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John Lee posted:Okay, I feel like a dingus because old, cheesy, lighthearted sci-fi and fantasy are basically what I was made for, but I can't remember the name of this really obvious, not-obscure series. It's an oldish fantasy series where the character/s explore various wildly different fantasy worlds. The only one I specifically remember is from one of the later books, where's there's an elaborate contraption in the netherworld that uses immortal imps in cages as a binary code system for a chunky mechanical computer - the imps have to stick their tongue out or keep it in their mouth to indicate the state. Sounds like the Master of the Five Magics series by Lyndon Hardy. The imp computer was in Riddle of the Seven Realms I think.
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Jun 29, 2018 18:24
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Also I want to live in your shoes where that series is obvious and not-obscure. It's one of my favorite thrift store finds from childhood but I've never met anyone else who's heard of it.
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Jun 29, 2018 18:30
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Veni Vidi Ameche! posted:Another one from the hundred best-of anthologies I have scattered around my life: I have definitely read this one but can’t remember its name. It was published in either (or both?) Lightspeed or Clarkesworld magazine within the last few years. They both have their archives online. Edit: found it, it’s “At Budokan” by Alistair Reynolds. wizzardstaff fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Jul 12, 2018 |
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Jul 12, 2018 19:46
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Dangit, this was finally one I knew and someone beat me to it. In 4th grade our teacher had us all pick our favorite picture from that book and write a short story about it.
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Oct 19, 2018 06:30
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Alan Smithee posted:Come to think of it K was too young. What state you go to school? Montana.
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Oct 19, 2018 22:35
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Resident Idiot posted:I'm 95% sure you're after the Gandalara Cycle by Randall Garriott and increasingly his wife Vicki Ann Heydon, starting with The Steel of Raithskar and ending with the River Wall that you remember. Thank you for this link; the book summaries look gloriously 80s. "Bearing the Ra'ira, Raithskar's most sacred gem, Rikardon and Tarani flee a ruthless enemy across the burning deserts of Gandalara. Protected by the swordsman's mighty warcat Keeshah, and the mystic bird called Lonna, who obeys the illusionist's commands, the two discover the smoldering passion they have long denied. But Keeshah leaves them to fulfill an ancient mating ritual in the Valley of the Sha'um, Rikardon and Tarani must risk death in the Well of Darkness to fulfill their destiny."
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Dec 12, 2018 01:42
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LongSack posted:This series, Robert Vardeman’s Cenotaph Road series, and Sherri Tepper’s Land of the True Game series are the ones I remember most fondly from my younger days. Great, thank you for the recommendations!
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Dec 13, 2018 05:17
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I'm looking for a children's story or folk tale that I had on tape when I was a kid. The story was about some sort of legendary set of trials in a cave on the mountain. Knights and heroes would practice for these trials but they would usually only make it past the first one; no one made it past the second except for the protagonist who was a plucky princess or something. The first trial was a big pit of snakes with a pillar in the center that you had to jump across. (I always heard the narrator say "pillow" and it gave me a weird mental image.) The second trial was a giant lion whose hide was covered in eyes, and when all the eyes opened it turned you to stone. (I remember the narrator describing it as slowly opening "eye after eye after eye after eye".) The third trial I think was a magic mirror or something, but I am less sure about that. It might have just been a mirror that was used to defeat the lion. I think it was a traditional folk tale and not a unique story so there might be multiple sources for this, but bonus points if you can identify the specific audio book edition I had.
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Feb 18, 2019 17:36
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Cornwind Evil posted:I'm trying to recall a young adult book in the vein of Judy Blume (not one of hers I believe, I checked a lot of them on her Wikipedia page). All I remember from it is that the female teenage main character has such a bad parent/teacher meeting (I think she and the teacher were having strong disagreements) that she basically suffers a complete physical breakdown, like the negative assessment by her teacher has made her violently ill. I thought then, and now, that it was a strange reaction. Her symptoms were a lot like one time that I got sick (she specifically mentions just being 'unable to get out of bed', which happened to me one time when I was young, my body just suddenly became very weak. No idea what I had then), but I actually had a physical disease while hers is a psychological reaction. Harriet the Spy?
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Mar 7, 2019 15:21
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Davros1 posted:Quoting this from a while back to see if anyone can help. I don't know about the specific book, but "weird but true" combined with "orange border" sounds like a National Geographic publication, if that helps narrow your search.
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Apr 4, 2019 17:00
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That’s Rhapsody by Elizabeth Haydon.
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Apr 12, 2019 04:22
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MohawkSatan posted:Goddamn dude, you must be some sort of guru. I've been trying to remember what it was called for days now. I also read that book as a teen. I actually remember far less of it than you described, but “heroes go through the elemental fire of the world tree and emerge centuries later” is pretty unmistakable. (Also I cheated and had to google the author’s name after I remembered the title.) wizzardstaff fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Apr 12, 2019 |
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Apr 12, 2019 14:23
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What else was the book about?
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Apr 28, 2019 13:54
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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
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Dec 9, 2019 12:50
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I don't know why I am compelled to google these things I have never heard of but I like sleuthing stuff down. This sounds like "Die Pflanzen des Doktor Cinderella" by Gustav Meyrink. I can't find the actual story in English (I don't even know if it's available in English; is that the language you read it in?) but it is cited in chapter 4 of Media, Modernity and Dynamic Plants in Early 20th Century German Culture.  
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Dec 10, 2019 00:15
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For reference the winning google search string was horror "short story" statue sleep pose -clown -russian -prince fingernail "pine cone".
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Dec 10, 2019 00:17
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Gambrinus posted:I've been after that story, off and on, for over twenty years. Cool, there is a lot of poo poo going on that I feel powerless to make right, but I can still make some small things better.
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Dec 10, 2019 01:22
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MockingQuantum posted:I'm trying to find a short story I read a while back, which I know is a tall order. It was a sort of sci-fi/horror story, that I thought was written by Brian Evenson but now I'm not sure and can't find it under his name, at least. I know I read it online, it had someone waking up inside a capsule or pod or something, presumably in deep space, but everything about the story was very ambiguous and uncertain, almost to the point of being dreamlike. Unfortunately that's all I can tell you about it... not much to go on, I know! What magazines do you typically read; do you think it was published in any of them?
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Jan 13, 2020 18:27
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Ok fine I'm in, my interest has been roused.
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Feb 15, 2020 18:34
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For no absolutely no reason related to current events, I've been thinking about a story I read a few years ago. It was framed as a woman's cooking blog during a pandemic and quarantine. Each entry had her trying to put a cheerful face on the situation and writing a new recipe out of diminishing supplies. I don't remember if it had a happy or sad ending. Google is not giving me great results right now with search terms like "cooking blog" and "global pandemic".
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Mar 8, 2020 02:05
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That's the one, thanks! e: I reread it. It has a happy ending. wizzardstaff fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Mar 8, 2020 |
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Mar 8, 2020 02:26
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The passage in question.quote:"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by eactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . The process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for commiting thought-crime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. . . . Has it ever occcured to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?"
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Apr 15, 2020 19:15
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Harvey TWH posted:2. Puzzle book I saw an older kid working on about 1990. I think it had the structure of a CYOA book, but it was primarily made up of detailed illustrations, and I think there was a series of glass tunnels with cameras all over and you had to avoid being seen or determine which cameras to take out. Monkeys may have been involved. Was this perhaps an Usborne Puzzle Adventure?
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Apr 21, 2020 03:47
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Harvey TWH posted:As for the puzzle books, I'm going to have to dig a little deeper on those suggestions. I can't see what they look like inside on Amazon, so I might need to pester sellers or see if I can find any at a library (once libraries are, you know, open again). I think the one I saw was full-page illustrations, little text, and probably bigger than a standard paperback (I want to say about the size of a Highlights Puzzlemania, maybe 8×10, though I know those definitely came later and also might be tainting my memory). Does this look familiar? 
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Apr 21, 2020 17:26
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Runcible Cat posted:The Sliced-Crosswise Only-On-Tuesday World by Philip Jose Farmer? There was also a series of books based on this story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayworld_(novel_series)
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Apr 30, 2020 21:33
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yaffle posted:Can you have sex with the centaurs? Asking for a friend. buddy,
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Jun 6, 2020 09:10
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Big Bad Beetleborg posted:Children's animated book published pre-1999 with a visual complexity somewhere between an Usborne puzzle book and Graeme Base. I'm not certain now if it was a puzzle book itself, or just had very complex drawings. Is this How To Live Forever by Colin Thompson?
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Jul 12, 2020 00:04
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Pretty sure based on the cover art that it's The Cold Cash War by Robert Asprin. e: or not, you mentioned a guy in a suit too   
wizzardstaff fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Aug 15, 2020 |
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Aug 15, 2020 05:57
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Google is flooded with hits for someone's bandcamp and a toy unboxing youtube channel, but there's also this if you're a soccer fan.
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Sep 14, 2020 06:54
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Is this familiar? The answer on that page seems to be Escape From Exile by Robert Levy.
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Oct 29, 2020 02:43
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Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld.
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Dec 26, 2020 16:38
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The first one sounds like something E(dith) Nesbit would have written, maybe? I have no idea about the second one but I'm pretty sure someone asked about the same thing several months ago in this thread. No one was able to track it down then either, but maybe you could compare notes? Dell_Zincht posted:I think I posted my request in this thread ages ago, but I can't find it. I've been looking for this for over a decade now, everyone I've spoken to about it thinks I made it up, and I was convinced I was until I found someone on Goodreads asking about the exact same book.
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Jan 9, 2021 17:00
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coathat posted:I'm looking for a YA Christian Scifi book I read around 2000. It was set after a nuclear war with a kid or kids waking up form some sort of cryogenic sleep. Hes helped by a group of mutants, I think there was a giant and a pair of dwarf twins that had to stay physically close together or else they'd get sick and die. They ended up going to some desert mountains with maybe bird people. I haven't read it but I believe this is the Seven Sleepers series by Gilbert Morris. Google Books has a hit on a passage about "Gemini Twins" who are dwarves with opposite personalities that have to stay together.
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Feb 4, 2021 17:52
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That sounds like it could be Fahrenheit 451 which is notable for its full-sized "parlor wall" TV screens. There is a character who wants to upgrade from three to four walls. I'm not sure if Bradbury used that device in a short story as well, though. Wouldn't be surprised if he did.
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Mar 9, 2021 15:10
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Every time the gas pump boy comes up in this thread I want to find it, but search results are just other people looking for it on reddit/goodreads/this thread. I’m starting to get Candle Cove vibes from it, honestly.
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Apr 21, 2021 15:28
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Memento posted:I remember reading a pop-science book about 10-12 years ago where it had various chapters on scientific concepts, written at about a year 11-12 level. One of the chapters was called something like "The incredibly unlikely triple-alpha process", speaking about how we got carbon inside stars. I think the book had a pink cover. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Poking around Google Books I think this is The Matchbox That Ate a Forty-Ton Truck by Marcus Chown which has a pink cover and a chapter called "You, Me, and the Spectacularly Unlikely Triple-Alpha Process". wizzardstaff fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Apr 28, 2021 |
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Apr 28, 2021 01:03
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Elderbean posted:Could anyone help me here? When I was a kid I remember reading a book at the library that was about a girl surviving by herself in a house following an apocalypse that was either nuclear or viral (can't remember) and then one day a man in a hazard suit shows up and she's unsure of who he is or what he wants. Z For Zacharia by Robert C O'Brien?
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May 13, 2021 21:04
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Hughlander posted:Looking for a short story may have just been posted online. Basically about capitalism in the land of automation. An Alexa style app is added to mcdonalds telling you when to cook when to clean when to order. And all of management is laid off. Then the voice is added to the drive through and registers and staff is cut in half. Then automated burger flippers lay off the rest. The rich respond by basic debtors prisons where if you don’t have a job you have to live in dorms and can’t leave unless you can prove you are working. Sounds like Manna by Marshall Brain.
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May 15, 2021 20:15
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Update on the "boy turns into a petrol pump" saga. Truths have been revealed! Posters in this very thread are implicated as CIA psyop agents spreading disinformation about a book that never existed!  http://www.thecourieronline.co.uk/petrol-stein-or-the-modern-polybius-the-strange-world-of-internet-book-searching quote:On a SomethingAwful page entitled 'The identify that story/book thread', user Dell_Zincht posted a similar request on 31 May 2020. On 31 July 2020, an r/whatsthatbook user (who has since deleted their account, but based on this post in r/Teachers may be u/Paint_Her), made yet another post looking for the book, with a similar description. More users claimed to have read it but didn't remember much. Someone even claimed to have seen a film trailer with a similar plot and a famous actor.
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Jul 8, 2021 19:10
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Biplane posted:what in the gently caress Digital signs that say "you must be born before XXXX to buy alcohol" have Y2K errors now.
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Jul 11, 2021 21:07
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