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I vaguely recall reading something like this, but damned if I can remember what.
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Sep 26, 2023 00:24
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:I vaguely recall reading something like this, but damned if I can remember what. I figured it out - it's the "Salvation Sequence" books by Peter F. Hamilton.
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Sep 27, 2023 16:39
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Ignoranus posted:I figured it out - it's the "Salvation Sequence" books by Peter F. Hamilton. drat, there’s a new Hamilton series I hadn’t even heard about. That guy shits out a 1000 page tome every eleven months or so. Even his typing speed is impressive.
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Sep 27, 2023 18:09
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:drat, there’s a new Hamilton series I hadn’t even heard about. That guy shits out a 1000 page tome every eleven months or so. Even his typing speed is impressive. Or is he like Barbara Cartland, strolling around a room dictating multiple books to multiple typists while casually petting a Pomeranian?
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Sep 27, 2023 18:14
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Ignoranus posted:There's also a plot thread in that second section about humans seeding a colony in close orbit around a neutron star. When they reach this colony, they find that the people they placed there have become super-advanced in a short time because the relativistic effects of the gravity of the star mean they've had a lot of time to develop. Isn't this.....the exact opposite of how it's supposed to work?
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Sep 28, 2023 01:02
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GD_American posted:Isn't this.....the exact opposite of how it's supposed to work? No, you often get better results if you slow down and take your time.
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Sep 28, 2023 11:13
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Ignoranus posted:I figured it out - it's the "Salvation Sequence" books by Peter F. Hamilton. Does it feature his usual racism, sexism, enthusiasm for middle-aged (and up) men having sex with girls in their early teens? I think the best/worst example is the short story The Lives And Loves Of Tiarella Rosa, but that poo poo runs through all of his works. (the F in his name stands for File)
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Sep 28, 2023 11:21
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GD_American posted:Isn't this.....the exact opposite of how it's supposed to work? It's how the neutron star creatures work in Dragon's Egg by Robert Forward, but they were literally made of compressed nuclear matter on the surface of the star. I assume humans in orbit would not be comparable.
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Sep 28, 2023 15:23
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IIRC the neutron star creatures aren’t in “faster time” than the humans because of any relativistic stuff, they just have very fast life cycles and metabolisms.
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Sep 28, 2023 17:07
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The ceela (I think) in Dragon Egg were on something not-quite the size and gravity of a real neutron star so the dilation wasn't a huge factor. Also instead of chemistry their biology was based on the strong nuclear force so they were like a million times faster moving/evolving/etc.
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Sep 28, 2023 22:34
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Flux by Stephen Baxter has a similar setup, with extensively modified 'humans' made of neutron star matter and living on similarly microscopic scales. They live inside the neutron star's superfluid 'mantle', with the crust forming a sort of impenetrable solid ceiling over them, so the environment is a little like living on an ocean world with an ice sheet. They live shallow enough in the neutron star that there are still some normal nuclei / protons in the nuclear pasta around them that their metabolisms exploit for energy and growth.
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Sep 29, 2023 00:34
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Trying to remember the name of a science fiction-ish short story. Set in a near-future gas-crisis version of the 50s-70s. A suburban guy keeping up with the Joneses rumbles his big, loud, brand new car up and down the block so his neighbor can see what he's driving - and then, when he pulls back into the garage, tells his son, "Ok, I'll go rewind the tape for the exhaust note, you wind the car's mainspring back up, and when you're done maybe I'll let you drive it!"
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Oct 4, 2023 17:47
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Phy posted:Trying to remember the name of a science fiction-ish short story. Set in a near-future gas-crisis version of the 50s-70s. A suburban guy keeping up with the Joneses rumbles his big, loud, brand new car up and down the block so his neighbor can see what he's driving - and then, when he pulls back into the garage, tells his son, "Ok, I'll go rewind the tape for the exhaust note, you wind the car's mainspring back up, and when you're done maybe I'll let you drive it!" Sounds like something by Ballard
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Oct 4, 2023 22:42
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I recently saw a reference somewhere to an old fantasy/horror story in which language becomes a solid substance, like black plastic, and indestructible. So every spoken word pollutes the environment, speakers and listeners become entrapped, and people try to cope by using nonverbal/nonvocal methods of communication. Anyone know what this is?
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Oct 7, 2023 01:55
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Hi peeps. Asking for this on behalf of a friend. Hope it's a good enough explanationquote:Perhaps a Jackie Collins or other novelist of that era
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Oct 11, 2023 09:00
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I don't think this will be identified but what the hey. A book I read in the 90s that I was way too young to be reading. It's a really tacky trashy erotic thriller and most likely was given away with a newspaper or something because I remember it being really short. The front cover was entirely red and there may have been a gun sight with a picture of a woman in it. The plot was that the female protagonist gets caught up in some kind of drug smuggling plot in Amsterdam. I think her new boyfriend is murdered and she has to go on the run from the law and criminals. The twist at the end might have been the boyfriend was alive and was actually evil all along. I definitely remember a scene where the main girl and her best friend are hiding out in a strip club and are forced to simulate having sex on stage. This was on my parent's bookshelf for years so its possibly a novella from the early 90s but that's just a guess.
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Oct 11, 2023 14:13
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I'm trying to find the name of a short story I read that I think was from either the late 1800s or early 1900s and set in London. From what I remember, the narrator of the story is a man who likes to go to a busy street in London at night to watch the people coming and going, and while he's watching he notices a man who just walks from one end of the street to the other and back in a loop until dawn. The entire time the man looks terrified and seems to just want to have other people around him. From what I remember the narrator sees the man do this on more than one night and at some point the man notices the narrator watching him. That's all I can remember
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Oct 12, 2023 03:46
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I hope that gets identified because it sounds loving chilling.
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Oct 12, 2023 14:13
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Deadite posted:I'm trying to find the name of a short story I read that I think was from either the late 1800s or early 1900s and set in London. From what I remember, the narrator of the story is a man who likes to go to a busy street in London at night to watch the people coming and going, and while he's watching he notices a man who just walks from one end of the street to the other and back in a loop until dawn. The entire time the man looks terrified and seems to just want to have other people around him. I found the title, though I had some details wrong. It's The Man of the Crowd by Edgar Allan Poe
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Oct 12, 2023 14:14
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Yngwie Mangosteen posted:The ceela (I think) in Dragon Egg were on something not-quite the size and gravity of a real neutron star so the dilation wasn't a huge factor. Also instead of chemistry their biology was based on the strong nuclear force so they were like a million times faster moving/evolving/etc. The premise was that they were so incredibly small (an entire adult cheela was the size of something like a sesame seed) that their brains worked on a subatomic level - thought would travel at the same speed as a human's, but it had so much shorter a distance to go that thought happened far faster. Scanning the surface of the star with a laser beam was so slow to the Cheela that a mutant (who had eyes that could see the specturm the beam was in) was able to follow it and form an entire religion between passes.
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Oct 13, 2023 03:25
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Gnoman posted:The premise was that they were so incredibly small (an entire adult cheela was the size of something like a sesame seed) that their brains worked on a subatomic level - thought would travel at the same speed as a human's, but it had so much shorter a distance to go that thought happened far faster. Scanning the surface of the star with a laser beam was so slow to the Cheela that a mutant (who had eyes that could see the specturm the beam was in) was able to follow it and form an entire religion between passes. I just looked it up, it's the nuclear force rather than chemistry that runs their biology, which is why it's so much faster.
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Oct 14, 2023 02:36
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A book I read in the mid-late 80s. I checked it out from a local library and I'm reasonably certain it was a new/recent release at the time. (I was still a kid, but I was reading grown-up novels at that point, so it would have been some kind of adult literary fiction.) A story about a young (20-30ish) woman who had a relative in a retirement home (aunt or grandmother maybe). The relative died but she had befriended the other residents, and the home was going to be closed due to lack of funding (or some other reason; I just remember that the home was going to be closed and she and the residents were upset about it). She and the residents then work together to save it. My memories of this are hazy. It's entirely possible she inherited the home from a relative who also lived there maybe. I recall it being a decent story. At the very least, it's stuck with me and I'd like to track it down.
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Oct 23, 2023 01:49
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Back for another BBC Radio Mystery Drama ID: a naked woman is found stuffed into the cabinet of a dentist. All I remember besides that detail is that a former lover of the accused dentist claims that his “style” would be to be naked as well, not clothed or something. Anyone recognize it, it’s driving me nuts!
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Oct 29, 2023 01:40
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A series, I think, about wizards in ww2 but they're all hosed from communing with eldritch terrors. I think the protagonist was british? And I think at one point his wife leaves him after he somehow turns their unborn child into some sort of soulless abomination. I think maybe everyone dies or it all goes completely to poo poo in the end.
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Oct 30, 2023 00:15
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Biplane posted:A series, I think, about wizards in ww2 but they're all hosed from communing with eldritch terrors. I think the protagonist was british? And I think at one point his wife leaves him after he somehow turns their unborn child into some sort of soulless abomination. I think maybe everyone dies or it all goes completely to poo poo in the end. Ian tregillis milkweed? I'm not helping but I read three or four 'eldritch WWII' books in a row a few years back and they're all sort of jumbled in my head.
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Oct 30, 2023 00:51
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branedotorg posted:Ian tregillis milkweed? I'm not helping but I read three or four 'eldritch WWII' books in a row a few years back and they're all sort of jumbled in my head. Yes that's it! Thank you 
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Oct 30, 2023 11:32
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Author and book(s) I heard mentioned somewhere and can't recall either: fiction, set among radical leftists in the 1930s, author's name was something like "Tess" or "Tress"; impression in my head is they were female, American and contemporary to what they were writing about but could have any of that wrong.
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Oct 31, 2023 23:16
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Not female or American, but Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists?
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Oct 31, 2023 23:32
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Runcible Cat posted:Not female or American, but Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists?
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Nov 1, 2023 00:06
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Hey got a question for all you fellow book nerds. Been looking for an out of print fantasy book, early to mid 80's female author. Around about the same time as the Paksennarion series. It was about a princess named Elizabeth who had to perform a series of deeds to prove herself worthy of the ring Raziel and her fathers throne. She has to contend with her weak father, her evil stepmother who wants the throne and is conspiring with demons to get it. Her mother who passed was a woodwitch who cursed Elizabeth's father after he strayed which caused him to become impotent thereby preventing her stepmother from giving her father a male heir and securing the throne for her daughter. His impotence was reflected in the land which began to become infertile. She has the support of the archangel Michael, the court Jester Jackie and her guardian angel Menediel? I remember a deed of hers was to face a dragon who was actually a woman who had been cursed by her mother in law I think. Another deed was saving a farmer from being burned to death at the stake. The cover is of Elizabeth facing the dragon in second hand armor mounted in a plow horse. I lost the book a long time ago but have been trying to find it again.
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Nov 3, 2023 02:42
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I think that's literally on a shelf beside my bed. Give me a few hours to confirm.
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Nov 3, 2023 03:26
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Thank you kindly
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Nov 3, 2023 08:04
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Agrinja posted:Thank you kindly I read this way too long ago to remember the plot, but based just on the cover description and the timing was it Witchdame by Kathleen Sky?
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Nov 3, 2023 10:46
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Resident Idiot posted:I read this way too long ago to remember the plot, but based just on the cover description and the timing was it Witchdame by Kathleen Sky? This appears to be it, thank you!
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Nov 3, 2023 17:48
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Book ID question from my wife! This was a nonfiction book about physics, aimed at kids. She got it from a public library in Canada in the mid-90s. Hardcover, trade format, relatively slim (~1cm). Black spine with white lettering. The focus was mostly (entirely?) on astrophysics, especially the spicy stuff like the stellar life cycle, black holes and neutron stars, pulsars, etc. She remembers a detailed description of what would happen to someone falling into a black hole, and discussion of red and blue shift and relativistic time dilation due to high speed or intense gravity, including mention of the twin paradox. There was one page that had a little "about Stephen Hawking" box in one corner, and another that mentioned theories that if you got a black hole (or an infinitely long neutronium cylinder) spinning fast enough you could use it as a time machine. It had glossy pages with colour illustrations. One page talked about the density of various things (with pictures), like "a teaspoon of white dwarf matter [fig. 1] weighs as much as an adult elephant [fig. 2]". It included some two-page spreads where the entirety of both pages was one huge illustration with textual labels, similar to this image (not from the book, just a blog image in a similar style).
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Nov 5, 2023 15:04
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From my childhood, I vaguely remember reading a book out of a series (that was never completely translated into my native German, I think) that was set in this fantasy world where everything was based on chess. The people in that setting were a race of shapeshifters, that had organized themselves into this rigid society of magic chess figures, and from what I remember, until the protagonist was revealed to be somehow related to one of the ancient shapeshifters that founded this society, no-one actually knew about shapeshifting being a thing. That knowledge had been forgotten. (Or something. My memories at this point are nearly 30 years out of date.) And since I only have some faint memories of book titles including chess-words like "Rook", the color red, and even vaguer memories of this weird, chess-related magic people plot, Google can't really help me. If it helps any, the series must have been written in the 80s, and the cover of my German issue had a giant, naked lady with horns and hooves on it. (I think the mystical magical mother of the protag?) Sorry that I'm rambling, but I'd really like to recover this series somehow. Hopefully people in this thread can wrangle something from this wreck of a memory
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Nov 6, 2023 00:08
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Libluini posted:From my childhood, I vaguely remember reading a book out of a series (that was never completely translated into my native German, I think) that was set in this fantasy world where everything was based on chess. Sounds like Sheri Tepper's Lands of the True Game series, although that's based on a made-up chesslike game rather than actual chess.
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Nov 6, 2023 04:07
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Selachian posted:Sounds like Sheri Tepper's Lands of the True Game series, although that's based on a made-up chesslike game rather than actual chess. Thanks! That was it. And bonus: Kindle had the first book for cheap. Time to find some some space on my reading schedule. Also  Wikipedia tells me Sheri S. Tepper wrote 9 books in this setting? Clearly I missed a lot back then.
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Nov 6, 2023 19:19
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ToxicFrog posted:Book ID question from my wife! I can only find newer editions with far more colorful covers, but I had some Time-Life science books that fit that description to a T.
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Nov 6, 2023 19:28
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Gnoman posted:I can only find newer editions with far more colorful covers, but I had some Time-Life science books that fit that description to a T. Hmm. It definitely wasn't the Life Science Library books, they're too early -- Hawking was still an unknown student then, and black holes a mathematical curiosity. The Life Nature Library "Universe" book is early 70s, but after looking at some excerpts it's not that, either. We both thought it might be one of the "Voyage Through the Universe" books, but none of the likely-looking ones there fit the bill, either -- right art style and they do love their margin infoboxes about Hawking, but notably lacking the drawing of an actual astronaut being spaghettified by a black hole or the teaspoon == elephant mass comparison. It's possible it was a different Time Life book but there are so drat many we may never find the exact one.
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Nov 7, 2023 02:33
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