The identify that story/book thread: Home of the gas pump boy

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The identify that story/book thread: Home of the gas pump boy

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

This is a book that came out a few years ago I think. It's about a guy who goes on a trip into space, but a micro-meteorite takes out the radio and the pilot. He starts writing his life story on a computer, which somehow is able to be read by people on Earth, who put it up on the news. There is an spaceship sent to save him, but he doesn't know about it so he flies the ship down to earth himself.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2007 15:01

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# ¿ May 1, 2024 21:25

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

Alan Smithee posted:

2) I believe a goon mentioned a cyberpunk novel similar to Snow Crash where in the future everybody is named after the company they work for (ie Nike). I remember looking it up on Amazon but I've forgotten the title

Sounds like Jennifer Government.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2008 02:22

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

Gawain The Blind posted:

This is a really stupid one, because if I remember correctly, the book wasn't terribly well-written in the first place, but for some reason i've been wanting to read it again, and can't remember the name of it.

It was a science fiction novel about a guy who is lazy and mostly useless, but who, through a series of really goofy events finds himself in control of a giant spaceship that is actually a gene bank. He ends up traveling around the universe to various planets who request something from the bank that they need in order to solve some ecological problem, (we need an animal that will eat this other animal) but he usually ends up screwing it up, sometimes on purpose.

If I remember correctly, the title is the guy's name, and its some really ridiculous name like "Pyle" or something. I read the book when I was in high school.. I think in the mid 90s, though it could have been after that.

I also can remember, with near perfect clarity, that the cover features this dude, who is sort of rotund and bald, sitting on a chair in the ship surrounded by cats. (cats feature prominently in the book as well if I recall)

This is driving me absolutely nuts. The really stupid thing is that it's probably a Heinlein book or something. Man, that will be embarrassing.

It's Tuf Voyaging, by George R. R. Martin.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2008 02:43

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

SupremeBovine posted:

I'm looking for a short story. It involved a plane full of people who get somehow stuck in a static point in time that's already passed and they have tp find a way out before the monsters that get rid of past time come and destroy everything. The name of the story is the name of the monsters.

I'd like to read it again, but I don't remember the name, who its by, or what collection its part of. I feel like its well known, but I can't seem to place it and its bothering me.

Sounds like Stephen King's Langoliers.

# ¿ May 29, 2008 02:21

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

Panorama posted:

Here's one.
Aliens develop a low tech space faring culture. Due to the expanse of the galactic empire technology stagnates. They then discover Earth, land in their wooden ships and promptly get bitchslapped by the modern Earth military.
I think it was a short story and I think it's fairly old.
Any help appreciated.

I remembered it was called "The Path Not Taken" or something and after asking around on IRC, it turns out it's The Road Not Taken.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2008 15:45

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

EvilMoJoJoJo posted:

I think I know the one you're talking about. But can't remember what it's called, either. By an Australian author? If it's the same one, the game they play ends up taking them to a deserted new planet with none of the problems of the old one (pollution, crime etc) and they call it "Gift" or something like that? Turns out the VR game was all part of a government scheme to populate new planets, too.

I also think this book was named in a recent "post-apocalyptic books" thread but bugger me if I can find its name now.

I think this is Invitation to the Game by Monica Hughes, posted on the first page of this thread.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2008 00:20

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

nuvan posted:

6. aliens invade earth. we start a guerilla war against them. they run their standardized intelligence test on us (which they weren't supposed to do) and find out we're smarter than they are, they just had/have better tech.

Was it a series of short stories? I remember a story about this where the humans end up basically doing all the species dirty work on different planets, including one where they use trained snakes and gorillas against a species on this planet where everything is edible to them.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2008 03:36

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

nuvan posted:

6. aliens invade earth. we start a guerilla war against them. they run their standardized intelligence test on us (which they weren't supposed to do) and find out we're smarter than they are, they just had/have better tech.

Found it. It's Pandora's Legions, available in the Baen Free Library.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2008 18:34

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

SimianNinja posted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%94All_You_Zombies%E2%80%94

You're welcome.

Did you even read the description of that story?

# ¿ Mar 1, 2010 17:44

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

Danith posted:

This is a series of books, I believe it takes place in an apocalyptic near-future. It started (iirc) in a little town in northern Minnesota, where the enemy things haven't got to yet and the main character was eventually recruited to a scouting division called the Wolves..

The 2nd book he got in to a espionage/assassination division called the Cats.. and I think the 3rd one he went to the Bears which was the heavy infantry dudes. (never got to read that one)

Oh, I remember the enemies had these almost-impenetrable/bullet proof cloaks they would wear..

I've been trying to find it again for awhile and I can not recall the title at all and my searching on google and amazon have been fruitless. I know not alot to go on and my recollection is hazy but this is bugging me because I never got to read the 3rd book

That is E.E. Knight's Vampire Earth series.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2010 19:19

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

iLikeMidgets posted:

I'm trying to remember a book I've read about 15-18 years ago. I was a bookworm at a young age but this is the only book that has stuck with me to this day.

The book was about these people who passed on their memories/feelings. There were keepers of memories whose responsibilities were to pass it on the the next generation. Once memories were passed on, they could not "remember/possess" it anymore. The memories were passed by touch.
I believe near the end of the book, the people were being attacked or their world was coming to an end. One of the keepers was protecting a child. As their world started crumbling, he would pass on his memories/feelings to the child so the child could understand and feel them.

As I've last read this book many many years ago, my memory is very vague but I hope someone could identify this book as I would love to to be able to read it again.

Pretty sure that's The Giver.

EFB

# ¿ Feb 20, 2011 00:23

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

Sanford posted:

A book I read ten years ago or more. Some kind of sci-fi, there was a war going on. Due to the immense distances involved forces would reach a destination to find that the whole scope of the conflict had changed, and many thousands of years had passed since they started their journey. I can't remember if this was due to stasis/sleep chambers or relativistic affects of lightspeed travel (or both).

The main characters were a couple, seperated by the war and I think they each accepted that the other was probably dead. The woman possibly begins a lesbian relationship because everyone else is doing the same, but she's not really into it. By some huge concidence they both survive and end up in the same region of space and time. By this time heterosexual relationships are all but unheard of and their coupling is seen as a somewhat grotesque abberation. I think they retire to a planet/region specially set aside for ex-soldiers who have been seriously displaced in time.

Some, all or most of these details may be incorrect. Any ideas?

Sounds like The Forever War.

# ¿ May 17, 2011 14:11

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

DNK posted:

There was a series (of series) with each book (in one of the series) starting with "Golden ______". The very first book started with the protagonist being a young boy growing up with a kind of beast-magic that was looked down upon. He grows up, does some cool stuff, yatta yatta.

Then he gets taken as a page in some castle, gets recruited by this master assassin guy, and learns to be a kung-fu, alchemist-operative who also is a raging berserker [a specific moment in the books is when this guy goes on a viking ship and literally flips his poo poo and axe murders like 100 people].

Later on he's adopted by the king, I think, and then has some strange succession issues due to politics and an impending invasion.

Then the realm is ending due to dark magic or whatever, and the secret to saving it is to put all their eggs into the "Summon Huge Fuckin' Dragons"-basket. This involves trekking into the Dark Forest and conversing with basically Elves. Oh, this guy eventually falls in love with some hippy from a mountain town who is also some kind of passable sorceress.

Then this guy grows old as gently caress, cynical as gently caress, and has basically killed everyone who he respected and, in the process, lost basically everyone he loved except for his dog, though even his dog had to be reanimated from the grave, or something. So the next series of books involves this guy as the old Master Assassin Sensei whereupon he trains the new killer viking kung-fu beast-magic alchemist raging berserker protege.

An underlying theme in all of the books is this guys' ability to use beast-magic and his relationship with the rest of normal society. The beast- society thinks he's just the establishment's tool, and the establishment thinks he's a fuckin' danger to society and wants to hang him.

I think I've read the first two books of this new series, but then I ran out of books.

I want to read this again, but I have no idea what its name is. It's pretty choice trash-fantasy -- the synopsis sounds pretty bland but the storytelling and pacing are fantastic.

That's the Farseer and Tawny Man series by Robin Hobb.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2011 14:29

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

Trying to remember a book about a vampire whose car is a ghost. Also I think he occasionally blacked out and turned into this demon bat thing.

Edit: Also a different series about a vampire who only gets half the vampire virus (due to a blood transfusion with Dracula), so he doesn't have all their weaknesses. He meets up with Civil War ghosts, and one of the books references the Tik-Tok of Oz.

Piell fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Jul 5, 2011

# ¿ Jul 5, 2011 00:29

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

I think the second one is the Half life series. Does he end up with a werewolf girlfriend?

Yep, that's it, thanks!

# ¿ Jul 6, 2011 09:42

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

Funkmaster General posted:

More children's/young adult's fiction needing identification!

Book is about a young boy who is a slave working on a ranch in a fantasy setting. Instead of (or possibly in addition to, I can't actually remember) traditional livestock, the ranch raises and breeds dragons. The strongest of these dragons are trained as fighters and pitted against each other in an arena in the city.

I remember at some point the boy has escaped, or been granted freedom, or otherwise is away from the ranch, and I believe he has a female companion of his own age. He has befriended a dragon, who he fights at the arena, but I can't remember if that happens before or after he is free. Also this might have been two or three different parts of a series that I'm combining in my head.

That's the Pit Dragon Trilogy by Jane Yolen. Despite being called a trilogy there are four books.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2011 01:55

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

Tuxedo Ted posted:

Second one might be a bit tougher, or it might not. Somewhere on these forums someone linked a short story, available online elsewhere. It is about alien invaders who try and take over a slightly post-modern Earth. But the trick is that the aliens aren't that advanced. The secret to interstellar travel is around victorian-era level technology, and mankind skirted around it by sheer fluke and continued to advance technologically without ever leaving earth. Contrawise, the aliens never bothered to advance their own tech much further because once space travel came around, that's all they ever bothered with. Flying to new planets, invading, etc, and not bothering with much else besides plundering. So they get to earth, find their sabers and muskets to be useless, and end up wondering what they unleashed by accidentally giving the humans the ability to travel across the galaxy. The POV switched between the raid captain of the aliens and the human's perspective.

This one should be freely available online, and might have only been published in a magazine or the like previously (if at all).

Thanks in advance.

It's the Path Not Taken or something like that.

efb

# ¿ Nov 23, 2011 17:05

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

Runcible Cat posted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Folded_Himself

It's probably that one, but there's also All You Zombies by Heinlein.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2011 23:22

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

Vaya con Dios!!! posted:

Anyone help me with this one:

Sci-fi book. Protagonist is I think 16ish - everyone is highly educated - up to Calculus levels by middle school.. live underground and have screens that project landscapes to give the impression of living above ground.

Anyway, the main plot is that at a certain age children are expected to go through a rite of passage involving a survival of the fittest type scenario. They are shot through space onto distant, undeveloped planets with only their wits and (I believe) one thing they can carry (can be anything - gun, knife, whatever). It is violent, and the kids end up stranded on the planet for years and start their own civilization. There is also some sort of strange animal that inhabits the planet and has some sort of annual migration that wipes the kids out. Eventually Earth manages to come back into contact with them and explains that a supernova interfered with their ability to get them back and some of the kids, now adults, decide to stay, since they have entire lives on the new planet.

I just read the Hunger Games yesterday and it reminded me of a stupider version of the book I'm describing, so I wanted to maybe reread the other but I have no clue who could have written it.

Invitation to the Game, perhaps? Though refreshing my memory from the wikipedia page, perhaps not.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2012 19:55

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

Urban-fantasy-ish novel set during the Civil War, the book starts with Abraham Lincoln getting attacked by a werewolf in the White House, and the werewolf is beaten to death with a silver serving tray. The guy who kills it (a butler I think?) is then set up as a task-force type thing to figure out what all this supernatural conspiracy stuff is about.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2014 23:56

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

Stereo posted:

Trying to remember a fantasy about some sect or other that get assigned as bodyguards to people and to seal the deal they get stabbed through the heart. Thanks

King's Blades series by Dave Duncan.

# ¿ May 8, 2014 15:50

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

Laverna posted:

Aahh, I thought I knew this one until I realised that not only could I not actually remember the name of it but also it wasn't the same book at all.

The one I'm thinking of had a main character called Ish who was lame in one leg, and he got abandoned by his tribe, I think? He travels with his pet dogs and one of them is named Jill who dies trying to jump across a ravine?
I think there were three books in the series. I've just tried to look them up but had no luck, so hopefully somebody recognises them.
There's a good chance they are by an Australian or New Zealand author.
For some reason the name "Jack" pops into my head in relation to these books so it could be the author's name or a different character's name.

Earth Abides, probably?

# ¿ Jul 21, 2014 14:50

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# ¿ May 1, 2024 21:25

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

ToxicFrog posted:

This is going to be horribly vague, sorry.

A book about a guy living alone in the wilderness. I forget if he was trapped there for some reason, or left human society voluntarily. I think that the book covers a span of several years and ends with him meeting people again. The one bit I remember clearly is that at one point he gets an overwhelming craving for liver, and kills some wild animal and eats its liver and feels much better afterwards, leading him to speculate that he had some kind of nutritional deficiency that was satisfied by eating it, hence the craving. At this point the book says something like "liver he had craved, so liver he had sought, without knowing why".

I would have read this in grade school, I think, so mid-late 90s, but it could easily be older than that.

I think its Hatchet.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2016 03:49

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