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Chairman Capone posted:There's an Isaac Asimov (I think... maybe Arthur C. Clarke, but I'm pretty sure Asimov) short story about a rabbi being called in to determine if a genetically engineered pig with cloven hooves and which chews cud can be considered kosher... tried hard to find it today but even Google is failing me. "The R-Strain" by Harry Turtledove.
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Jul 27, 2016 15:30
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Whoops! Thanks for the clarification!
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Jul 27, 2016 16:38
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Chairman Capone posted:Whoops! You can get the R-Strain in the Departures short-story collection: https://www.amazon.com/Departures-Harry-Turtledove/dp/0345380118/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469635671&sr=8-1&keywords=departures+turtledove
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Jul 27, 2016 17:07
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I was thinking recently about a book I read in 3rd or 4th grade , so around 1996 or 7. It was an oversized book they came with a little handle on the spine and the book was about gnomes and the various Adventures they got up to. Of note was the phrase one of the Giants says I think, "gnorum borum pon my snorum". I just remember that being my favorite book ever when I was little and I wanted to get it for my daughter but for the life of me I can't find it and any descriptor I can give Google can't find it either. The arts style and illustration always showed the Gnomes with elaborate machinery made out of wood and pulleys and gears and such. I'm sure this is one hell of a crap shoot but it is driving me crazy so maybe there is a goon who also had it?
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Jul 27, 2016 23:59
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Trying to remember a children's book series about a kid adventuring with a crew of tiny aliens. At one point he was shrunk to their size too. Captain of the aliens was pretty belligerent in the drill sergeant sort of way, but he had a slot in his neck where you could swap in a personality module disc and make him less ornery. I don't remember if that was a major story point or just a one off thing.
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Jul 28, 2016 08:16
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Angry Birds Suicide posted:I was thinking recently about a book I read in 3rd or 4th grade , so around 1996 or 7. It was an oversized book they came with a little handle on the spine and the book was about gnomes and the various Adventures they got up to. Of note was the phrase one of the Giants says I think, "gnorum borum pon my snorum". I just remember that being my favorite book ever when I was little and I wanted to get it for my daughter but for the life of me I can't find it and any descriptor I can give Google can't find it either. The arts style and illustration always showed the Gnomes with elaborate machinery made out of wood and pulleys and gears and such. I'm sure this is one hell of a crap shoot but it is driving me crazy so maybe there is a goon who also had it? You sure it's not The Gnomes or Secrets of the Gnomes by Rien Poortvliet? I recall the latter having wooden machines with gears and pulleys and such.
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Jul 28, 2016 15:28
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AnonSpore posted:Trying to remember a children's book series about a kid adventuring with a crew of tiny aliens. At one point he was shrunk to their size too. Captain of the aliens was pretty belligerent in the drill sergeant sort of way, but he had a slot in his neck where you could swap in a personality module disc and make him less ornery. I don't remember if that was a major story point or just a one off thing. Is it the Aliens ate my homework series by Bruce Colville?
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Jul 28, 2016 18:11
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oldpainless posted:Is it the Aliens ate my homework series by Bruce Colville? Seems like it, yeah. Thanks, it was bugging me on and off for years.
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Jul 28, 2016 18:18
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Tardigrade posted:You sure it's not The Gnomes or Secrets of the Gnomes by Rien Poortvliet? I recall the latter having wooden machines with gears and pulleys and such. I finally found it! The book was titled " a trip to Woodland: a suitcase full of stories and games". Apparently it is out of print and a good condition used will set you back about 30 to 40 bucks with brand new condition going for over a hundred. I managed to pick up a nice quality one from Amazon for about 40
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Jul 28, 2016 22:21
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A big picture book, set in a very large house or hotel. Each set of pages was the same wide angle of the hotel, just set a few seconds after the previous pages. An entire array of stories were told purely visually.
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Jul 28, 2016 23:02
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grilldos posted:A big picture book, set in a very large house or hotel. Each set of pages was the same wide angle of the hotel, just set a few seconds after the previous pages. An entire array of stories were told purely visually. Full Moon Soup. There's a sequel set on a cruise ship, it's called Full Moon Afloat. 
Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Jul 29, 2016 |
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Jul 29, 2016 05:06
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Thank you.
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Jul 29, 2016 15:05
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I remember something that was a short story in the genre of absurd horror. I read it online somewhere and from what I can remember, it was about a guy waiting outside an elementary school to pick up his kid and a lady walking her dog went by.
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Jul 30, 2016 14:14
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Maybe five or six years ago I read a short story online and I want to find it again. The only thing I remember is that it had a group of people going through a post-apocalyptic America and there was a Starbucks involved (I think it was a Starbucks, could have been a Wal-Mart or McDonald's or something). That sounds pretty generic, but it was really good, really witty and fresh. It's likely I found it on the SA forums in the first place, so does this ring any bells at all?
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Jul 30, 2016 17:11
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This is an older sci if book, I thought either the title or main character was called ptolomy but that doesn't help me on either Google or Amazon. It featured a robot left here from the long past,and they used their technology to predict events and that the robot would be used for something. The main character might have been called ptolemy and the long dead race predicted he would be there to find the robot. Does that sound familiar to anyone? The second one may have been called scorpion. It started with a plane landing and everyone dead or disappeared, and these weird creatures started killing people and then they evolved into better killing things. The creatures were scorpion like and would sting people while flying through the air. In the end it turns out the book was a history written from the last city that held out against the invasion.
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Aug 1, 2016 23:23
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This one is right out there: A graphic novel, first off. I read it perhaps 20 years ago and it was in Czech - I do not know what other languages it can be found in. The basic premise is a time travel plot where modern day humans rescue a traveler from the future - one that looks like an angel. After traveling with him to 'paradise' they learn that immortality is achieved by some means of harvesting the organs of giants from another planet/timeline - they fly inside them in their ufo to jarvest organ chunks which they can process into this miracle cure. One of the modern day humans, a militaristic sort, learns that the world will be doomed to peace and happiness unless he fucks with the timeline by killing a specific artist - which he tries to accomplish by stealing one of the angel's time travel ships. There's a lot I'm probably misremembering but the gist is there. A lot of crazy poo poo like: -The angels amusing themselves by fighting tigers barehanded, being mauled to death and then ressurected by the miracle cure. -A trip to harvest organs where their ship is swallowed whole, and one of the crew dies of nicotine poisoning when the giant takes a puff on his cigar and floods the ship with toxic smoke. -The first traveler is found when his ship flies up out of the ocean and crashes into a fighter jet. He is pulled from the water by dolphins and brought onboard a cruiseship. Probably more insanity but I hope someone else has some idea. Good luck!
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Aug 2, 2016 01:24
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PureRok posted:I read this book in the late 90s. It was about two friends and they made a game of hopping fences through yards at night. I can't remember much else, except the main character's friend dies. I think it was a young-adult book. Asked about this a few years ago (wow, time flies), and I just thought of it again. Don't think anyone knew then, but maybe someone does now. Dunno.
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Aug 7, 2016 20:45
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Here's a longshot: A humor anthology, likely from the 1950s-1960s, that I once owned. My memory has it in a blue hardback edition. It is a collection of pieces by various authors, some of which included: * George S. Kaufman, If Men Played Cards As Women Do * Will Cuppy, I believe an excerpt from either How To Become Extinct. The story had lots of footnotes, in Cuppy's typical style, one of which ended with "...if [something is not so], then history has no meaning and might as well stop." * John Collier, Another American Tragedy ("I believe that mental derangement can be caused by dental derangement.") * Leo Rosten, excerpt from The Education of H*Y*M*A*N*K*A*P*L*A*N * Damon Runyon, Butch Minds The Baby * A radio play entitled What Prize Heaven?, in which a gambler dies saving a child and goes to Heaven, where he is bored silly and conspires with St. Peter and a racehorse named Larranaga to liven the place up * A profile of Wilson Mizner, including the "He insulted Goldie!" "In God's name, HOW?" anecdote and others. My first guess was The Week-End Book of Humor edited by P.G. Wodehouse, which I have acquired and while it _is_ familiar in content and in style, it is not the anthology I am looking for. I checked out Wodehouse's A Century of Humour and it's too old, and cannot find a table of contents for his later A Carnival of Modern Humour. I may be mixing up / blending together a couple of anthologies in my aging mind, but the radio play ought to be the unique identifier as I can find no trace of it via Google. Any thoughts? EDIT: May have found it -- A Treasury of Laughter edited by Louis Untermeyer, 1946. delfin fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Aug 10, 2016 |
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Aug 10, 2016 00:48
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I am nostalging hard for some books I read as a child, but can't remember titles or authors. All of these were fairly large, thin paperbacks with full-colour illustrations. I would have read these around the early 90s. The first one was about a cat with, I think, some mice as friends. The only scene I remember clearly is where the cat is visiting a launch site where they're preparing to launch some kind of scientific rocket; the cat gets into a wiring closet, disconnects all the wires, and makes a nice nest out of them to nap in. When it wakes up it can't remember how the wires were connected, so it puts them back in a way that "looks even better than before" (or something to that effect) -- they're arranged into the shape of a cat's face. This causes the rocket to go wildly off-course when it's launched later. The second one was also about a cat and may have been in the same series/by the same author as the first one, but I don't think so. The cat goes exploring with its human (or possibly searching for its human?) and finds a massive underground temple complex and a cult worshipping Bast. Another story (definitely featuring the same cat, possibly in the same book) involved a trip to the north pole looking for an icebound ship.
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Aug 10, 2016 20:38
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Complete guess: the Church Mice series? The cat's called Sampson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_Mice_series vvv Cool! vvv Runcible Cat fucked around with this message at 06:24 on Aug 11, 2016 |
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Aug 10, 2016 20:43
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Runcible Cat posted:Complete guess: the Church Mice series? The cat's called Sampson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_Mice_series That's definitely the first one and almost certainly not the second one. Thank you!
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Aug 10, 2016 21:07
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ToxicFrog posted:The second one was also about a cat and may have been in the same series/by the same author as the first one, but I don't think so. The cat goes exploring with its human (or possibly searching for its human?) and finds a massive underground temple complex and a cult worshipping Bast. Another story (definitely featuring the same cat, possibly in the same book) involved a trip to the north pole looking for an icebound ship. Seems plausible at least, although I don't recall a North Pole trip.
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Aug 11, 2016 16:46
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ToxicFrog posted:I am nostalging hard for some books I read as a child, but can't remember titles or authors. All of these were fairly large, thin paperbacks with full-colour illustrations. I would have read these around the early 90s. That's the Church Mice and the Moon, it features the goofiest scientists. Everyone should read all of the church mice books.
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Aug 11, 2016 20:49
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Here's one that has been bugging me for a very long time. I would have read it in the early-mid 90's when I would binge anything vaguely horror-y from the library. I think it was from some c-list horror author (think Shaun Hutson/Dean Koontz tier) but it may have been a nobody. The gist: a series of brutal, realistic horror films is proving popular, all produced by a studio that nobody really knows anything about. The main actor or the director (can't quite recall) is called something like Max Shreck or Max Orlok (obviously both after the Nosferatu actor/character). Our hero goes to see one and is either deaf of can just lip-read anyway and realises that these are actual murders on the screen by what one of the women is saying (the original voice track has been removed/over-dubbed). He sets out to investigate and, I think, manages to save the next victim. Not sure if it was a novel/novella or a short story, but I do remember it being rather good. Please help, constant readers!
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Aug 12, 2016 08:05
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franco posted:Here's one that has been bugging me for a very long time. I would have read it in the early-mid 90's when I would binge anything vaguely horror-y from the library. I think it was from some c-list horror author (think Shaun Hutson/Dean Koontz tier) but it may have been a nobody. This is ringing a bell. Was it something from the Sonja Blues stories by Nancy Collins? Or was it mission in Vampire the Masquerade video game?
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Aug 12, 2016 12:24
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franco posted:Here's one that has been bugging me for a very long time. I would have read it in the early-mid 90's when I would binge anything vaguely horror-y from the library. I think it was from some c-list horror author (think Shaun Hutson/Dean Koontz tier) but it may have been a nobody. I really want to say this is "Out Are The Lights" by Richard Laymon (spoilers ahoy!), but I'm having a hard time finding a plot summary and my copy is in a box. Somewhere. Probably. Being Laymon, there's an outside chance of it being rather good (he did have his moments) but your chances are probably better if you read it when you were 14.
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Aug 12, 2016 12:48
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Could this have been Lloyd Alexander's Time Cat? I read it as a kid. Ancient Egypt was his first time hop and then uh... Wikipedia says "Rome, Britain (55 BC), Ireland (AD 411), Japan (998), Italy (1468), Peru (1555), the Isle of Man (1588), Germany (1600), and America (1775)." It definitely was not time cat -- the cat lives in a big house(?), goes exploring, and finds tunnels and canals and temples under the house somewhere. There's a procession of cats chanting "Bast, Bastet, Bubastis!" or something like that. E: holy poo poo, found it in a Google Books scan of Picturing Canada: A History of Canadian Children's Illustrated Books -- it's the Zoom the Cat trilogy by Tim Wynne-Jones. The north pole expedition is Zoom Away and the Bast cult is Zoom Upstream.
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Aug 12, 2016 13:37
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navyjack posted:This is ringing a bell. Was it something from the Sonja Blues stories by Nancy Collins? Or was it mission in Vampire the Masquerade video game? Thanks for the guesses! But it is definitely: Gorbash posted:I really want to say this is "Out Are The Lights" by Richard Laymon (spoilers ahoy!), but I'm having a hard time finding a plot summary and my copy is in a box. Somewhere. Probably. Thank you so much! No wonder I struggled - Otto not Max, which obviously brought up a load of unrelated stuff. Also got the protagonist's sex wrong, oops. Had forgotten the room-mate part. Strangely, the title rings absolutely no bells, but that's 100% it 
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Aug 13, 2016 06:48
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I remember reason a book when I was very young, but the details are vague. I even went through those old book sale catalogs that circulated around school (those were the best) but no luck. What I recall is that it was about a young girl sent off to boarding school, and for reasons I don't remember, she got a single room up in an attic or some other barely used area/building. At some point she finds a doll that does Bad Things. She tries to get rid of it multiple times but it continues showing back up in her room. I think she tried to tell adults about it but no one believed her. She may have had a male classmate helping her out. I think the cover was a picture of the doll.
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Aug 17, 2016 04:31
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My girlfriend was talking about a story recently in which a young brother and sister with some sort of fatal disease were sent to stay at an island resort for terminal patients for a vacation, at the end of which they would ride a euthanasia coaster. While they're there, the boy notices that all of the employees have really bright, shining eyes. When the children do finally ride the coaster, the boy survives; he's cured of his disease, but now has the same shining eyes as the island's employees. I know it's definitely not "Vladimir Chong Chooses to Die", which is the only story I can find involving a euthanasia coaster. While were at it, there's a separate story that's been bothering me where I can remember a specific scene, but not the book it comes from. It involves a man describing a dream that he's had where he's dead and in purgatory, which is described as a massive room filled with people, and in the middle is a well. In the dream, you can stay in purgatory as long as you want; it's described as somewhat maudlin, but not a bad existence. If you want to leave, though, you have to jump in the well: if you're worthy enough, you'll be teleported to paradise, but if you're not, you just keep sinking forever. I thought maybe that it was from "Hell" by Robert Olen Butler, but the last time I flipped through that book I couldn't find that sequence. Any ideas on either story? Thanks!
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Aug 17, 2016 05:13
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Cymoril posted:I remember reason a book when I was very young, but the details are vague. I even went through those old book sale catalogs that circulated around school (those were the best) but no luck.
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Aug 17, 2016 07:24
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Okay, longshot but here it goes. I read a weird sci fi short story about a couple who have a baby that's born as an oblong rectangle. The reason given is that the baby is partially in another dimension (or something). Eventually the parents are able to visit the baby in its dimension (also appearing as weird 3D shapes in our universe), and ends with both parents staying in the child's world permanently. Does this ring any bells for anybody? Would love to know the name or author. I read it in the mid 90s and it felt a bit dated then, so it's possibly quite old.
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Aug 17, 2016 07:44
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mr. unhsib posted:Okay, longshot but here it goes. I read a weird sci fi short story about a couple who have a baby that's born as an oblong rectangle. The reason given is that the baby is partially in another dimension (or something). Eventually the parents are able to visit the baby in its dimension (also appearing as weird 3D shapes in our universe), and ends with both parents staying in the child's world permanently. Does this ring any bells for anybody? "Tomorrow's Child" by Ray Bradbury.
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Aug 17, 2016 15:54
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Action Jacktion posted:"Tomorrow's Child" by Ray Bradbury. Yesssssssssssss this is it. Thanks!
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Aug 17, 2016 19:42
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A book of short stories, most of them pretty dark and cynical, all having animal protagonists. One of them is about a dog who's a Buddhist detective. Another is about a dung beetle who works himself to death building a dung statue of himself. Another was about a badger(?) who desperately wanted to find a mate to hibernate with. I think another one was about a bee who ate royal jelly and turned into a queen when it wasn't supposed to. I must've read it around 2008. Author may have had an Italian name. Does anyone know this one?
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Aug 18, 2016 16:59
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Maha posted:A book of short stories, most of them pretty dark and cynical, all having animal protagonists. I don't know what this is, but I certainly want to read it.
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Aug 18, 2016 17:08
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reading distorted, half-remembered plot summaries of books that are in themselves bizarre is like dadaist flash fiction
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Aug 18, 2016 18:12
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End Of Worlds posted:reading distorted, half-remembered plot summaries of books that are in themselves bizarre is like dadaist flash fiction And why I lurk this thread.
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Aug 18, 2016 18:45
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Maha posted:A book of short stories, most of them pretty dark and cynical, all having animal protagonists. None of the story you describe ring a bell, but the combo "dark cynical animal stories" and "author with Italian name" makes me think it might be Pork by Cris Freddi?
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Aug 18, 2016 19:06
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yaffle posted:None of the story you describe ring a bell, but the combo "dark cynical animal stories" and "author with Italian name" makes me think it might be Pork by Cris Freddi? Sounds similar, but I don't think that's it? I definitely remember the dung beetle and hibernation stories.
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Aug 18, 2016 21:24
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