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Ok, can't remember if this was a book, a short story, or a movie line. Can't even really remember much BESIDES this, so I am utterly lost. Might have been something I either read or saw in the last year. Basically, guy is talking with another guy, and offers him a sword. Guy responds he already has one, and the guy offering says something to the effect of "It's trash, this one is special from some smith and has been folded etc number of times all other swords are trash before it." I cannot remember wtf that was from and it's driving me nuts. Any helps appreciated.
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Aug 4, 2013 23:25
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Ok, can't remember if this was a book, a short story, or a movie line. Highlander? Or pretty much any book or movie ever that plays into the whole sword obsession thing. But seriously, it sounds like something from the first Highlander movie.
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Aug 4, 2013 23:38
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Ah. Got it. It was a line from a lovely book I quit reading. Red Moon Demon.
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Aug 5, 2013 00:57
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Ah. You expect us to believe you willingly picked up a book written by "Morgan Blayde" starring "Caine Deathwalker". I read bad books for fun and even I wouldn't touch that.
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Aug 5, 2013 01:15
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 It was my prime rental for the month. I thought "Hey, how horrible can it really be?" and the answer is "pretty god damned horrible".
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Aug 5, 2013 01:31
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I'm trying to identify a sci-fi book for my friend that he read as a kid and has been trying to find out what it was called. This is what he remembers:quote:I'm not sure if it was a book or a short story and I'm not sure of the publishing date. it was about two intelligent civilizations that developed independently on either two planets in the same solar system or on two moons of the same gas giant. they were aware of each other before they invented spaceflight or radio communications. i think they were aware that someone was out there before these technologies were invented but i don't think they could actually communicate before telescopes. i vaguely remember that their first contact was peaceful or at least there was no large scale fighting after first contact. Its not much but that's all I remember. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Aug 5, 2013 20:49
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Maybe The Giant's Novels by James P. Hogan? The last one in particular has two races.
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Aug 5, 2013 22:16
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I have two, both pulp Sci-Fi. One is set in some underground prison city made of ice. The city is run by a crazed computer, and the inmates are the descendants of the original prisoners, and have probably forgotten that they are even in prison. There is some sort of technology that allows escapism into a sort of virtual reality, temporarily. The other involves a comet coming to Earth, containing Prometheus and some sort of demon, who are actually aliens. The demon was not actually evil, just animalistic, like Pan. Then he leaves to settle another planet and stops the humans there from developing beyond neolithic levels. Then time changes or something, and these other humans invade Earth. Then the heroes have to change time again and prevent it. Or something. I remember it being a confused mess, like a lot of old pulp Sci-Fi.
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Aug 6, 2013 14:54
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Project1 posted:I have two, both pulp Sci-Fi. This is a long shot, but maybe I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream? It's got the crazed computer and the ice caves, and I think the computer could basically manipulate reality. Some other bits don't match, though.
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Aug 6, 2013 16:32
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I thought I'd remember enough of the plot of this book to find the name of it but apparently not. I'm trying to remember a book that'd probably fit in the young adult sci-fi category, about some people that live on a planet that they've clearly colonised in the past but have since lost/forgotten their advanced technology. They have a sort of sacred place where someone always keeps watch, where there's a magic light that's actually just an electric light bulb. One day the light goes out. While taking his turn in the room, the main character notices the spare bulbs and how they look like they fit, and replaces the bulb, getting it working again. It's heralded as a miracle but starts the character asking questions.
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Aug 6, 2013 22:47
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Nition posted:I thought I'd remember enough of the plot of this book to find the name of it but apparently not. I read a short story years ago about a kid in a bumpkin village that gets visited by magicians. Turns out they're scientists who've kept alive the knowledge of the pre-fall world through their guild, and they notice him being inquisitive so they kinda feed him little bits of knowledge to see how he copes. He ends up closing some old floodgate accidentally and indirectly saves the village from being swept away because the magicians activate this beacon which causes snow to melt in the hills. I have no idea who wrote this, what it's called or where I read it but it could be the same person?
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Aug 6, 2013 23:10
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I don't think that's it, although come to think of it there are a few books about "people have lost their technology but a few advanced people/items remain and return to shake their world up." The Chrysalids is a good one.
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Aug 7, 2013 01:24
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I am pretty sure this book was trash, but something about it stuck out in my memory. I want to say it was set in England, and it's definitely a black comedy. The main character is an ex-heroin addict, he works lovely welfare jobs to get by. There's a small part, that I vaguely recall being a flashback, where he talks about how he used to crash with an older gay dude who supplied heroin; he also experimented with gay sex during this time. In the book, he meets a woman who was also an ex addict. The two of them, with some friends, rob a private bank and he talks at length how to get away with robbing a bank. I am pretty sure the book ends with him still living in a small flat attached to the back of his parent's place, afraid to spend any of the money he stole. The only things I remember about the cover was that it was yellow, and there was either red or pink text. Also, maybe the title of the book was horrible? I got it out of a free bin at a book fair about seven or eight years ago, and it's been bugging me to the point of being a near obsession for the last three years. Help 
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Aug 7, 2013 02:20
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Whalley posted:I am pretty sure this book was trash, but something about it stuck out in my memory. This sounds a bit like Trainspotting, and a bit like Shantaram, but not quite like either.
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Aug 7, 2013 03:04
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miryei posted:This is a long shot, but maybe I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream? It's got the crazed computer and the ice caves, and I think the computer could basically manipulate reality. Some other bits don't match, though. No, this one was by a no-name author, I'm quite sure. There was no reality manipulation, I think. I remember the main character was a woman, and her lover was a one armed black man.
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Aug 7, 2013 03:44
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Nition posted:I thought I'd remember enough of the plot of this book to find the name of it but apparently not.
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Aug 7, 2013 07:29
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Project1 posted:The other involves a comet coming to Earth, containing Prometheus and some sort of demon, who are actually aliens. The demon was not actually evil, just animalistic, like Pan. Then he leaves to settle another planet and stops the humans there from developing beyond neolithic levels. Then time changes or something, and these other humans invade Earth. Then the heroes have to change time again and prevent it. Or something. I remember it being a confused mess, like a lot of old pulp Sci-Fi. Argh, I've read this book too but can't recall the author or title. A couple of additional details; there was a female character who could somehow manipulate time - she ended up 'marrying' the demonic alien, who was a more sympathetic character than the Prometheus alien, who was pretty much an rear end in a top hat. I think the cover showed the demonic alien (with bat wings) flying with the woman in his arms. Another scene I recall is just after the wedding, the woman and demonic alien are supposed to have sex in the fields, in front of the whole crowd, in order to symbolically fertilize the crops. Because she doesn't want to do this in front of everyone, she convinces the demonic alien to have sex while flying above the crops, so no one can watch them. Yeah, it was a weird book. Captain Equinox fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Aug 7, 2013 |
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Aug 7, 2013 21:13
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Centripetal Horse posted:This sounds a bit like Trainspotting, and a bit like Shantaram, but not quite like either.
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Aug 7, 2013 21:16
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Project1 posted:
There's a (not terribly good, as I recall) book Outpost by Scott Mackay which I haven't read for a while but I think at least starts like that. An ice prison with a malfunctioning computer/robots looking after it. I believe the (woman) protagonist keeps getting dreams of being a man and murdering someone, and the dreams are meant to make the prisoners relive the reason they are incarcerated (but the actual prisoner in her case is long dead and she's a descendant of his or something). Then it goes onto some strange time-travel(?) plot that I can't really remember. Hobnob fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Aug 7, 2013 |
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Aug 7, 2013 21:29
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screenwritersblues fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Aug 21, 2013 |
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Aug 9, 2013 03:03
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Captain Equinox posted:Yeah, it was a weird book. Found it! Hobnob posted:There's a (not terribly good, as I recall) book Outpost by Scott Mackay which I haven't read for a while but I think at least starts like that. An ice prison with a malfunctioning computer/robots looking after it. I believe the (woman) protagonist keeps getting dreams of being a man and murdering someone, and the dreams are meant to make the prisoners relive the reason they are incarcerated (but the actual prisoner in her case is long dead and she's a descendant of his or something). Then it goes onto some strange time-travel(?) plot that I can't really remember. No, this one was written no later than the 80s. There were no aliens or robots, Friend Computer kept the complex under control by affecting conditions, rather than robots. I read it in the early 90s, before this one was written. More trashy SF books are coming out of the woodwork! First one: Aliens are talking about an interesting extinct race. That race was humanity. We were at war with some pretty bird race, and this was a fairly standard "for fun" war. Then some evil race came, wiped out the birds, and mostly wiped out the humans. The humans recovered by making huge changes to their physiology and intellect, and becoming nomadic and travelling space in family units. The war went back and forth for a while, until humanity eventually voluntarily became extinct. At one point, a couple want to settle on a planet, only to find that it is infested by some green slime. After wiping it out on several planets, they decide planet living sucks. The next one is a Brave New World ripoff/homage. The society is segmented by genetic engineering, and are colour coded by their function/intellect. The golds are idle rich, blues are scientists and engineers, and browns and blacks are stupid labourers (  ). Entertainment comes from cameras on two terraformed planets, one being the sex planet, the other being the fantasy Conan the Barbarian planet. The hero is the biggest and toughest barbarian, and he comes through the transporter to Earth and helps the rebels tear down the sick society.
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Aug 10, 2013 05:52
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Thanks, that was bugging me.
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Aug 10, 2013 19:07
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I read this book several years back and can't for the life of me recall the title or author. It was a pretty light SF novel, but I remember enjoying it as a kid. This family moves into a really old mansion that used to belong to their great-grandfather or something like that. While exploring the grounds, the two kids discover an overgrown hedge maze and eventually find that it acts as a gateway into parallel universes. Soon enough they get stuck in a different world. For some reason or other the groundskeeper at the universe they stumble into knows about the maze and helps them get home. I'm pretty sure it was something along the lines of his cat being able to navigate the maze. There was a lot of pseudo-quantum mechanics stuff going on, but it was entertaining for a middle-schooler.
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Aug 11, 2013 21:37
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StillWaters posted:I read this book several years back and can't for the life of me recall the title or author. It was a pretty light SF novel, but I remember enjoying it as a kid. Could it be The Last Universe?
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Aug 12, 2013 00:55
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Zola posted:Could it be The Last Universe? That's the one! Thanks.
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Aug 12, 2013 03:22
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I remember a book or story I read 10-15 years ago. It was probably old back then, we were in the habit of buying used books and trading them back in. Anyway, the story was about this group of people who were at some kind of...exhibition or unveiling of a scientific experiment or apparatus, there is some kind of accident and then the group wakes up and at first thinks nothing is wrong but it turns out that one of them has reality warping powers now? Or something. I forgot how the plot progresses but they end up killing that person, then the world sort of resets and another person in their group suddenly has the power to dictate reality? I think the protagonist comes to believe that if they kills each one in turn and force resets then things will turn to normal. Two things I remember is that they tricked one of them into making all air vanish (because she was sort of dim and hated dirty things??) so they all suffocated and the world reset again. During another iteration with some shell-shocked vet in charge of reality, God was real and he was a giant angry eye in the sky and would just kill people (heart attacks or accidents) for minor infractions because apparently that vet thought God was an rear end in a top hat. I don't remember anything else. I hate having really fragmentary memories of poo poo I read ages ago. I *think* the ending was ambiguous on whether any of it really happened or they were just knocked out by the accident and had wild hallucinations.
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Aug 13, 2013 11:10
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Psykmoe posted:I remember a book or story I read 10-15 years ago. It was probably old back then, we were in the habit of buying used books and trading them back in. Anyway, the story was about this group of people who were at some kind of...exhibition or unveiling of a scientific experiment or apparatus, there is some kind of accident and then the group wakes up and at first thinks nothing is wrong but it turns out that one of them has reality warping powers now? Or something. I forgot how the plot progresses but they end up killing that person, then the world sort of resets and another person in their group suddenly has the power to dictate reality? I think the protagonist comes to believe that if they kills each one in turn and force resets then things will turn to normal. That sounds like Philip K. Dick Eye in the Sky
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Aug 13, 2013 12:57
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I'm pretty sure that's it. Thanks!
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Aug 13, 2013 13:07
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Runcible Cat posted:The Guardian of Isis, by Monica Hughes - it's the sequel to Keeper of the Isis Light, if you want to start at the beginning. The 3rd book is The Isis Pedlar, but the quality goes downhill through the series. Yeah, that's it, thanks! Funny though, I'd hardly recognise it from the Internet synopsis. All the main stuff is apparently not the parts I actually remember. Edit: I definitely read that first book too, but forgot about it until now. Nition fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Aug 15, 2013 |
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Aug 14, 2013 01:32
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Trying to remember a short story or a book that was mentioned earlier in either this thread or an earlier incarnation of it. Guy gets flown by helicopter to this place out in the desert, where there's this giant hole in the ground. He's a reporter, and some multi jillionaire has decided to take up this SECRET PROJECT and requested him. Turns out the SECRET PROJECT was somehow falling into a giant hole in the ground and travelling through time? I remember something about some sort of space shark? attacking the time sub thing, and the end of the story was something along the lines of "They went through with it a second time to see if they could something something, but no one heard from them again". Pretty sure it's a short story.
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Aug 14, 2013 05:25
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Got one that is driving me nuts. HAH! The book is called Hunter. James Byron Huggins wrote it. Damned if I can find my copy of it though.
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Aug 14, 2013 06:23
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Trying to remember a short story or a book that was mentioned earlier in either this thread or an earlier incarnation of it. In The Abyss off Time, by Stephen Baxter. It was in his Last and First Contacts collection.
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Aug 16, 2013 04:56
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Hoping you guys can help with this one. I work in a bookstore, and this is literally all the details the customer can remember: Read in the 1960s/1970s. Female author, no idea of the name. Historical Fiction, Elizabethan times. Probably written for what we'd now call the Young Adult readers. The guy has hazy recollections of the plot involving a girl who travels to London and becomes involved in a Fagin-esque deal with an older man teaching young children to be pickpockets. The title probably contains the word 'Scarlet' in it at some point. That's it. Sound familiar to anyone?
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Aug 16, 2013 21:38
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Wolfechu posted:Hoping you guys can help with this one. I work in a bookstore, and this is literally all the details the customer can remember: That's the name of it, I think: Scarlet
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Aug 17, 2013 04:35
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Zola posted:That's the name of it, I think: Scarlet That could well be it, though it seems a bit recent compared to what he was describing (2012). Still, I've emailed him the details, thanks! Update: Nope, that wasn't it, but got a few more details out of him: Book Hunting Customer posted:
Wolfechu fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Aug 17, 2013 |
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Aug 17, 2013 06:25
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Whalley posted:I am pretty sure this book was trash, but something about it stuck out in my memory. White Merc With Fins by James Hawes
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Aug 17, 2013 08:49
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mirthdefect posted:I read a short story years ago about a kid in a bumpkin village that gets visited by magicians. Turns out they're scientists who've kept alive the knowledge of the pre-fall world through their guild, and they notice him being inquisitive so they kinda feed him little bits of knowledge to see how he copes. I don't remember the name or the author, but this is a pretty well known story and I think it might've gotten expanded into a novel eventually(?) It's part of a lot of different anthologies. Sorry I can't help further.
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Aug 17, 2013 13:28
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I have a vague memory of a book I read sometime in highschool. I feel like I read in in one or two sittings, so I doubt it was very long. I know it was a science fiction novel, and that it had a female author. I thought it was Ursula K. Le Guin for a while but I went through the wikipages of a lot of her most famous books and I don't think it's one of them. I sill have a nagging feeling it's her though. Basically the only thing I can remember is that there was a a female character that was essentially an Amazon warrior. I think she was the main character (I hope so anyway, it would be weird if I only remember a minor character). My memory is that she either was black or otherwise had dark skin, but this might just be the way I pictured her in my brain. I know I read this, but I have no idea why I can't remember anything else about it.
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Aug 17, 2013 15:35
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1969 baby posted:White Merc With Fins by James Hawes
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Aug 17, 2013 16:00
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One for myself rather than a customer: Been looking for a scifi short story I read in my teens (so mid-1980s), and I believe it was in a collection of stories published by either Hamlyn or Collins, a thick hardbound block of a book I've never been able to find online either. Bright orange cover with some suitably SF painting on the front, called something along the lines of "The [Publisher name] compendium of science fiction". The only details of the story in question I remember is that it involved a guy in a rocket or spaceship, going faster than anyone previously been able to. It was almost completely, if not entirely, nothing but his internal monologue as he tried not to be completely freaked out by the experience. The only frames of reference he had to what was happening was the speedometer directly in front of him, and the counting of his own heartbeat to measure time passing. Can't for the life of me remember how it ended, but I'd love to read it again, or even get hold of the book it was in.
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Aug 17, 2013 16:59
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