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

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

When I was in primary school I read this sci fi book where I can't really remember the ending and I'm sort of wondering if there was ever a sequel.
The plot points I can remember are these:

The narrator is a boy whose family sees some sort of weather phenonmenon (a meteor storm??)
The next week/day they find a child and take him in. The boy is heavily implied to be an alien
It seems to be set somewhere between the end of WW2 and 1960
The boy and possibly his sibling(s?) find a corpse of a 'pig-like' thing which is heavily implied to be possibly one of the aliens which wasn't able to acclimatise
The child they take in grows really fast. As in he reaches the maturity of a 6 year old in a few years and is an adult in something like <10 years.
The main character's sister develops and attachment to the mysterious child and as he gets older and older the mystery boys says to her that he loves her (or is fond of her) but they can't be together (I remember him saying "It wasn't meant to be..." or something to that effect) and ends up marrying the main characters oldest sister
The mystery boy has some sort of strange abilities, like the rapid growth and intelligence, but it exhausts him when he uses his abilities and he looks really ill
The oldest sister has a daughter with the now grown up alien man who is 'hardy' like her mother but still strangely alien.
There's a bit mentioned where the alien hybrid daughter falls out of a tree which would normally be fatal, but she dusts herself off and just goes back to playing with her friends.
There are other mystery children and they all meet up and it's implied they're trying to find their way 'home' or 'back' to where they came from.

I have no idea how it ended and I'm now really curious.

Edit: Looks like I'm not the only one wondering what the name of this book was.

froglet fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Feb 2, 2014

# ¿ Feb 2, 2014 04:52

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 12:54

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

Mammon Loves You posted:

Born Into Light by Paul Samuel Jacobs?

I asked about that book way back in this thread and got the answer here. Almost all the plot points fit exactly.

I know this is a bit late, but you are a wizard. Thanks!

# ¿ Mar 19, 2015 14:28

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

Oh Noetry posted:

I'm searching for a book I loved as a kid so I can pass it on to my step children. It's an Australian history book, illustrated, and starts with stories about the dreamtime, covers the gold rush, Ned Kelly gang, Woollawarre Bennelong, the stump jump plough, I think there was a section on some famous tennis players? Towards the end there's stuff on Parliament House as well. Full page illustrations with text over them. I was born in 1990 so the book must have come out 1985 to 1995, and we had a hard cover copy of it. Hoping a fellow Ausgoon sees this and recognises it!

Not sure if this is very helpful, but I vaguely recall seeing a book like that - it was called History of Australia (funnily enough). I don't remember it at all, so no idea how helpful this is - then again, I don't think there's going to be that many illustrated Australian history books...

# ¿ Mar 19, 2015 15:06

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

Sanford posted:

I have a couple, one sci-fi, one fantasy.

The sci-fi was a short story and a simple premise. When the guy went downstairs, he travelled back in time. Upstairs, forwards in time. I think there might have been some kind of inter-dimensional administrative agency trying to fix whatever problem was causing it.

The fantasy one is more difficult. It was perhaps spread across more than one book. A group had to collect something (gems?) to stop A BAD THING from happening. The plot was incredibly contrived and more like the plot of a video game ("Aha, we have captured the gem of the centaur king! Now to challenge the leader of the swamp lords for his gem!"). One of the main party of characters was female and specialised in knives and knife-throwing. I think that the big bad they were trying to stop was also female. And that's all I have.

That last one sounds a bit like Deltora Quest, though I think the main bad guy was 'the shadow lord' or something.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2015 13:08

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

A book I found in the library in the mid-2000's. I remember the book seemed "older" and might have been from the 70s or 80s? The main characters name was Jory, he lived on an alien planet where the colonists had shunned modern technology. There was a scene where a satellite communicated to a passing by ship that they were not to be disturbed.

I remember there being a girl with green skin who was genetically modified to survive on the planet (something like UV rays potentially killing her), who had a robot caretaker. Oh and Jory's grandad was also called Jory and I think it's implied Jory was of African descent.

Any ideas? I keep getting results about Metroid from Google.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2015 14:13

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

Runcible Cat posted:

Guardian of Isis, by Monica Hughes. It's the sequel to Keeper of the Isis Light.

Holy cow you are amazing! I never knew it was a series.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2015 16:21

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

computer parts posted:

I think this is a kid's book. All I remember is that the protagonist is kind of young (probably no more than 10) and she(?) lives in a city, probably New York City. She's traveling to somewhere more out in the country, and she's amazed about how bright the autumn leaves are, because in the city the leaves just turn kind of brown because of the pollution.

The book might be 'Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great'. It's follows Sheila, a recurring character in the Fudge books.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2016 06:30

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

504 posted:

A collection of stories, I read in school so roughly the mid 90s..

It was a collection of "creepy" stories supposedly told by country folk and handed down by word of mouth (all fiction of course that was just to sell the book)

Stories were:

A burnt in devils hoofprint that would not wash off a window
The tale of a "water witch" that drowned people trying to cross her river
A sinkhole that people throw pennies into, two brothers steal some and are tormented overnight

The copy I read was hardback with a water color painted cover of figures with no faces.

I think I've read the same book. No, I don't remember the name, either. The devil's footprint sounds like a spin-off of the Jersey Devil or 'Devil's Footprints' tales, though.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2016 10:38

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

DACK FAYDEN posted:

SF short story, probably published within the last ten-twenty years? Post-apocalyptic, follows some kids who grew up after their parents died or something. Earth entered a region of weird physics or something, and multiple-foot-long spiky crystals suddenly shot out of every electronic device in every direction and that's why almost everyone died ten years before the story began.

This sounds like the plot of Eden: It's An Endless World by Hiroki Endo. Except it's a manga, not a short story.

Edit: And the thing that killed off the parents was a virus, but the crystals are linked to the virus iirc.

froglet fucked around with this message at 11:31 on Jan 5, 2017

# ¿ Jan 5, 2017 11:29

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

If you're interested in that sort of thing, there's also Brother in the Land and Plague 99, both of which are set in the UK after a disaster (nuclear holocaust and plague, respectively).

# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 15:25

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

alpha_destroy posted:

When I was a kid my dad read me an excerpt of a book so this is going to be difficult probably. I assume the book was detective fiction, both because my dad loved mystery books and because what I remember of the excerpt.

The excerpt was in a Scottish dialect. Because it was read to me I don't know if the book itself was in a Scottish dialect or just the character speaking. I also remember that the content of the excerpt was suggesting that someone be forced to bring his wife to court (the exact language was something like "produce your good woman") within like two weeks or it be assumed he murdered her. I also remember some suspicion that the suspect may have turned his wife into haggis or sausage or something.

Whenever I hear 'Scottish' and 'detective', I immediately think Ian Rankin, who's most famous for his Inspector Rebus books, which are mostly set in Edinburgh, Scotland. However, he's written over 20 books and I am certain there's other mystery novels with Scottish people in them.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2017 15:31

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

Zeerust posted:

There was a fantasy novel I read as a teenager that I just can't remember the name of. These are all the bits I can remember:

- The protagonist is a woman, and another major character is a wizard who's nicknamed 'Long-shanks'.

- They have what was in retrospect probably a super inappropriate relationship because of a significant age gap (he's a lot older than her).

- There's a bit where she gets hypnotised by a pool of some weird magic stuff, but a talking lizard snaps her out of it by biting her ankle.

- Minotaurs are in the setting and they're extremely rapey, because the power that made them didn't make any female ones.

I want to say it might be a Weatherlight novel, but I've got no way of confirming.

That sounds a lot like the last of The Immortals series by Tamora Pierce (Realms of the Gods).

# ¿ Jul 3, 2019 07:41

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

Lemniscate Blue posted:

Beat me to it.

I'm glad that it wasn't just me that remembers it as being super weird. Like I kinda blasted through all the series as a kid, and I wasn't too bothered by it because "hey if it's available at the library it must be okay", but as an adult my reaction is more "what the actual gently caress".

I mentioned this book at a panel discussion I was on a few years back because "we'd all be up in arms if there were a book out there set in the real world where a 16 year old and her teacher fall in love and everyone - including the girl's parents - is cool with it. Meanwhile, The Immortals series is still quite popular now and kids can borrow it from the library".

froglet fucked around with this message at 08:12 on Jul 3, 2019

# ¿ Jul 3, 2019 08:03

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

Okay since you all are really good at finding obscure fantasy books of yesteryear please help me remember this one.

It's a fantasy book, it was maybe for young adults (like I think some of the more mature themes went over my head because I had a reading age of a young adult but was probably too young to understand a lot of it), and I would have read it in the late 90's/early 00's. Each chapter started with a little in-universe proverb and some of them were about dragons like "if you want to understand dragons, find a girl with green eyes".

The main character is a girl with green eyes who feels like she doesn't fit in with her community of brown eyed people (she lives with her aunt and uncle who are both brown eyed). Oh and her mum is either dead or missing but also had green eyes like her (... I think).

Then some guy takes her along on an adventure involving dragons or something because she has GREEN EYES and that apparently means she's qualified? It's not clear, I would have been like 11 when I read it.

Oh and pottery (or spinning??) is a thing she does, like the book starts and ends with her doing some sort of pottery thing??

Anyways, I vaguely recall it being a series but the library didn't have any others in the series.

froglet fucked around with this message at 13:37 on Dec 9, 2019

# ¿ Dec 9, 2019 10:14

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

wizzardstaff posted:

I've definitely never read that book but searching for dragons and green eyes got me to this author, whose Dragon Chronicles books seem to fit the right timeline:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/119933.Susan_Fletcher

Yeah that first one is it!

Just goes to show how poo poo I am at google, haha.

Edit: I laughed when I saw one of the reviews mentions the themes are a bit too mature for the target age the book is marketed at. They're absolutely right.

froglet fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Dec 9, 2019

# ¿ Dec 9, 2019 13:36

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

Ok, got one I told people about and I said I'd try to find the name of it, but all Google gives me is news articles about people who woke up from comas.

So I think the book was a collection of short-ish stories all told from the perspective of a 12 year old boy. At the start of this story he buys his crush a perfume he thinks she'd like called Australis to give her for Christmas, something happens (a bike accident?) and when the story picks up again he's now in his 20s or 30s and just woken up from a coma.

In the prior stories his friend often talks about how he is visited by a version of himself from the future before he goes to bed at night and they just have interesting conversations. So in the story he finds his friend now an adult, he did build the time machine, does use it to go back in time to chat to his prior self and I think they use the time machine to keep the accident that left him in a coma from happening?

I'm pretty sure the book was Australian, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was by Paul Jennings, Morris Gleitzman or Andy Griffiths.

(I would have read this in the late 90s or early 00's).

... Or maybe I hallucinated this book (unlikely, I'm not that creative).

froglet fucked around with this message at 09:23 on Jan 23, 2020

# ¿ Jan 23, 2020 08:22

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

Isolationist posted:

I remember this as being a tad darker than Gleitzman etc - I thought Tim Winton, but just did a quick scan through of his bibliography - it wasn't 'Lockie Leonard; Scumbuster' was it?

The accident that caused the coma was the main character and friend (Egg, if Lockie Leonard) had a plan to build a winged bicycle and fly it off the roof to impress the love interest. Just before the launch, a main-character-from-the-future shows up and gives the main character a tail/rudder assembly and mentions he did similar stuff when he was a kid, and you can easily spin out and crash if you don't have a steering method.

Man, I dug through about 500 books on various 'best Australian YA fiction' lists trying to find out for you, and I gotta say holy hell Isobelle Carmody and Gary Crew were killing it back in the 90's!

Edit: Got it! John Larkin, Growing Payne (1996)

Holy poo poo, you are amazing at this.

uvar posted:

I wasn't the requester, but I'm disappointed that you weren't right the first time. The idea of the Lockie Leonard series going off the rails, to the point where he's travelling through time, is hilarious.

Yeah, that would have been very funny.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2020 12:51

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

Okay, I am sure this is one weirdly specific Google away, but I really suck at googling these things, so here goes:

It's a book set in a future UK where there's some sort of trade embargo/war. So food and clothes and shoes and all that necessary stuff eventually spirals in cost or becomes almost impossible to obtain. The main character is a boy, I am pretty sure he has two sisters (the younger sister is named Ellen).

Anyway. Main characters dad is a lunatic prepper who stocks up for his family, and the plot of the book revolves around the fact they're suddenly the most resource rich house in town while everyone around them becomes increasingly desperate.

Some plot points I remember:

- the kids find a bunch of clothes in their house that don't fit any of them, but they realise it's to keep the younger sister clothed as she grows, implying the dad expects the embargo to go on for a long time.
- the dad cutting a deal with a butcher and trading winter shoes for a freezer full of meat
- the town becoming aware that while they're all going hungry, the main characters family doesn't seem to be losing much weight or looking as thin-faced like the rest of them
- the main character watching an ad on TV about people hoarding food and resources in their homes (like their family).
- the main character volunteers for meals on wheels and some being resentful old people are getting a steady supply of food while a characters pregnant wife couldn't
- main character giving some tins of food to somebody who needed it and eventually giving his dad hundreds of pounds from his bank account because that's what the tins were worth
- main character growing a conscious and deciding he couldn't live with himself, so he engineered a heist of his parents food stash

In light of recent events I've had a hankering to re-read it. Also to show my friends that this depressing rubbish has existed for a long while. I have a feeling it was written in the 80s or 90s.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2020 09:53

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

Runcible Cat posted:

Sounds like Noah's Castle by John Rowe Townsend.

Looking at the reviews, that is most likely it. Thanks!

# ¿ Mar 13, 2020 08:56

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

KittyEmpress posted:

When I was working in a FEMA call center 4-5ish years ago I picked up a book at barnes and noble to read between calls since I worked 8pm to 8am, the slowest shift of the day.

All I remember about it was that one of the two protagonists was a girl from a (from what I remember) vaguely arabic society that hated/viewed magic as demonic and wrong, who ended up running away with a thief or something briefly, before being captured and being taken through the desert to a mountain temple to be contained.

I'm curious what the name of that book was.

I think the other (male) protagonist was a more typical western type mage??? And I recall the end of the book being a portal introducing them to each other as they crossed into the same world.

Sorry if this is all very vague, I was not actually all that coherent in those days.

It sounds a little bit like the Renegade/Healers Quest series by Jessica Palmer - the main character Zelia is originally from a nomadic tribe, but is sent away to become a priestess.

# ¿ May 7, 2020 06:57

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

Mister Kingdom posted:

Here's a couple from the late 70s or early 80s:

Sci-fi novel:

Reptialian aliens come to earth. The main character is a female scientist (biologist, maybe?). Once scene has her being freaked out that they eat their own eggs.

Short story:

Dysptopian future where fundamentalist religion takes over. Even joking about something unnatural can get you into trouble. Example: a kid(?) makes the comment that his chores would be easier if he had a third arm.

That second one is The Chrysalids by John Wyndham.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2020 04:01

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

Pulcinella posted:

I need help finding the title of a hard sci-fi novel. It’s about one of a number of spaceships who are on a doomed mission unless they are able to develop an artificial intelligence. The true nature of the mission (develop the ai) is known only to the captain. Also I think people back on Earth had manage to create AI but it exploded so now they do it out in space instead.

Sounds like Destination: Void by Frank Herbert.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2020 06:27

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

gschmidl posted:

I'm trying to find the name of a science fiction story I recall only dimly, so details may be wrong here.

The main conceit is that a spaceship returning to Earth is in some kind of time loop. I think it keeps exploding and the loop resets. I also think that there's a stowaway involved that causes this somehow. And unless I'm completely mistaken, there's some extra cruel twist at the end where they decide to murder the stowaway to get back safely, but that just throws them into another, worse, time loop?

I know it's not "The Cold Equations".

That sounds a bit like A Little Something For Us Tempunauts by Philip K Dick, but it's not a perfect match.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2021 12:43

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

SeanBeansShako posted:

Oh boy no progress on this one?

Do I have to add this? there is a super gross fetish-esqe bit where the Chinese War Lord smugly shows off asking one of his concubines to pee in front of everyone for entertainment.

Probably not it but this sounds a little like a Phillip Pullman book I remember reading ages ago. Except I think they were all set in England.

Mister Kingdom posted:

Looking for a time travel novel wherein the protagonist could travel back in time but never to the same place twice. I think the guy was trying to save his wife maybe? I think was from the 90s.

The Time Travellers Wife? He couldn't control where or when he goes, but he could go both forward and backward in time.

# ¿ May 3, 2021 11:59

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

Random Integer posted:

There was a book I read as a kid and everything about it except for a vague outline of the plot completely escapes me now.

The story, from what I remember, was about a guy living in the real world in contemporary times who gets transported to a magical fantasy world. In the fantasy world he is a super hot, super buff, super capable warrior. Also he is now a woman. And the fantasy world is incredibly misogynistic.

The only specific detail I recall is that when the protagonist gets transported they arrive at a stone circle. There are a bunch of people there because they are waiting for the foretold chosen one to appear but of course they aren't expecting the chosen one to be a woman.

That's all I got. I would have been about 12 when I read it and I was reading a really old, ratty, second hand copy so likely the book came out in the 80s sometime. Also it was written by an established author because the only reason I picked it up was because I recognized the author. Cant remember who though.

It really nagged at me at the time because despite obviously being the first book in a series I could never find out if any other books existed. It didnt even appear under the author's list of published works. The memory of it popped into my head today and of course a quick search would answer that question in 5 seconds, if only I could remember what book it was.

Attempts at googling just lead to thousands of entries of gender transformation erotica. 12 year old me was pretty dense but I would still probably have realised if I was reading erotica.

The Wonderland Gambit? The first book is called The Cybernetic Walrus. Anything involving transformations sounds like Jack Chalker. What a guy.

# ¿ May 6, 2021 03:32

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

ToxicFrog posted:

This one's from my wife. She says it was probably a short story, possibly by Asimov or PKD, but can't rule out the possibility that she's conflating multiple stories or remembering a subplot of a longer work.

Someone shows up in a time machine, and claims he's from the future. He has a bunch of advanced technology (in addition to the time machine itself) that seems to support this. However, it turns out that while the time machine and its contents are from the future, he isn't; he stole it from the original pilot a century in the past, and, not knowing how to control it, has been joyriding around time on autopilot, claiming to be from the future when he thinks he can get away with it.

At some point -- I don't know if this is before or after his lies are exposed -- he fails to make it back to the time machine in time for its next automatic jump, and it leaves without him.

The story is told not from the point of view of the traveler but from one of the natives of the time period he just arrived in.

It has a few elements in common with Worlds to Barter by John Wyndham, The Toynbee Convector by Ray Bradbury, and something about it reminded me of that early-internet tale of someone who claimed to be from the future.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2021 15:21

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

Drakyn posted:

I inflicted this awful bullshit on the Sci-fi and Fantasy thread in passing:

And now I bring it unto you. I am sorry.

This actually reminds me a bit of a book I read - in it, they were fed some of the clues via a computer game they were playing, and iirc they initially think the house used to model the game (which is a bit like Myst crossed with some sort of sci fi game) was just like the house the (male) narrator was staying in by coincidence, but the girl realises that no, it is actually that particular house after comparing a missing bit of tile on the floor from the kitchen in the game to the actual house.

The uncle did have a secret area in the house, but it wasn't an entirely sealed off room, I don't think, it was more like a cupboard or attic or something. Spoilers on the off chance it's the same one - the mystery of the book is that the main female guardian figure (aunty? mum? I feel like it was possibly a great-aunty) had a brother who was autistic, but at the time they didn't have a name for it, he was just a freak. While playing the game and visiting the places referenced in the game and finding clues, the kids realise the game is a kind of allegory/allusion to the incident that lead to him being sent away, presumably to an institution. It turns out the kids living in the house (including the narrators mum or dad?) and a group of local children were playing, and the uncle took it way too seriously and/or maybe got upset about the two twin boys bullying him, and ended up firing some sort of air rifle or bb gun at one half of the set of twins and the boy ended up falling down a ?? well/abandoned mine shaft ?? and died (I don't think it was the getting shot that killed him, it was the falling down and presumably breaking his neck). It's conveyed in the game as the player character shooting at two aliens, but the kids basically use that + some stuff one of the other adults present said to piece it all together.

The uncle is alive and working making video games (this book is almost certainly from the 90s given the uncle solo made a video game and at the end he says to use some sort of instant messaging program to chat with him coz he finds it easier to communicate that way?) and this is his (tbh probably unhealthy) way of dealing with what happened, and he'd lost contact with the rest of the family coz the dad just dumped him at some institution and didn't leave a forwarding address and told the other kids their brother had died.

The end of the book was finding out the still living twin (Timothy??) had moved to Australia never knowing what had happened to his brother, and the conclusion was kinda 'look this guy has likely moved on with his life, telling him the truth about what happened that day would probably be far more upsetting than leaving it', what happened was a terrible accident and it's not fair to apportion blame, and the mum/aunty/guardian figure and her brother being reunited.
.

I swear every time I post in this thread I wonder if I've hallucinated a book or made it entirely up yet people here have proven no, it was real, my brain likes to hang onto weird AF childrens books, but apparently 'uncle leaves weird clues and the nephew + friends go solve a 40 year old mystery' is A Thing.

Edit: Hey if it's not that I'd still be interested in someone finding it; it's the first book I remember reading that mentioned autism or had an autistic character and I know someone who'd probably be interested in reading it.

froglet fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Oct 9, 2021

# ¿ Oct 9, 2021 07:13

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

Bargearse posted:

I’m trying to find an Australian sci-fi book I read years ago. The setting is post apocalyptic Sydney, which having survived a nuclear war more or less unscathed has become the closest thing there is to a superpower, run by a totalitarian dictatorship. All I can remember of the plot is that it involves a group of people finding out the rest of Australia is much more habitable than the government is letting on, and fleeing to what’s left of Melbourne. The protagonist is a cop assigned to bring them down.

CBD by John Heffernan maybe?

If it's not that, some ideas to help you narrow it down:

Salt by Gabrielle Lord

And tomorrow and tomorrow by M. Barnard Eldershaw doesn't have a plot match and sounds way too political to fit the bill.

Shades Children and Obernewtyn both sort of fit in that they're both by Aussie authors and iirc they're both set after a nuclear holocaust but they seem a bit too fantastical.

... And finally, someone seems to have written a book entirely about how Australia is depicted in apocalypses?

# ¿ Mar 2, 2022 15:36

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

Chill la Chill posted:

Trying to remember the name of a short story that was about a man who was running through an idyllic 1950s neighborhood but everything was frozen in time, or ghostly, or there were no people there and just memories. I think there was also a short film made from the short story. They were running through the neighborhood, I think because they wanted to get back home or wanted to reconnect with their family, but lost them as time went on.

Wish I could remember more of it, but it was years ago.

Sounds a little like The Day Time Stopped Moving? But while the main premise of it being frozen in time matches, the lost family bit doesn't really fit that well.

# ¿ May 1, 2022 14:43

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

Nah, they had that weird drug everyone took that suppressed emotions.

It sounds a lot like The Giver, though the protagonist is from that society rather than transported to it.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2022 23:16

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

eating only apples posted:

A YA novel read around 2005/6 about a girl who enters an exclusive prestigious high school full of rich people. She pals up with a group, one of the girls she befriends is called Kiran who I believe was the fashionable one. I don't think there was anything supernatural, just teen girl drama. I think it was a series. I'm UK, I think the book might've been UK-based too but not confident on that. Not much to go on, sorry!

Oh, I think my sister read those! Was it the Private/Billings Girls series?

# ¿ Mar 31, 2023 15:58

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 12:54

froglet: Nov 12, 2009; You see, the best way to Stop the Boats is a massive swarm of autonomous armed dogs. Strafing a few boats will stop the rest and save many lives in the long term.

You can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs. Vote Greens.

Hughlander posted:

Probably another unsolvable one... This popped into my mind while I thought of The Green Leopard Plague By Walter Jon Williams:

Aliens arrive at a ruined Earth and do archeology on it. See a statue of someone all across the planet, celebrated in rural areas defaced in urban. Eventually they figure out that the person created a microbe that could live in a human gut and break down cellulose and ending world hunger as people could just munch on trees or grass. However, it mutated and became airborn breaking down all plant life and causing the O2 => CO2 => O2 cycle to end leading humanity to die off. At the end the aliens realize the microbes are on their ship, and their clothes and they can't return to their home planet or they'd doom it as well.

Ooh I think I've seen a similar one! Iirc it broke the process by sequestering too much carbon so there was too much oxygen in the atmosphere?

Edit: found a book called The Nitrogen Fix that looks like it's close, but not quite on the mark.

froglet fucked around with this message at 13:38 on Jan 9, 2024

# ¿ Jan 9, 2024 12:45

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