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Two stories, both Sci-Fi: One about the Soviet astronaut left to die on the Moon because they can't figure out a way to get him back to Earth. The other about HP Lovecraft and Robert Howard teaming up in Hell.
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Dec 15, 2007 19:06
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Nrapture posted:Shadow's Bend by David Barbour? Not really. The one I read was a short story. It's about this weird afterlife in which everybody that ever lived appears in flesh, sort of like the Riverworld saga. The great military leaders of their age such as Queen Elizabeth, Genghis Khan and others organize vast armies. HP and Howard serve as courtiers to the Queen Elizabeth. Another character that appears is the Swiss humanitarian Dr. Schweitzer. There are all kinds of humans inhabit that strange world, thought to be Hell. Neanderthals are mentioned, as well as Celts, victims of the Black Plague and others. Oh, and Lovecraft and Howard are a gay couple.
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Dec 16, 2007 12:45
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Death Hamster posted:"Gilgamesh in the Outback" by Robert Silverberg That's the one, thank you
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Dec 17, 2007 19:24
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I remember a story, probably by Robert Reed, about a Buddhist civilization on Earth peacefully submitting to invading aliens. The problem is, he is very prolific and I can't find which one among the hundreds of his stories is this particular one.
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Mar 13, 2011 19:32
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Eliza posted:Posing a question for someone without an SA account, here. This one? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mezzanine
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Dec 29, 2011 14:29
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Looking for a novel (or a series?) about well-meaning robots enslaving the humanity to prevent people from doing anything risky.
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Apr 8, 2012 15:05
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Runcible Cat posted:With Folded Hands and sequels, by Jack Williamson. That's the one! I was thinking of Humanoids, that is. I even searched for Hominids and found only the neanderthal alternate history series.
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Apr 8, 2012 21:22
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E: gently caress, beaten
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Jul 9, 2012 17:13
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appropriatemetaphor posted:I was talking to some dude in a hip german sausage place today and he was telling me about a book that was translated from French, and in it the author only speaks in like first person declarative sentences. He said it was on some list of best translated foreign books, the title starts with "auto". It's also pretty short, like 125 pages. http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/book/?GCOI=15647100384770
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Apr 18, 2013 08:56
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What was the name of that contemporary novel set in the Irish countryside in which the church burns down and unspeakable acts are comitted with a sheep?
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Oct 14, 2014 22:34
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mirthdefect posted:Did a guy inject saline into his ballsack in it too? Probably Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein. No. I might have been a little bit unclear. The novel came out maybe ten years ago, but the setting is, I think, historical. Everybody is very poor, as well, and I think it was written as the priest's diary.
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Oct 15, 2014 08:41
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Hedrigall posted:"Kin" by Bruce McAllister. Its one of my favourites. Whoa, it's the Alien alien, isn't it?
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Feb 21, 2016 21:05
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I remember a short story about an Arab, possibly a trade representative, sent to America in a dystopian future in which Islam rules the world. America is dirt poor, and there might've been a plot about a woman that sings in a bar, which the protagonist finds most unusual.
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Mar 4, 2016 12:51
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House Louse posted:Is it "Seven American Nights" by Gene Wolfe? Yes! Thank you!
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Mar 6, 2016 09:40
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Lot 49 posted:It's a short story that I'm pretty sure I read after someone else asked about it in this thread. It's the one of the best genre stories ever IMO: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/quietwar.htm
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May 7, 2016 19:05
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Lot 49 posted:That was fast, thanks! I don't know, never read anything else.
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May 7, 2016 19:58
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Beaten, but it's in one of the science fiction hall of fame collections, edited by Robert silver beef I think. Absolute classic and highly recommended. I am not familiar with Mr Beef's work
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Jun 2, 2016 13:48
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boom boom boom posted:A short story from an old sci-fi short story collection.  I'm sorry, I just find this hilariously depressive.
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Jun 25, 2016 19:14
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yaffle posted:Was it something by Iain M Banks? The trailer seemed really familier to me as well. Banks happens to mention that killing yourself to get into one of machine-ran heavens is frowned upon in societies that maintain that sort of afterlife. I think it concerns the Chel heaven in Look to Windward, although there is some discussion of artificial heavens in mostly hell-oriented Surface Detail. I don't remember a subplot in which people did kill themselves to be together in the afterlife, and I've reread both books fairly recently.
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Feb 27, 2017 11:27
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Hughlander posted:This is probably the wrong thread for it, but are there any good books from the point of view of people or a society that are truly immortal and have more than 40 or 50 thousand years of experience? I know there's things like Chronicles of Amber by Zelazny, but for all their agelessness it feels like they've only lived for 5-10k years. (Except maybe Benedict.) There's the various Warhammer 40k or DC Vandal Savage characters but I'm interested in something about the fantasy/sci-fi society that long long term immortals would create. Reynolds' House of Suns
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Aug 21, 2017 18:48
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uvar posted:SF book, maybe from the 70s? Aliens appear on earth and build cities of crystal and light, but don't communicate with us. I'm not sure if I ever actually read it because I think I'm remembering the blurb instead of the actual story. That's not a lot to go on, but I remember the cover too - my memory and artistic skills are not good enough for Google, but maybe someone here might recognise it? 
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Oct 14, 2017 07:52
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Something I’ve read fairly recently. Possibly just one of the threads in a larger novel or some kind of a dream/hallucination within another story: a boy travels from a rural area to a large fantasy-type city. I think he might’ve been orphaned and the road was very perilous. In the city he becomes sort of an apprentice in the local police force analogue, although he could’ve gone the other way and become a criminal. Pretty soon he solves a big case/conflict/riot although he still has junior status. The city is possibly under threat of invasion or some kind of disaster? That’s all I’ve got, aside from a strong feeling all of this was actually happening on the sidelines of a wider sci-fi story.
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Nov 9, 2017 22:27
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Isolationist posted:Shot in the dark here, but the galaxy-wide Edeard flashbacks in Peter F Hamilton's Dreaming Void series? Yes, thank you! That’s why I don’t remember how the story ended - I abandoned the book because I didn’t like the main plot. But there was something rather compelling about these dream sequences.
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Nov 12, 2017 11:20
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Kvlt! posted:Nope, thank you though. Maybe I'm misremembering because nobody can find it anywhere (and neither can I!) One of the two books narrated by a self-insert doctor by Celine? The horror is human existence
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Dec 30, 2017 22:15
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There’s an AI gun in David Gunn’s Death’s Head novels. Can’t think of one in Culture novels that matches the description.
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Jun 7, 2018 06:21
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Agents are GO! posted:This is EXACTLY it! Thank you! That sounds an awful lot like the completely unnecessary reveal at the end of Tim Powers’ Dinner at Deviant’s Palace
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Jul 24, 2018 16:30
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Sanford posted:A story about a boy who’s mother is dying and he has to travel across America to the coast which is repeatedly referred to as “the place where the sea meets the sky”. He can sidestep into another dimension, and I think he was special because he doesn’t have an alternate self there. This means he steps into the equivalent place to where he is now, rather than to where his double is in the other dimension. This bit is really really confusing to me and I can’t work out how it worked. I think a villain had a club foot in one or other dimension, because when the hero switched between he noticed tracks in the sand where this version had been dragging his foot around. Talisman by Stephen King e:not sure about the dimension hopping, I know the alternate reality was somehow smaller so you travelled faster through it. Might’ve had something to do with the titular talisman.
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Sep 25, 2018 19:54
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Sanford posted:Haha what the gently caress dude I hadn’t even finished posting It’s a good book for a child to read. I might’ve been 14 at the most and it was a great read at the time. I don’t think it would really work for an adult.
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Sep 25, 2018 20:00
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There was this story about humans evolved for a much colder world in the far future. They live on ice floes and survive by sucking plankton or algae out of the ice they chew. Once your teeth decay, you’re as good as dead. The protagonist sets out to find some fabled land or something and eventually discovers a paradise island heated by geothermal energy. turns out “normal” humans live there and freak out when they meet our blubbery protagonist Probably read it in a magazine a couple of decades ago.
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Dec 9, 2018 12:44
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Bookish posted:I'm pretty sure this is the same story I asked about quite a while ago and it turned out to be Huddle by Stephen Baxter. That one really sticks with you! I’ll check it out, thanks. It stuck with me, yeah!
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Dec 9, 2018 22:14
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strange feelings re Daisy posted:Aliens scout Earth, deem it an easy target for invasion, and return with their invasion force many years later. The problem is by the time they return human technology has advanced far further than they anticipated and Earth is now capable of putting up a substantial fight. I can't remember the name and it's driving me crazy. That would be Turtledove’s Worldwar series e:fb
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Jan 7, 2019 13:39
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Resident Idiot posted:"Otherwise Pandemonium" by Nick Hornby. This is terrible, he uses his knowledge of the upcoming Armageddon to pressure a 14 year old girl into sex
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Jul 16, 2019 14:49
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Yes it does
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Apr 21, 2020 18:34
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Tree Goat posted:what is the relatively famous horror short story about the british guy whose car breaks down and he is coerced to spending the night at a hotel where everything is slightly too warm and you have to eat and eat and eat (because leaving food insults the chef) and there is potentially a murder or doppelgänger etc. The Hospice by Robert Aickman? e: fb
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Apr 30, 2020 21:23
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Goons! We need the dickgun story title, seriously. Someone bring in one of the thread wizards to solve this mystery.
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May 1, 2020 13:43
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It’s Aickman’s The Hospice
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Sep 8, 2020 05:32
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It has this tendency to stick with you and make you forget the author or where you’d read it. I know I experienced it myself. I guess that the oneiric quality in it really shines and plants it somewhere near the unconscious. That’s why we get it that often in this thread.
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Sep 8, 2020 07:49
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I believe that a similar idea comes up in Iain M. Banks's Culture series. Up to a point. Conservative religious societies develop Bruegelian hells in which they torment digitalized sinners to make their religious doctrines reality. It’s peak Banks, totally needlessly gruesome stuff, I think it happens in his second to last book.
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Nov 23, 2020 21:14
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navyjack posted:I’m gonna post this in the SFF thread too, but does anybody remember a book with a magic system that had practitioners learning foreign languages as a kind of “magical circuit breaker” in their minds? Like it could be Klingon or French or Old Estruscan, but the one step remove from being their native language kept the magical energies from blasting their minds apart? I need to know if I’m imagining this or if it’s real so I can use it in something if I made it up. Either this is real or we're both imagining. However, I haven't read Dresden so it's probably Bakker, I guess? Let us know which one it was.
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Jan 22, 2021 14:19
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verbal enema posted:This was i think a polish book translated to English. I think it took place in the late 60s early 70s and some guy gets at this goverment facility that is FULL of spies. Everyone is spying on everyone there for eachother and their bosses but also for their personal enemies and blah blah. The main character is understandably completely confused as he's just bounced around this place. It's Lem. Memoirs Found in a Bathtub
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Jan 27, 2021 22:30
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