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Admiral101 posted:I'm sure someone here will know this: Gateway, by Frederick Pohl.
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Jul 9, 2012 16:16
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E: gently caress, beaten
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Jul 9, 2012 17:13
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Sounds like Gateway by Frederick Pohl. EDIT: Beaten twice.
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Jul 9, 2012 19:00
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This thread is great. Thanks
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Jul 9, 2012 23:14
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I asked this in the thread a long time ago but sadly was too much of a stumper, but it still bothers me from time to time so I'm going to ask again because you never know! It has haunted me for almost 20 years now... It was a science fiction short story, in a collection I read in middle school so it was written at the latest in 1994. However, since I'm pretty sure it was in a collection with Harrison Bergeron and A Sound of Thunder it was probably older than that. The plot was: A man either finds or steals a ring that, when you press it, takes you back in time a very short amount, definitely less than a minute, probably less than 30 seconds. He uses it to go to casinos and make an ungodly amount of money by seeing what will happen and then going back in time to bet on it. Eventually either the rightful owner of the ring or someone who just wants it sends some muscle after him to get it, but he uses it to escape. He somehow gets on an airplane to get away from the guy, but while he's on the plane an accident happens and the door opens. He tries to use the ring to go back and warn people it's going to happen, but no one gets in time, so he tries again but is sucked out of the plane and doesn't hit the ring quickly enough for time to go back far enough to get him back in the plane. So he just keeps pressing the ring over and over again, falling endlessly. It's really stuck in my mind and I've always wanted to know who wrote it and what it was called but I can't find it anywhere. I've Googled it off and on since college but have only ever found other posts asking what the story was! Thanks for the help for anyone who knows it.
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Jul 12, 2012 01:40
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I just remembered this book I had a long time ago. It was a collection of horror stories. The theme was that each story was from a different state - 50 stories total. I wasn't able to find what I was looking for by Googling various combinations of "50 states/stories." Now, since my memory is not quite working properly, I can only think of a few stories in the collection. -A man is on a train. The train is alive, and controlling parts of itself that look like people. He chops some of them/the train up with a hatchet before blowing up the train. -Children of the Corn may have been included. I tried finding a list of collections that story has been in, but no luck. -The main character gets pulled over for speeding in a small town. I recall that he used a footpedal to dim his headlights. It ends up that the townspeople are cannibals and are going to roast him alive. He remembers noticing that the portrait of someone's wife had pointed teeth as the room he's in heats up. Thanks in advance for the help.
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Jul 12, 2012 08:37
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Polka_Rapper posted:I just remembered this book I had a long time ago. It was a collection of horror stories. The theme was that each story was from a different state - 50 stories total. I wasn't able to find what I was looking for by Googling various combinations of "50 states/stories." Now, since my memory is not quite working properly, I can only think of a few stories in the collection. Could it be The Scary States of America?
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Jul 12, 2012 08:49
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AreYouStillThere posted:Could it be The Scary States of America? I found that one while searching, but I'm pretty sure that's not it. I don't recall a central narrator in it. I'm pretty sure it actually had the number '50' in the title as well. Thanks though!
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Jul 12, 2012 08:52
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I probably would've figured that out had I but looked at the publication date first  I'll keep looking! E: What age group was it for?
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Jul 12, 2012 08:59
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AreYouStillThere posted:I probably would've figured that out had I but looked at the publication date first It was for an adult age group. I don't remember when it would have been published. I'm very tired, so I'm probably going to get some sleep soon. Thanks again for looking. I might have some better luck myself when I'm rested.
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Jul 12, 2012 09:08
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Polka_Rapper posted:-The main character gets pulled over for speeding in a small town. I recall that he used a footpedal to dim his headlights. It ends up that the townspeople are cannibals and are going to roast him alive. He remembers noticing that the portrait of someone's wife had pointed teeth as the room he's in heats up.
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Jul 12, 2012 12:24
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Runcible Cat posted:That's Children of Noah by Richard Matheson, so from its ISFDB page I suspect you're looking for A Treasury of American Horror Stories. And that's it! I remember that list of stories. Thank you so much. I don't know where I got that it had '50' in the title.
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Jul 12, 2012 18:18
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Polka_Rapper posted:And that's it! I remember that list of stories. Thank you so much.
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Jul 12, 2012 22:32
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Scored one in the US for .17 and 3.99 shipping.  Seems like a pretty cool anthology. Worth checking out for less than 5$ anyway.
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Jul 12, 2012 23:57
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This has been driving me crazy for a long time. The time frame for when I first read this book is probably mid-to-late 80s. The book was one of those doubles, with two novels or novellas under one cover, sometimes called dos-a-dos, where the stories are printed upside-down to each other. One story was called something like "Web of Deceit," or "Web of Destruction," or "W.e.b. of... something." The other story in the book had a name like "Agent 13" or something along those lines, I think Agent was in the name. I am not 100% sure on either title. The "Web" story was about some random (but very fit) dude who is out jogging and becomes mixed up in some secret-agent baloney. I remember a souped-up van, and the jogger ending up captured by the "good" guys who basically give him a choice of joining them or being murdered, since they couldn't let him go. The dude joins up, and the go adventuring. I think there's a scene in a (casino?) restaurant involving a lobster, and I know there is a scene where they all end up tied up, and one of them suffers pretty sever numbness of his hands from being tied up. There is definitely a large explosion in there, somewhere. In the end, I think the jogger joins the secret agents/mercenaries full time. The "Agent" story had to do with an assassin/ninja type, a lot of mysticism, as I remember it, and I think a ring that would burn the agent's number into his victims' bodies. That number may or may not have been 13. I have tried every combination of those titles in Google and ISFDB with no luck. Please help me.
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Jul 13, 2012 03:07
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I found my books. I suppose they weren't really that popular, but they had them in the local library I frequented as a young'n. The author is Morgana Rhys and these are the books I was searching for: http://www.paperbackswap.com/Morgana-Rhys/author/ There's a good used bookstore in my area so I'm going to check there first, but failing that it seems there are some pretty cheap used copies available on Amazon.
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Jul 14, 2012 04:24
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Well I give up trying to find this series, so ..help? Looking for a fantasy series, more like a humor/parody of fantasy, series. I first read the series in the late 80s/early 90s, the last time I can recall seeing one of the books is '95. Plots I can remember: Man and woman, strangers from Texas(?) are taken to some fantasy land, given new bodies and have wacky adventures to save the land from evil. Man left behind a son, who he's able to rescue and bring to fantasy land in a later book. One thing that sticks in my mind, they go see an oracle who has an assistant by the name of "Porange Bilver/Borange Pilver", just so they have a way of rhyming orange/silver during prophecies.
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Jul 14, 2012 10:40
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AwesomePossum posted:Well I give up trying to find this series, so ..help? vvv :twirls mustache: Now if I could only parlay this unholy talent into something that earned money.... vvv Runcible Cat fucked around with this message at 12:51 on Jul 15, 2012 |
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Jul 14, 2012 11:00
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Runcible Cat posted:Jack Chalker's River of Dancing Gods series. You sir, are not mortal. The wacky thing is, I have Chalker's wiki open, because I was also looking for the Rings of the Master series. I just hope I enjoy both as much as I did when I was a kid, Dancing Gods is responsible for sucking me into fantasy.
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Jul 14, 2012 11:20
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I vaguely remember reading a short story several years ago where the narrator was an obsessive Scrabble player. A Google search has only turned up "Death by Scrabble," by Charlie Fish, which I'm quite sure isn't it. I remember the narrator being female, and the triple-triple being significant to the story somehow, but I remember nothing else about it.
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Jul 15, 2012 09:52
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One time I read a short story that was really like Stephen King's Misery. It's only now I'm actually reading Misery that I remember it. A man is in a car crash and wakes up horribly injured with mangled legs being kept prisoner by a woman. I think the woman wants him to marry her daughter, who's possibly a bit slow? In the end he takes off the bandages and it turns out that his legs weren't actually mangled at all, he was fine, he just thought he couldn't walk. Ring any bells to anyone?
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Jul 18, 2012 19:18
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A guy is about to shoot himself in the head when death appears and at the last minute he manages to kill death with a bullet through the skull. The problem is that he has to become the grim reaper. He meets a dying man who offers up his daughter (she uses some kind of gem to look prettier) for extra life and from memory souls have to be unhooked to be collected. I forgot how it ended. Any ideas?
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Jul 19, 2012 00:42
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Camo Guitar posted:A guy is about to shoot himself in the head when death appears and at the last minute he manages to kill death with a bullet through the skull. The problem is that he has to become the grim reaper. He meets a dying man who offers up his daughter (she uses some kind of gem to look prettier) for extra life and from memory souls have to be unhooked to be collected.
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Jul 19, 2012 00:45
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Ok so this was a science-fiction book I checked out from the library probably around ten years ago. As best as I can remember, it was about a human born on a spaceship with a bunch of aliens for some reason, and they're heading to Earth, possibly to establish contact with the human race? I'm not sure. But this human on their ship somehow factors into their plans. They get to earth and this human I think goes through all this emotional turmoil finding out who and what he is, and at the end it turns out he wasn't actually a human, but grown on the spaceship, in a vat I guess, for some reason having to do with diplomatic relations with earth. Does this sound familiar to anybody at all? It's been bugging me for years now. I'm pretty sure it was something like "Homeworld" or "Homeward" or something like that. Any help would be hugely appreciated.
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Jul 19, 2012 04:37
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mystes posted:Is this On a Pale Horse by Piers Anthony? Has to be. Part of the Incarnations of Immortality series.
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Jul 19, 2012 05:00
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^ that's it! I read the wiki and parts of it came flooding back, thanks guys!
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Jul 19, 2012 21:50
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Real_Horrorshow posted:Ok so this was a science-fiction book I checked out from the library probably around ten years ago. As best as I can remember, it was about a human born on a spaceship with a bunch of aliens for some reason, and they're heading to Earth, possibly to establish contact with the human race? I'm not sure. But this human on their ship somehow factors into their plans. They get to earth and this human I think goes through all this emotional turmoil finding out who and what he is, and at the end it turns out he wasn't actually a human, but grown on the spaceship, in a vat I guess, for some reason having to do with diplomatic relations with earth.
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Jul 19, 2012 23:39
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Hobnob posted:I'm looking for an SF story/novel, read it sometime in the early 90s but I suspect was written either 70s or early 80s. The background is that someone invented a method of remotely detonating fissile material so nobody can use nuclear bombs or reactors anymore. With oil running out, this has lead to a worldwide energy shortage (solar panels are at a premium) and there's been a number of Fuel and Water Wars (I believe they are referred to as that) for resources. This sounds like Michael Kube-McDowell's Emprise, you aren't conflating. Zola fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Jul 21, 2012 |
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Jul 21, 2012 16:40
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Can't remember the title of a short story involving going back in time to hunt dinosaurs. It's not A Sound Of Thunder by Ray Bradbury. In this story, the guy ends up being killed by some giant parasite that was feeding from the dinosaur.
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Jul 21, 2012 16:46
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Hedrigall posted:the guy ends up being killed by some giant parasite that was feeding from the dinosaur Hope somebody gets this one, because it's gonna bug me too, now. I remember the ending creeping me out, with its description of the crab-like parasite cheerfully snipping the fingers off the guy. 
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Jul 21, 2012 21:41
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Hedrigall posted:Can't remember the title of a short story involving going back in time to hunt dinosaurs. It's not A Sound Of Thunder by Ray Bradbury. In this story, the guy ends up being killed by some giant parasite that was feeding from the dinosaur.
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Jul 21, 2012 23:33
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Zola posted:This sounds like Michael Kube-McDowell's Emprise, you aren't conflating. That's it! I recognize the Author's name and the other details match. Thanks very much.
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Jul 22, 2012 01:07
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I'm trying to remember a book that my sisters and I read as kids. It had an old lady who was nearly blind, and a crow. The crow started out on her nightstand, and might have stolen her glasses. Because she couldn't see very well, she just called the crow a "big smut," which has caught on in my immediate family. I tried Googling for old lady crow big smut, but, well, I'd rather not talk about that.
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Jul 23, 2012 08:24
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I have been trying to find this for a while. It is science fiction, and a trilogy. The first book has a guy crash land on a forbidden planet/nature reserve etc, and finds the area he has landed in is run by basically space Mongolians (ie Khans, horse based economy etc), I think it is a family group with a father and son (and wife and maybe daughter). The second book has the son forming a expedition to circumnavigate the planet, and using some magic crystals that amplify the suns light as a propulsion system. They find another continent that has basically libertarians on it (Everything is a barter economy etc). And the third continent has some plants (like poppies) that are part of a very important drug (lifespan enhancement I think) for the rest of the known universe, and there are some caretakers or something there. And the 3rd book has the space empire turning up wanting the drug, and they use the magical crystals as a weapon to drive them off. My memory is pretty bad on it, as I had first read it back around 1994-1995.
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Jul 29, 2012 22:11
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I post this one every now and then and no one seems to know it, i'll give it another shot. Short story, probably written between 1940-1950, I feel like it was not written by an American. Story involves a woman wandering around a ruined village, trying to remember who she is and how she got there. I remember the village is specifically described in a way that it was near the site of an atomic bomb explosion. The woman thinks that if she can just find a mirror or something so that she can see her face, it'll jog her memory and she'll remember everything. At the end, she finds a house that's pretty much still standing, goes upstairs and there's a mirror at the end of the hall. She looks in it, and...there's some kind of horrible realization I don't remember. Anyone?
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Jul 31, 2012 15:30
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Popular Human posted:I post this one every now and then and no one seems to know it, i'll give it another shot. I did a bit of digging around on google because the story sounded interesting but didn't find anything. I did, however, find a listing of Japanese fiction about the Bomb that might give you a new avenue to search.
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Jul 31, 2012 18:48
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Asked this in here over a year ago and didn't get answered, so has anyone heard of a book, almost definitely titled Andre, about a boy in revolution era France who learns fencing from an old man and goes to America with his brother? Something like that. Google has nothing. Note that the copy I read in school around 5th grade was a worn hardcover, I'd estimate it couldn't have been any newer than the early 80s at best. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 10:56 on Aug 1, 2012 |
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Aug 1, 2012 10:53
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icantfindaname posted:Asked this in here over a year ago and didn't get answered, so has anyone heard of a book, almost definitely titled Andre, about a boy in revolution era France who learns fencing from an old man and goes to America with his brother? Something like that. Google has nothing. I think it might be Andre by Bertha B and Ernest Cobb. This is a really old book, it came out in 1930, but there may have been multiple editions. There isn't much about it on Google, I happened to think of it because the Cobbs wrote many children's books, and many of them were a one-word name (Arlo, Clematis, etc) so I searched on their name and Andre, and lo and behold.... Maybe you can find a copy in a used book store to see if it is the one you remember. Edit: That last line didn't come out right. Maybe you can find a copy at a used bookstore so that you can look at it before you spend any money. Zola fucked around with this message at 14:21 on Aug 1, 2012 |
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Aug 1, 2012 14:03
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Zola posted:I think it might be Andre by Bertha B and Ernest Cobb. Yeah this is probably it. I'll see if I can find it anywhere to confirm, but that book was definitely old as hell when I read it. My school had a thing for really old books for some reason, they used original McGuffy readers from the 1880s. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Dec 9, 2012 |
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Aug 2, 2012 02:58
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this has been bugging me for years. it was a series of short stories about backwoods,dirt-poor, hillbilly, Appalachian types that had developed various sorts of psychic powers and supergenius abilities because they were such an isolated, possibly inbred genepool. but because their community was so isolated, they had no idea there was anything unusual about this. this is the reverse of the idea that inbreeding causes people to become stupid, but instead could concentrate traits for wild talents. kind of like Eureka crossed with the Beverly Hillbillies. the stories were funny as hell. probably written in the 50's, maybe C.M Kornbluth or Henry Kuttner? I'm looking for a K-word here, i think. the only story i remember was about an old curmudgeonly hillbilly that hates the world *so* much, he builds a machine that will simultaneously teleport a duplicate of himself behind the back of every body in the world, whereupon he will hit every one in the world in the head with a stick (including you). his friend finds out about this plan. to prank this old geezer,he builds another, similar machine (they're that smart) and taps everyone in the world on the shoulder,hands them a stick and disappears again... 2 seconds before the first guy uses his machine. -so he gets the crap beaten out of him by everyone in the world, including you. sort of like ceasar's quote "i wish the whole world had but a single neck so i could cut off its head", practically implemented. i have googled and googled till my googler is sore, cant find 'em. funniest thing i ever read. almost sure it was Kornbluth, but no hits. Kornbluth also wrote "the marching morons", aka Idiocracy. these stories share some concepts with it. found it in the Santa Monica library, circa 1968. maybe i should repost in the syfy thread? zimboe fucked around with this message at 12:42 on Aug 3, 2012 |
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Aug 3, 2012 12:18
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