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All that but I also thought the original species was psychically controlling the rest of the galaxy not just tech.
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Nov 27, 2022 05:10
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I'm having trouble remembering a book I read. It was within the last 5 years, probably em ebook. More than likely sci Fi or thriller. 99% chance it was on Kindle. The plot point I remember is the protags end up in Utah? somewhere and it turns out a bunch of the Mormons there have interbreeded (interbred?) with aliens, so they are sort of a huge mind. I think they were going to rescue one girl who was trapped by some rear end in a top hat alien hybrid Mormons. I remember the protags being weirded out about the child brides and the creepy kids, and the gun carrying husbands who didn't want em near their family. Iirc the space mornings lived out in the boonies away from the city on big farms.
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Nov 27, 2022 06:54
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Lemniscate Blue posted:The Dread Empire's Fall series by Walter Jon Williams. First book is The Praxis. There was a third book, and the trilogy was expanded into a larger series recently. That's the one, thank you!! Hughlander posted:All that but I also thought the original species was psychically controlling the rest of the galaxy not just tech. Started re-reading it, I haven't gotten to anything that explicates how the original species took over but I think I assumed tech on account of how monkeys-with-guns all the subordinate species act when they get the kids to their parents' laser cannons and FTL travel.
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Nov 27, 2022 23:14
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Omi no Kami posted:That's the one, thank you!! Yeah, if I remember right it was technological superiority conquest followed by several millennia of brutal suppression of any native culture that the overlords didn't approve of, which was a long list.
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Nov 28, 2022 01:32
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That's kinda what's going on in the behold humanity books. There's a 3 way war going between humanity, a race of assholes, and a mixture of the Borg and locusts race that wants everything in the universe for itself. Turns out the assholes have been gene editing the conquered species to make em docile, and destroying everything related to their culture as well.
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Nov 28, 2022 04:26
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Omi no Kami posted:Not the exact plot, but The King of Masks is a 1996 movie which is hella close to what you're describing. Obviously drawn from the same well, maybe this was a fashionable storyline at the time?
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Dec 2, 2022 22:03
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A conversation, likely being from a cormac mccarthy novel and probably even suttree. Something to the tune of "I lead an interesting life" then "You[r actions] make it interesting". Keep searching on google for it but do you know how many mccarthy conversations revolve around life, I'll never find it that way
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Dec 5, 2022 05:13
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I'm looking for the title of a 19th century ghost-story. It might be Sheridan LeFanu or M.R. James but I can't find it in any of their anthologies so I might be wrong. The protagonist is restoring an old manor IIRC. He might have inherited it. He finds a piece of paper in a book with a design on it. Like a lock of hair or a ringlet. And he decides to have some of the wallpaper made with this design. The big setpiece/climax of the story is him sitting in his newly wallpapered library reading. He thinks he's stroking his dog but it's actually some kind of hairy man-thing/apparition that was crouching down besides his chair. Presumably because of the wallpaper. He barely escapes with his life, sells the manor etc. etc. e: It was M.R. James. The Diary of Mr. Poynter Pondex fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Dec 6, 2022 |
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Dec 6, 2022 14:06
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I didn't find it but I did remember more and 99% sure it's a convo between Suttree and Ab Jones. In case anyone was wondering. Case closed
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Dec 7, 2022 14:10
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I've got one here from my sister that I had no luck finding- Do you remember a story about some kid on a spaceship, intergalactic, they attend a meeting with their parents like a political one, someone compliments his little pet...thing? and they have to give it to them because it's the polite thing to do. That's the only thing I can remember about it. And something about school or a classroom.
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Dec 10, 2022 11:28
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this aint it, but its a good story about what's right and polite on a generation ship: An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
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Dec 10, 2022 11:58
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A Proper Uppercut posted:I've got one here from my sister that I had no luck finding- I, Earthling by Bruce Coville. The pet was a miniature panda. It's apparently from the short story collection "Bruce Coville's Book of Aliens", but I read it in some other anthology. rollick fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Dec 10, 2022 |
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Dec 10, 2022 13:16
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rollick posted:I, Earthling by Bruce Coville. The pet was a miniature panda. It's apparently from the short story collection "Bruce Coville's Book of Aliens", but I read it in some other anthology. A tender story about finding your place in the universe that opens with a major fart scene! I almost want to buy it just to see the fart scene.
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Dec 10, 2022 19:45
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important question: are the fart scenes illustrated?
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Dec 10, 2022 20:02
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rollick posted:I, Earthling by Bruce Coville. The pet was a miniature panda. It's apparently from the short story collection "Bruce Coville's Book of Aliens", but I read it in some other anthology. Hell yea this is totally it. We both read the poo poo out of Coville. This thread always delivers.
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Dec 10, 2022 23:29
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Carthag Tuek posted:important question: are the fart scenes illustrated? Scratch and sniff.
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Dec 11, 2022 01:32
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I think this is a recently written series because I'm fairly sure I read a few books in the series and the others had not yet been written. It is a fantasy series or at least takes place in a medieval setting. The first book is about a guy who has been raised since birth to be a tool of the king, or at least fill some sort of role in the kingdom. He makes a big deal out of acquiring skills - they regularly bring in the best people to train him, like when it's time for him to learn sword fighting they bring in the best sword fighter in the kingdom to be his trainer. It's also implied that some or most of the people who train him are killed afterwards to keep the training secret. The book starts at the end of his training where he has mastered every skill (he talks about major and minor ones) and he lives according to a set of rules. He is just about to be told his actual mission when his trainers turn on each other and they kill one another until there's no one left. He has lived his whole life in the training facility and never knew anyone but his trainers. So he has all these skills and this weird rigid rule based lifestyle but has no idea what his actual mission is. The rest of the series is largely about him trying to connect with other people to figure out what that mission is. A few incidents I remember:
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Dec 16, 2022 15:47
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drat, I remember reading the first one of those, at least partly. He ends up killing a ton of gang bangers or something because he made his first friends and you are always supposed to help your friends. I think he was trained by monks it something in a temple. Lemme dig through my book pile.
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Dec 16, 2022 16:15
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Might be the King's Dark Tidings series by Kel Kade. First book is called Free the Darkness.
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Dec 16, 2022 17:17
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That is 100% it, I knew as soon as you said the title. Thank you! Edit: And it looks like a new book came out in September, nice.
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Dec 16, 2022 18:55
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Trying to remember a novel I read in grade school, which by now is about 20 years back. It starts off with a poor kid, obsessed with spending what little money he gets on fast food at a place that's a poorly-disguised pastiche of McDonald's. One day the franchise has a contest to design their new slogan, and the winner gets a super prize. The kid has a great start to his new slogan but can't finish it(he tries to get advice from people, but anyone he asks is either incompetent or unsympathetic, like his dad, who instead makes up a rhyme about the burgers being full of chopped rats and horse meat), so he has someone's uncle hypnotize him and, in his hypnotized trance, he makes the ULTIMATE SLOGAN and wins the FAST FOOD PRIZE of getting to travel to FAST FOOD LAND, which at first seems to be a utopia, but slowly turns out to have a sinister underbelly. In the last chapter, he escapes FAST FOOD LAND, and the train leaving starts just travelling into an empty, meaningless void... and as he sits there, staring into the void, the other passengers muttering meaningless garbage, he hears the echo of the hypnotist from the first chapter muttering: "gently caress, I can't snap him out of it," implying that the whole thing has been his brain spiralling in on itself while he's been trapped in the hypnotic trance. I can't remember if it was particularly good or bad, but it's just one of those books that occasionally pops into my mind and now I want to see what it was actually like.
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Dec 18, 2022 00:50
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PurpleXVI posted:Trying to remember a novel I read in grade school, which by now is about 20 years back. Holiday in Happy Street. Jon Blake.
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Dec 18, 2022 11:50
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Lot 49 posted:Holiday in Happy Street. Jon Blake. Thanks, this sounds extremely likely to be it! I'm gonna have to grab it next time I snag a batch of books and see if it holds up to the memories I have of it being an interesting read for someone in their mid teens.
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Dec 18, 2022 16:10
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I remember reading a short story where all of a sudden people began to inexplicably show up at the same places. Like, a movie theatre would suddenly have everyone in town show up to watch a matinee. Eventually everyone stays home for fear that what they think they want to do is what everyone else is doing. Any idea what the story is?
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Dec 22, 2022 12:41
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Professor Shark posted:I remember reading a short story where all of a sudden people began to inexplicably show up at the same places. Like, a movie theatre would suddenly have everyone in town show up to watch a matinee. Eventually everyone stays home for fear that what they think they want to do is what everyone else is doing. Idk but if I had to take a blind guess, "Nobody Goes There Anymore, It's Too Crowded" (or just "Nobody Goes There Anymore") seems a likely choice for the title.
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Dec 22, 2022 15:25
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I’m pretty sure it was part of “50 Great Short Stories” but looking at the list I have no idea what it would be
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Dec 22, 2022 17:31
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A sci-fi novel where aIiens secretIy ruIe Britain and one or more universities have been turned into a prison camp for peopIe with psychic abilities? It had a blue cover with a star symbol on it? Never mind, it was The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon BattyKiara fucked around with this message at 13:40 on Dec 23, 2022 |
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Dec 22, 2022 23:26
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This is from a biography/autobiography/memoirs/letters of an English man either Victorian or Edwardian, probably part of the Bloomsbury Group or adjacent (Someone who hung around with Ottoline Morrell or J.R. Ackerly?) The author speaks or refers to their fathers pride and satisfaction in "Knowing that I was the first to kiss you with passion, fully on the lips" (or something like that). I swear to god I read this somewhere but I can't remember where.
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Jan 2, 2023 13:58
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trying to recall a scifi short story wherein some kind of anomaly is detected deep underground, and when scientists drill down to find out what it is it turns out to be a transdimensional pipeline full of toxic waste that is being pumped from one parallel Earth (that also exists a couple hundred years in the future) to another one (that they consider "lower" for somewhat vague reasons) All else I remember about it is that our version of Earth ends up getting messed up by leakage from the pipe, and the story ends with people from the bottom-most parallel Earth turning up proposing to stage a rebellion against aforementioned garbage dumpers.
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Jan 3, 2023 18:04
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A Powerful Culture by QNTM, almost certainly. Published in short story collection "Valuable Humans In Transit". E: here's an early draft version https://qntm.org/drill
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Jan 3, 2023 18:16
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That's exactly it, thank you!
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Jan 3, 2023 20:38
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Renaissance Robot posted:trying to recall a scifi short story wherein some kind of anomaly is detected deep underground, and when scientists drill down to find out what it is it turns out to be a transdimensional pipeline full of toxic waste that is being pumped from one parallel Earth (that also exists a couple hundred years in the future) to another one (that they consider "lower" for somewhat vague reasons) They stole that from Ed, the Happy Clown, where one dimension pumps all their poo (because they haven't invented plumbing) through a rift ending up in some guy's bumhole and also Ronald Reagan falls in the funnel and gets stuck at the shoulders and uhh somehow his head ends up at the end of Ed's knob. Maybe they didn't steal it from Ed, the Happy Clown...
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Jan 4, 2023 13:21
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3D Megadoodoo posted:They stole that from Ed, the Happy Clown, Oh wow, I’ve not thought about that book in a long time.
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Jan 4, 2023 14:16
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Been watching an interesting lecture series on the evolution of the Arthurian legend and it's got me reminiscing about one of my first major exposures to a number of the stories, and I'd like to hunt it down and take a look to see how it packaged the Arthurian tales for a younger reader. Unfortunately I can't remember what the drat book was called or who it was by, and trying to track it down has been a pain in my rear end, so putting it here as a hail mary. I remember that the tales had a framing device surrounding them. Grain of salt, but this is it to the best of my recollection - It begins at the end, with the Round Table split and Gawain having been mortally injured in a duel with Lancelot after he and the Queen's adultery had been revealed. As he lays in his tent dying, he sends a letter to Lancelot begging him to rush to aid Arthur in his fight against Mordred. While he rests, he regales his young squire with tales of the Knights of the Round Table - I definitely remember the tale of Gawain and the Green Knight being in there, along with the Grail Quest, and some scattered smaller stories. I think at the end of the book although Lancelot makes it to aid Arthur, things turn out as they must and Arthur and Mordred slay each other, and Arthur is taken to Avalon. Gawain himself passes away shortly afterwards, taking solace at least in that his friendship with Lancelot is somewhat mended. The book was written for a young adult reader, modern and relatively simple English. The best recollection I have for a title was something like "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Other Tales" though I can't be sure. I don't believe it was any of the Squire's Tale books by Gerald Morris.
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Jan 19, 2023 12:33
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Mode 7 posted:Been watching an interesting lecture series on the evolution of the Arthurian legend and it's got me reminiscing about one of my first major exposures to a number of the stories, and I'd like to hunt it down and take a look to see how it packaged the Arthurian tales for a younger reader. Unfortunately I can't remember what the drat book was called or who it was by, and trying to track it down has been a pain in my rear end, so putting it here as a hail mary. CouId you Iink these Iectures, pIease? Sounds Iike something I wouId Iove
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Jan 19, 2023 13:05
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Yeah the lectures sound interesting. I know I've read one version of Arthur that was oddly enough by John Steinbeck. It has the more modern verbiage but it's been 30 years since I read it.
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Jan 19, 2023 18:27
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Sure. Lectures are here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0IAN1A2ENLxjsGLproWiknUfRq1fU22W
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Jan 19, 2023 21:04
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calandryll posted:Yeah the lectures sound interesting. I know I've read one version of Arthur that was oddly enough by John Steinbeck. It has the more modern verbiage but it's been 30 years since I read it. The Steinbeck one is more or less a modern paraphrase of Malory - just a "let me repackage these stories I love so much so kids these days can read them too" thing.
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Jan 20, 2023 05:36
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Short story about a bIoke who is convinced there is secret society setting up in his neighbourhood, Iots of shenanigans as he tries a bunch of very inept spying on supposed secret society happens, with humorous resuIts! Turns out the secret society and their compIex handshakes turns out to be a IocaI meet up for deaf peopIe
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Jan 27, 2023 14:42
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BattyKiara posted:Short story about a bIoke who is convinced there is secret society setting up in his neighbourhood, Iots of shenanigans as he tries a bunch of very inept spying on supposed secret society happens, with humorous resuIts! Oh I think I've read this. Is this a Roald Dahl story?
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Jan 28, 2023 16:02
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