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I'm trying to help someone remember the title of novel they read. The title was something "not scifi sounding" but the premise is very scifi. We figure it was published before 1976 but not necessarily during that decade. The plot was basically an asteroid or something from space was going to hit Earth and destroy the planet. There was widespread panic and then things settled down. Nations and people were settling long disputes. In the end, the asteroid didn't even hit Earth or probably never even existed and everything was just fine, yay! First thing I thought of was Rendezvous With Rama but that's not it.
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Jan 21, 2018 04:45
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Maybe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Worlds_Collide ? Probably not though.
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Jan 21, 2018 06:51
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The Big Eye, by Max Erlich? First published 1949. Summary from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/max-ehrlich-2/the-big-eye-2/:quote:1960 is marked by strange happenings throughout the world, believed to be evidence of secret Russian weapons and it is merely a question of who starts the unavoidable war. At Palomar, Dr. Dawson calls a conference of international astronomers, has his calculations checked, and announces a new planet -- Y -- will overtake the earth and end the world in 1962, at Christmas. After a period of hysteria, all countries settle down to peace, prosperity, global good will and christian living, and, as the planet, resembling an ever watchful eye, draws nearer and time grows shorter, all wait their doom calmly. And the miracle comes -- the Big Eye stops before it crashes into the earth and then recedes. The world continues its new utopian course, and Dr. Dawson's assistant learns the true story of the Big Eye.
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Jan 21, 2018 07:12
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Added Space posted:A short story about a civilization that discovers they are inside a man's dream. They send an expedition to turn off the man's alarm clock so they can continue existing a bit longer. Mainly I remember this as an animated short. Rarg. https://youtu.be/jUApquYVH0E
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Jan 21, 2018 19:58
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uvar posted:The Big Eye, by Max Erlich? First published 1949. Summary from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/max-ehrlich-2/the-big-eye-2/: As soon as I said the title, they exclaimed "That's it!" Thanks a ton 
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Jan 22, 2018 18:17
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Science fiction book, probably from the 70s or 80s. I might have some of the details incorrect but iirc the central character is some sort of golden android traveling alone through space in a coffin like vessel on mission to found a new human civilization. There is some sort of malfunction and he unexpectedly lands on an alien world. He possesses the memories of his creator, who in the distant past had built many such androids. There is some sort of love triangle between the android and the two first humans who he awakes on the alien world, the humans being clones of the creator's colleagues. The golden android is totally hairless, naked and was featured prominently on the cover of the paperback I had read 20 something years ago.
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Jan 23, 2018 17:00
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Sinding Johansson posted:Science fiction book, probably from the 70s or 80s. I might have some of the details incorrect but iirc the central character is some sort of golden android traveling alone through space in a coffin like vessel on mission to found a new human civilization. There is some sort of malfunction and he unexpectedly lands on an alien world. He possesses the memories of his creator, who in the distant past had built many such androids. There is some sort of love triangle between the android and the two first humans who he awakes on the alien world, the humans being clones of the creator's colleagues. The golden android is totally hairless, naked and was featured prominently on the cover of the paperback I had read 20 something years ago. Manseed by Jack Williamson
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Jan 23, 2018 19:11
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Haha how could I forget. Thanks
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Jan 24, 2018 03:36
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Bit on the nose, isn't it?
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Jan 24, 2018 03:52
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It's all coming back to me. The golden man, in a tragic accident of birth has no genitals. He ferries his Adam and Eve around in a flying car while they relentlessly bang and he tries to ignore it. I was a young child when I read it....
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Jan 24, 2018 05:06
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I picked up that book by the title alone. I read it recently so I knew it right away. The golden android dude spends half the book wondering where his genitals are.
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Jan 24, 2018 17:58
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SirSlarty posted:I picked up that book by the title alone. I read it recently so I knew it right away. Who Moved My Dick?, that lesser-known management book.
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Jan 25, 2018 13:12
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Please help me identify relatively recent (probably written within the past decade or so) short story about the first generation of people genetically engineered to not need sleep. The story was mostly an exploration of the social pressures created by having a small group of (elites?) people who did not have this basic human limitation. The no-sleep people became very unpopular, and I think they formed a commune. I remember them getting pass-out drunk in an effort to see what sleep was all about.
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Jan 27, 2018 23:05
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Veni Vidi Ameche! posted:Please help me identify relatively recent (probably written within the past decade or so) short story about the first generation of people genetically engineered to not need sleep. The story was mostly an exploration of the social pressures created by having a small group of (elites?) people who did not have this basic human limitation. The no-sleep people became very unpopular, and I think they formed a commune. I remember them getting pass-out drunk in an effort to see what sleep was all about. Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress?
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Jan 27, 2018 23:47
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Veni Vidi Ameche! posted:Please help me identify relatively recent (probably written within the past decade or so) short story about the first generation of people genetically engineered to not need sleep. The story was mostly an exploration of the social pressures created by having a small group of (elites?) people who did not have this basic human limitation. The no-sleep people became very unpopular, and I think they formed a commune. I remember them getting pass-out drunk in an effort to see what sleep was all about. I remember reading this too. I think one of the side effects of no-sleeping was not aging, also, leading to that unpopularity. Don't remember what it was called though, sorry.
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Jan 27, 2018 23:49
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There's also Nod by Adrian Barnes but it's more of a scifi-horror thing. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16044493-nod
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Jan 28, 2018 11:09
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Runcible Cat posted:Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress? I think that has to be it, and I feel like I’ve been told that was it, before. I think I read the novella in a Hugo winners or “year’s best” collection, and I’m being thrown off by the fact that the novella was turned into a series of novels. Thanks. DarkDobe posted:I remember reading this too. You’re almost certainly thinking of the Kress stories, too. The “no aging” thing is a biggish plot point according to Wikipedia.
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Jan 28, 2018 11:43
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Veni Vidi Ameche! posted:I think that has to be it, and I feel like I’ve been told that was it, before. I think I read the novella in a Hugo winners or “year’s best” collection, and I’m being thrown off by the fact that the novella was turned into a series of novels. Thanks. If you're sure it was in a collection, there are some short stories as well - or maybe just one? "Sleeping Dogs", which is in a 1999 book called Far Horizons, and weirdly it's easier to find a copy of the entire story online than a synopsis of it but quote:Nancy Kress' "Sleeping Dogs" is set early in her Sleepless future, and it deals with a woman who vows revenge on the unscrupulous people who sold her father dogs engineered not to require sleep, without caring about the unforeseen consequences. It's not a bad story, but it's really not about her central idea of sleeplessness, but rather about revenge, and how the desire for it can harm people. As such, the connection with the Sleepless trilogy is more ornamentation than anything else. I hadn't thought about it for years but I have a copy of that book... I really should re-read my 'old' collections again.
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Jan 28, 2018 12:27
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A sci-fi novel. Humanity has a decent few interstellar colonies. Some scientist decides to do something impossible (FTL, time travel, something). This experiment catches the attention of a cosmic being. The being then puts most humans into stasis in embarrassing poses, rewrites history, and changes fundamental constants. He then tells the scientist to stop loving around and disappears. I know this is NOT a Star Trek or Q story, but I remember it being by a well known author and I think it was a sequel.
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Jan 30, 2018 20:46
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Added Space posted:A sci-fi novel. Humanity has a decent few interstellar colonies. Some scientist decides to do something impossible (FTL, time travel, something). This experiment catches the attention of a cosmic being. The being then puts most humans into stasis in embarrassing poses, rewrites history, and changes fundamental constants. He then tells the scientist to stop loving around and disappears. Singularity Sky by Charles Stross?
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Jan 30, 2018 21:09
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Kvlt! posted:This is a long shot. It was a book I think about a doctor or physician and I think he was depressed or a drug addict, or generally misanthropic or negative. Maybe it was Russian but I'm definitely not sure on that. It had some sort of horror or thriller bent I think. Sorry it's not a lot to go on, but if anyone can find it i'd greatly appreciate it. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey? I've got one from when I was a child (somewhere between 80-85) It was one of the "Weird, but True Supernatural" style books from Scholastic. I remember such stories in it (and they were only about a page/page and half long) about the body of a small alien creature that had washed up on a shore, a woman who had a dream that her recently deceased husband (or son) wa still alive and when they dug up his body he was still alive, and a man who when he was hanged, his body disappeared. There were probably about 20 stories in it, and it was a thin paperback with several illustrations on the cover, surrounded by a orange-ish border.
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Feb 12, 2018 20:40
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Veni Vidi Ameche! posted:I’m looking for a book I read, I’m going to guess, 25 or 30 years ago. It was a story about a young boy whose family adopted a child from Vietnam, or at least a Vietnamese kid. Another plot in the book was that the main character adopted a raccoon, and the raccoon got up to all sorts of shenanigans. I’m sure the adopted child was Vietnamese, and his last name was Nguyen, but the raccoon may have been a fox. Actually, I kind of think it was a fox. https://www.amazon.com/Hello-Name-Scrambled-Eggs-Minstrel/dp/0671741047 is the first thing that sprung to mind.
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Feb 13, 2018 17:29
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Beerdeer posted:https://www.amazon.com/Hello-Name-Scrambled-Eggs-Minstrel/dp/0671741047 Oh, wow. I think that’s probably it. Nice pull. I am almost certain there was a raccoon or fox pet involved, though, and I can’t find anything about that. Also, holy cow: that lady wrote Thirteen Ways to Sink a Sub. I was thinking of that book just a few hours ago.
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Feb 14, 2018 04:01
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Hi everyone, was hoping for some help locating a book that was written about a crazy period in my wife's family's distant history. My wife has been looking into her genealogy lately and found out that her distant grandfather, Johann Kenner, immigrated from Germany to Maryland with his wife and 6 kids around 1790. Her grandfather got into a bar fight that involved three of his sons and ended up killing another man. They fled to Tennessee and changed their name from Kenner to Queener. He died in Tennessee in 1814. A book was written by an adopted son of Flora Queener named Paul Lemaster about the killing and the family's flight to Tennessee. Flora, also known as Geraldine, was the daughter of Henry Queener, one of the sons involved in the bar fight. My wife is a descendant of Henry's brother, Jacob, another of the brothers that was involved. The book is titled The Queeners of Tennessee but we unfortunately don't know what year the book was written. My mother in law has done a lot of work trying to locate this book but has so far been unsuccessful. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how we could find this book or any resources that may help.
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Feb 18, 2018 05:20
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It could help the search to know when Paul Lemaster was an adult & published the book. Presumably sometime in the latter half of the 19th century, his adoptive mother being a granddaughter of Johann Kenner (fl. 1790–1814, probably born c. 1750s)? You could also try writing the guy mentioned in the note below, he could be a descendant and appears to be an authority on the family: https://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=familyhart&id=I56519 Also check out the genealogy thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3777244 Carthag Tuek fucked around with this message at 14:09 on Feb 18, 2018 |
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Feb 18, 2018 12:30
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Did some digging around, it appears Paul Lemasters died in 2016 at the age of 56. One of the people mentioned in his obit, Robert Bailey, is apparently an archivist/historian on the "Roane County Heritage Commission", Roane County (Kingston to be exact) being where Lemasters lived. Considering that the only mention of this book I can find is on Ancestry threads (even searched the Kingston TN library's catalog), I'd hazard a guess that trying to get in contact with Mr. Bailey might be your best shot. He's on Facebook, might just try sending a message there. E: Krankenstyle posted:You could also try writing the guy mentioned in the note below, he could be a descendant and appears to be an authority on the family: The guy in that note is Paul Lemasters. Lprsti99 fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Feb 18, 2018 |
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Feb 18, 2018 17:28
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Wow, thank you both so much for looking into this and giving me some great leads to pursue. I passed this along to my wife and mother in law and will definitely report back if we are able to learn more or find the book!
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Feb 20, 2018 03:12
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There's a kids' book, probably from the 90s, about a girl who has a new family move in next door who behave strangely. She befriends their daughter and finds out that they are apparently cursed with an evil cat, which makes their lives hell, keeps them from having any kind of social life, won't go away (it might have been that they had to get someone to take it willingly), and will only eat raw bones and candy corn. Eventually they manage to somehow transfer the cat to the rear end in a top hat old rich guy who owns half the town and, iirc, installed pay toilets in an orphanage or something along those lines. I think the main girl or her friend may have been named Nadia or Nadine.
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Feb 21, 2018 23:30
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Standard "probably from an anthology of sci-fi short stories". There has been some kind of radioactive event that leads to all kids being born all messed up. The narrator of the story repeatedly refers to her baby not being affected ("not my baby, my perfect little girl"). At the end someone else goes to change the baby's nappy or dress her or something and can't get her leg through the leg hole. He quickly realises the baby hasn't got any arms or legs, and the mum is just bonkers. Any takers?
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Feb 22, 2018 16:16
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Sanford posted:Standard "probably from an anthology of sci-fi short stories". There has been some kind of radioactive event that leads to all kids being born all messed up. The narrator of the story repeatedly refers to her baby not being affected ("not my baby, my perfect little girl"). At the end someone else goes to change the baby's nappy or dress her or something and can't get her leg through the leg hole. He quickly realises the baby hasn't got any arms or legs, and the mum is just bonkers. Any takers? That Only a Mother, Judith Merril.
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Feb 22, 2018 16:19
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Runcible Cat posted:That Only a Mother, Judith Merril. Three minutes, seriously? Edit: Also, thanks!
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Feb 22, 2018 16:20
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Sanford posted:Three minutes, seriously? 
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Feb 22, 2018 16:26
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Sort of political thriller I read around 2005. Set at the end of the cold war. As the Soviet Union collapses and splits into several nations, the same thing happens to USA. As in The union dissolves, and several new, smaller nations emerge. Some of them successful, others...not so much. I think the north west states was a dictatorship with a batshit insane dictator. There was also a war between two southern nations, mostly over where the borders extended into the gulf of Mexico. Ring any bells?
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Feb 24, 2018 15:14
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A local museum has a temporary exhibit about space exploration, and the stuff about living long-term on the ISS reminded me about this one that I can't quite place: A short story, near future sci-fi involving a psychological experiment in the months-long crew isolation necessary for travel to other planets. Turns out all the serious, professional crews crack up and try to murder each other, but the protagonists' crew of loony jokesters blow off steam and tension by pranking the hell out of each other and Mission Control, and wind up being most successful at staying mission-capable. One of the pranks involved pretending that their habitat module had been invaded by aliens, and an accordingly goofy rubber mask. Anyone recognize this?
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Feb 25, 2018 03:56
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My grandma read me the beginning of a book when I was a kid that I've never been able to find. It starts with a description of pea-soup fog, saying it was so thick it could give you webbed feet. The protagonist was a kid who lived with some elderly relatives at an inn or something. Two guys show up during the fog doing some kind of sideshow, claiming one of them had been hanged three times and lived. A rare coin goes missing while they're in town. And that's as far as we made it. None of my grandma's kids or other grandkids know it. Probably from the 40s-60s.
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Mar 1, 2018 23:50
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Disco Godfather posted:My grandma read me the beginning of a book when I was a kid that I've never been able to find. It rings a vague bell... maybe something by Sid Fleischman? Or The Black Symbol by Annabel & Edgar Johnson? I've got a copy of that around somewhere; if I can find it I'll check.
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Mar 2, 2018 00:19
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Runcible Cat posted:It rings a vague bell... maybe something by Sid Fleischman? Or The Black Symbol by Annabel & Edgar Johnson? I've got a copy of that around somewhere; if I can find it I'll check. Found it! Thanks!! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/350588.The_Ghost_on_Saturday_Night
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Mar 2, 2018 00:38
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Disco Godfather posted:Found it! Thanks!! Hooray!
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Mar 2, 2018 08:14
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I've got a kids' book I'm looking for. Shorter than a chapter book, and it was two stories in one book. The first story is about how Rooster got his crown by teaching the king's son to speak. The king promises half his kingdom and half his crown to anyone who can make his son speak. Rooster takes the prince fishing using a broken calabash and a basket with a hole in the bottom. He catches the same fish repeatedly while the prince stands mute. Then he berates the prince for stealing fish and the prince is so insulted that he begins to speak. The second story is about an evil and destructive elephant. The people tell him that they want to make him their king and they give him a crown and lay out a royal carpet for him to walk on. But the carpet is covering a giant pit and the elephant falls in.
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Mar 7, 2018 14:12
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I read a fiction story several years ago, I think it was online. A guy (named Michael? 23 years old?) is hit by a bus and goes to heaven, which turns out to be reality, and earth is a simulation/game maintained by an AI. There are aren't many people in existence (less than 100?), they don't have genitals, and are immortal. They can travel very quickly by sitting on grass, and there's a really dumb explanation about light just not being able to travel far. Any ideas what it is?
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Mar 10, 2018 04:15
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