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Food Guy posted:I have another story I have been trying to remember. It is an old sci fi story, probably published in the 70-80s. I'm pretty sure the cover had a person and a insectoid alien on it. If I can remember correctly, a party from a space ship found a small alien baby through some means and decided to, I think, keep it under observations or something. 70s - 80s old sci-fi story with insectoid aliens makes me think of Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth series. Nor Crystal Tears is the only one I can think of with an appropriate cover, though.
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Oct 29, 2013 22:14
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Food Guy posted:Okay I've posted this a couple of times now, but I still haven't found it and I think I remember some more details. There is a series of books, I know I have read two of them probably about 7-8 years ago but I don't know if there is anymore to the series. I'm fairly certain the author is a woman. Some of your descriptions reminded me of a trilogy of books called Five Children and It. It's a very long shot as it doesn't cover everything. The Five Children and It No recollection of what the authors name could be or what the cover looked like? hambeet fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Oct 29, 2013 |
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Oct 29, 2013 22:57
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I got a short story I've been trying to find again. Problem is, I can't remember details and I think it was part of a compilation. What I do remember is a sort if explorers club that meets every so many years and they eat rare/exotic/endangered species. The last one they eat is some sort of mythical creature-- a Phoenix or something? I think I remember them burning. Google has not helped me out. If this turns out to be Neil Gaiman or something, I might lose my poo poo.
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Nov 1, 2013 17:14
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foxatee posted:I got a short story I've been trying to find again. Problem is, I can't remember details and I think it was part of a compilation. What I do remember is a sort if explorers club that meets every so many years and they eat rare/exotic/endangered species. The last one they eat is some sort of mythical creature-- a Phoenix or something? I think I remember them burning. If it was anytime recently, the compilation was probably Unnatural Creatures a collection of stories put together by Neil Gaiman. And the one you refer to is Sunbird by Gaiman himself. Sooooo, I guess lose your poo poo? bookblog posted:“Sunbird” by Neil Gaiman is the story of the Epicurean Club, the members of which have just about run out of strange and exotic creatures to eat… except the mythical Sunbird. ETA: Also included in this book is "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" by E. Lily Yu which is a wonderful read if anyone's looking for a good short story. a friendly penguin fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Nov 1, 2013 |
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Nov 1, 2013 18:05
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Glob dammit, I knew it was going to be Neil Gaiman! I tried to look it up, but Google kept talking about that stupid Dallas safari club thing. That is the story, though. Glob, I suck. Thank you!
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Nov 1, 2013 18:32
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Looking for an ID on a book that I read maybe 20-25 years ago, when I was a teen. The main thing I remember about the book was that it was on a colony planet. Something about the planet made all children of the colonists infertile. Perhaps spores? A fungus? No idea.
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Nov 12, 2013 01:50
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I've got two snippets of books that this might be the place for. They may be the same book. Hell if I know. I was a smalll shrimp when my mom started giving me adult level reading material. Both/either predate the mid-90s. 1) A young man who has something to do with a magician is trying to get through a maze. He finds grey people living in the maze, with grey fruit that they live on. He's been using chalk to keep track of the maze. He tries to get up on a wall to get his bearings. 2) A young man has shoes that help him float a few feet above the ground. Problem is, he's trying to cross a chasm and will splat just as much from a 95 foot fall as a 100 foot one. junopsis fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Nov 12, 2013 |
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Nov 12, 2013 05:45
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Veinless posted:Looking for an ID on a book that I read maybe 20-25 years ago, when I was a teen. Sleepers, Wake by Paul Samuel Jacobs contains those things, plus a 40 year old manchild who was accidentally woken up at 10 years old from suspended animation on a spaceship and raised by the ship's computer for 30 years if that rings a bell. I asked about that same exact book in this thread way back when.
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Nov 12, 2013 19:21
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I'm thinking of a short story about a murder where the inept murderer forgot to wear gloves and in the panic can't remember what the caddish victim made him touch so he's found 12 hours later polishing all of the books in the library they're sitting in. It really bugs me that I can't remember who wrote it. It sounds Poe-ish but I don't think it was him.
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Nov 13, 2013 01:25
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Mr. Squishy posted:I'm thinking of a short story about a murder where the inept murderer forgot to wear gloves and in the panic can't remember what the caddish victim made him touch so he's found 12 hours later polishing all of the books in the library they're sitting in. It really bugs me that I can't remember who wrote it. It sounds Poe-ish but I don't think it was him. Not to mention Poe was writing 50 years before fingerprints were used to solve crimes.
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Nov 13, 2013 06:19
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I have been trying to remember the name of a children's book I remember from 4th grade (which was 20 years ago, but the book might be older for all I know). I don't even remember it fondly, but thinking back on the themes make me very curious about it. It's about a sister (the protagonist) and brother who are both very frail and sick. Before the brother dies, he says, "I'm off to Nangelena, don't worry." (That spelling is phonetic, the book was read to class, which now seems weird for the 4th grade, but v  v ) He dies, and in the coming months, the sister dies as well, leaving a similar note for her mother. She awakens in some other world, explores the society for a bit, and is accosted by the local constabulary. She lies and says she's lost and she's here with her grandfather and he lives at a little white house. They take her around, and she's terrified she'll get caught, but happens across an old man sitting outside a white house. She runs to him and whispers, "please pretend you're my grandfather." For whatever reason, he goes along with it, saving her from punishment. My memory gets fuzzy there, but the old man knows someone who knows her brother, they do something against the resident power, succeed in their goals, but are cornered in their final escape. They're at a cliff, surrounded, and her brother says, "It's okay, we're off to" some place I don't remember the name of. So they jump off the cliff and it ends with her saying, "Yes, I see it... I see it..."
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Nov 16, 2013 19:13
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Got to be The Brothers Lionheart, even though that's 2 boys.
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Nov 16, 2013 19:36
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That's it. The wiki article allays some of my latter-days confusion as it straight up says the themes were "unusually dark and heavy for the children's book genre." Thank you very much.
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Nov 16, 2013 20:30
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Here, this one's impossible. So, mid 80s. CYOA style books, but longer then typical Which Way Adventures / CYOA and written for / marketed to a young adult crowd -- 12-15, say. Probably at least twice the length of a typical CYOA book, maybe 3 times the length. I think it was a series of 3 or 4, though I only ever read one. And I think there was a recurring character, maybe a talking rabbit? It was recommended to me as an ~11 or 12 year old by the late teens / early 20s bookstore clerk. And I think they were light fantasy / magical realism in theme, but they may have been high fantasy. That's all I have!
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Nov 24, 2013 14:16
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So here are two that I hope the collective can identify: First is about a kid/teen (I think a girl) who is given a present by her far travelling uncle (or maybe older brother?). The gift is a box and its given with one condition- she can't open it or look inside. I think he tells her he'd show her what was inside when he got back because he had to leave in a hurry but I mightbe making that bit up. She of course does and these weird but harmless seeming mechanical spider/crab things come out. They build something in her basement (a city I think?) and things go wrong and she freaks out, etc. I swear the title was "The Box" or "The Cube" or something but neither search turns anything up so I have no clue. I know I read it when I was in middle school so late '90s or early '00s. The next is a short story about a guy who is working on a team to build a better radio so the Russians (I think, might have been just the Commies or maybe the Koreans?) couldn't listen in. They somehow bounce the signal off or around the sun and he ends up talking to this Buddist monk something like a thousand years in the past instead of the other team working on the project. It turns out he's actually talking to an alternate reality version of Genghis Khan who got orphaned and found by monks instead of practically taking over the world. When he explains it to the monk he runs off to become Genghis Khan too and then the sun goes out of alignment and he can't reach the monk anymore. Also I swear there was another guy on our side that did nothing but be a generic techy character and smoke cigerettes and drink coffee. I read it in an old issue of Playboy from the '70s or '80s.
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Nov 24, 2013 20:34
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Nostri posted:First is about a kid/teen (I think a girl) who is given a present by her far travelling uncle (or maybe older brother?). The gift is a box and its given with one condition- she can't open it or look inside. I think he tells her he'd show her what was inside when he got back because he had to leave in a hurry but I mightbe making that bit up. She of course does and these weird but harmless seeming mechanical spider/crab things come out. They build something in her basement (a city I think?) and things go wrong and she freaks out, etc. I swear the title was "The Box" or "The Cube" or something but neither search turns anything up so I have no clue. I know I read it when I was in middle school so late '90s or early '00s. This sounds like the novel The Boxes by William Sleator.
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Nov 25, 2013 04:15
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I read this in the UK in 2006. There were men (i think they were human) who could fly. There were insects who were coming to take over the world, and something about a sort of escalator that the main character saw in a dream. The insects were going up the sort of escalator. It was a paperback with a mostly white cover.
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Nov 26, 2013 01:11
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Trying to find a scifi short story I read quite a while ago, I'm pretty sure it was in one of those Gardner Dozois Year's Best anthologies The story takes place on Earth. There was a Ring built around the planet that most of humanity had lived on but then they had disappeared in some type of singularity event (I think?). Anyways there are a few people left behind on earth and the main character is a teenaged girl who is part of 'creche.' I remember it being like a sibling group that all live together and might have some limited telepathy? I know that each of the kids had a little ability, the only one that I remember is that one of them never missed when throwing rocks. Anyway, the main girl meets this older guy who says that he was on the Ring and has a way to get back and my memory gets fuzzy from there, but I think in the end he was lying or something.
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Nov 27, 2013 02:00
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regulargonzalez posted:Here, this one's impossible. Could it have been one of these? John Cenas Jorts posted:Trying to find a scifi short story I read quite a while ago, I'm pretty sure it was in one of those Gardner Dozois Year's Best anthologies This one, perhaps? Zola fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Nov 28, 2013 |
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Nov 28, 2013 21:30
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John Cenas Jorts posted:Trying to find a scifi short story I read quite a while ago, I'm pretty sure it was in one of those Gardner Dozois Year's Best anthologies
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Nov 28, 2013 22:10
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Total long shot here; novel, average length (300 pages plus change), divided into 3 segments, looked to be 1970's print, back-cover copy had quotations like "one of the few novels in the current generation that will outlast it", translated from (probably) Russian, plot possibly about a dissident under house arrest, first chapter opens with quotation similar to "it is impossible to rule without guilt." NOT by Solzhenitsyn. I gave a copy of it the once-over in a second-hand book stall before remembering that I've got a book of short stories about the holocaust back at home and now it's tormenting me.
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Nov 29, 2013 01:28
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Less Fat Luke posted:I think this is a story by Peter Hamilton, written in the same universe as Olympos and Illium. There were a few of them over the years. If it is, it's not the one in "New Space Opera" that Zola suggested tho. ETA: and looking up Olympos/Ilium, it doesn't look anything like that story. Asker's probably best off heading to a library and digging through Dozois best-ofs. fritz fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Nov 29, 2013 |
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Nov 29, 2013 03:27
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Zola posted:Could it have been one of these? Thanks, but no. I'm as certain as I can be that it wasn't CYOA (or Which Way Books) branded.
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Nov 29, 2013 17:43
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Mr. Squishy posted:Total long shot here; novel, average length (300 pages plus change), divided into 3 segments, looked to be 1970's print, back-cover copy had quotations like "one of the few novels in the current generation that will outlast it", translated from (probably) Russian, plot possibly about a dissident under house arrest, first chapter opens with quotation similar to "it is impossible to rule without guilt." NOT by Solzhenitsyn. Long shot question, long shot answer: Invitation to a Beheading?
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Nov 29, 2013 17:53
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Mr. Squishy posted:Total long shot here; novel, average length (300 pages plus change), divided into 3 segments, looked to be 1970's print, back-cover copy had quotations like "one of the few novels in the current generation that will outlast it", translated from (probably) Russian, plot possibly about a dissident under house arrest, first chapter opens with quotation similar to "it is impossible to rule without guilt." NOT by Solzhenitsyn. Another longshot: The Trial?
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Nov 29, 2013 18:01
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This is for a friend. It's a book of scary stories for kids (young adults maybe?). Apparently, "it had two notable stories. One about a traveller who is invited by a little man to stay in his hut. The little man keeps asking him to put another log on the fire. In the end he refuses and the cabin and man disappears and he's standing on the edge of a cliff. If he'd reached for the last log he would have fallen to his death. The other is about the moon coming to earth in human form to save travelers from monsters on a road. In the end the monsters eat the moon. It also has a story about Black Annis and has her on the cover." Anybody? Thanks.
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Nov 30, 2013 18:37
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I'm trying to remember the name of a fantasy novel(?) that I started reading and never finished. I think it was pretty well known but I don't remember much about it... all I remember is that there was a city (or a country?) that some wizard had cast a curse over and removed from the memories of everyone. Nobody knew the country had ever existed and even the name of the place was forgotten... then I remember some dramatic scene where the main character remembers the name somehow and by remembering the name it unlocked all the memories of the place and its history and how it had been wiped out. Can anyone help please?
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Dec 3, 2013 09:58
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bouncyman posted:I'm trying to remember the name of a fantasy novel(?) that I started reading and never finished. I think it was pretty well known but I don't remember much about it... all I remember is that there was a city (or a country?) that some wizard had cast a curse over and removed from the memories of everyone. Nobody knew the country had ever existed and even the name of the place was forgotten... then I remember some dramatic scene where the main character remembers the name somehow and by remembering the name it unlocked all the memories of the place and its history and how it had been wiped out. Can anyone help please? Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay. One of my favorite authors, check out his other books too. (Avoid the Fionavar series.)
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Dec 3, 2013 12:55
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I don't know if I can be helped. I have a memory of a story, possibly YA Fantasy. The only thing I can recall at all is that when the main character was an infant small bugs and things came to him to die and as he got older in his childhood the creatures that came to him to die got progressively larger. He wasn't killing them, mind. When a nearby creature was going to die it just found its way to the kid first. Ring any bells?
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Dec 4, 2013 00:46
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Mr. Squishy posted:Total long shot here; novel, average length (300 pages plus change), divided into 3 segments, looked to be 1970's print, back-cover copy had quotations like "one of the few novels in the current generation that will outlast it", translated from (probably) Russian, plot possibly about a dissident under house arrest, first chapter opens with quotation similar to "it is impossible to rule without guilt." NOT by Solzhenitsyn. Is this NOT "the gulag archipelago?"
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Dec 4, 2013 01:03
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John Cenas Jorts posted:Trying to find a scifi short story I read quite a while ago, I'm pretty sure it was in one of those Gardner Dozois Year's Best anthologies This feels much like the novella engine summer by john Crowley. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_Summer
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Dec 4, 2013 01:08
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I remember reading a summary of some book a while back about Russian scientists during the cold war or WWII who were working in some underground lab researching either people with superpowers or magic. It was supposed to be a dark comedy. It might have been originally written in Russian, and I think it was written a few decades ago. Anyone know what I'm talking about?
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Dec 4, 2013 01:38
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Transistor Rhythm posted:This feels much like the novella engine summer by john Crowley. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_Summer Not it.
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Dec 4, 2013 01:45
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John Cenas Jorts posted:Trying to find a scifi short story I read quite a while ago, I'm pretty sure it was in one of those Gardner Dozois Year's Best anthologies
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Dec 4, 2013 02:01
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Splicer posted:Odd question: Was there a bit in the sewers with a "witch"? Did they live on the Street, capital S? * The creche of kids was a starship crew in training * They had enhanced senses and could communicate through pheromones * The older dude kidnapped the narrator and did some kind of mind-control thing so that, IIRC, she could take him up the space elevator or something * The pheromone thing turned out to be plot-critical at the end because it was the one mode of communication that the kidnapper's mind control thing didn't squash
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Dec 4, 2013 02:33
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Splicer posted:Odd question: Was there a bit in the sewers with a "witch"? Did they live on the Street, capital S? I'm pretty sure the answer to the first is No, but I have no idea about the second fritz posted:Pretty sure I remember these facts: All of this def sounds like it could be what I'm looking for? The snapping out of it element definitely seems right. Again, again my strongest memory of the story was that there was the existence of the Ring. I don't even remember what made me think of it at this point, but now I've got to find the damned thing. I'm going to try to dig through a bunch of collections at the library some time this week to see if I find it.
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Dec 5, 2013 05:55
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My friend asked me about a book I know I read, and he can't remember it either, and it's driving us both insane. It's an airport fictiony book. It has something to do with nanotech or something really close to it, and it has to do with gold. We both remember a scene where they are testing a golden cross in a lab, and the bad guys break in, and it turns out the golden cross is what they are looking for. I thought it might have been Temple by Matt Reilly but after a quick glance it doesn't seem to be the case. Timeline for having read it is the last 20 years or so. Doesn't narrow it down much, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't written before 95. Edit - He just called. It's Excavation by James Rollins. Stupid_Sexy_Flander fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Dec 10, 2013 |
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Dec 10, 2013 18:41
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:My friend asked me about a book I know I read, and he can't remember it either, and it's driving us both insane. If you like that genre you should drop by this thread. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3282164
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Dec 10, 2013 20:33
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I think that this might be the best place to ask this. I need help finding a quotation about novels or writing, and it's something like "the definition of a novel is an imperfect thing sent out into the world". Does that sound familiar to any of you?
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Dec 11, 2013 11:53
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Teach posted:I think that this might be the best place to ask this. I need help finding a quotation about novels or writing, and it's something like "the definition of a novel is an imperfect thing sent out into the world". Does that sound familiar to any of you? I think this is the one you are thinking about : quote:A book is sent out into the world, and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel. Chaim Potok
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Dec 11, 2013 16:53
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