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strange feelings re Daisy posted:Aliens scout Earth, deem it an easy target for invasion, and return with their invasion force many years later. The problem is by the time they return human technology has advanced far further than they anticipated and Earth is now capable of putting up a substantial fight. I can't remember the name and it's driving me crazy. That would be Turtledove’s Worldwar series e:fb
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Jan 7, 2019 13:39
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uvar posted:Harry Turtledove's Worldwar books? Aliens scout us in the 12th century, return in the middle of WWII.
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Jan 7, 2019 13:42
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Human Tornada posted:I'm trying to piece together which of Richard Stark's Parker novels I've read, can anybody tell me which one has him driving a bulldozer into a gun store and taking the guns he needs? Are you sure you're not confusing it with the film Commando? (I have never read a Parker novel)
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Jan 8, 2019 03:50
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Novel I read in the early 1990s. Set in Spain, in the Franco era. A rich man is approached by an elderly man, who asks to be his slave. Not in a kinky way, he literally wants to be a house slave, in the style of ancient Rome. The rich man agrees, thinking it is half a joke, half elderly man needing a job and a place to live. But the old man is serious. He insists on wearing a kind of bracelet or collar in the style of prison manacles. Claiming that as a slave owned by a powerful man he is safer and better off than as a free, but poor and powerless man. At a supper party for military men he silently serves food kneeling at each seat while serving. The rich man is utterly mortified and tries to get out of the whole slave thing. But the old man insists that no, he is a slave owner now, with the responsibilities that come with his station. The son of the house is worried that his father is going to Hell for owning a slave. Ends with the slave and owner going to a church, step up to the altar, where the slave finally agrees to having his slave manacles removed. With a priest as a witness. They then kneel to receive communion, and the priest is crying when giving them the bread.
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Jan 10, 2019 12:45
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This is a novel I read, inadequately, as part of a Contemporary (US) Southern Literature course around 2007. I don't remember a lot about it, but there was a major, if not principle, theme of the American South's Southern-ness being supplanted by generic modern American-ness, featuring a character who I think was the husband or brother-in-law of the female protagonist, him being a middle-class dipshit in a loud shirt involved in marketing or selling new suburban / exurban housing developments in what I recall being a sort of intermediate-Southern location, Georgia or northern Florida. I'm pretty sure it was written 80s-2000s, probably 90s, and I think the author was a woman. Many thanks to anyone who can turn my half-memories into a book.
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Jan 11, 2019 19:19
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This story might have appeared in a set of children’s encyclopedias I had fortyish years ago, but I’m not sure. The story was about an apprentice sumo wrestler, and his teacher. Mainly, I think it was about the young man’s training, and making him big and strong. I remember that his teacher kept preparing his rice with less and less water in order to toughen him up. I guess the idea was that if you can chew drier and drier rice, you’re getting stronger. I think there were also feats of strength. One day, the apprentice couldn’t life a sapling, but later on he could lift an entire tree, stuff like that. I think the young wrestler eventually became a massive badass, and might have gone on to become a renowned champion, or something along those lines.
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Jan 15, 2019 06:24
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A YA book I read in the UK sometime in the 80's. I can't remember anything except that the protagonist might have had a single mum and that they and their friends were making a book that was called something like "The observers guide to British shits" or "Turds of the British Isles" the content of which was labeled and dated homemade pictures of turds of one sort or another with the occasional conservative politician every few pages. The turd book was a throwaway gag, not central to the plot. I think it took place in a seaside town?
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Jan 15, 2019 15:05
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Veni Vidi Ameche! posted:This story might have appeared in a set of children’s encyclopedias I had fortyish years ago, but I’m not sure. This is a Japanese folk tale called Three Strong Women.
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Jan 15, 2019 17:16
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Easy-Bake Coven posted:This is a Japanese folk tale called Three Strong Women. That's totally it. Thank you.
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Jan 15, 2019 21:38
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Please help me book thread, I remember vaguely some story (stories) I read some years back during a deep sci-fi dive that I cannot recall either the title or author of, and I fear I may go crazy. My memories are sparse, but I recall that it centers on a young girl who lives (maybe) beneath a mountain in a post-apocalyptic type commune that barely remembers the world that came before. Life is rough and she ends up outside the safety of the earthen walls, and through some weird circumstances ends up spirited away to a series of increasingly mind blowing alien habitats that appear to be constructed specifically for human beings. From there you have strange companions and even stranger environments, including segments with non-euclidian geometries and other seemingly impossible things. My explanation is terrible but my memory of it is fragmented and possibly polluted by other books I'd read in the intervening time. That's my current bugbear so if anyone can help me track it down that'd be great. Also, there was another much simpler book I remember more of that I have forgotten the name of at least twice that maybe someone knows. It's about a kid who runs away from a comfy suburban home to a whimsical mansion surrounded by hedgerows wherein everyday is a holiday like halloween or christmas and such and nobody ages, but anyone who tries to leave finds themselves turned back by said hedge. Later in the book they discover strange batlike creatures, and even later it turns out the children are being turned into these creatures by the house or the entity that controls it. It's firmly YA fiction, but I can't for the life of me recall the title.
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Jan 17, 2019 02:02
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zxqv8 posted:
I suspect this one is Clive Barker's The Thief of Always.
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Jan 17, 2019 02:27
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Lemniscate Blue posted:I suspect this one is Clive Barker's The Thief of Always. Yes! That was it, thank you! I read it as a kid then forgot the title, then asked the teacher who had introduced me to it, then forgot the title again since. Gotta bookmark this poo poo so I stop forgetting. Now I just gotta hope my other broken description jogs someone's memory.
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Jan 17, 2019 02:39
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Veni Vidi Ameche! posted:There's an old science fiction story where a person is kidnapped by a mysterious being or beings, and plopped down on some foreign landscape, and given instructions he has to follow. There's a lot of, "Walk forward fifty steps, then turn sharply left," and, "This place does not obey the physical laws of your world..." The being giving the instructions often refers to previous victims of this treatment, and encourages the person by telling him the last person didn't make it this far, and so on. It quickly becomes obvious that the person is being used as a living chess piece in a game being played by higher-dimensional beings, or aliens, or something. Veni Vidi Ameche! posted:A person is mysteriously transported or teleported to an alien or other-dimensional place. The person is given instructions, with little or no explanation. The entire story is told by having us listen to the instructions, commentary, and scant explanations of the off-screen character who is in charge of the situation. Quoting myself from the Way Back, because this is still an unsolved mystery.
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Jan 17, 2019 04:55
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Veni Vidi Ameche! posted:Quoting myself from the Way Back, because this is still an unsolved mystery. There's a SFE entry for Chess stories, perhaps you recognize something from there? http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/chess
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Jan 17, 2019 05:36
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Veni Vidi Ameche! posted:Quoting myself from the Way Back, because this is still an unsolved mystery. It's a tiny little bit like Silverberg's Man in the Maze, but not nearly enough I think.
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Jan 17, 2019 06:18
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zxqv8 posted:My memories are sparse, but I recall that it centers on a young girl who lives (maybe) beneath a mountain in a post-apocalyptic type commune that barely remembers the world that came before. Life is rough and she ends up outside the safety of the earthen walls up until the alien bit this sounds like the city of ember
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Jan 17, 2019 06:31
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Hobnob posted:There's a SFE entry for Chess stories, perhaps you recognize something from there? Thank you, but it’s not in there. I found that resource last time I was looking for this story. The game the beings are playing isn’t strictly chess. I’m not even sure if the word chess is used, although I kind of think it was. It’s been a long time since I read the story. Resident Idiot posted:It's a tiny little bit like Silverberg's Man in the Maze, but not nearly enough I think. Nah. There was no greater context to this story. If there was, it was part of a larger work the story taken from. I think the story just plops us down in the middle, with some guy being abducted and used as a pawn in a pissing contest between two space egos.
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Jan 17, 2019 06:41
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chernobyl kinsman posted:up until the alien bit this sounds like the city of ember It sounds similar, but what I'm remembering is definitely something else. I'm remembering something to do with a gamma ray burst loving everything up, but again I'm not sure if it's from the same thing or not. I feel like maybe I'm mixing it up with another book with trans-humanist themes of some sort, or maybe it's part of the same story. I recall some hard sci-fi setting where most of humanity decides to escape a predicted impending gamma ray burst by uploading their minds into a computer with the hardware buried deep enough to escape the damage the burst would do to it. The simulation also births new individuals by creating personality seeds that are then iterated upon until they're indistinguishable from an uploaded personality. At some point in the story a constructed personality leaves the simulation by being copied to some sort of automaton managed by a remnant that never uploaded...or something. I just have all these fragments of stories stuck in my head from a period where I was reading the weirdest hard sci-fi I could find and can't remember the full details, authors, or titles of any of them. Edit: After writing all that garbage out, I found out it was from Diaspora, by Greg Egan. Though I'm glad I could figure that one out too, it isn't the book I'm trying to remember from my earlier post. That one firmly escapes me still. zxqv8 fucked around with this message at 08:54 on Jan 17, 2019 |
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Jan 17, 2019 08:50
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I'm terrible with titles but I remember reading this in the early 90s with a few strange details sticking in my mind. -It's set in a life is super cheap sci fi future where corporate meetings are settled with some kind of rollerball style last person standing combat. -$15 to buy a suit is deemed a lot of money -The main character was born with no ears -He works with or at least knows two bouncers, one with no arms the other with no legs. -His female companion has nails sticking out of her head (she puts fruit there when shopping) -If you fall down a manhole/hole in the ground you get ripped to pieces by rats. -The army are brutal I know it's definately a book, I'd love to know if it was worth reading ever again... Edit: Whelp, turns out I asked about the same book years ago. Hopefully someone has stumbled over it since then.. Camo Guitar fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Jan 22, 2019 |
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Jan 22, 2019 05:00
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I hesitate to post this, because it’s almost certainly hopeless, but this thread has been lying fallow for a while. This is going to sound like I’m trolling the thread, because I have absolutely no useful details to give, but I promise this story exists, and I’d to know what it was. I swear to God, as I finished typing that last sentence, the name of the character, which I had been unable to remember, popped into my head, and that name turned out to also be the name of the story, which turned out to be easily googleable, so thank you, book identifying thread.
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Jan 28, 2019 10:45
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Veni Vidi Ameche! posted:I swear to God, as I finished typing that last sentence, the name of the character, which I had been unable to remember, popped into my head, and that name turned out to also be the name of the story, which turned out to be easily googleable, so thank you, book identifying thread. And you're not going to share what it was?
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Jan 28, 2019 12:43
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uvar posted:And you're not going to share what it was? I’ll post the question I was going to ask, and see how long it takes Goons to figure it out. Now that I’ve found it, I think Goons would have been able to answer the question, even with my limited details. This is a story I read a long time ago, at least thirty years. It had kind of a dusty feel to it, like the characters were poor or lived in a poor place. I kind of remember it being maybe in the Soviet Union, or somewhere in that region, but that could be totally wrong. The story is about a kid and (I think) his mother. I don’t remember any plot, but I think the kid made friends with a man that lived in their apartment block or something. I think there was something wrong or scary about this guy, but I don’t remember what. The guy had a name that seemed very strange to me at the time, something like Mr. Lucchessi [now that I know his name, I don’t actually remember what I thought his name was], but not exactly that, and even more odd, because I don’t think I’d ever heard the name, before. Also - and this might be 100% wrong - the guy might have been imaginary. ^^ I think that’s approximately what I was going to ask.
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Jan 28, 2019 18:26
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Heya, looking for a meaningful childhood book for a friend. It got her into Egyptian mythology. No author, title, or character names can be remembered. Here's what I've got: -She read it before the year 2000, and thought that it was maybe an older book. Had that sort of rough texture to it. -It was missing its dust jacket. The book was gold, with four black hieroglyphs down the center. -About pinkie-width. Guessing no more than 200-250 pages. -Story of a father who is made pharaoh for a day, in ancient Egypt. His son learns that it's because his father is going to be sacrificed!! She specifically used the wording "sun god's wrath," so presumably something to do with Ra? -She said it was sort of a coming-of-age story. She thinks the son was the protagonist, and that he was maybe at most 12 or 13. Given the length, and the age of the main character, I'm thinking this has got to be children's lit, or a YA novel. Google has been no help, so any ideas are greatly appreciated. 
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Jan 28, 2019 23:25
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I'm not so much looking for help i.d.-ing a book as i.d.-ing a general source. Last thursday I ended up seeing If Beale Street Could Talk based on the Baldwin book. Now, I have not read the Baldwin book, so I'm really here more or less to get clarification on the source of the following quote which acts as a preface to the film, because nowhere that I search for the quote on line ever leads me to a proper citation. It could possibly be a forward or preface to an edition of the book that isn't in print anymore, which would make sense, but among preview copies and e-book editions online I can't find the quotation at all. quote:Beale Street is a street in New Orleans, where my father, where Louis Armstrong and the jazz were born.
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Jan 29, 2019 00:34
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yaffle posted:Also let me know how Conrads war stands up, I really liked it as a kid. Alright, which of you goons wrote this?  Just finished Conrad's War. Also, just started Conrad's War - it's only 144 pages.  I enjoyed it, and this is not just the nostalgia speaking. From a 2019 perspective, I guess it's about a boy trying to deal with a world of toxic masculinity, but in 1978 it's about the maturation of a young boy as he moves past his childish obsession with war and killing, and about his growing understanding of his family. It was published only 33 years after the end of WW2. 33 years ago was 1986, and that's when Challenger blew up, when Chernobyl blew up, when Crocodile Dundee blew up. No wonder Conrad is obsessed by the war - every one of his father's generation lived through it. Or didn't live through it. From early on.  From midway through.  Some big thoughts for pre-teens. It was good. It drags a little (in so much as a 144-page book can drag) when Conrad escapes from Colditz (spoiler), but I'm glad I've revisited it. I read it and re-read it over and over as a kid. Now for the Borribles. MOD EDIT: use [timg] people! (also neat post thanks) Somebody fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Feb 7, 2019 |
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Feb 5, 2019 07:29
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Sci fi short story, probably golden age-era, a couple of kids are exploring their grandparents attic or something and marveling at all the old-timey stuff. They don't understand the point of a book since it only has one story in it.
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Feb 7, 2019 00:16
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regulargonzalez posted:Sci fi short story, probably golden age-era, a couple of kids are exploring their grandparents attic or something and marveling at all the old-timey stuff. They don't understand the point of a book since it only has one story in it. The Fun They Had, by Isaac Asimov.
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Feb 7, 2019 06:12
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regulargonzalez posted:Sci fi short story, probably golden age-era, a couple of kids are exploring their grandparents attic or something and marveling at all the old-timey stuff. They don't understand the point of a book since it only has one story in it. http://web1.nbed.nb.ca/sites/ASD-S/1820/J%20Johnston/Isaac%20Asimov%20-%20The%20fun%20they%20had.pdf e:fb
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Feb 7, 2019 16:25
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Veni Vidi Ameche! posted:The Fun They Had, by Isaac Asimov. Humbug Scoolbus posted:http://web1.nbed.nb.ca/sites/ASD-S/1820/J%20Johnston/Isaac%20Asimov%20-%20The%20fun%20they%20had.pdf Thank you!
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Feb 7, 2019 21:17
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Trying to find the title of a book so I can actually read it. I was in one of my library branches in February in 2017 browsing Black History books. A fiction book for children or teens caught my eye. I remember reading the back seemed to have an excerpt of a part of the book where the black boy protagonist was talking with the white boy protagonist about being careful in the woods as they walk in a forest, talking out loud to supposedly throw off who he felt may be listening. Adding something about his grandma (?). The white protagonist is puzzled and teases him about it [ "your grandma?" ] and doesn't understand why he is worried what his grandma would hear. Black protagonist then hints that there may be some kind of monster in the woods. I remember the cover looking like a color photo of the two kids in clothes from a period from early 1900-1910s- walking in a forest. No idea when it was published but appeared to be brand new at the time.
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Feb 10, 2019 06:51
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Agreeable Employer posted:Trying to find the title of a book so I can actually read it. That sorta sounds like The House of Dies Drear.
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Feb 11, 2019 04:04
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RC and Moon Pie posted:That sorta sounds like The House of Dies Drear. No. Not that. Thie synopsis for it sounds like a good story, though! Adding it to my list.
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Feb 11, 2019 13:48
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Okay discussion on lab grown meat has made me remember this book of connected short stories. The premise is an engineer on a worldship or somesuch that can do large scale terraforming projects is the only person who lives through some catastrophe on the ship, and hires himself out to "fix planets", so the short stories are just the problems he encounters and how he fixes them. The one I'm remembering is he goes to a planet that is having overpopulation issues, agrees to help with food but warns them they really need to work on the overpopulation thing, then comes back and they just grew population due to the food, then he creates lab meat factories, and then the same thing happens, and then he makes some manna from heaven kind of thing, but laces it with something that lowers population growth (sterilization, lower sex drive, I forget what), so a genophage basically. Does this ring a bell for anyone? Gotta be 15 years ago at least that I read it, it's not at all a new book. It had some title like "blah name, world engineer" but a bit more grandiose.
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Feb 11, 2019 22:11
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Tuf Voyaging, by George RR Martin.
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Feb 11, 2019 22:15
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Khizan posted:Tuf Voyaging, by George RR Martin. Oh yup that's the one, thanks. And that kinda explains why the morals of the stories didn't actually seem particularly moral whatsoever.  thanks
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Feb 11, 2019 22:18
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Agreeable Employer posted:Trying to find the title of a book so I can actually read it. Found it. The Madman of Piney Woods by Christopher Paul Curtis. A companion book to Elijah of Buxton. I should have mentioned I had a feeling it was set in Canada. It was.
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Feb 12, 2019 17:05
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Khizan posted:Tuf Voyaging, by George RR Martin. Related question. What's the best collection of GRRM short stories?
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Feb 13, 2019 19:19
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lifg posted:Related question. What's the best collection of GRRM short stories? Sandkings and Dreamsongs. Sandkings has Sandkings, which is a fantastic science fiction/horror mashup, which contains an unusually accurate depiction of a psychopathic person. Sandkings also has Fast-Friend which is a pretty gut-wrenching story about loss and separation from someone you love. The Way of Cross and Dragon is a pretty good far-future story featuring a Catholic priest/enforcer and an alien Pope. Dreamsongs is huge, with a ton of content. It includes two Tuf stories, as well as other science fiction, and numerous horror/crossover stories. Meathouse Man is an extremely grim tale featuring animated-corpse brothels. The Monkey Treatment is a horror/humor tale about a fat guy trying to lose some weight. The Pear-Shaped Man is just loving creepy. A Song for Lya and Nightflyers, two of what I would call his classic works, are also in there. The coolest part, though, is that it contains a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff, with George talking about sending letters to fan magazines, publishing his first works in those magazines, and discussing the reasons some of the stories in the collection came to exist. Dreamsongs contains most of the stories in Sandkings, too. I know he’s become very famous in recent years due to A Song of Ice and Fire, but I’m a bit of a stan for his earlier work. I think George RR Martin is a much stronger writer than he gets credit for. His science fiction/horror is probably the best in the genre.
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Feb 14, 2019 05:32
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Need help remembering the name of a book I saw mentioned in the fantasy thread I think? Apparently it's some fantasy thief thing in a fantasy version of Venice. The title has a format liek "the many crimes of lucien lachance", but obviously with a different name and verbs probably The author wrote a sequel after many years because of bad brain stuff but that's all I know about him I swear I added it on my to read list but I can't find it anywhere because I'm a big dumb idiot
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Feb 16, 2019 01:40
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The Lies of Locke Lamora
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Feb 16, 2019 01:46
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