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Moon Slayer
Jun 19, 2007

Somewhere, a few decades ago, a scifi writer whose name escapes me suddenly stopped and thought "has anyone written a sequel to The Time Machine?" Apparently this was a thing that you could just do, idk. (note, I looked it up later and this is apparently the official sequel approved by the Wells estate. Who knew?)

The story begins less than 12 hours after the protagonist has returned from the future. He immediately decides that he's going to go back and save his girlfriend from the Morlocks. This time he'll be prepared, though, and arms himself with a fire poker. But when his machine gets going forward things seem different, especially when the sun goes out. He arrives to find that Morlocks rule the world, are intelligent, and have busted up the whole solar system to build a Dyson sphere around the sun.

He picks up a Morlock sidekick and heads back in time to stop himself from building the machine in the first place. This is usually the conclusion of a time travel's journey of self discovery, so props for going straight for this solution I guess. Anyway he, his sidekick, and his past self are arguing when a giant World War 1 tank appears on his street and a time-traveling British Army lady officer from the 1930's take them all to her present. World War 1 never ended here because the Germans did some time travel. Due to constant bombing raids all British cities are beneath domes, too. Now they want their own time machine to really Red Alert 3 this war.

During a German attack though the dome is breached and the protagonist's younger self is killed. Everyone spends a few minutes trying to figure out what this means. Anyway they escape and end up in dinosaur times. The British follow them and are arresting them again when a German plane shows up and nukes everything. The surviving British build up a settlement.

Protagonist and Morlock repair their time machine and start jumping forward. They watch the settlement expand, grow into a huge city, the Earth getting wrecked, and giant ships leaving the planet, all before humans ever technically evolved. Time travel!

Anyway they get to somewhere in the future or possibly the past and are taken in by an AI who wants to time travel back to the start of the universe for ... some reason. They build The Time Ships (that's the name of the book!) and start rewinding. Turns out if you go back to the Big Bang you can access all timelines. I guess it's like a junction or something. The AI goes off into one timeline to rule the universe and the protagonist is shot back into his original timeline. He stops to give his younger self the idea to build a time machine and then heads to the future to save his girlfriend from the original book.

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reignofevil
Nov 7, 2008
I first experienced The Time Machine in a decrepit basement in New York City when a single nerd did a 'live radio show' and he just read the story really hard while colored strobe lights occasionally flashed and by God knowing about this sequel now I can't help but feel like I totally got ripped off.

Two Owls
Sep 17, 2016

Yeah, count me in

GotLag posted:

Every star with a planet capable of supporting life has a bubble around it that's invisible from the inside but impenetrable from the outside. Someone's been seeding the galaxy and so far humanity are the first ones to have broken out and it's depressingly lonely on a civilisational level.

Oh, that reminds me of another one.

Bubble around the Solar system mysteriously just appears one day. Some people go mad with loneliness but the bulk of the book is set years later. Everyone has neural modifications, and Our Hero - a PI investigating some sinister corporation's research - gets caught and has a Loyalty-to-the-Corporation mod forcibly jammed into his brain. Except: this backfires as he meets another bunch of people with loyalty mods, who have brain-rules-lawyered their way into believing they are the Actual Real Corporation. They have the corporation's best interests literally wired into their brain, and so must take it over.

Anyway: the research turns out to be into quantum wavefunction collapse, which turns out actually happens in the brain (and so can be influenced by a new brain mod). This is also why the bubble was put in place - every time a human looked into the sky they were collapsing the wavefunction and causing untold damage to the quantum multiverse or whatever so some aliens just snipped us out of the universe.

I forget what happened in the end, some people got the quantum brain mod and everything went a bit weird with multiple realities all over the place.

Quarantine by Greg Egan/Bear, I always get them mixed up

Groke
Jul 27, 2007
New Adventures In Mom Strength

Two Owls posted:

has a Loyalty-to-the-Corporation mod forcibly jammed into his brain. Except: this backfires as he meets another bunch of people with loyalty mods, who have brain-rules-lawyered their way into believing they are the Actual Real Corporation. They have the corporation's best interests literally wired into their brain, and so must take it over.

This part was kind of cute. So there's this group of people who have loyalty mods that ensure they always act in the best interests of the Corporation. So they think about it for a little bit and come to realize that the people currently in charge do not have the loyalty mod so cannot be trusted to act in the best interests of the Corporation, so they cannot be allowed to stay in charge. Quite logical, really.

Moon Slayer
Jun 19, 2007

reignofevil posted:

I first experienced The Time Machine in a decrepit basement in New York City when a single nerd did a 'live radio show' and he just read the story really hard while colored strobe lights occasionally flashed and by God knowing about this sequel now I can't help but feel like I totally got ripped off.

God that sounds totally insufferable.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
A team of aliens arrive on Earth to arrest the world's most dangerous galactic criminal. This criminal has been hiding on Earth, as it is seen as a rather backwoods planet--somewhat off the grid, and in advance of first contact.

The team includes a diplomacy officer, a telepathic science officer, an engineer who has a little sidekick organism, a tactical officer shaped like a lemon, and a captain whose personality is controlled by the diplomacy officer using a series of rods shoved into his brain.

They create a deputy on Earth in order to help find the criminal and to escort them around Earth, as a technical malfunction affected their ship when it landed on the planet.

We learn a lot about the crew and the basis of morality for the "civilized" members of the galaxy.

At the end, they find the criminal, who is actually---a bad dude! He threatens to kill some toddlers, makes a drat good effort at killing everyone else, and is generally a real bastard. He revels in being a dickhead--and this is the greatest of all crimes: causing unnecessary suffering for personal amusement.

Finally, the aliens leave the planet with a simple "thanks for your help" for their now de-deputized human contact and shoot off back into space.

Moon Slayer
Jun 19, 2007

These aliens wouldn't happen to be very small, would they?

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

Moon Slayer posted:

These aliens wouldn't happen to be very small, would they?

and hungry. so hungry they might eat something they're not supposed to.

Moon Slayer
Jun 19, 2007

Hell yeah, I got that book, the sequel, and a poster of a car at a Scholastic book fair in third grade.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

Moon Slayer posted:

Hell yeah, I got that book, the sequel, and a poster of a car at a Scholastic book fair in third grade.

There's three sequels, actually!

The Aliens Ate My Homework series is my favorite kid's science fiction series, by miles.

Bogus Adventure
Jan 11, 2017

More like "Bulges Adventure"
I got the chance to take a sci-fi lit class in college. After playing a balancing act with my sanity in order to accommodate my science major with my music minor, I finally had a free spot where I could take a fun course. I got to read a bunch of pulpy sci-fi. One of the books we had to read for it was called "He, She and It" by Marge Piercy. It has been a long time since I read this book, but I still remember it as one of the weirder books I've read.

It's set in a futuristic dystopia run by megacorps and small free collectives, and parallels the legend of the Golem. The main character is a Jewish woman who I think used to work for one of the megacorps before she got fired or left it. It meant she broke up with her boyfriend or divorced her husband, I don't remember. She ends up going to live with her aunt in one of the free collectives. I think it was supposed to be like a kibbutz. That group is very much "Fight the Man" in name and spirit, and somebody ends up building an android. The android looks like a man, but isn't. A bunch of bullshit happens, and the kibbutz free collective hippies manage to fight and steal information from the MC's former megacorp. It also has a bunch of themes and messages about men versus women, and how women do not need men in their lives.

The above is pretty much what you'd expect from a sci-fi book, and isn't all that interesting. However, the MC ends up having a relationship with the android. She bangs it, probably because it's science fiction. I guess it's not really that weird or memorable nowadays, but I read it back in 2004 and thought it was funny that I was reading a book about a woman and her dildo. I had to look up the book, and noticed that it was written in 1991, so it is entirely possible that she watched TNG's The Naked Now and thought that Yar banging Data was hot.

Oh, here is another lovely summarization about a China Mieville "Perdido Street Station" book that I could only get a few pages through. A friend wanted us to read it as part of a sci-fi book club. A human dude eats out a bug-lady's bug-vagina. That was where I stopped. We're not friends anymore. Not because of the book, but also not not because of the book.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
speaking of, I'm doing a readalong of the snakefucking book. surprise twist: a p good book

Bogus Adventure
Jan 11, 2017

More like "Bulges Adventure"

Pick posted:

speaking of, I'm doing a readalong of the snakefucking book. surprise twist: a p good book

Lol, I might have to check that out if only because it seems to touch on the subject of a particularly :stonk: goon saga.

Hedrigall
Mar 27, 2008

by vyelkin

Bogus Adventure posted:

Oh, here is another lovely summarization about a China Mieville "Perdido Street Station" book that I could only get a few pages through. A friend wanted us to read it as part of a sci-fi book club. A human dude eats out a bug-lady's bug-vagina. That was where I stopped. We're not friends anymore. Not because of the book, but also not not because of the book.

TBF her vagina is very humanoid because she's only a bug from the neck up

Moon Slayer
Jun 19, 2007

Pick posted:

There's three sequels, actually!

The Aliens Ate My Homework series is my favorite kid's science fiction series, by miles.

Which one was titled "The Search for Snout," please tell me it was book 3.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

Moon Slayer posted:

Which one was titled "The Search for Snout," please tell me it was book 3.

It was!

Taerkar
Dec 7, 2002

kind of into it, really

Bogus Adventure posted:

Oh, here is another lovely summarization about a China Mieville "Perdido Street Station" book that I could only get a few pages through. A friend wanted us to read it as part of a sci-fi book club. A human dude eats out a bug-lady's bug-vagina. That was where I stopped. We're not friends anymore. Not because of the book, but also not not because of the book.

I know some guys really don't like the idea of going down in a girl but that seems extreme.

Bogus Adventure
Jan 11, 2017

More like "Bulges Adventure"

Taerkar posted:

I know some guys really don't like the idea of going down in a girl but that seems extreme.

I remember now that the "going down on the beetle babe" scene wasn't what finally put me off of the book. It was Mieville's obnoxious prose. I looked him up just because I couldn't remember the name of the book, and seeing that it was in the Steam Punk genre jogged back A LOT of memories about why that group of friends picked it. While I was scrabbling down the Internet rabbit hole, I came across a little snippet that he wrote. He writes like a pretentious pissant. Some people might like his style, but to me it's the literary version of nails on a chalkboard.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
it's ok, goddamn can we let a guy not like bug cunnilingus any more? like is that what we've come to? you didn't like LICKING bug PUSS ? loving cancelled dipshit

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
extremely hateful towards bug people. and not very sex positive. your grandchildren are going to leave your regressive rear end to rot alone in a retirement home for your indefensible position on bug snatch :lofty:

Sonderval
Sep 10, 2011
Please stop talking about bug sex, it’s giving me ptsd flash backs to the New Jedi order books.

Bogus Adventure
Jan 11, 2017

More like "Bulges Adventure"

Pick posted:

it's ok, goddamn can we let a guy not like bug cunnilingus any more? like is that what we've come to? you didn't like LICKING bug PUSS ? loving cancelled dipshit

Pick posted:

extremely hateful towards bug people. and not very sex positive. your grandchildren are going to leave your regressive rear end to rot alone in a retirement home for your indefensible position on bug snatch :lofty:

I appreciate these, they made me laugh.

Sonderval posted:

Please stop talking about bug sex, it’s giving me ptsd flash backs to the New Jedi order books.

You can't just drop that in this thread and not include a bad summary from memory.

Barudak
May 7, 2007

A man does what every grad school student does and becomes obsessed with an impossible dream project and devotes his entire life to it. This project, to create a human being, is either very hard or very easy depending on how one views "involving a woman" as cheating or not, and unfortunately our protagonist thinks it is. Despite all known laws of science and the characters own admission they don't know how what they did works, it succeeds.

Unfortunately, being very good at producing a full grown lab raised human is not very good at [a e s t h e t i c s] and the thing is revolting. Just awful to look at. A real face only a mother could love so sadly all its got is a daddy who immediately abandons it. This is, unsurprisingly, not taken well by his offspring who disappears into the night.

Time passes and our character never mentions the whole "yeah, I can make sentient life just whenever" to anyone, not even his fiance. To be fair, it would stink to pay child support on something that was born big enough to play power forward, but in what is the most scifi part of this book I guess theres no money in telling a military you can produce infinite soldiers.

Suddenly, our protagonist's poorly socialized child reveals he is stalking them, and wishes very grievous harm. To prove this, he murders people. The protagonist wont go to the police and somehow a shambling horror of a man who could clean your gutters without a ladder evades detection at will. For not having done any parenting, the kid is pretty independent and self motivated, at least.

Unfortunately, it turns out his kid is a grade-a "im owed a woman" nice guy except literally. He demands the protagonist make it a wife who, uh, presumably gets not say whatsoever in the matter. A murderous psychopath who wants to own a woman without her consent is the real monster folks, not man. The protagonist goes along for a while then decides against it which does not sit well with his son, who swears more vengeance.

The protagonists plan of "ignore the problem that continues to tell me its going to murder my wife" doesn't work out so he finally resorts to a high speed lead based plan B. After stalking his kid back, the two meet and the child tells his father his very boring life story. Its a hodgepodge of being angry for being ugly, not having his parents approval, and a dash of libertarianism. It's like reddit but with more biblical allegories.

Protagonist thankfully interrupts this to basically say "uh Im glad you went on an introspective journey but you murdered people and purposefully ruined my life" which the child responds to by running away. The rest of the book is some boring chase details and culminates in the protagonist and his child somewhere in the arctic trying to kill each other.

Sadly, we never find out if histories first incel is successfully defeated.

Barudak fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Jun 15, 2020

Moon Slayer
Jun 19, 2007

I'm a big fan of the "summarize a well-known classic but leave out a key detail" trend, I just wish I was clever enough to pull it off.

Frankenstein?

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
Definitely

Barudak
May 7, 2007

A man survives a terrible thing, something so awful that by its definition it cannot truly be expressed. He survives by good fortune and not out of any effort or skill on his part, just pure chance. He is broken in this moment, knowing that the force he ascribed himself to and felt was good could do this act. He repeats a mantra he learned from someone about the inevitability and isolation of death. It doesn't really help. Things continue.

Our protagonist then, and for the rest of the book, believes he no longer needs to follow chronology. From this point we have three timelines, the life of the man up to his miraculous survival, his life after the survival, and his encounters with space aliens who see all time at once. You probably squint at the book and wonder what thats all about, you were never promised space aliens, but things continue.

The protagonist as prior to the event is a sullen idiot in over his head unable to admit he needs help and makes an easy person for everyone to hate. After the incident he becomes wealthy but obviously completely PTSD riddled and the unexpected death of his wife does not help his mental condition one bit. The aliens show up here and there, explaining there was nothing the man could do, it was already always going to happen. These aliens are assholes and things continue.

Our protagonist is then very unwell, and begins seeing a future with laser gun assassins in 1976. It is a very boring, somber, laser gun assassination, but they get our protagonist. He views this inevitability as comforting, so you know he has very different opinions on being shot to death by lasers than the average person. Its around here, right at the end, you either have gotten the message of the book, of how irreparably broken people can become and what they will do to assuage their survivors guilt or you get deeply lost in a completely pointless argument over the existence of free will. Either way, things continue.

Barudak fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Jun 15, 2020

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
slaughterhouse 5

VictualSquid
Feb 29, 2012

Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.
Another barely remembered pulp novel, that I have no intention of rereading:

In the near future corporations rule the world. Lawsuits have been replaced by battles between mercenaries happening in "unpopulated" jungles. There might be some kind of lasertag tech being used but that part is a bit unclear.
Our hero is some kind of mercenary related office worker, and a friend recruits him to help train and lead the new mercenary force for a Japanese company which wants to break into the mercenary battle style of competition.

They get to the secret ninja training facility where the ninjas learn how to jump up and down tall cliffs. The ultra proud and traditional previous leader of the ninja dislikes our hero. After some strange staring and plotting our hero challenges the best wrestler among the ninja to a battle and breaks his arm. The old leader gets so angry he attacks our hero from behind with his Japanese katana and gets shot.

The Japanese sneak into the country where one of the mercenary games are happening by disguising themselves as ultra-stereotypical Japanese tourists. There is a long scene where our hero distracts some rando's attention away from the Japanese by talking ultra racist about the Japanese. Then they reassemble their weapons and sneak into the battle ground.

There is some fighting and they win easily. Afterwards everybody goes to some kind of international conference where the corporate leaders of the world decide that the Japanese won the thing that was at stake at that lasertag game between two unrelated companies.

Then we are at the twist ending: It turns out our hero's friend and sidekick is a Russian spy and he sneaked some of his own mercenaries into the conference. And because they now hold the corporate leaders hostage Russia has conquered the world. They abolish high stakes laser-tag, which is now only played as entertainment for TV-audiences.

The END.

This time I even looked up the name after writing this: It is Cold Cash War by Robert Asprin.

Tulip
Jun 3, 2008

yeah thats pretty good


A short guy studying math gets so loving pissed about people cracking jokes about his name and his height snaps and declares war on order in general, "the midget vs the digits" (yikes), and proceeds to prank scientists across the globe, trying to throw off their experiments by introducing junk data, thus derailing their theories. He particularly hates the guy studying Orgasm Research. Somehow this ties into a global nuclear war.

Unkempt
May 24, 2003

...perfect spiral, scientists are still figuring it out...

Tulip posted:

A short guy studying math gets so loving pissed about people cracking jokes about his name and his height snaps and declares war on order in general, "the midget vs the digits" (yikes), and proceeds to prank scientists across the globe, trying to throw off their experiments by introducing junk data, thus derailing their theories. He particularly hates the guy studying Orgasm Research. Somehow this ties into a global nuclear war.

Does he leave a bunch of signs around ending 'BY ORDER OF THE MGT.' ? Or is that a different small guy?

muscles like this!
Jan 17, 2005


This book takes place thousands of years in the future. Mankind colonized space but decided that it all sucked and came back home to Earth. Unfortunately Earth is kind of trashed from all the stuff that went on before (except the oceans, which are thriving) so everyone lives in a weird mishmash of medieval tech and futuristic stuff. Also it is so far into the future that mankind is getting bored about waiting around for the apocalypse and every couple of years some new guy comes along, declares the final battle between good and evil, someone wins and everyone goes home disappointed that the world didn't actually end. The main character is a teenager living in a ruined town where everyone is building a big gently caress off cathedral but he's more interested in maps.

A ship comes into port and he learns that its time for another apocalypse so he joins up. He gets to the place where the war is supposed to happen, isn't sure which side he's actually on but it doesn't matter because the enemy blows everything the gently caress up. Main character is horribly injured, losing an eye and an arm but he gets them replaced with ancient (high tech) cybernetic replacements. The arm is so old that the entire thing is covered in engravings from previous owners. The people who brought him there are dead and/or gone so he has to find a new way home.

So he hooks up with a couple of whacked out mercs on a giant truck/train and they start the long way back to his town. They travel around for a while and the main characters finds a skeleton which had a cybernetic voicebox that still talks but just makes random sounds. Also he finds a saint's hand reliquary and then unscrews his cyborg hand to replace with the reliquary. The traveling companions die and the main character can't run the land train so he goes to hang out by the ocean thinking about how the world won't end with the ocean still full of life so he symbolically stabs the ocean with a sword. He then sits on the beach staring up at the sky thinking about how his cybernetic parts will keep going long after he's dead and how the eye will look up at the stars forever.

Tulip
Jun 3, 2008

yeah thats pretty good


Unkempt posted:

Does he leave a bunch of signs around ending 'BY ORDER OF THE MGT.' ? Or is that a different small guy?

P sure that's the one

I really do not remember that book that well

Bogus Adventure
Jan 11, 2017

More like "Bulges Adventure"
A freelance computer toucher and gig economy slave struggles to unravel the mystery behind somebody killing people through Second Life. He has an underage delivery kid as a sidekick. The novel spends waaaay too much time talking about the anti-rape device she's sporting, and...yeah.

tl;dr-The computer toucher beats the killer, who is a goofy-looking pedophile.

Basically, this book predicted today's Internet.

Barudak
May 7, 2007

Short story time:

#1
A city is unimaginably prosperous. Everyone in it is well taken care of, fed, housed, and profoundly happy. The neighboring cities and countries are envious, and are unable to reach the same level of general population well being and equality. The story, however, sides with the very stupid people who leave this society and join other cities because this city has one person who is unhappy and suffers instead of systemic abuse of whole classes, races, ideologies.

#2
A shipping company does no preflight checks, has no security, has no emergency response team, and allows open access to its cargo holds so a low-rung employee has to follow company policy and murder a stowaway.

#3
The war at the end of time is over, and the protagonist comes home. Physically unable to discuss his experiences without sending himself back to the war to refight it, he tries to live in this town after 20 years have passed since he went away. Unfortunately, soldiers from one of the losing sides show up in town and begin abusing the inhabitants with their far superior future tech. After trying to let this go and turn the other cheek for a while, the protagonist gives up and reveals himself to the others and savagely murders them with his superior military hardware and dooms himself to go back and fight the war at the end of time all over again.

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

Barudak posted:

A man does what every grad school student does and becomes obsessed with an impossible dream project and devotes his entire life to it. This project, to create a human being, is either very hard or very easy depending on how one views "involving a woman" as cheating or not, and unfortunately our protagonist thinks it is. Despite all known laws of science and the characters own admission they don't know how what they did works, it succeeds.

Unfortunately, being very good at producing a full grown lab raised human is not very good at [a e s t h e t i c s] and the thing is revolting. Just awful to look at. A real face only a mother could love so sadly all its got is a daddy who immediately abandons it. This is, unsurprisingly, not taken well by his offspring who disappears into the night.

Time passes and our character never mentions the whole "yeah, I can make sentient life just whenever" to anyone, not even his fiance. To be fair, it would stink to pay child support on something that was born big enough to play power forward, but in what is the most scifi part of this book I guess theres no money in telling a military you can produce infinite soldiers.

Suddenly, our protagonist's poorly socialized child reveals he is stalking them, and wishes very grievous harm. To prove this, he murders people. The protagonist wont go to the police and somehow a shambling horror of a man who could clean your gutters without a ladder evades detection at will. For not having done any parenting, the kid is pretty independent and self motivated, at least.

Unfortunately, it turns out his kid is a grade-a "im owed a woman" nice guy except literally. He demands the protagonist make it a wife who, uh, presumably gets not say whatsoever in the matter. A murderous psychopath who wants to own a woman without her consent is the real monster folks, not man. The protagonist goes along for a while then decides against it which does not sit well with his son, who swears more vengeance.

The protagonists plan of "ignore the problem that continues to tell me its going to murder my wife" doesn't work out so he finally resorts to a high speed lead based plan B. After stalking his kid back, the two meet and the child tells his father his very boring life story. Its a hodgepodge of being angry for being ugly, not having his parents approval, and a dash of libertarianism. It's like reddit but with more biblical allegories.

Protagonist thankfully interrupts this to basically say "uh Im glad you went on an introspective journey but you murdered people and purposefully ruined my life" which the child responds to by running away. The rest of the book is some boring chase details and culminates in the protagonist and his child somewhere in the arctic trying to kill each other.

Sadly, we never find out if histories first incel is successfully defeated.

Lol

Can't believe Mary Shelly was 20 when she wrote it. She also wrote an early book about a scientific apocalypse

Tulip
Jun 3, 2008

yeah thats pretty good


Bogus Adventure posted:

A freelance computer toucher and gig economy slave struggles to unravel the mystery behind somebody killing people through Second Life. He has an underage delivery kid as a sidekick. The novel spends waaaay too much time talking about the anti-rape device she's sporting, and...yeah.

tl;dr-The computer toucher beats the killer, who is a goofy-looking pedophile.

Basically, this book predicted today's Internet.

Predicted or inspired

Nebakenezzer
Sep 13, 2005

The Mote in God's Eye

In the near future, everything is pretty much as it is now in Britain, but the government is mostly composed of professional bureaucrats who do their jobs very well, and a king who is elected by lottery. In this future London is a Bored Man who loves twisting things around so he can get a laugh out of it. He's generally seen as a lunatic by everyone else. He is of course elected king. King dives headfirst into silliness, instead of giving a coronation speech he doesn't speak with his mouth at all, instead insisting that he is speaking via a language he just made up that is conveyed by moving your left leg.

This goes on for a bit and Bored Man really starts working hard, making up history for all the various boughs and streets of London town. A kid follows all this, and instead of getting the joke falls in love with the romance and pageantry of Bored Man's made up history. Taking it perfectly straight, sincere kid grows up into sincere man, and long story short, ferments a civil war in London, fought with pike, sword, and bow, between the various made up areas.

pygmy tyrant
Nov 25, 2005

*not a small business owner

Pick posted:

slaughterhouse 5

Is this really it? I was thinking the same until laser gun assassination, but I definitely do not remember that part.

muscles like this!
Jan 17, 2005


Yeah it is a weird part where he starts talking about the "future" and how he becomes famous for talking about the alien abduction and their view of time.

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pygmy tyrant
Nov 25, 2005

*not a small business owner

...cars on fire, and there's *ahem* strong Dead Flag Blues vibes. There are no cars currently aflame though, at least not here. Maybe not anywhere. I'm not sure because every time I tried to read it I only made it about 20 pages further than the last time before I got confused and exhausted in a way that hung around for days after I put this book down. So after three tries reading it I present to you: The First 60-ish Pages of Dahlgren.

[A sex scene has happened already that I forgot about. I'm pretty sure we're still on page 1 though.]

Like I said, no cars, because we're out in the woods. The crap woods. The kind of woods that are just far enough from a city that nobody ever comes around to pick up the trash, but close enough that the highway noise has driven off every animal bigger than a sparrow. Still no cars though, its quiet except for the wind in the branches and some heavy breathing. If you looked, you'd find that the leaf litter remains at least half human litter, though its too dark to see much with the smoky haze in the sky and dusk moving in. From here at the top of this little slope, the whole way down to the stream is already in a deep shadow. Can you still even make out the old shopping cart down there in the water? I loving can't. I can't see poo poo.

And neither could the doofus in the little cave or hollow or whatever just below us - the one that has the faintly luminescent fungi in it. The guy must have been picking around for valuable (To whom? I haven't a clue! [The lady he was having sex with before we got here told him to take a fancy gold necklace full of prisms]) litter, but slipped on a rock and just tumbled down into the stream! I'm pretty sure he missed the cart, he seems fine. Weird, I think he slipped after he managed to avoid the tripwire trap at the cave entrance. Oh well, he's fine, I can just make him out down there shaking himself off - and now hes walking off again towards the smokier horizon. C'mon, lets follow him, this hill is boring.

[Turns out the lady he was having sex with in the cave told him to take the gold chain necklace full of weird prisms he's wearing]

Wait I take it back, I'm fairly sure there are cars. And the highway, with some somewhat recently aflame cars even. Out in the flat space now, and without the shade of the trees, it's still early enough in the evening to watch this Kid walk down a ribbon of asphalt flanked with nothing bad omens and ill portents for a while longer, but that time mostly doesn't matter. What matters is that the Kid is walking towards that smoky horizon, towards the rumpled skyline of a city, and before he quite gets there, I believe there is a minivan. I don't know if there's actually a minivan in the book, but I certainly think there should have been one. With a kind of pudgy, balding man in a very grease stained shirt driving, and a woman I can't see very clearly riding shotgun. They slows to a stop to have a quick chat with this kid walking towards the city the people in the van are trying to drive away from. Their chat is quick:

"You okay there, Kid?"

"I'm alright," the kid says, while looking down and brushing off more dirt and trash stuck on his thigh from his fall, "is that The Bridge?"

"Yeah, if you're looking to get to Bellona, thats the way."

"Thanks."

"Take care now."

The bright red space behind the van suddenly dims and the van and its occupants start creeping out of the realm of stuff you and I give a poo poo about. A realm full of MF BELLONA.

The kid crosses the bridge and suddenly the Kid is in a wrecked city. Theres punk gangs and stuff. People have developed their own traditional weapons already. Who knows how long Bellona has been like this. There still scraps to fight over, and definitely still flammable material to burn considering the host of mostly not structure fires pouring smoke and stench into the sky. Anyway, right after this Kid walks into the city he goes hunting around for somewhere to lay his head and runs into some punk gang - oh, they look like they're going to fight. Or maybe not? Somehow this kid has a loving freddy kruger hand with like, extra knives. Like a big mobile of knives, hanging down from his fist towards a down only the knives feel, straight toward some punk gang dudes face. Yeah! gently caress that guy up Kid! I'm actually pretty sure the kid gets beaten up, but at some point soon he will absolutely have a too-many-knives gauntlet.

Things are pretty crap in the city itself though. Sure, there's nowhere near as many people in Bellona as there used to be, but there are also nowhere near as many windows in Bellona as there used to be. Shelter is a little scarce, made more so by the fact that the Kid is also not trying to get in additional fights with street punks. There are still some people around, and it looks like the kid just met a guy. They head off after striking a deal - sex for shelter. Or maybe sex for the knife fist? Sex for something. They're up in their shelter now, in the safety of being out of sight and behind a scramble up a downspout. I'm feeling loving tired again, I don't really feel like climbing up there. Go for it if you want. I'm just going to hang around down here for a minute because it smells like a nice mix of campfire and whatever soup they're having, and its a nice break from Bellona's signature sewer and burning plastic. And its no trouble staying warm with all these

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