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Runcible Cat posted:Guardian of Isis, by Monica Hughes. It's the sequel to Keeper of the Isis Light. Holy cow you are amazing! I never knew it was a series.
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Oct 6, 2015 16:21
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froglet posted:Holy cow you are amazing! I never knew it was a series.
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Oct 7, 2015 01:34
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Sci-fi story, pretty short. A rich guy has made a time machine. The narrator tests it out with him and they go either very far into the past or very far into the future, like either the big bang or the end of the universe. At one point something sees/attacks them and I think it's described as being like a shark in some way.
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Nov 20, 2015 11:09
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Since someone helped me in this thread, I wanna pay it forward - and your story sounds to me like "Lost" by Larry Niven, which is part of the Draco Tavern anthology.
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Nov 20, 2015 12:45
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Lot 49 posted:Sci-fi story, pretty short. drat I think I remember this one. Was the machine like a big hole in the ground? Got it! In The Abyss off Time, by Stephen Baxter. Stupid_Sexy_Flander fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Nov 20, 2015 |
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Nov 20, 2015 18:47
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Got it! In The Abyss off Time, by Stephen Baxter. That's the one, thank you.
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Nov 21, 2015 11:20
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Can't take full credit. I had asked about it earlier in the thread  Still, good story!
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Nov 21, 2015 15:33
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Fantasy book / series? This was a number of years ago but I feel like reading a lovely book during the holidays. Anyway, it had some magic dudes , possibly a separate race, and the real danger with the magic guys vs regular humans was special magic dudes who had greater control and I think could link people together and sort of use them as their own. The magic race people had weird features like white hair I believe, they also had less of a lifespan -- possibly related to how much magic they used? The main character was trying to hide his weaving ability but accidentally showed it to some magic girl by creating a small tornado in his hands. Also , the apparent antagonist was an chancellor of the empress that conquered the magic people , but he secretly wanted to revive their kingdom and be evil and stuff.
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Nov 25, 2015 03:54
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Lumius posted:Fantasy book / series? Deryni?
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Nov 25, 2015 04:44
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The first was I'm pretty sure was a book that had a lot of either child or teen characters on a generation ship (maybe?) in which one of them makes or rebuilds a matter transmitter and I think they escape the ship at the end through it? I remember picking it up from a used book store in the late 90s early 00s and it was pretty heavily yellowed at the the time. The second was a short story in either a sf/f magazine or a collection that I've been trying to find if only to identify the author. I think it's first person and the main character is a gay researcher on something, but they use this weird strung out body like those exhibits that show just the nerve system, but with everything and it was alive on the wall. And I say this without the slightest hint of joking, it ends with him having literal butt babies with I think two husbands somewhere in south america and gay dudes are going to take over the world by outbreeding the straights because gay dudes literally only have sex all the time. This was also early 2000s I think. I know this story is real and I really want to find the author and know what the hell their deal is.
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Nov 25, 2015 06:00
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I don't think this is it but deryni does seem like a fun read too.
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Nov 25, 2015 06:50
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Lumius posted:I don't think this is it but deryni does seem like a fun read too. How about Winds of the Forelands?
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Nov 25, 2015 06:55
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Lprsti99 posted:How about Winds of the Forelands? I think this is exactly it , thanks so much.
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Nov 25, 2015 07:20
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Ok, I've been racking my brains trying to remember this book for a couple of years now. I read it about 22 years ago (when I was 14), so it's pretty hazy. All I can remember is that it was a coming of age type story, and it revolved around teens (pre-teens?) at a camp of some kind. There's a girls camp nearby, maybe? I know the protagonist spends a good portion of the book pining after a girl. The lyrics to a song that go "up and down and round and round" appear throughout the story. At one point, one of his friends gets bitten by a spider, and they lance the boil but forget to disinfect the needle and he gets an infection and dies. That last part could be a bit different than I'm remembering. It was an old book that I found in my uncles collection. Very old style covering and binding, and smelled about a thousand years old. I know that's likely not very helpful...but I'd be surprised if it was published after 1980. Devorum fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Nov 26, 2015 |
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Nov 25, 2015 21:11
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I think this is a kid's book. All I remember is that the protagonist is kind of young (probably no more than 10) and she(?) lives in a city, probably New York City. She's traveling to somewhere more out in the country, and she's amazed about how bright the autumn leaves are, because in the city the leaves just turn kind of brown because of the pollution.
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Dec 8, 2015 19:21
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This one is going to be difficult. I'm looking for a short story I read online, many years ago. A blind woman gets a phonecall from her sister. The sister is a single mum and has up until a few months ago homeschooled her son. Convinced her son is a genius she has named him something super pretentious like Ludwig Amadeus Hamlet, and only taught him things like classical music, ancient Greek works of literature, Shakespeare etc. The child has never had any kind of social interaction with other children. But a few months ago a social worker came around and made it clear that either this boy starts school, or else he will be placed in care. At school the boy is completely confused, and unable to understand much of what is going on. When asked if he has a PlayStation he answers something like "I like lots of plays" and starts spouting lines from Greek classics. But gradually he makes friends and starts having normal interests, prefering to play football after school instead of listening to opera with his mum. Mum gets very upset over these changes. Finally mum has a breakdown, calling her blind sister, ranting about how it only took school a few months to turn a genious into a monkey, and now she doesn't know what to do, she can no longer control this monkey and she wants her son back. The blind aunt arrives at her sister's house. She finds the door unlocked. In the hall she finds a phone message confirming a purchase of a single plane ticket to Brazil or some other far away country. She also finds that there are no traces of her nephew, not even a single piece of child size clothing. What should have been the nephew's room is empty. However, there is a small monkey running wild in the living room.
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Dec 19, 2015 20:03
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Devorum posted:Ok, I've been racking my brains trying to remember this book for a couple of years now. Those lyrics are probably from the song "At the hop", if that helps your search at all
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Jan 7, 2016 09:31
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What was the series or author with the Vaun Neuman seeded machines that were some sort of infection (cubes containing the seeded machine and could make people into superhumans?) and humanity had to work and avoid the devils deal and also fight them off at the same time?
Washout fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Jan 8, 2016 |
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Jan 8, 2016 01:49
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Washout posted:What was the series or author with the Vaun Neuman seeded machines that were some sort of infection (cubes containing the seeded machine and could make people into superhumans?) and humanity had to work and avoid the devils deal and also fight them off at the same time? That could be almost Singularity sky which was basically how stupid age of sail in space is given that a few generations difference of tech would be I recognizable. Wiki page
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Jan 8, 2016 05:15
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Washout posted:What was the series or author with the Vaun Neuman seeded machines that were some sort of infection (cubes containing the seeded machine and could make people into superhumans?) and humanity had to work and avoid the devils deal and also fight them off at the same time? If it's not Singularity Sky, it could be Asher's Polity series (where the nanotech in question are called "Jain nodes").
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Jan 8, 2016 17:38
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ToxicFrog posted:If it's not Singularity Sky, it could be Asher's Polity series (where the nanotech in question are called "Jain nodes"). Yeah that's it, thanks!
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Jan 8, 2016 23:52
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I have a recollection of old 70/80s paperbacks, either published by Playboy or Penthouse, which was about the smutty R-18 adventures of a woman. The author has a "St." in the last name somewhere, like Something St. James or Something St. Pierre. Any help? I have some vague memories of the scenes written in the books but I don't know if they'd be any help, like I said it was mostly paperback, somewhat fantastical smut.
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Jan 9, 2016 08:00
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gradenko_2000 posted:I have a recollection of old 70/80s paperbacks, either published by Playboy or Penthouse, which was about the smutty R-18 adventures of a woman. The author has a "St." in the last name somewhere, like Something St. James or Something St. Pierre. Blakely St. James? (which deeply amuses me, because I took a writing workshop with Charles Platt once. He mentioned he'd done romance novels under a female pseudonym but he certainly didn't mention THESE.)
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Jan 9, 2016 14:52
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computer parts posted:I think this is a kid's book. All I remember is that the protagonist is kind of young (probably no more than 10) and she(?) lives in a city, probably New York City. She's traveling to somewhere more out in the country, and she's amazed about how bright the autumn leaves are, because in the city the leaves just turn kind of brown because of the pollution. I remember the leaves detail in one of the Fudge books by Judy Blume.
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Jan 11, 2016 04:24
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I remember reading a book long, long ago about an english/dutch ship of settlers sailing to Spanish-occupied America, and the main character's dad gets killed by conquistadors and then he has to evade said conquistadors through Florida swampland or something similar. Along the way he meets up with an escaped African slave child and a tribe of Native Americans who help him. There was one scene in particular about the main character finding a piece of fish, but finds out that it's covered in ants, so he dunks it in the water to try and clean it. Towards the end he is disguised as one of the conquistadors from the help of the natives after eating a meal of deer meat and infiltrates a Spanish outpost, I think. Anybody got an idea of what I'm talking about? Read back in 4th-5th grade, if that helps.
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Jan 15, 2016 23:36
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All I remember is that the book had a wizard who abused his assistant, a dashing bard character who got in a fight covered in flour, and they were trying to find a "universal rap sheet". It ended on a cliffhanger and I never figured out the rest.
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Jan 16, 2016 14:49
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I am in need of your always generous help again, please thread. I have two books taking around my head: 2) Is a fiction book I read about the same time, though probably earlier. It was set in a small (Mid-Western?) American town, and from what I recall it was about a high school football player and his life after high-school not being all that great. I think he hit his girlfriend and she lost an eye? Someone certainly had one fewer eye at the end of the book than they had at the start. I know that's not much to go on in either case, but I'd be very grateful for any help, thanks! e: 1 was solved by the kind goon below, and after a minor flash of inspiration I'm 99% sure that 2 is Goodnight, Nebraska by Tom McNeal. Pork Pie Hat fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Jan 18, 2016 |
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Jan 17, 2016 17:28
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Pork Pie Hat posted:1) A non-fiction book I read about 15 years ago. It was presented as a series of Sherlock Holmes short stories in which Holmes and Watson investigated mysteries that were all based on modern scientific things, so the reader could learn about modern science (I want to say it was just physics, but I'm not 100% on that) in the guise of fiction. One of the mysteries involved a heavy metal sphere dived in half, and it turned out that when the two halves were joined together a nuclear explosion occurred. That sort of thing. The Einstein Paradox by Colin Bruce.
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Jan 17, 2016 20:29
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Action Jacktion posted:The Einstein Paradox by Colin Bruce. Ah, that's the one! Brilliant, thank you very much.
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Jan 17, 2016 23:55
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Wanderer posted:There was a cheap horror novel in my high school library that I remember distinctly as being extremely depressing. It was a zombie novel, where the end of the book involved all the zombies suddenly falling over dead, followed by a supervirus wiping out the remaining humans, and finally Zombie George HW Bush hitting the nuclear button and destroying everything. For my seventeen-year-old self, it was utterly bizarre to see a book that ended not merely that bleakly, but in such a "Okay, gently caress my characters" sort of way. Quoting myself from a few years ago. I reminded myself just now that I still couldn't remember the name of the book or the author. It would have had to have been published before 1995 or so. (Also, Swan Song is $1.99 on Kindle right now, if anyone's interested.)
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Jan 18, 2016 20:17
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This came up in an IRC channel, and it's driving me nuts. It's a short story I read online years ago, and it was about copyright gone mad in the near future. As a part of everyone's daily routine, they settle lawsuits and pay license fees because of all the infringement they're doing just by hearing a neighbor's stereo or humming a song to themselves. The story's kind of about a parent teaching their preteen kid how to handle all of these micro-lawsuits. Most are settled for pennies or fractions of a cent, but it's just a constant thing they have to deal with. It's proving to be quite difficult to find on Google.
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Jan 20, 2016 06:57
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Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson?
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Jan 20, 2016 09:06
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D. Ebdrup posted:Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson? Nope. That one's about discussing the potential of infinite copyright terms. The one I'm thinking of is shorter, and doesn't touch on copyright length, IIRC. It was about how often you infringe in daily life and a possible future of everyone suing everyone for every possible infringement, even little kids.
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Jan 21, 2016 04:20
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Yo I got a science fiction short story that I'm struggling to find, it was about a team of virtual people making a copy of themselves to drop into a black hole to do cool research before those copied consciousnesses inevitably died, and there's a virtual stowaway girl or something that comes along for the ride, it was extremely dense with technical concepts and I think the title had "Drop" in the name. e: nvm found it, was called "The Planck Dive" and I guess I mixed up dive and drop in my head Control Volume fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Jan 24, 2016 |
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Jan 24, 2016 21:05
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I'm looking for this book series about a polar bears wearing armor, a compass that lets its user answer any question, and a bunch of witches and familiars.
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Jan 26, 2016 18:26
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Terciel posted:I'm looking for this book series about a polar bears wearing armor, a compass that lets its user answer any question, and a bunch of witches and familiars. The trilogy starting with Northern Lights aka The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman.
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Jan 26, 2016 18:29
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Krazyface posted:I remember the leaves detail in one of the Fudge books by Judy Blume. That seems likely, I read that as a kid.
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Jan 27, 2016 02:09
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I'm trying to remember the title of a YA book I read in the 80s / 90s about a girl who has a growth spurt and suddenly everyone is calling her Giraffe. She finds this unbearable. She makes a new friend who seems to accept her but who is also a real jerk. They spend time bullying the new friend's little sister. At one point they make cookie dough with dish soap in it and feed it to the little sister, who cries. I think they maybe also lock the little sister in a box by the railroad tracks? Eventually they go Too Far and then Repent. I think the title had "Summer" in it. I'm not sure I want to re-read it because those kids were real assholes but it's driving me crazy.
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Jan 27, 2016 03:52
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I need some help looking for a book that I saw discussed on io9 a while back. I honestly can't remember if it was a graphic novel or traditional novel, so maybe you all can help? It was about two sisters, maybe female friends, that at least one of them got super powers? I believe it was described as "melancholy". It came out around 2013/2014. I searched all through io9 and couldn't find it. :/ Any ideas?
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Jan 30, 2016 05:49
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Synnr posted:The second was a short story in either a sf/f magazine or a collection that I've been trying to find if only to identify the author. I think it's first person and the main character is a gay researcher on something, but they use this weird strung out body like those exhibits that show just the nerve system, but with everything and it was alive on the wall. And I say this without the slightest hint of joking, it ends with him having literal butt babies with I think two husbands somewhere in south america and gay dudes are going to take over the world by outbreeding the straights because gay dudes literally only have sex all the time. This was also early 2000s I think. I know this story is real and I really want to find the author and know what the hell their deal is. The boyfriend (not the man who got pregnant but the other one) was South American of some sort, yeah. Oh, and the butt babies are always twins for... reasons. I swear it does exist.
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Jan 31, 2016 03:27
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