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Hughlander posted:I thought this was in All Systems Red but it wasn’t. Maybe one of the sequels. ken macleod's fall revolution series?
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Mar 3, 2024 18:07
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Time travel novel made me remember a terrible novel I read in the early 1990s. Setting: Stone age level village. There are some metal tools, but very few, and mostly used for special occasions. The phrase "Beware! Beware the bright circles!" is used a greeting/warning/start of religious rituals. Circular items are taboo, especially small circles. Even perfectly round stones are immediately smashed so they are no longer circular. There is a nasty, several pages long, extremely detailed coming of age ritual. Teenage girls are held down, and copper knife is used to cut a centimeter deep gash is cut from inside her belly button to her pubic bone. This results in a wide scar once healed, as there is no sewing up or bandaging done. Once fully healed, the girls is seen as adult and sexually mature. While in healing the girl is kept secluded, given first pick of food at all meals, exempt from all work, and those who want to be her future lovers leave gifts at her hut. She must accept all gift, but it is up to her if she wants to repay the men. It is hinted that the better the gifts, the better the chance she will choose the man later. The bright circles are coins. Or the memory of money. It is a warning to not reinvent capitalism
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Mar 4, 2024 15:45
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BattyKiara posted:The bright circles are coins. Or the memory of money. It is a warning to not reinvent capitalism That is terrible. 
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Mar 4, 2024 16:42
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:What was that book that had the mage who got made fun of because he cried and ran away from a wedding to a princess because the barbarian hero showed up to rescue her, but it turns out the dude was like 8 and had no clue what the gently caress was going on? I think his dad was the big bad necromancer of the book. Orconomics.
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Mar 4, 2024 16:46
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I'd also like to add I used chatgpt to help me figure this out, and after a few false starts it nailed it. Might be worth a try if you are stumped on a book.
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Mar 4, 2024 17:02
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Drawing blanks from both Google AND chatGPT (who keeps repeating my synopses with other random, completely unrelated book titles and saying “Is this it?”) on these two books: I read both of these probably in the late 90s, or early 00s at the latest. They are most likely YA of some variety. One book was about a couple of dudes who have to go back in time to find some Professor/mentor friend. Other than that, my memory of the details are extremely hazy, aside from one. Throughout the story, they have this handheld device that basically looks like one of those four-pronged sink handles. They have no idea what said device does, until they make a miraculous escape by holding the device aloft, and then it basically acts as a mini helicopter that they use to fly away with. The second book was about a boy or teenage boy who lives an isolated lifestyle with his father somewhere. I want to say it was a rocky, canyonous sort of place and possibly even on another planet, but I can’t say for certain. The father’s job was to live at this outpost and keep a watch on it. It was expected that once a year or so, friendly aliens would come to visit and part of his job was welcoming and interacting with them. Previously, the boy had never personally met the aliens, though he had heard stories and knew all about them. Something happens to the father, and now it’s the boy’s job to take his place as the aliens are expected very soon. They arrive, and everything goes as it should, until somehow the boy learns that the aliens he has met aren’t the ones they’ve been expecting at all. They’re imposters, and there is some nefarious plot they are working through.
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Mar 4, 2024 18:42
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Ok I cannot for the life of me find this via google. There is a book that apparently my 1st and 2nd graders both read (or had read to them) at school, where a cat goes and lives in the forest for a while and then when it returns it’s kind of mangled up and refuses to go back inside its house. Apparently in the end it does go back inside the house. It is not Into the Wild. I have no idea what book these kids are describing to me.
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Mar 4, 2024 19:48
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Fork of Unknown Origins posted:Ok I cannot for the life of me find this via google. One of the Erin Hunter books maybe? They are all about gangs of cats that go and live in the wild, but there are about 100 of them so it could be any of them.
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Mar 5, 2024 05:05
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With 3 body problem coming out soon was thinking of a book series i read the start of then I think I threw across the room. It was a big series and had recently been re-edited and had a new prequel at the start which is mostly what I remember. Chinese government realizes that western capitalism is going to win in the end so they launch a cyber attack on the entire world including China knowing that in the post-apocalypse recovery they'll emerge stronger. Rest of series was hundreds to a thousand or so years later, and something about super powerful building materials making city sized buildings or something? The prequel story annoyed me that I didn't get to the actual story and just remember reading a wikipedia page about it instead.
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Mar 5, 2024 08:33
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Fork of Unknown Origins posted:Ok I cannot for the life of me find this via google. This is a really long shot but is it Cat, You Better Come Home?
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Mar 5, 2024 08:34
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Hughlander posted:With 3 body problem coming out soon was thinking of a book series i read the start of then I think I threw across the room. I haven't read it myself but the summary for the Chung Kuo series by David Wingrove sounds very much like it fits.
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Mar 5, 2024 09:10
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wizzardstaff posted:I haven't read it myself but the summary for the Chung Kuo series by David Wingrove sounds very much like it fits. Yep that's the one thanks!
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Mar 5, 2024 09:43
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Fork of Unknown Origins posted:Ok I cannot for the life of me find this via google. My 3rd grader who has read basically all of those warriors books says yes, it's definitely one of them, he can't remember which one but definitely. So start looking through the plot summaries I guess!! yaffle posted:One of the Erin Hunter books maybe? They are all about gangs of cats that go and live in the wild, but there are about 100 of them so it could be any of them.
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Mar 5, 2024 13:36
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Hughlander posted:With 3 body problem coming out soon was thinking of a book series i read the start of then I think I threw across the room. david wingrove, first few were ok, gets progressively more detailed and the quality dips to the point he has self published the rest, i think they're still going. i think i stopped at book four but it was about 20 years ago.
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Mar 6, 2024 04:02
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I've been looking for a book I was given as a kid that was a collection of myths from various cultures. I have tried googling things I remember but haven't had any luck. From what I recall: It contained the stories of Beowulf fighting the dragon, Hercules killing the hydra, a tale about a woman saving her husband(?) from a curse by embracing him for a whole night in the woods while he changed into various things, etc... I'm pretty sure it had something about Gilgamesh in there too.
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Mar 12, 2024 00:31
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I dunno the book but in case it helps you search, the story with the woman holding her husband is a Scottish ballad about Tam Lin.
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Mar 12, 2024 01:16
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Diesel_Doc posted:I've been looking for a book I was given as a kid that was a collection of myths from various cultures. I have tried googling things I remember but haven't had any luck. I'm not sure if it was the book you want (in fact checking I don't see Gilgamesh or Beowulf) but the best book of that nature I know of is this one https://www.amazon.com/Best-Loved-Folktales-Anchor-Folktale-Library/dp/0385189494 Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Mar 12, 2024 |
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Mar 12, 2024 03:04
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Diesel_Doc posted:I've been looking for a book I was given as a kid that was a collection of myths from various cultures. I have tried googling things I remember but haven't had any luck. The Great Deeds of Superheroes? https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?346616
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Mar 13, 2024 12:01
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A fantasy story featuring some kind of ancient clockwork/steampunk machine sunken in a swamp, speculated to be the work of a civilization long vanished. I don't think it was ever really explained; it was just part of the world. This might have been part of an online series presented as a traveler's diary?
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Mar 15, 2024 05:14
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I'm not sure if it was the book you want (in fact checking I don't see Gilgamesh or Beowulf) but the best book of that nature I know of is this one Oh poo poo, I had this and totally forgot it existed! Thanks for the reminder!
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Mar 15, 2024 05:20
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Very very long shot, but it was a short story in one of our 6th grade English(Reading) textbooks, so mid-nineties. It was a story about a guy stuck on a planet by himself being stalked by some hideous monster, and at the end he sees himself reflected in a puddle of water and you realize that he's the monster. All scraggly hair and wild eyes and junk.
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Mar 20, 2024 22:41
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If he'd have turned on his monitor he could have avoided the whole issue.
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Mar 21, 2024 09:51
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Narzack posted:Very very long shot, but it was a short story in one of our 6th grade English(Reading) textbooks, so mid-nineties. It was a story about a guy stuck on a planet by himself being stalked by some hideous monster, and at the end he sees himself reflected in a puddle of water and you realize that he's the monster. All scraggly hair and wild eyes and junk. This sounds like HP Lovecraft's "The Outsider" to me.
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Mar 21, 2024 13:21
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Similar themes, looks like, but the one I remember was sci Fi, and the dude was a stranded astronaut.
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Mar 21, 2024 13:23
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Tragic Wagon posted:Was it Rocco (or A Time of Darkness in the USA) by Sheryl Jordan? Published in 1990, so around the right time. I can't find too much about it online, but I read it in school too, and it fits the high schooler travelling in time. I don't remember any armpit-related romance, but I do remember the ending implying that it's not actually the distant past, it's the near future after some sort of terrible disaster. By the way, this was correct. Thanks, brah!
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Mar 21, 2024 13:34
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Narzack posted:Very very long shot, but it was a short story in one of our 6th grade English(Reading) textbooks, so mid-nineties. It was a story about a guy stuck on a planet by himself being stalked by some hideous monster, and at the end he sees himself reflected in a puddle of water and you realize that he's the monster. All scraggly hair and wild eyes and junk. I love Grover!
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Mar 21, 2024 14:26
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Brawnfire posted:I love Grover! Hahaha, oh poo poo, i didn't make that connection at all. I should have, too, because my son loves both of those.
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Mar 21, 2024 15:25
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Brawnfire posted:I love Grover! lol
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Mar 21, 2024 15:25
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Short story, people's homes are in parallel earth where mankind never evolved. In the US each person get's their own earth, in the Soviet Union they put a few thousand to a million on the same earth. Someone calls tech support / repair person because aliens are outside their house. Feel it's either Roger Zelazny or Phillip K Dick but I don't know who or what it's called.
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Mar 27, 2024 03:12
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Sounds like Asimov's "Living Space": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Space
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Mar 28, 2024 18:34
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Inverigo posted:Sounds like Asimov's "Living Space": That’s the one! Thanks
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Mar 28, 2024 18:35
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Too much Helldivers 2 is poisoning my brain but also caused me to dimly recall a sci-fi short story that I'd like to read again: Humanity is fighting an endless war against some lizard people and the story follows a marine as he rises through the ranks. First he's a soldier, then he becomes a pilot but to be a pilot they saw your head off so you take up less space, then they take his brain out cause the head is a waste of space and all you need is your brain hooked up to a computer at the current rank. All along the commanders keep repeating don't worry you'll get X body part back when the war is over. And it goes on and on until he's talking about how he's now an AI doing vast calculations where on some vast level to win this huge abstract war they're controlling a race of lizard people who are fighting these hairless apes.
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Mar 31, 2024 23:18
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asking for a friend: quote:theres a story im never going to remember the name of and i wonder if you can help me It's not "Looking for Kelly Dahl" by Dan Simmons. edit: It was Alastair Reynolds' The Six Directions of Space! tinaun fucked around with this message at 08:05 on Apr 4, 2024 |
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Apr 4, 2024 07:54
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I'm looking for a graphic novel I read within the past ten years. I've read so many that I've forgotten the frame tale. The story opens in a strange rendition of a Marquis de Sade novel, the one with all the s&m. It turns out that this is a story within a story and somebody in the 'real world ' is either reading the book or it's some kind of X-Men Danger Room. The story then moves to the real world and the rest of the comic is about it but it does revisit the Marquis world briefly at the end - I think something that happens in the real world has an effect on what happens in the book. Sorry that's not much to go on, it's likely a one shot independent so it's not Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, Transmetropolitan or anything like that.
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Apr 9, 2024 09:04
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The Invisibles go back in time and visit the Marquis de Sade? He ends up coming back with them to the present day.
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Apr 9, 2024 09:29
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The_Doctor posted:The Invisibles go back in time and visit the Marquis de Sade? He ends up coming back with them to the present day. I think they actually go into the book 120 Days of Sodom, so that's almost definitely correct
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Apr 9, 2024 14:22
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It's not The Invisibles as I've never read it. I'm gonna ask a friend who I often shared comics with if he remembers.
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Apr 9, 2024 21:12
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My wife has been trying to remember this book: It's sword-and-sorcery fantasy, at least 5 years old (but could have been much older). The book follows multiple POV characters. One is a woman who is connected somehow to a king. Another is an old lady/witch (who is called 'grandmother') who has a mute young woman as a ward/apprentice and is teaching her some knot or weaving-based magic. Grandmother and co are on the outskirts of society, maybe doing some large magical working that will overthrow the current people in power. She thought it might be by Brandon Sanderson but the part she's most sure of is the mute young woman, and I can't find anything matching that.
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Apr 10, 2024 06:39
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I read a book or story, at least a decade back, that had a character seeing a 24-hour long presentation of the Hitchcock film Psycho, possibly slowed down or repeated? I wanna say it was Bret Easton Ellis or Don Delillo...
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Apr 18, 2024 18:17
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escape artist posted:I read a book or story, at least a decade back, that had a character seeing a 24-hour long presentation of the Hitchcock film Psycho, possibly slowed down or repeated? I wanna say it was Bret Easton Ellis or Don Delillo... That was a real art exhibition, and the book was DeLillo's Point Omega: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_Hour_Psycho#Aftermath
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Apr 18, 2024 23:35
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