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

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yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

A YA book I read in the UK sometime in the 80's. I can't remember anything except that the protagonist might have had a single mum and that they and their friends were making a book that was called something like "The observers guide to British shits" or "Turds of the British Isles" the content of which was labeled and dated homemade pictures of turds of one sort or another with the occasional conservative politician every few pages. The turd book was a throwaway gag, not central to the plot. I think it took place in a seaside town?

# ¿ Jan 15, 2019 15:05

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 23:02

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Absurd Alhazred posted:

Are you sure that wasn't an episode of Garfield and Friends?

There is a Garfield book just like this, he starts out with big saber teeth etc. "Garfield, his nine lives"

# ¿ May 24, 2019 00:55

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Absurd Alhazred posted:

Really reminds me of this comic:

I thought of Legorobot as well

# ¿ Sep 19, 2019 01:04

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Possibly "Journey" by Aaron Becker?

https://www.amazon.com/Journey-Aaron-Beckers-Wordless-Trilogy/dp/0763660531

# ¿ Nov 1, 2019 09:08

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

chernobyl kinsman posted:

why do you people read this poo poo

I literally went through the library shelves in alphabetical order and read everything with that Victor Gollancz SF yellow spine.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2019 07:55

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

A sci fi book or short story I read in the late 80's, I guess, about a group of astronauts, possibly testing out a new engine, who get sucked into a far future where all the left brain people have exterminated the right brain people, because they were a useless burden on society. The future people are stunned that some of the astronauts paint or have creative ideas. I may be misremembering some stuff here. It might have been by Clifford Simak, but I can't see it in his bibliography.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2020 03:21

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

It's way more modern but maybe something by Peter F. Hamilton? One of the alien races in the commonwealth books doesn't use technology and has access to a network of worlds in some mysterious way.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2020 12:43

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Schadenboner posted:

It was a children's book, 8.5 x 11 or larger, color drawings, probably 1970s or late 60s, American or Anglophone origin. Called "Peoples of the world" or something similar and it showed drawings of what were certainly well-intentioned but probably incredibly racist drawings of the various cultures of the world (Masai tribesmen and Orthodox Jews were two I remembered but there were lots), "well-intentioned" because it was all in that bullshit cold war "brotherhood of man" nonsense. The last couple of pages were a world where everyone was of the same culture and it was all grey and boring?

is of little use with search terms as vague as my memory.

Any help?

Could be "People" by Peter Speir?
https://www.amazon.com/People-Peter-Spier/dp/038524469X

# ¿ May 8, 2020 10:31

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Schadenboner posted:

Oh gently caress, I read tons of this guy's stuff when I was an literal childe. He did the one about the people who go to the grocery store.

E: also Tin Lizzie

He is one of my favorites, "Christmas" is great, so is "The cow that fell in the canal"

# ¿ May 8, 2020 22:25

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

A science fiction story, possibly by Larry Niven, about a man who wakes up from some sort of last chance cryosleep into a dystopian world that want him to pilot an interstellar scout ship (for some reason) he escapes when he realizes that relativistic effects mean they can not make him do anything for them.

# ¿ May 16, 2020 10:33

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Runcible Cat posted:

World out of Time is the novel, can't remember the name of the short story it's an expansion of offhand.

Thanks, It's "Rammer" btw
Does anyone have any recommendations for dystopian space travel short stories? Preferably more modern than the ones I can remember?

# ¿ May 16, 2020 11:24

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

regulargonzalez posted:

Sounds a lot like a slightly misremembered Well World book from Jack Chalker. Very 70s, planet with different zones but iirc the southern hemisphere was for carbon based life and the north was silicon based and were essentially entirely incompatible with each other. I think the first or second book has two people who get split up into different zones in the south. The equator is another zone that has to be passed to travel from North to south. And each hemisphere has different zones, some are agricultural, some are war based, some inhabited by people, some by plant things, some by centaurs, etc.

Can you have sex with the centaurs? Asking for a friend.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2020 03:51

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Gambrinus posted:

Short story, set in England.

Travelling salesman (may not be) ends up in a hotel he'd never been to before and his car breaks down. Everything is a bit off. All the guests are eating vast amounts of food. It's very very hot. He's sharing with a roommate who is a bit off. Can't get his car fixed. Sense of dread throughout. Any ideas?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5a0odh8ro08 ??

# ¿ Sep 7, 2020 23:01

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

This rings a bell, maybe something by Charles Stross or Iain Banks? I definitely remember a scene where the protagonists visits kids in a virtual world while they are playing an appallingly visceral war/torture game of some sort.
Edit: Neal Stephenson maybe?

# ¿ Nov 24, 2020 02:03

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

I just went and dug it up, the bit is almost at the end:
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando.html#PART3
searching for "Little Mani" will bring you right to it.

# ¿ Nov 24, 2020 03:58

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Nathilus posted:

This has been driving me crazy. I hate my lovely memory.

A sci fi story about a bunch of kids on a starship. They are wandering the universe out for revenge against the unknown aliens that blew up earth with help from a confederation of other species who have had their home planets blown up. These aliens are the ones who built the ship and sent the children on their journey, under the ethical presumption that they are the ones who have the right to consider whether or not to xenocide the naughty aliens.

I believe this is the second book in a trilogy btw, with the first leading up to the destruction of earth and involving contact with the friendly alien confederation who are willing to save a portion of humanity from the catastrophe. And the third book being about the humans who were saved and their experiences in the period after the children on the revenge ship crew had departed. Relativity being what it is, this happens long after the subjective timeline of what the kids are going through in book 2.

Anyway more details about the specific book: the leader of the kids changes every subjective year IIRC and they're called The Pan, as in peter pan.There's a humanoid interface on the ship the kids call Mother I think, though it only intervenes with the kids in very specific circumstances for ethical reasons.

The kids eventually find a conglomeration of alien species that might have been the ones who destroyed earf. But it's intentionally unclear until after the climax whether it's true or not.

One of the big themes is about how very advanced species might rely on interstellar camoflage as their primary defense. The particular aliens the kids find have multiple layers of it going on, from intentionally making themselves VERY hard to find when looking into their system from the outside to not being exactly what they seem when they actually come into contact with other species.

Could be "Anvil of Stars" by Greg Bear
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anvil_of_Stars

# ¿ Feb 28, 2021 12:27

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

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.

One of the Gor books by John Norman? As Jack Chalker is to transformation so John Norman is to misogyny...

# ¿ May 6, 2021 03:57

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Pug Smugly posted:

I'm trying to find a children's picture book that I half remember.

The characters were little creatures that looked like moomin or buster from the Arthur cartoons.

There was a good side that was trying to end winter and bring in spring/summer. The bad creatures were trying to make it always winter.

I remember one page had a good creature hooking up wires so that a crocus flower could bloom through snow.

The cover was black with coloured pictures on it.

Thanks for any help

This is "Trouble for Trumpets" I wish I could find a cheap copy.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2021 13:49

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Arsenic Lupin posted:

In my experience, little kids adore ghoulish books. I grew up on, and could recite from memory, Matilda, who told lies and was burned to death.. Hilaire Belloc was the late 19th-century Edward Gorey.

My favorite poem to read to little kids, you get to the end and they expect her to have learned a lesson and have ice cream, no. Dead. If you can find a copy the version illustrated by Steven Kellogg is great.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2021 01:01

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:

A children's book of short stories that I had in the '90s - think something like Stephen King's Night Shift except not scary, and all the stories were interrelated and involved a matronly character, Mrs. ___________.

Mrs. ___________ was something like a cross between an (American) Mary Poppins and Mary Worth. In each of the stories, a member of a family would have a certain problem, like talking too much, and she would be summoned to fix the issue. If I remember correctly, her solution usually involved something like adding magical ingredients to a person's food to force them to go to one extreme to the other. In other words, if a person talked too much the magic ingredient would give them laryngitis for a certain amount of time so that they couldn't talk at all.

There were three or four stories like this in my book, and it seems like it may have been part of a series. But I've long since lost track of the book and I'm wondering if anyone else remembers it.

Mrs Piggle Wiggle? edit: gently caress, beaten

# ¿ Dec 13, 2021 09:10

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

First one might be the Magic Tree House series?

# ¿ Jan 9, 2022 06:48

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Mr.Chill posted:

Okay - this one sucks because I have no idea how it ends and it's haunted me for years and I can't remember the name or title.

Published sometime after 1995 and before 2010, I think.

It takes place in the Midwest in the 60's or 70's and is told as a memoir even though it's fiction. It's about a family in a rural town made up of a stoic Stienbeck-esque dad, no mom, our narrator who is about 10 and has bad asthma, his sister who is a year or two younger and writes epic poems about cowboys, and the teenage brother.

The teen brother gets into some kind of illegal stuff and gets sent to jail. He breaks out, steals a horse, and treks off to hide somewhere that only the family knows the location of. The rest of the book is a road trip to find the brother before the police do. At the same time the sister is writing her epic cowboy poem and we're getting snippits as they go, and it's legitimately good.

It's a surprisingly relaxing book despite the tense subject matter. There was some annoying anti-atheism ranting from the main character but he's ten and his grasp on faith is shallow at best, so it adds to his naivete.

Any ideas?

Peace like a river by Leif Enger?

yaffle fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Jan 10, 2022

# ¿ Jan 10, 2022 14:40

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Liquid Communism posted:

Help. I've just been reminded of a book I read probably 25-30 years ago and only remember bits of. Does this seem familiar to anyone?

The synopsis I remember is that the book's set in a virtual RPG where something has gone wrong (maybe people being trapped, this is late 80's to 90's so litrpg tropes before litrpg was a thing), and one of the creators who'd long left the company is called back in to troubleshoot.

The points I remember most are that the character called back in was the original combat system designer, who was an olympic level fencer who's too old to be competitive now, and originally was the sole character with the 'bard' class.

This is going to bug me for days, I can almost see the cover art. It was not a good book, but I read pretty much any trash fantasy/SF I could get my hands on then.

It might have been early-mid 1990's, I think I read it somewhere around 1995.

"Lead character designed the combat system" is straight out of Snow Crash.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2022 08:14

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

titties posted:

I'm trying to remember the name of a children's book i read in the late 80's. No idea when it was written.

A little girl gets a rat as a pet. It's specifically said to be a hooded rat. I think she named the rat Rose.

She keeps it in a shoebox under her bed. Eventually her parents try to make her get rid of her pet because her grandmother is coming to live with them and they think she'll freak out about the rat.

The girl hide the rat and lies to her parents about it. Eventually grandma finds the rat and it's cool because she sees that rats are pretty chill pets.

There are aspects of "The battle of Bubble and Squeak", but I think they were gerbils and there were two kids.

# ¿ May 10, 2022 11:08

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Synnr posted:

There's a sci-fi novel right had Reef in the title but there's a bunch of well known ones (egan, Armageddon reef etc) and the one I thought it was, Vacuum Flowers doesn't sound like the correct one:

There's some kind of competition between companies and so on to engineer space plants basically, but something never works out and they die or don't spawn? Maybe it's an engineered death. But some folks find what seems to be an abandoned research facility In a rift on an asteroid that's like an undersea reef full on different plants metabolizing different materials and maybe space bugs. Perhaps a war between asteroid miners and a corporation that wants to poison the reef and stop them from being independent?

Brightness Reef by David Brin? Can't help with your butt babies I'm afraid.

# ¿ May 21, 2022 04:46

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

papa horny michael posted:

It really reminds me of some stories by Larry Niven in his Known Space series. Beowulf Shaeffer meeting a Pak Protector, perhaps?

or Louis Wu on one of his sabbaticals? I think I've read it as well but I'm not sure it's Niven - around that time though.

# ¿ May 26, 2022 11:57

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Isolationist posted:

It's me, Ned! Ned Ryerson!

I had to go back and check the last page in case it was me that suggested a Niven story before and I'd had a stroke and forgotten

# ¿ May 26, 2022 14:47

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

GrayGriffin posted:

Children's/young adult chapter book starring a cat, possibly a kitten, who ends up having adventures on the street. I don't remember if he's a pet that wanders out or a stray that's leaving the nest for the first time. However, one thing I do remember is him being warned about dogs early on, and later on when he first sees a bunch of cars on the street he assumes they're dogs because of how big and scary they are. Later on, when he meets a real dog, he ends up befriending it, which all the other cats are shocked about at the end. I also remember there being some kind of supernatural/science-fiction plot with the villain trying to create cyborg/zombie cats, but that might be a different book. I remember the cover being mostly reddish with a picture of the cat protagonist, who was mostly black with a splotch of white. There were also some interior illustrations.

Could be one of the Warriors series by Erin Hunter? The villain and his cyborg cats sound like Tailchaser's song by Tad Williams, but Tailchaser is ginger.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2022 12:37

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

A sci fi story or novel, from before 1988-ish. The protagonists are transported to a future in which society has eliminated "Right brained" people, creativity and the arts were deemed frivolous and unnecessary and the only people left are "Left brained" scientists and engineers.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2022 12:51

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Rupert Buttermilk posted:

Isn't that kind of the plot of Equilibrium? All arts were destroyed? Or am I misremembering?

I remember it wasn't emotions, but creative or artistic thought, I think they had genetically eliminated the possibility of a "right brained" person being born.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2022 00:31

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

I can only remember a fragment of this, it's a memory a character has of someone flying through a shop window and a long piece of glass punctures their lung. The shop owner (butcher shop?) slaps a pice of grease proof paper over the wound, which seals it enough for the lung to re-inflate, saving the characters life. Read sometime before 2000.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2022 14:28

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Sanford posted:

Suddenly had a repressed memory pop in of a story that terrified me as a child. Almost definitely wasn�t a child�s story! It will have been a short story (or I wouldn�t have got through it) and I remember being shocked by the content, so it was probably included in a fairly innocuous book of sci fi or something. I definitely wouldn�t have been reading horror (still don�t) so it�s maybe not quite as terrifying as I remember but by god it troubled me. It gave me such bad nightmares I had to go and get in bed with my parents, so this can�t have been any later than ~~last week~~ about 1989.

A man is sitting in an old fashioned drawing room - comfy chair, roaring fire, big mirror. In the mirror he notices the door slowly opening and a spooky hand comes through and grabs his dog (cat? bird?) and drags it away. Later, his reflection gets got by whatever it is and there�s a graphic description of the monster eating his hand �like it was a chicken wing�. I think he runs round the house smashing mirrors so the monster can�t get out?

Could it be the short story "The Entrance" by Gerald Durrell? It's at the end of one of his short story collections "The Picnic and Other Inimitable Stories" which appears to be aimed at children, like a couple of other collections he wrote. I remember reading it expecting the usual Durrellesque whimsy involving animals and eccentric relatives and being totally traumatized.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2022 10:02

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Sanford posted:

Not only are you absolutely correct, my parents still had the book:

This edition came out September 1988, so I would have got it for my 8th birthday at the start of December. That wasn�t very age-appropriate!

Thats the edition I had, so I must have been at least 16 when I read it and still remember it being really scary. I wonder where it came from? It's so unlike his other stuff.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2022 10:06

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Fleetwood posted:

I'm looking for a sci-fi book where a crewed spaceship reaches a planet and the AI aboard the ship has lost its mind. I think the book is told from the point of view of the ship and it slowly dawns on the crew that the ship has it in for them? I'm a little hazy on the details. The only other thing I remember is that the author is a guy.

Destination Void by Frank Herbert?

# ¿ Oct 10, 2022 22:44

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

AnonymousNarcotics posted:

A book that's a biography of a fictional author, interspersed with excerpts from "his books"

This was a large (height/length) hard-cover book. The cover may have been blue? The book was a biography of a fictional author - the pages were in color, with pictures of the author's books and excerpts and descriptions.

I took it out from the library once a long time ago, but never finished it. This must have been sometime between 2009 and 2017.

I think the title may have been something along the lines of "The Life and Work of [Fake Author]"

It's "The Mysteries of Harris Burdick" by Chris Van Allsburg.

yaffle fucked around with this message at 12:22 on Oct 24, 2022

# ¿ Oct 24, 2022 10:28

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Mr Darcy posted:

Cross post from the White Whale Thread.
----------------

I’m trying to remember a children’s book it would have been out in the UK probably mid to late 80s at the latest. So could well have been from an earlier decade I guess

There's a moderate chance it would have been a jackanory story, if not then it's the sort of book that would have been read by the teacher in primary school, roughly year 4 to year 6 in current school year dating (Was probably Lower Juniors to Upper Juniors in my 1980's CofE primary)

Plot points I can remember:

A child goes to a strange world and the first people they encounter are a seemingly sweet couple (man and woman, I think elderly) who lie all the time.

They encourage the child to lie too.

They encourage the child to tell little "white" lies.

There were "little white lies", which maybe weren't that bad and also "black lies" which were a lot worse(?)

The couple/whatever were trying to get the protagonist to lie to make bad things happen? Somehow the worse thing you lie about, it helps wake a monster or do something bad to the world?

Sounds like something by Enid Blyton - one of the Magic Faraway tree books maybe?

# ¿ Nov 6, 2022 13:44

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

I'm looking for a series of Sci-fi books set in a failed colony that has regressed to a medieval level. The planet was infested with invisible psychic monsters that fed on strong emotions and basically caused the original colonists to do a purge on each other. The only survivors were people who could control their emotions through meditation. The whole culture was based on Japanese buddhist philosophy, and sword fighting, naturally. I'm pretty sure one of the books was called "<Japanese name>'s Koan" but I'm buggered if I can remember the name. Help me The identify that story/book thread.

Edit: I read them in the 80's and they had predominately black red and white covers, I'm almost totally certain they were American.

yaffle fucked around with this message at 10:31 on Nov 16, 2022

# ¿ Nov 16, 2022 10:26

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Runcible Cat posted:

Sounds like the Kensho series: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?6579

That's it, thanks.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2022 11:59

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

This is from a biography/autobiography/memoirs/letters of an English man either Victorian or Edwardian, probably part of the Bloomsbury Group or adjacent (Someone who hung around with Ottoline Morrell or J.R. Ackerly?) The author speaks or refers to their fathers pride and satisfaction in "Knowing that I was the first to kiss you with passion, fully on the lips" (or something like that). I swear to god I read this somewhere but I can't remember where.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2023 13:58

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 23:02

yaffle: Sep 15, 2002; Flapdoodle

Hughlander posted:

I swear I asked this before in this thread but can't see it...

Short story, was first in an anthology, the narrator visits an old friend at an observatory and learns that when a person dies, their soul travels out into space and becomes trapped inside an alien creature, where it remains for all eternity. The friend explains that these aliens are actually the physical manifestation of the soul and that they are all around us, undetectable until they consume a human soul. In the story, the narrator is able to observe the aliens and sees the souls of many historical figures, including Adolf Hitler. The story explores themes of mortality, the afterlife, and the nature of the soul.

I have no idea but this sounds an awful lot like it might be by L. Ron Hubbard...

# ¿ Mar 14, 2023 05:36

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

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