WeaponGradeSadness posted:

This is the funniest thing I've ever read

quote:

ITALIAN BOY: My story is about my dead sister and how she died of cancer and her death was very sad. Poohoo.

ASIAN MAN: No offense, but I just do not find that interesting. There are too many screenplays about people’s family members and I find no reason to care if I do not know the person.

ITALIAN BOY: How-a could-a you-a say-a that-a?! I-a going-a to-a kill-a you-a!

PROFESSOR: This is unacceptable!

ASIAN MAN: I am allowed freedom of speech.

quote:

WHITE GIRL: Friends and sex and parties and makeup!

Pick posted:

From the children's book Slugs.

muscles like this? posted:

I was reading some short story collection years ago and got to a Poppy Z Brite one. One of the earliest lines was about using an oiled human femur for sex and I was like "That's enough of that!" and skipped to the next story.

quote:

We explored the damp alien territory between the legs of any girl who would have us, sometimes separately, sometimes both of us in bed together with one girl or more. We bound their wrists and ankles with black lace, we lubricated and penetrated their every orifice, we shamed them with their own pleasures. I recall a mauve-haired beauty, Felicia, who was brought to wild sobbing orgasm by the rough tongue of a stray dog we trapped. We watched her from across the room, drug-hazed and unstirred.

Geokinesis posted:

E: It was "His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood".

SerialKilldeer posted:

I remember that from when I was a little kid! Scared the daylights out of me. I actually saw it just about a year ago, too, when my university library had a "banned books month" exhibit. Wonder why a book like that was banned...

divabot posted:

I haven't read The Transhumanist Wager by Zoltan Istvan, but I was delighted to see that even the other transhumanists thought it was poo poo and that Istvan was counterproductive.

Mister Kingdom posted:

Holy gently caress, it's awful. How the hell it got nominated for Hugo, I'll never understand.

hirvox posted:

Polybius

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Ugh, this bullshit too?

Sham bam bamina! posted:

_{(And given that he's framing all these game references in the terms of cult '80s movie The Last Starfighter, he's "diversified" even less than you'd imagine.)}

hirvox posted:

Some time ago, Ernest Kline diversified from Ready Player One to assure people that being able to recite cult movies from memory is not the only way to measure geek cred. Knowing geek "culture" is still important, though. Otherwise, how else could you uncover the Conspiracy? Galaga, Polybius, Battlezone, Star Wars, the Last Starfighter, that latest MMO you keep playing? You know, the one where you are one of the elite pilots topping the leaderboards? They're all part of the plot by Every Geek Icon Ever (including your not-dead dad) to prepare humanity to fight the incoming alien Armada. Despite all the naysayers, all those gaming sessions in the backroom of your millionaire friend's gaming shop were totally not useless. They were literally the most important thing you could have done with your time. They were grooming you to be the Hero.

Klaus88 posted:

Just assume I posted that image of Mr. Kline sitting next to George R. Martin in a Deloran.

Ernest Kline posted:

It was an old black baseeball jacket with leather sleeves, and it was completely covered, front and back, with embroidered patches, all somehow science fiction or videogame related, including several high-score-award patches for old Activision games like Starmaster, Dreadnaught Destroyer, Laser Blast and Kaboom! Running down both sleeves were logos and military insignia from the Rebel Alliance, the Star League, the United Federation of Planets, the Colonial Fleet from BSG, and the Robotech Defense Force, among others.

I studied each one in turn, running my fingertips over the embroidery. When I'd last tried this jacket on a few years ago, it had still been too big on me. But when I slipped it on now, it fit me perfectly, almost as if it had been tailor-made.

I found myself itching to wear it to school tomorrow - despite my earlier vow to stop living in the past and obsessing over the father I had never known.

Mr. Chainsaw posted:

The worst book I've read is Exquisite Corpse. I bought it on a whim after someone I knew said it was their favorite. Not sure what I expected when the premise is "serial killer romance", but I put it down when I realized it wasn't going to be anything beyond fanfiction-tier gay erotica between edgy torture scenes. I thought about donating the book but I don't want to inflict it on anyone else honestly, so its still on my shelf.

Nanomashoes posted:

Arivia posted:

The book is weird, but what the hell is up with that table?

Snapchat A Titty posted:

i think its a chair with what looks like horse leather maybe. definitely some kind of animal skin

C.M. Kruger posted:

A while back I read a techno-thriller called Kill Decision. Basic plot is that a shadowy cabal is out to get America with drone attacks and by using stolen/rebuilt Predator drones to frame the US by blowing up mosques and stuff, Clancy meets Crichton's hand-wringing over technology essentially. So to stop them, a one-dimensional brooding special forces soldier named Odin (who has two trained ravens named Hugin and Munin, of course) has to rescue a one-dimensional scientist who researches swarm theory and basically exists to tell Odin and his team how to best shoot the science run amok.

IIRC everybody in Odin's team chooses to stay at the rank of Sergent, because apparently officers answer to the government but the enlisted answer to 'Murica. Odin and the scientist get it on after escaping a drone swarm, the ravens watch. I think the book just sort of ends after the characters stop a plot to destroy some US aircraft carriers with a cargo ship full of killer drones, and there's like two pages at the end where one of the cabal members gets blown up by a drone strike in Maryland or something.

C.M. Kruger posted:

A while back I read a techno-thriller called Kill Decision. Basic plot is that a shadowy cabal is out to get America with drone attacks and by using stolen/rebuilt Predator drones to frame the US by blowing up mosques and stuff, Clancy meets Crichton's hand-wringing over technology essentially. So to stop them, a one-dimensional brooding special forces soldier named Odin (who has two trained ravens named Hugin and Munin, of course) has to rescue a one-dimensional scientist who researches swarm theory and basically exists to tell Odin and his team how to best shoot the science run amok.

IIRC everybody in Odin's team chooses to stay at the rank of Sergent, because apparently officers answer to the government but the enlisted answer to 'Murica. Odin and the scientist get it on after escaping a drone swarm, the ravens watch. I think the book just sort of ends after the characters stop a plot to destroy some US aircraft carriers with a cargo ship full of killer drones, and there's like two pages at the end where one of the cabal members gets blown up by a drone strike in Maryland or something.

shelley posted:

Prey was such trash, but somehow it gave me existential terror as a child. I thought my mom was nanobots. I was a dumb child.

shelley posted:

Prey was such trash, but somehow it gave me existential terror as a child. I thought my mom was nanobots. I was a dumb child.

Speaking of Crichton, Timeline is poorly-researched dogshit. I mean, my requirements for thrillers are fairly low, but it's written like he slept through a showing of A Knight's Tale one time and thinks that's how medieval Europe really was.

Ryoshi posted:

Prey was awesome because it was about killer robots and at one point I think a Jeep was used as a makeshift firebomb.

Timeline is awful on about a million levels and doesn't even attempt some kind of internal consistency or coherence. It's all different universes instead of actual time travel but somehow everyone manages to pass notes through history, the scientists' machine is so outlandish and nonsensical that it is literally hand waved as "someone in another universe got this to work and is helping us teleport people even though we have no way of communicating with them", the fact that half the dialogue reads like something you'd overhear at the smelly D&D table down at the game store, ugh.

And Timeline was still better than Rising Sun.

C.M. Kruger posted:

A while back I read a techno-thriller called Kill Decision. Basic plot is that a shadowy cabal is out to get America with drone attacks and by using stolen/rebuilt Predator drones to frame the US by blowing up mosques and stuff, Clancy meets Crichton's hand-wringing over technology essentially. So to stop them, a one-dimensional brooding special forces soldier named Odin (who has two trained ravens named Hugin and Munin, of course) has to rescue a one-dimensional scientist who researches swarm theory and basically exists to tell Odin and his team how to best shoot the science run amok.

IIRC everybody in Odin's team chooses to stay at the rank of Sergent, because apparently officers answer to the government but the enlisted answer to 'Murica. Odin and the scientist get it on after escaping a drone swarm, the ravens watch. I think the book just sort of ends after the characters stop a plot to destroy some US aircraft carriers with a cargo ship full of killer drones, and there's like two pages at the end where one of the cabal members gets blown up by a drone strike in Maryland or something.

BioEnchanted posted:

I don't know if they're really bad, but they are certainly entertainingly batshit insane: The Ring trilogy, Ring, Spiral and Loop by Koji Suzuki, that the Horror movie Ringu was based on. Well it was based on the first book, it kinda ignored the other two. This is completely psychotic but I had so much fun reading it, I honestly recommend going in blind, but for the curious:

Ring reads innocently enough - horror novel about people who die after watching a haunted video tape. OK, much like the movie so far. Main character finds the bones, attempts to lay Sadako to rest and fails, just like the movie. However the first signs of oddity come at the end of this book - Sadako is a partial hermaphrodite as well as a vengeance ghost, and she was raped just before her death by a smallpox victim just before she dies - that was who put her in the well. So she projects her anger towards the videotape and kills whoever watches it unless they copy and show it - fine.

MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR THE BATSHIT TRILOGY AHOY!
However, then Spiral happens - new revelations:

Sadako is not only the fury at her own death, she has also joined with the smallpox virus, which is itself angry that modern medicine killed it by rendering it powerless. The reason for the videotape is revealed - she the reason everyone who watches the tape dies is because they get infected upon viewing by a variation of smallpox called the Ring Virus. Sadako is no longer thinking like Sadako - she only wants to reproduce, as that is all a virus wants to do. However the virus turns into two strains - the unbroken ring, which kills the victim if not copied, and the Broken Ring, which is compared to a sperm cell.

This comparison is important - anyone infected with this version is made to reproduce it another way - one of the main characters is a journalist with good writing skills - Sadako makes him, through the virus's influence, write a manuscript that describes the tape so intensely, impossibly accurately that anyone who reads it gets the same effect. However if a woman who watches the tape/reads the manuscript happens to be ovulating when they watch it Sadako basically impregnates them with her genetic information. Sadako, in this book, does this once. The secondary main character of the first book, Ryuji, is discovered dead by his assistant, who reads the manuscript while there. She later gives birth to Sadako, after Sadako takes over her mind and throws her down a shaft (she wants to be reborn in the same circumstances in which she died, to overcome the obstacle that killed her). After her birth, Sadako rapidly reaches the age at which she dies, but the main character of the second book fails to recognise her at first, because she looks slightly different. This is explained by the idea that noone, unless looking in a mirror, knows exactly what their own face looks like so some details are filled in by the brain in the minds eye - the face she ends up with is the face that she pictured herself with.

The book ends with the main character being confronted on the beach by Reborn Sadako and formerly deceased Ryuji - when reborn Sadako was born as a complete hermaphrodite so on top of everything else she can impregnate herself now. Ryuji is back because Sadako made a deal with him post-mortem - if he helped her she would help him return to the world of the living by taking his genetic information from his remains and literally birthing him anew. She makes the same offer to the main character - Allow her manuscript to be published and read by millions, while she also has a plan in the works to make her way into other media - she will make a videogame, movie, website, every type of media will spread her virus worldwide, allowing her to take over the world. He agrees as she offers to give him back his dead son in the same way Ryuji was reborn,


THINGS GET CRAZIER! STRAP IN!

In Loop it is hard to tell at first how it fits in - The main mystery is a simulation of the beginning of life that was created on a supercomputer to solve the problem of 'how we got here' - however the project failed as the life simulated became cancerous, all life, animal or vegetable became one type of organism and the simulation just stopped. Also a viral form of Cancer called the Metastating Human Cancer Virus started spreading with disastrous results. While searching for zones where the virus failed to take hold the main character learns the following:

The Simulation virus was caused by three virtual entities - Sadako Yamamura, Ryuji and the main character from the second book. The first two books only took place in a simulated reality. However, as Ryuji died, but before Sadako made her pact with him, he noticed that he was being watched by something 'outside' and called out for help to 'get out'. The head scientist at the time obliged, and found a way via absolute nonsense relating to genetics, and converting binary code to amino acids. Ryuji was reborn and grew up outside the sim- to become the main character of the third book. Ryuji vows to stop the cancer virus, wshich escaped because he was a carrier of the Ring virus, by stopping Sadako before his world can b destroyed utterly - so he is put back into the simulation, reversing the process only to be given birth to by - Sadako Yamamura - he has overwritten the version of himself that made the vow witrh Sadako, so now instead of helping her, he ends the series joining with the MC of the second book to stop her. The world may yet be saved.

BioEnchanted posted:

I don't know if they're really bad, but they are certainly entertainingly batshit insane: The Ring trilogy

Guy Mann posted:

If there was a bad fiction bingo card I feel like having characters named after Norse mythology would be a square. Its prevalence in right-wing military fiction is especially troubling considering how heavily it is co-opted by white supremacists...

BioEnchanted posted:

I don't know if they're really bad, but they are certainly entertainingly batshit insane: The Ring trilogy, Ring, Spiral and Loop by Koji Suzuki, that the Horror movie Ringu was based on. Well it was based on the first book, it kinda ignored the other two. This is completely psychotic but I had so much fun reading it, I honestly recommend going in blind, but for the curious:

Mythology 101 posted:

Meet Keith Doyle—weirdo, business major, nerd, believer in myths. To his joy—and horror—Keith has just learned a legend is real...
THERE ARE ELVES IN THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
a secret village of pointy-eared, magical little leprechauns who help students pass killer courses. And Marcy, the girl of Keith's dreams, is in contact with them.
BUT THE LIBRARY IS ABOUT TO BE TORN DOWN
thanks to a modernization campaign led by Keith himself. The students hate him. Marcy hates him. The elves' home will be destroyed.
Keith and the leprechauns need each other. For the only thing that can save Keith's social life is elfin magic. And the only thing that can save the elves is the magic of...
Free enterprise.

Mythology 101 posted:

"Hmmhmmhmmhmmhahahahaha ..." laughed Borget in as sinister a tone as he could manage.

Mythology 101 posted:

On the benches around the wooden meeting table, the Folk shifted to position themselves comfortably. It wasn't often the whole Council attended a village meeting, so though the benches were long, the regulars had to suck in their sides to make room for their more erstwhile companions. It was a sign of the seriousness of the situation that there was no banter, no friendly arguments between the young Progressives and the older Conservatives.

Mythology 101 posted:

"Mr Doyle?" inquired Dr. Freleng, holding a thesis paper in the air with disgusted thumb and forefinger. The teacher's grey mustache lifted on one side as his lip curled. "This is Sociology 430. Don't you think this paper should better have been submitted to your fiction writing teacher instead?"
"Well, I'm not taking that course this semester," stammered Keith Doyle, scrambling to sit upright from his comfortable slouch behind Mary Lou Carson, the fattest girl in class.

Mythology 101 posted:

"See," crowed Carl, breaking the silence. "He didn't deny it. For the sole purpose of bugging me, he threat—"
Tears were overflowing Marcy's eyes. "Shut up, Carl."
He whirled on her, angrily. "Hey, he's been a pain in the butt as long as I can . . ."
"I said, shut up," Marcy blurted, sniffing. "I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear anything you have to say. Big hero. We're through. You can leave me alone from now on."
"Marcy!" Carl looked astonished, then angry.
"Didna you hear what the lady said?" Enoch hissed, springing up and glaring into Carl's face. "Leave her alone."
"Back off, shorty," Carl snapped. "I'll say whatever I feel like." His face went red and his hands tightened into fists. The slightly built elf stood up to him.
"Did you mother teach you no manners, Carl Mueller?" Enoch sneered.

Mythology 101 posted:

"It started the day you got thrown out of class. Maybe a lot sooner, I don't know. Carl said something insulting to me. I really hate him. He's got such an ego. Enoch jumped on him for it. I think he would've hit him if Carl hadn't backed off. Carl was really surprised. I was, too. He's been . . . protective of me, lately. Enoch, not Carl." She was having to fight to get the words out. "I . . . I feel, I don't know . . ."
". . . Like you've got something going for him?" Keith finished, a little light going on in his mind. "That's why you've been sort of backing off on me?"
Marcy nodded, miserably.
"Great!" Keith exclaimed.
"But I feel like I'm cradle-robbing, or something."
Keith's eyes went wide. "What? Is this the author of the Marcy Collier paper on the sociological stresses of racial dwarfism? The person who stood up to Dr. Freleng when he suggested that there wasn't enough statistical evidence to make a sociological premise out of it? You are treating short people like children." He pointed a finger toward her nose. "You're doing it. Enoch is forty-six years old. He told me so himself! If anything, you're a little young for him. He's cradle-robbing."
Marcy's mouth fell open. Her tongue felt dry, and she swallowed. "He is?"

The Baker's Boy posted:

A thrilling new voice in fantasy adventure introduces THE BOOK OF WORDS, where the lethal conspiracies and deadly intrigues of the mighty can be countered by only one power: magic.

THE BAKER'S BOY
At vast Castle Harvell, where King Lesketh lies dying, two fates collide. In her regal suite, young Melliandra, the daughter of an influential lord, rebels against her forced betrothal to the sinister Prince Kylock. In the kitchens, an apprentice named Jack is terrified by his sudden, uncontrolled power to work miracles. Together they flee the castle, stalked by a sorcerer who has connived for decades to control the crown, even committing supernatural murder to advance his schemes.
And a young knight begins a quest, leaving behind his home and family to seek out the treacherous Isle of Larn, where lies a clue to his desperate search for the truth.
Here a wondrous epic of darkness and beauty begins...

The Baker's Boy posted:

His attention returned to his task. He was nervous at first, but there was not a flicker from the queen, so he continued on more forcefully. He knew the quickening of desire and was surprised by its familiarity. As his excitement grew so did his abandon, and he pushed into her with all his strength. He had not expected to enjoy it and was surprised when he did. Eventually he reached his climax and his seed flowed deep within the queen.
As he withdrew from her, a trickle of blood escaped from the queen and ran lazily down her inner thigh; maybe he had been a little rough, but no matter. For the second time that evening he drew bloodied fingers up to his lips. He was not surprised to find the queen's blood tasted different: sweeter, richer.

Darthemed posted:

Mythology 101, by Jody Lynn Nye.



Jody Lynn Nye, who as her Amazon bio for this book describes, "is best known as a collaborator with other notable authors" including Anne McCaffrey, Robert Asprin (author of the Myth Adventures books mentioned earlier in the thread) and Piers Anthony, wrote this very light novel with the following jacket synopsis:

A few excerpts from the book.

quote:

And the only thing that can save the elves is the magic of free enterprise.

Darthemed posted:

Mythology 101, by Jody Lynn Nye.

things not to do, according to the TCL posted:

“Said” Bookism

An artificial verb used to avoid the word “said.” “Said” is one of the few invisible words in the English language and is almost impossible to overuse. It is much less distracting than “he retorted,” “she inquired,” “he ejaculated,” and other oddities. The term “said-book” comes from certain pamphlets, containing hundreds of purple-prose synonyms for the word “said,” which were sold to aspiring authors from tiny ads in American magazines of the pre-WWII era.

Darthemed posted:

Mythology 101, by Jody Lynn Nye.



Jody Lynn Nye, who as her Amazon bio for this book describes, "is best known as a collaborator with other notable authors" including Anne McCaffrey, Robert Asprin (author of the Myth Adventures books mentioned earlier in the thread) and Piers Anthony, wrote this very light novel with the following jacket synopsis:

A few excerpts from the book.

Mildly Amusing posted:

If this thread ever gets a vanity title it should be this quote. Good hell, it reads like an accountant wrote it.