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There was a Stephen king novella sort of about this. Can't remember the name but it came out last year or early this year. Bout a guy who loses weight, but not mass. He's not getting skinnier, he's built the same, just getting lighter over time until he starts to float around. It was an interesting concept but got a little too weirdly "woke" in a side plot involving lesbians who open a vegan? restaurant and how the town hates them. Still a neat read though. I remember thinking how loving weird it was to read a King book that was sort of a feel good story instead of a monster/creepy poo poo story. I'm trying to remember one, and I might be just combining multiple plots from books by mistake, but all I can remember is it's a book about some explorers in the jungle, and there's a cave or something where they find these people living there, and there's this golden goop that heals stuff and regrows limbs and whatnot but there's "monsters" in a lower cave that are the result of the goop not fixing poo poo but mutating people into creatures. I thought it was Amazonia by Rollins but after a re read that's not the book, while it does have magic goop, there's no people monster things. Sorry to be so vague. I think I read this as an ebook maybe 5-10+ years ago. I got the impression it was an actual published book and not a self pub via Kindle/Amazon. I know it's not much to go on but it's all I can recall at the moment.
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Aug 29, 2019 16:50
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:There was a Stephen king novella sort of about this. Can't remember the name but it came out last year or early this year. Bout a guy who loses weight, but not mass. He's not getting skinnier, he's built the same, just getting lighter over time until he starts to float around. I think it was his son, Joe Hill. A collection of short stories, but can't remember what it was called.
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Aug 29, 2019 17:01
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Elevation
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Aug 29, 2019 17:37
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:There was a Stephen king novella sort of about this. Can't remember the name but it came out last year or early this year. Bout a guy who loses weight, but not mass. He's not getting skinnier, he's built the same, just getting lighter over time until he starts to float around. That's rather derivative. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Pyecraft
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Aug 29, 2019 17:54
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Someone on these forums once posted a portion of some sci-fi story where the protagonist gains the ability to see in 4 dimensions. The description of their new sight was really neat. I'm looking for the name of the book and if anyone has it, that specific portion. Edit: If it helps I vaguely remember that the character is on an alien ship or perhaps on a human ship somewhere in space. They get some object or something that allows them to see in 4D and describe seeing everything including their own body in a new light. bowser fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Aug 30, 2019 |
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Aug 30, 2019 16:07
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bowser posted:Someone on these forums once posted a portion of some sci-fi story where the protagonist gains the ability to see in 4 dimensions. The description of their new sight was really neat. I'm looking for the name of the book and if anyone has it, that specific portion. Might be Rudy Rucker's Spaceland?
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Aug 30, 2019 16:27
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bowser posted:Someone on these forums once posted a portion of some sci-fi story where the protagonist gains the ability to see in 4 dimensions. The description of their new sight was really neat. I'm looking for the name of the book and if anyone has it, that specific portion. 'The Universe Between' by Alan Nourse?
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Aug 30, 2019 16:39
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How long ago is "once"? The third Three Body Problem book (by Cixin Liu, 2010) has a lot of dimensionality fuckery, including narrated point of view experiences.
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Aug 30, 2019 18:47
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Does the dude go mad at the end?
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Aug 30, 2019 18:47
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Krankenstyle posted:How long ago is "once"? I think this is it! Unfortunately I read the first book in this series (I think because of that quoted fourth dimension segment) and found it really underwhelming and hard to get through. The author is a master of describing scenes that are really fun to visualize but his characters are completely flat and the endless exposition sucked out any remaining enjoyment.
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Aug 30, 2019 18:51
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bowser posted:I think this is it! Unfortunately I read the first book in this series (I think because of that quoted fourth dimension segment) and found it really underwhelming and all around not fun to read. The author is a master of describing scenes that are really fun to visualize but his characters are completely flat and the endless exposition sucked out any remaining enjoyment. Agreed, the characters aren't very good but tbf the first book is by far the weakest, and yea it gets badly infodumpy in the last half. Liu is kinda like a Greg Egan, more about the ideas and concepts than engaging characters. The second and third ones are much less expository and I liked them a lot more, plus the ideas get a lot wilder. The wallfacers are a fun concept, and the dark forest is pretty scary tbh. imo its worth powering through the first one to get to the others.
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Aug 30, 2019 18:59
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Krankenstyle posted:Agreed, the characters aren't very good but tbf the first book is by far the weakest, and yea it gets badly infodumpy in the last half. Liu is kinda like a Greg Egan, more about the ideas and concepts than engaging characters. Dang I had the opposite reaction. I really liked the first book and rushed to pick up the second but could barely slog through and didn’t bother with the third.
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Aug 31, 2019 03:06
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Unkempt posted:An old SF book, 60s or around there. It starts in a magazine office, National Geographic or Nature or something, and they're trying to find their oldest subscriber; someone notices that there's a guy who's had a subscription for around a hundred years. They think it's probably several generations of people with the same name but go and meet him anyway, and of course it turns out it's just one man who's been getting it all that time, and after that I can't remember a thing about the book. Anyone? Holy poo poo this is over 10 years old. I found it last week, it was 'Way Station' by Clifford D Simak and my description was wrong in all sorts of ways.
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Sep 4, 2019 01:04
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Biplane posted:Does the dude go mad at the end? Don't they all?
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Sep 6, 2019 13:54
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I've thought about this short story for some time, and damned if I can remember any pronouns to search for it: A bunch of scientists are secreted away to some lab, where a scientist has revealed hes discovered a time-watching machine. He explains that the thing functions like a clacker-ball toy. It'll be here, then bounce back in time a billion years, then come back to here, bounce backwards a million years, come back, bounce back a thousand years, yadda yadda yadda, until it comes back with pictures of every time period it wound up in. One of the scientists is actually a journalist, a woman, who asks the scientist your standard what-if-anything-goes-wrong question. This causes friction with the assembled group, because she's a journalist (who snuck in? Was related to someone on the project? I can't remember), and a woman. The head scientist guy says nothing will go wrong, activating the machine. The story explains how the device went back a billion years, knocking a random particle or six off course. When it came back and went backwards a million years in time, it displaced some microbe. Came back, thousand years backwards, did something, etc etc, until it stopped back in normal time. Cut to everyone in the place turning to goo (or something), and while the goo-people scatter (with some implication that they've always been Goo People), the Head Goo Scientist going "see? nothing bad happened!" MisterBibs fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Sep 6, 2019 |
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Sep 6, 2019 20:38
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MisterBibs posted:I've thought about this short story for some time, and damned if I can remember any pronouns to search for it: Kiiind of like R A Lafferty's Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne, but I think I remember something closer as well. Drawing a blank on more details ATM though. You can google chunks of the Lafferty and see if it seems familiar - the opening line is: quote:'We've been on some tall ones," said Gregory Smirnov of the Institute, "but we've never stood on the edge of a bigger one than this, nor viewed one with shakier expectations. Still, if the calculations of Epiktistes are correct, this will work."
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Sep 6, 2019 22:15
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Expecting no one to know this, since it's such a nothing piece of information, but this bit from a book popped into my head, and now it's an itch I can't scratch. All I remember is a bullwhip with a gold coin that was inset on the bottom of the handle.
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Sep 6, 2019 22:21
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MisterBibs posted:I've thought about this short story for some time, and damned if I can remember any pronouns to search for it ”Brooklyn Project” by William Tenn. Action Jacktion fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Sep 6, 2019 |
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Sep 6, 2019 22:22
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I’m looking for a children’s short story I would listen to on cassette when I was little, around October. It features a kid (or maybe a couple of kids?) who investigate the neighborhood’s notorious haunted house, get thoroughly spooked by weirdness, and then discover that it’s actually just the cover for an intergalactic travel hub. A friendly alien walks them through the place, shows them how all the phenomena they’ve experienced are just illusions designed to keep nosy humans away, and basically gives them a tour of a spaceport. I vaguely remember a scene where they’re at a restaurant or bar, and if memory serves, the kids are drinking a weird alien concoction that is a bunch of different flavors that changes as you drink it, which sounded like the coolest thing ever to six-year-old me. Does anyone else remember this thing, or have the vaguest idea what it might be called?
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Sep 7, 2019 02:31
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Davros1 posted:Expecting no one to know this, since it's such a nothing piece of information, but this bit from a book popped into my head, and now it's an itch I can't scratch.
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Sep 7, 2019 11:23
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Thank you so much! 
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Sep 7, 2019 16:19
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wheatpuppy posted:That makes me think of By the Great Horn Spoon by Sid Fleischman. But I think that might be me conflating with the movie version (Bullwhip Griffin) butler keeping gold dust in his gloves. He had gold dust in his gloves in the book, too! Man, I forgot all about that book but I loved it as a kid!
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Sep 8, 2019 06:50
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Sid Fleischman is great.
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Sep 8, 2019 16:37
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I have a copy of The Ghost in the Noonday Sun on my shelves but still haven't read it -- I'll have to dig it out sometime. As for the bullwhip with the gold coin, the only thing I can think of is Geoffrey Marsh (aka Charles L. Grant)'s Lincoln Blackthorne series, which starred a globetrotting adventurer blatantly copied from Indiana Jones to the point of using a whip. I don't recall the gold coin specifically, though.
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Sep 8, 2019 22:20
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It's a kid's story, kind of Astrid Lindgren-ish but more messed up. Two brothers (no this is not The Brothers Lionheart) are in some kind of fantasy land, separated and taken in by different groups. I distinctly remember the one brother being in a group that was put in eggs, to be eaten by those who took in the other brother.
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Sep 8, 2019 22:40
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Absurd Alhazred posted:It's a kid's story, kind of Astrid Lindgren-ish but more messed up. Two brothers (no this is not The Brothers Lionheart) are in some kind of fantasy land, separated and taken in by different groups. I distinctly remember the one brother being in a group that was put in eggs, to be eaten by those who took in the other brother. This sounds similar to Joy Chant's Red Moon and Black Mountain, although that has a sister, as well.
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Sep 9, 2019 02:01
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xcheopis posted:This sounds similar to Joy Chant's Red Moon and Black Mountain, although that has a sister, as well. From what I'm reading it seems like it's way more elaborate than what I remember, but I might have to pick it up and check for sure.
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Sep 9, 2019 02:11
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Absurd Alhazred posted:From what I'm reading it seems like it's way more elaborate than what I remember, but I might have to pick it up and check for sure. It's a series, too, which I had forgotten.
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Sep 9, 2019 02:24
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Short story, might have been Stephen King, where some kids get a weird wire toy that completely befuddles all adults. Eventually a scientist looks at it and is also stumped but at least determines that the toy is using higher dimensions and that adult minds are already too set in their ways to comprehend it. Before they can be stopped the kids use their knowledge to travel to said higher dimensions. The end! No moral
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Sep 9, 2019 03:36
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The Chad Jihad posted:Short story, might have been Stephen King, where some kids get a weird wire toy that completely befuddles all adults. Eventually a scientist looks at it and is also stumped but at least determines that the toy is using higher dimensions and that adult minds are already too set in their ways to comprehend it. Before they can be stopped the kids use their knowledge to travel to said higher dimensions. The end! No moral Mimsy Were the Borogoves?
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Sep 9, 2019 03:53
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xcheopis posted:This sounds similar to Joy Chant's Red Moon and Black Mountain, although that has a sister, as well. No one gets put in eggs in that though. Older brother gets adopted by unicorn-riding tribespeople and younger brother and sister get found by magic-using royal not-elves. Sister and not-elf princess then get kidnapped and younger brother has to head to the capital to warn the king. If that helps.
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Sep 9, 2019 06:17
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Thanks, this is definitely it, though all the time travel and alice in wonderland parts got memory-holed
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Sep 9, 2019 12:51
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This was a non fiction essay about someone who broke up with their exciting photojournalist boyfriend for something more stable. There’s a line in it about how they wanted someone who would enjoy cute pictures of their friends kids with them instead of laughing at them. I cannot remember who wrote it at all  . It was a woman, and I think a pretty well known essayist/memoir writer.
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Sep 11, 2019 06:23
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Tip of my tongue. A piece of soft scifi web fiction, about a man who has brian trauma. He’s implanted with a sort of experimental personality adjuster and the doctors train him to visualize and move the dials himself. Later on he falls in love with a girl who works at a local bookstore, and gets depressed. Set in the UK maybe?
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Sep 16, 2019 21:46
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Barry Bluejorts posted:Tip of my tongue. A piece of soft scifi web fiction, about a man who has brian trauma. He’s implanted with a sort of experimental personality adjuster and the doctors train him to visualize and move the dials himself. Later on he falls in love with a girl who works at a local bookstore, and gets depressed. Set in the UK maybe?
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Sep 16, 2019 22:25
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Llamadeus posted:I think this is Reasons to Be Cheerful by Greg Egan That was it! Thanks!
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Sep 17, 2019 00:28
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I listened to this story on a podcast, probably Starship Sofa. Must’ve been at least 10 years ago and I’m fuzzy on the details. Broadly, it’s about a guy living in a totalitarian dystopia who’s been convicted of rape, and part of his sentence is being subject to experiments where increasingly bizarre pieces of alien anatomy are grafted onto his body. The central conceit was to create a creature so alien that it somehow pushes the boundaries of reality. Mankind had been somehow trapped in a limited amount of space and this was part of an effort to break out. In the end, I think he escapes, although it’s not really him any longer at that point. I seem to recall the protagonist lives in an apartment building where all the apartments are in constant webcam communication with each other, and his neighbours will regularly tell him how he shouldn’t have raped that girl if he didn’t want to be in his predicament. He’s summoned for his sessions by a flying insect drone finding him and injecting some kind of drug, unannounced. Yeah, it sounds crazy, but there was something about the story and the narrator’s delivery that did it for me at the time. Looking at what I just typed, it has dream-logic written all over it. Any ideas?
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Sep 18, 2019 20:25
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immolationsex posted:I listened to this story on a podcast, probably Starship Sofa. Must’ve been at least 10 years ago and I’m fuzzy on the details. Really reminds me of this comic: 
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Sep 19, 2019 00:35
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Really reminds me of this comic: I thought of Legorobot as well
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Sep 19, 2019 01:04
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Its scifi, short story I believe, about a guy coming home from some war at the end of time and being dropped back off in his original point. As the story progresses be is harassed by other veterans of the war who to the locals seem supernaturally powerful and fearsome. Eventually he confronts them wherein its revealed hes even more inhuman due to the war than they are and he dispatches them with grisly efficiency. I believe his family name is Bones, his family business (abandoned when he was at war) is a distillery, and he chants a bizarre poem to himself that contains odd phrases something like "icicle spike and devils eye" edit: of course I find it immediately afterwards "A Dry, Quiet War" Barudak fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Sep 22, 2019 |
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Sep 22, 2019 03:28
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