Oct 28, 2011 18:40
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The more I think of it, the wronger this guess must be.
Beerdeer fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Oct 31, 2011 |
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Oct 28, 2011 21:43
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There was a kid's book I read a few years ago. Basically, there's this kid (probably in late middle school?) who gets a new teacher in his class. She's completely nuts and changes the entire class into a year-long sewing course, forcing all the kids to learn how to make stuffed animals. Eventually the kid finds out that by using spit he can use the figures he makes like voodoo dolls, controlling people if the doll is built in their image. That's all I really remember, but there was a lot more, I think the kid had a few friends and there was some sort of subplot about an ice machine in the apartment building he lived in. It seemed normal at the time, but looking back I can see it was loving bizarre, even for children's fantasy. I remember it being really good, though.
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Oct 31, 2011 04:31
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Read the first 1/3 of a book about 15 years ago, can't remember much about it, cept i'm pretty sure it was going to be about werewolves. The protagonist rocks up at an asylum or mental hospital, and they have some strange piece of music they play to the inmates. Think it was blue moon or blue something, be great if anyone could help.
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Nov 3, 2011 15:42
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Its a short story that I'm pretty sure I read on somethingawful, and was about earth being covered in this red (although it may have been a different color) fungus that infected everything, and mutated everything into monsters/aliens, causing the human population to slowly dwindle down in bunkers until they started fighting back. It ended with the US about to invade Europe.
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Nov 5, 2011 03:15
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akurlej posted:Its a short story that I'm pretty sure I read on somethingawful, and was about earth being covered in this red (although it may have been a different color) fungus that infected everything, and mutated everything into monsters/aliens, causing the human population to slowly dwindle down in bunkers until they started fighting back. It ended with the US about to invade Europe. This was answered only a few posts above yours.
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Nov 5, 2011 03:18
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Funkmaster General posted:This was answered only a few posts above yours. Nope, although similar sounding, that wasn't it. It wasn't a book, but it was posted online somewhere.
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Nov 5, 2011 04:35
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akurlej posted:Nope, although similar sounding, that wasn't it. It wasn't a book, but it was posted online somewhere. Then it's probably the Instructions for a Help series.
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Nov 5, 2011 08:23
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Young adult series written about boys in roughly the late 1800s or early 1900s. I remember in one book the main character ends up at a school and learns to play basketball (newly invented) and I think in that same one he makes a key using a bar of soap to make the blank mold. In another one of the books there is a tug of war across a river and maybe a cave?
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Nov 10, 2011 06:07
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Icehawk_OS posted:Young adult series written about boys in roughly the late 1800s or early 1900s. I remember in one book the main character ends up at a school and learns to play basketball (newly invented) and I think in that same one he makes a key using a bar of soap to make the blank mold. In another one of the books there is a tug of war across a river and maybe a cave? Maybe the Great Brain books by John D Fitzgerald? They're about three brothers and their friends growing up in Utah in that time period. The soap-key thing sounds familiar, at any rate. Edit: Specifically, The Great Brain at the Academy; Tom molds a key in a bar of soap and then carves a wooden copy of the key in order to sneak out of boarding school. wheatpuppy fucked around with this message at 11:01 on Nov 10, 2011 |
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Nov 10, 2011 10:52
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Yes! I thought the author's name was Fitzgerald but it was very hazy with time and all I could think of was F. Scott who obviously wasn't the author. Time to find some copies. Thanks a bunch wheatpuppy Now if only someone can figure out the sci-fi book I can't recall - the gist is that they are soldiers in training on a very long flight, all training is VR and I think they may have used a tank/deaths in training. I also think the soldiers *might* have been called zombies.
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Nov 10, 2011 15:27
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wheatpuppy posted:Maybe the Great Brain books by John D Fitzgerald? They're about three brothers and their friends growing up in Utah in that time period. The soap-key thing sounds familiar, at any rate. Yep, that is it. Great books that I need to hunt up copies of again myself.
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Nov 10, 2011 15:52
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Since you guys are so good at this I'll throw out some old books from my younger days. Two young adult SciFi novels by the same author. The first starts with a worldwide meteor shower and afterwards mysterious abandoned babies are found everywhere. The main character is one who is adopted by a family in the US. The kid grows up and is pretty weird and ends up married and has kids that are equally weird. All the offspring of these meteor children get the urge to meet up and have a reunion of sorts and they end up getting launched into outer space somehow. Turns out they are aliens that travel by generationally planet hopping. The second starts on a space ship where a kid's suspended animation container malfunctioned and he grew up on the ship by himself tended to by the ship's computer because he didn't have access permissions to wake anybody up. He's a 40 year old manchild with a messed up arm that was broken and didn't heal right. The rest of the crew wakes up when they land on a colony planet covered in green fungus. The colonists are either lost or in hiding except for the children who ignore the adults and only interact with space ship's children and the manchild. The green fungus is a sentient life form that can infect children and turn them into creepy children-of-the-corn type pod people.
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Nov 10, 2011 18:11
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Young adult (although leaning more toward "young" than adult) book about a kid who finds a weird alternate universe in his basement and goes on a quest for the crab people who live there, only to realize that time moves slowly there and when he comes back it's like 30 years later. I'm sure I could give a better description but I don't remember the middle parts.
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Nov 10, 2011 18:51
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Mammon Loves You posted:Since you guys are so good at this I'll throw out some old books from my younger days. Dammit, I should know this one. I'm nearly certain I read it in 8th grade Lit. The title is something about a light in the forest? To verify if I'm thinking of the same book: The main character is found in the woods by a brother and sister whose family adopts him. At the start he is much younger than the girl but he ages more rapidly than his host family and he grows up to marry her? Edit: Thank Christ I found it, I was starting to get a Google headache. There are a lot of books out there with "light" in the title. Book 1 is Born into Light by Paul Samuel Jacobs, which means book 2 must be Sleepers, Wake by the same author. wheatpuppy fucked around with this message at 12:20 on Nov 11, 2011 |
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Nov 11, 2011 10:20
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Funkmaster General posted:Young adult (although leaning more toward "young" than adult) book about a kid who finds a weird alternate universe in his basement and goes on a quest for the crab people who live there, only to realize that time moves slowly there and when he comes back it's like 30 years later. Marco's Millions?
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Nov 11, 2011 13:10
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wheatpuppy posted:Dammit, I should know this one. I'm nearly certain I read it in 8th grade Lit. The title is something about a light in the forest? To verify if I'm thinking of the same book: The main character is found in the woods by a brother and sister whose family adopts him. At the start he is much younger than the girl but he ages more rapidly than his host family and he grows up to marry her? Awesome, yeah those are the books. Here's another that should be a stumper because it's not typical goon fare. I picked this up because of the cover (a creepy wooden chair sitting in a wood paneled room) thinking it was a horror novel but instead got some kind of character study. The book follows a yuppie couple in London in the 70's which struck me as odd because I think of yuppies as an 80's mentality. Also this book might have introduced me to the term DINKY. The couple later settles down in the suburbs and have a kid who turns out to be an emotionless sociopath, think Macaulay Culkin's character from The Good Son. There's not a whole lot of action and it mostly just focuses on the mother coming to terms with what her son is. She might've smothered him in the end because there was no place for him in the world. I don't really remember.
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Nov 11, 2011 16:46
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Mammon Loves You posted:Awesome, yeah those are the books. Here's another that should be a stumper because it's not typical goon fare. I picked this up because of the cover (a creepy wooden chair sitting in a wood paneled room) thinking it was a horror novel but instead got some kind of character study. The book follows a yuppie couple in London in the 70's which struck me as odd because I think of yuppies as an 80's mentality. Also this book might have introduced me to the term DINKY. The couple later settles down in the suburbs and have a kid who turns out to be an emotionless sociopath, think Macaulay Culkin's character from The Good Son. There's not a whole lot of action and it mostly just focuses on the mother coming to terms with what her son is. She might've smothered him in the end because there was no place for him in the world. I don't really remember.
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Nov 11, 2011 22:54
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There was a sci-fi book got from a library in middle school and I have never been able to remember the title or author. The stand out features of the setting were:
Ive tried finding the name of this book for years.
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Nov 13, 2011 17:32
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Thrill Cosby posted:There was a sci-fi book got from a library in middle school and I have never been able to remember the title or author. Sounds like Robert Silverberg's Kingdoms of the Wall.
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Nov 15, 2011 07:54
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akurlej posted:Its a short story that I'm pretty sure I read on somethingawful, and was about earth being covered in this red (although it may have been a different color) fungus that infected everything, and mutated everything into monsters/aliens, causing the human population to slowly dwindle down in bunkers until they started fighting back. It ended with the US about to invade Europe. Sounds a little bit like Bio Apocalypse, which had a dedicated SA thread It was a 94 page illustrated EPIC, written by a 6th grader http://hillridge.net/SA/Bio%20Apocalypse.pdf
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Nov 15, 2011 14:22
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zedar posted:Sounds like Robert Silverberg's Kingdoms of the Wall. This is it! Thanks a million. 
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Nov 15, 2011 14:48
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Looking for: The name of a book I read that looked like it was circa 1980s / 70s. About a young man who is sent out to reinforce a firebase during the vietnam war. While there he meets an older vet who is mysterious and odd. As the story progresses it is revealed that the older vet possesses a magic sniper scope that lets him look for vast distances into the forest. He can also tell if someone is going to die by examining their aura through the scope, and he can also resurrect people. The vietcong also have their own versions of these magic people, including a buddist monk who can resurrect himself. The book is very magic realist and odd, and while I was younger when I read it, it seems on recollection to have been a pretty cool idea. Also looking for: A book set in a small town. Most of the animals in the town are intelligent and can communicate with each other, as they are familiars for the many unusual people who have arrived in the town to assist in or stop a mysterious ritual that will bring about the end of the world. The book was very urban fantasy but also looked slightly old, ie written in the 80s. The main character is a loyal dog who is helping his master to prevent the evil ritual, and one of his "friends", a cat, is seemingly neutral.
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Nov 15, 2011 17:56
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xutech posted:Also looking for:
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Nov 15, 2011 19:15
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1: A fictional book about anthropologists studying the aztecs. Might be considered a thriller. Characters find a new temple(?) and start studying it. There is some kind of secret that's either mystical or real that someone else is trying to keep a secret. They're chased through an underground area near the end by someone or something. I know this is incredibly vague but I remember reading this from cover to cover and finishing it as the sun rose when I was 13 or so. 2: YA fantasy, came out at least 10 years ago. Possibly dystopian society, definitely pretty far from real world setting. Characters are young, maybe have powers (?), live in some sort of citadel and the premise of the book has something to do with a veil that is above the castle/city. I also vaguely remember them possibly having some sort of avatar. E: It's also a series, I remember more than one book. It's not the Subtle Knife nerdzrool fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Nov 15, 2011 |
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Nov 15, 2011 20:19
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nerdzrool posted:2: YA fantasy, came out at least 10 years ago. Possibly dystopian society, definitely pretty far from real world setting. Characters are young, maybe have powers (?), live in some sort of citadel and the premise of the book has something to do with a veil that is above the castle/city. I also vaguely remember them possibly having some sort of avatar. E: It's also a series, I remember more than one book. It's not the Subtle Knife Could this possibly be William Nicholson's Wind On Fire trilogy? The first book, The Wind Singer, sounds close. Also no one ever seems to be able to remember the names of those books, I've seen so many people asking about it!
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Nov 15, 2011 20:32
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E: Nope.
nerdzrool fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Nov 15, 2011 |
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Nov 15, 2011 21:11
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nerdzrool posted:1: A fictional book about anthropologists studying the aztecs. Might be considered a thriller. Characters find a new temple(?) and start studying it. There is some kind of secret that's either mystical or real that someone else is trying to keep a secret. They're chased through an underground area near the end by someone or something. I know this is incredibly vague but I remember reading this from cover to cover and finishing it as the sun rose when I was 13 or so. Is #2 the Seventh Tower series by Garth Nix? Here is the first one. I remember that they were a little pulpy, but entertaining: I liked the shadow creatures. e: Actually, I had a few requests myself. #1: I remember checking out a YA or middle grade fantasy novel back when I was in elementary school. (I'm 23, so this would have been in the 90s, although the book wasn't new when I checked it out and could have been written any time before then.) The only thing that I can remember about it was that it involved various transformed characters: so one of the main characters was a girl who had been turned into a whipped hound, and another was a black flying horse that had been turned into a dragon. IIRC, it wasn't even a very good book, but I've been wondering about it for a while now just out of nostalgia. It might have actually been a sequel to something I hadn't read. #2: This year or last year, I read an novel (I legitimately can't remember if it was sci-fi or lit fic, although I'm 99% certain that the author was male) with a passage describing a female character's skill with high heels. The third person narrator explains how the woman wears heels to work everyday, and how she's trained herself (after breaking several shoes) to walk over drainage grates without falling in. She's proud of the impression she makes just striding over the grates instead of walking around them. gently caress if I know why I've been thinking about this passage, but I just can't find the book it's in and it's been driving me crazy. e2: Great, nerdzrool. I think they were all collected in an omnibus, if you wanted to check them out and read them again. BlueFlowerRedSky fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Nov 15, 2011 |
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Nov 15, 2011 21:12
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BlueFlowerRedSky posted:Is #2 the Seventh Tower series by Garth Nix? Here is the first one. I remember that they were a little pulpy, but entertaining: I liked the shadow creatures. Oh shoot, yes, that is it. Right cover, right title. Need to go back and edit above posts. E: I think I may have read that other book as well, though. Both of these, plus the subtle knife, are kind of muddled in my brain and I think my memory is turning them all into one book. nerdzrool fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Nov 15, 2011 |
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Nov 15, 2011 21:15
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eating only apples posted:Could this possibly be William Nicholson's Wind On Fire trilogy? The first book, The Wind Singer, sounds close.   I'm unpacking and I just found this in a box. BlueFlowerRedSky was still correct, but I knew there was a reason The Wind Singer sounded familiar. (Also please ignore my toe in the right corner.) BlueFlowerRedSky: How old were you when you read The Seventh Tower? We're the same age.
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Nov 15, 2011 23:45
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Okay how about this one. It's a sci-fi book about people that live in a giant gaseous void, their towns are built on giant rotating wheels to simulate gravity, and they have to grow their food under the light of artificial suns. The plot may revolve around a group trying to build a new one. Help?
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Nov 16, 2011 03:17
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Inyourbase posted:Okay how about this one. It's a sci-fi book about people that live in a giant gaseous void, their towns are built on giant rotating wheels to simulate gravity, and they have to grow their food under the light of artificial suns. The plot may revolve around a group trying to build a new one. Sounds sort of like Stephen Baxter's Raft, set in a universe where extremely high gravity means there aren't any planets as we understand them.
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Nov 16, 2011 03:25
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