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

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Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Crappy Ace Sci-Fi 70s paperback. May have been written by Piers Anthony but I don't think so. Rural Teenagers are visited/abducted by Aliens, only it turns out that there's some twist, it's not earth or something, they're not kids or they're robots. I think everyone else is a robot and it's far in the future. Man this describing things is harder then it sounds!

# ¿ Mar 8, 2008 00:13

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 15:25

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

cricket eater joe posted:

I've been trying to remember the name of this book for some time now. The basic premise of the story focuses around a young wizard who is gay. Early in his life he is injured somehow and develops an extreme affinity for all aspects of magic (I am thinking there were five), rather than just one or two like most people have. In the book they're not actually described as gay or wizards, they have different terms to refer to them that I also cannot remember.

I am thinking it is called The "something" mage, or something similar.

Hmm I haven't read it in like 20 years, but there's "Master of Five Magics"? Has 5 magics but don't remember the gay.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2008 23:18

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Skittles n Bugs posted:

The story that�s bugging me is about a bunch of people on a space ship headed out on government orders. I�m not sure, but I think they�re going to investigate something. The captain of the ship is a guy that has a photographic memory and can�t forget anything. His girlfriend killed herself a while back when a law was passed that people of the same ethnicity could no longer get married/have children. Once the people get where they�re going, they see a cloud or something out in space? The captain also accidentally kills one of the crew members. Everything they imagine appears in the cloud, and since the captain doesn�t tell them the chick is dead, they still hear her voice. It ends with them all being able to discorporate? Not really sure, it�s driving me crazy. I thought it was by Piers Anthony, but I don't know any more.

Ghost by Pier's Anthony

# ¿ Aug 29, 2008 23:01

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Captain Equinox posted:

nemotrm posted:

I think it was written by Arthur C. Clarke, Joe Haldeman, Robert Sawyer or Neal Stephenson. The only thing I really remember is that at the end of the book an international law is put into place where no country can have more nukes than any other, so every time France disposes of a nuke Russia and the US have to as well.

This is from a short story by Joe Haldeman, To Howard Hughes: A Modest Proposal.

It was also included as a plot device in the end of Tools of the Trade also by Joe Haldeman.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2008 21:55

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

I read a short story on line at some point, I believe it was by a Golden Age Sci-Fi author. May have been published in a Baen Book Omnibus at some point.

The basic premise was a space empire or some pirates were going to invade a planet of pacifists, but the catch was that they weren't really pacifists but the universes best strategists and so there was no one worthy to fight. (I believe they admonished one of their children about being so wasteful in fighting at the end, and he could have done it with far less violence.) There may have also been a plot about making people disappear.

# ¿ May 1, 2009 02:19

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Xenix posted:

Heard about a book here in TBB, and cannot remember the title or author for the life of me. It was a sci fi novel about revenge. Guy is the only survivor on a wrecked spaceship, sees another ship from his company and sends a distress call, ship ignores him, and the guy vows revenge. If I remember right from the first chapter, he spoke with a cockney accent or something like that.

The Stars My Destination (Or 'Tiger! Tiger!')

E:FB

# ¿ Nov 17, 2009 02:37

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Zamboni Jesus posted:

Thanks, I found the story: http://savetherobot.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/the-sickest-story-ive-ever-read/

The title since the blog guy can't remember it is 'On The Uses of Torture'

# ¿ Jan 19, 2010 22:31

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Boody posted:

Been trying to remember the name of an author for the past couple of weeks, only have some sketchy details and not finding anything that jogs my memory with google. Details are very sketchy, so even a list of cyberpunk/noir authors would be helpful.

Male cyberpunk/noir author was popular in that area around 10 years ago but no real mainstream presence. Lot of buzz/hype at the time about his books and how cyberpunk/noir was going to be the next big thing. Wasn't a famous cyberpunk author, not Gibson, Rucker, Sterling, Stephenson or anyone like that. Wasn't Jon Courtney Grimwood but would have been around the same time he was starting to get noticed. Vague recollection that the author and book names were quite common/generic, nothing that stands out as strange or unusual.

The one book I vaguely remember was much heavier on the noir elements, the other elements downplayed. I think the main character ended up looking after a young girl/woman that was a fugitive from something (like a million other books) and for some reason I have the idea of a street or highway stuck in my head.

I'd be amazed if anyone is able to pull a name from that but a list of authors doing noir with some sci-fi/cyberpunk influence would be great. I'm sure I'd remember the details if I saw the authors name or book title somewhere.

Could be anything but for a guess (Though more like 20 years ago than 10) Walter Jon Williams, and Hardwired as the book?

# ¿ Jan 24, 2010 01:21

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Boody posted:

Sadly not, checked over a few sci-fi and cyberpunk author lists and checked into possiblities but haven't come across anything that matches. Convinced the author had at most 2-3 books published and I'd picked them up sometime between 1998-2002 when they were quite new. After the first big wave of cyberpunk books but before people like Charles Stross started getting published.

Book I'm thinking off was more or less a hardboiled detective story but set on another planet, almost read like a near future dashiell hammett story. Slightly futuristic and I think the main sci-fi/cyberpunk twist was related to the girl but just can't remember what it was or why she was on the run. Probably some low profile author that I'll never track down. Frustrating as I can remember most of the authors I'd read before and after but just not from around that time.

Another stab in the dark... Greg Egan Quarantine? It's Earth but Future, Noirish, Cyberpunkish involves a girl but you'd probably remember the Bubble if that's what it was...

# ¿ Jan 24, 2010 08:00

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

gruvmeister posted:

Quoting myself from a ways back. Something made me think of this again tonight and I did some more clever Googling and found it! It's a short story in Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic, I believe it's the one called 'The Devil went to Bell Labs' I can't read it all in the Amazon peek inside preview, but if I remember right the wisher in the book, Bill, is supposed to be a young Bill Gates.

Holy two years later bat-man... I think I'll have to pick this up...

Also to:

Beach Bum posted:

Science fiction short story.

A child is asking his father questions about things like "why is the sky blue" and whatnot, but the father doesn't know and is frustrated when he tries to think, by things like this buzzing noise in his ears. The father was worried about his child because of some sort of intelligence test that the government runs, and worries about if his kid was going to "pass" or not.

I seem to remember reading it in a collection, but I'll be damned if I can find it anywhere.

Having read the two stories I'm 99% sure you are combining Examination Day and Harrison Bergeron... Check online for Harrison Bergeron I know I read it in a web browser and see...

# ¿ Feb 6, 2010 16:04

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

E Minor posted:

I'm hoping to identify a science fiction story I read about ten years ago. Some psychologist has a machine that allows him to go into the minds of his patients. A blind woman goes to him to undergo the process because she would like to know what it is like to see. It was a short novel, less than 200 pages in length. If anyone could identify this story, thanks.

The Dream Master - Roger Zealzny one of his lesser known under-rated ones.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2010 15:43

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Adam Bowen posted:

I read this sci-fi book probably a decade or more ago, it was based around this procedure that could extend the human life, bringing an aging human essentially back to their 20's or so and adding another 80 years to their life before the effects started to fade. The catch was that the person receiving the procedure had to give all of their earthly possessions to the company performing it, and would start their "new" life with nothing. They had to have at least a million dollars (or something like that) worth of assets to be eligible, so each time they started again they had 80 years to build up enough money from scratch to pay for it again, or else they would die.

I remember that the procedure basically consisted of ripping out and rebuilding every part of the human body one at a time and then reimplanting them, and for some reason they couldn't knock the patient out during the procedure, but instead would give them a drug afterwards that would make them forget that they had just gone through this horrific process while totally conscious. I think there was some sort of conspiracy going on where they realized the company had the technology to extend life for much longer than 80 years but were suppressing the information to make more money.

Buying Time by Joe Haldeman - Though it was 10 years not 80...

# ¿ Mar 11, 2010 05:01

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

xcheopis posted:

This sounds very close to The Girl, The Gold Watch and Everything by John D. MacDonald, which was later made into a movie.

Actually from the wiki page of that book it sounds more like:
Roger Lee Vernon's story "The Stop Watch"

# ¿ May 10, 2010 23:33

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

uXs posted:

Been looking for this for ages:

There's a spaceship that lands on what seems like a deserted planet. Turns out it's actually an agricultural planet for invisible aliens. They get attacked by invisible flying things (probably an automated defense system against pests), and some people die when the ship's AI acts logically and raises the shields when the enemy things come too close.

Then there's also a part about an alien spaceship landing and the alien being all invisible getting inside their own spaceship. But it's telepathic and they force it to become visible by torturing one of their own crew members, after which they can kill it.

I think there's also a boxing match somewhere, maybe, and it's possible I'm mixing up two books.

Any ideas?

Torturing own crew to make an invisible alien visible has been in this thread before, I think I looked it up on wikipedia after it was posted and it was a novella in a series about an explorer... Not sure that'll help much but I'm sure it's answered in this thread somewhere.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2010 23:25

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

n/m ^^^ that is indeed it!

# ¿ Jul 9, 2010 23:50

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

What sucks about this one is it's a book I know I own, I just don't remember which it is...

Written in the '60s, about a mid future point (3-400 years I think?) Only thing I remember is that the protagonist is hidden at some point in a giant underground 'vat' of processed protein. It was a mutant chicken hundreds of feet in diameter that the city used for it's food supply. Every day they'd carve off a few tons of it for food and it'd grow back. I think a female character had a flute or something that she'd play and the 'chicken' would move a bit to get to a hiding spot under it's bulk.

I think it may be Immortality Inc. But not sure...

# ¿ Aug 16, 2010 15:04

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Unkempt posted:

It's 'The Space Merchants' by Pohl and Kornbluth.

Thanks, I'll have to grab it from my bookshelf, just checked it's wiki page and saw:

'wiki posted:

As with many significant works of science fiction, it was lexically inventive. The novel is cited by the Oxford English Dictionary as the first recorded source for a number of new words, including "soyaburger", "moon suit", "tri-di" for "three-dimensional", "R and D" for "research and development", "sucker-trap" for a shop aimed at gullible tourists, and one of the first uses of "muzak" as a generic term. It is also cited as the first incidence of "survey" as a verb meaning to carry out a poll.

Amusing that I can't remember a thing about the actual plot...

# ¿ Aug 16, 2010 15:40

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

eating only apples posted:

This is a short ghost story I've been searching for for years, not holding out much hope but maybe someone here can help.

It was in a compilation of horror/ghosty stories aimed at teenagers. The compilation (I'm almost certain) also contained The Veldt by Ray Bradbury. The story itself may have been titled "The Horn" or something similar, but I've had no luck googling that.

It was set in Sherwood Forest. A group of children were on a field trip of some kind. They spent a while discussing the history of the forest, and how it used to be huge and have wolves, and Robin Hood. With them is a bully, who goes off and destroys a sapling and kills a nest of baby birds.

I think they hear a horn being blown, and the bully ends up being found dead with an arrow in his back. There's a quiver of arrows hanging on the tree and possibly the horn as well.

As you can see I remember almost everything about this story, but I just want to read it again

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?64827 shows everything The Veldt was published in...

And after searching most of it I found...
The Horn � (1987) � shortstory by Susan Price
Which is published along with The Veldt in 'Ghosts, Ghouls, & Other Nightmares' edited by Gene Kemp... It was also published in 'The Puffin Book of Ghosts and Ghouls'

# ¿ Sep 21, 2010 23:38

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Just read a random TV Tropes page that mentioned this, anyone know what it's called?

quote:

# Gordon Dickson wrote a short story about this, in which the dominant powers of the galaxy recruit a Token Brigade of humans and other less-advanced species to help fight an oncoming invasion�we're useless, but we have a stake in the outcome and deserve to have our shot. Turns out said dominant powers are Straw Vulcans�when they see how large the invasion fleet is, they prepare to surrender because their calculations indicate there's no way to win (even though surrender means the destruction of all life in the galaxy). The "less-advanced" folks pass through a state of fury and into Tranquil Fury, allowing them to use the ship's psychic weapons more effectively; it then turns out that the super-aliens never considered a berserker one-ship attack as a viable tactic. The enemy are thrown into disarray, and the defenders win the day.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2010 03:31

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Not quite a story or a book really, but an essay in a book I read in the late 80s. The book itself was probably from the early 70s and maybe the essay was written in the late 60s.

It was entitled something like 'The effects of a 10 (20?) megaton nuclear bomb on Manhattan Island' and over the course of the 10-20 pages it went on and on to describe the damage that an air or ground burst would do to NYC and the surrounding areas. Any search for it now instead is finding things related to the Manhattan project.

Any help?

# ¿ Jan 4, 2011 15:55

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

pandasmustdie posted:

I remember hearing about a Sci-Fi book on the forums before that sounded rather interesting.

The plot involved an alien invasion (I think) and the aliens are happily killing all the regular humans thinking that, like bees, they're all just mindless drone workers that don't count for anything, and that only the kings and queens should be preserved. I think perhaps the humans had been doing the same to the aliens, but I'm not certain. When they aliens find out they're mortified that they've killed all these sentient beings.

It sounded really interesting and I'd love it if someone could point me in the direction of it.

Thank you

That's a really really minor plot point of Ender's Game, but without more to go on, I'm not sure that's what it was.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2011 22:50

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Sri.Theo posted:

This book is a bit difficult as I have no idea when it was published, I read it when I was 12 or 13 which would have been around 2000 but it was already second hand.

It involved the far future when humanity had been genetically modified/evolved into different races and castes. For some reason there isn't much technology used now but there's something with a tower. I remember that one of the races has beautiful butterfly wings - that don't work- they look good but can't actually fly. Except in one scene where one of the characters is hurt and manages to fly just before she dies.

I remember it has the tone of a journey novel i.e. a group of people going out on a quest they travel through different weird places and also it seemed almost pornographic in places.

If you can get it from that you deserve a medal!

Not quite right but there was a trilogy in the 70s by John Varley Gaea Trilogy Demon/Wizard/Titan (Maybe a different order) which was only near future but had a sentient moon who's inside was populated by creatures it created, one of them being 'Angels' that could maybe sometimes barely fly in the low gravity environment but not really. And I think a big part of one of them was involving getting to the center tower. Parts of it was definitely pornographic in the odd new wave sci-fi way of the times...

Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaea_Trilogy and see if it rings a bell.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2011 22:47

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Sri.Theo posted:

Hey since my last request was such a success and there seem to be many people here who spent as much of their youth in libraries as me, does anyone recognise this sci-fi novel?

It involves humans travelling to another planet - I think to capture samples of wildlife but they eventually discover that there is an intelligent form of life on the planet - and its purely carnivorous. Which they find shocking. I also remember that these creatures had the ability to direct their own evolution or mutate or similar.

I vaguely remember the ending which is the spacemen taking off and wondering what will happen when these creatures, which have now been introduced to tool use, develop space travel.

And also the creature (which looks like a big cat) contemplates changing some claws into a hand although "not the front two as they were too useful for catching prey".

It may have been a short story rather than a novel.

Hopefully someone's read it!

It's a really famous short story and I just read it in the last month...

http://www.webscription.net/chapters/0743498747/0743498747___5.htm Black Destroyer by A.E. Van Vongt.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2011 18:44

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

titus androgynous posted:

My turn! I am looking for:

1. A short story I first read about in a thread here. It takes place in a small town on a future Earth in which the laws of physics are subject to change randomly and without warning. A load of people have died that way and the remaining citizens are pretty nihilistic about it. I distinctly remember one scene where a man's beer changes into something unstable and explodes in his hand, and another scene where the sidewalk suddenly melts and a guy is sucked into it before it changes back.

http://www.robertmccammon.com/fiction/something.html Something Passed By....

Opens with:

quote:

Johnny James was sitting on the front porch, sipping from a glass of gasoline in the December heat, when the doomscreamer came. Of course, doomscreamers were nothing new; these days they were as common as blue moons. This one was of the usual variety: skinny-framed, with haunted dark eyes and a long black beard full of dust and filth. He wore dirty khaki trousers and a faded green Izod shirt, and on his feet were sandals made from tires with the emblem still showing: Michelin. Johnny sipped his Exxon Super Unleaded and pondered that the doomscreamer's outfit must be the yuppie version of sackcloth and ashes.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2011 03:33

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Synnr posted:

There is a short story titled The Road Not Taken by Turtledove. I'm not sure if the Hoka teddy bear guys are the aliens in that or not, it has been awhile.

Yah it's a thread favorite to, I think this is at least the 3rd time it's come up, last time just a month or two back. You can google for the story itself and there's supposed to be a sequel somewhere but I didn't find it when I looked.

# ¿ Jun 24, 2011 18:47

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

I think I found this short story originally from this thread. It was an older story maybe published in a Baen anthology about a planet being invaded and the people on the planet had such high tech / psychic ability that they just put all the invaders in stasis, and the person 'defending' the planet was an adolescent / college student doing it as his Senior Thesis where he's downgraded for waste in the number of invaders killed before being put in stasis.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2011 15:47

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Tuxedo Ted posted:

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

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

Thanks in advance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_story) Thread favorite...

# ¿ Nov 23, 2011 16:53

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

ManSedan posted:

Ok I hope my description is not too vague. I've never read Terry Pratchet but something makes me think his name was in the cover or something. The book was a fantasy novel with quite a bit of humor, with the plot following several characters as they separately tried to find... A universal rap sheet or something? One character was an old angry wizard who was very abusive to his assistant, another was an adventuring artist who I thought was cool because he kept knives concealed in his easel. There was also a huge brute of a man who was so insane he knew the secret of the universe. There was also a wizardly looking fellow on the covere.

Does this ring anyones bell?

Might be Interesting Times by Terry Prachett but I haven't read it in years...

# ¿ Apr 10, 2012 02:32

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

shadok posted:

Is it There Will Be Time by Poul Anderson?

If not, the idea of time travellers at the Crucifixion has been done more than once...

Definitely 'There will be Time' I just read it recently after it coming up in this thread.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2012 15:08

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Hedrigall posted:

I never get enough of posting this:

Oddly enough I don't think that was his most hosed up idea. That would belong to Millennium where one if the main characters had God as a sex toy.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2012 17:42

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

^^^ reminds me of one I'd like to re-read.

It's a short story about how all of the New Age Sci-Fi writers stories are actually written/edited by their sentient word processors. I think it was written by Zelazny or maybe Ellison. I'm sure those two are mentioned. Something about how Zelazny is writing yet another story about a demi-god immortal.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2013 15:06

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Flame112 posted:

I'm pretty sure it's The Excalibur Alternative. The first half of the plot summary is almost exactly what I remember, but weirdly I don't remember the second half at all. Thanks for the find and the links.

That's a novelization of a short story called 'Sir George and the Dragon." the second half, which is the best part IMO, (And rather short at around ~40 pages) is new for the novel. I don't think the short story had anything about developing a new weapon though.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2013 14:39

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Hmm that reminds me of one I wouldn't mind rereading it's a post apocalyptic society where the apocalypse was a retrovirus that increased everyone's sense of smell by 1000X to the point that you almost instantly went mad just from being in a city and few people could stand to be around anyone who wasn't directly related to them. Anyone recall that one? I think it was by a 'Great' of Sci-Fi maybe Zelazny?

# ¿ Oct 19, 2013 02:30

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Runcible Cat posted:

Post just above you, dude.

No, there was no alien species, and it ended with revenge on the guy that caused the retrovirus, reading about the post above me is what got me thinking about a similar but distinct story.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2013 15:10

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

I'll track it down, I know I've read Spider Robinson short story books before so it's easily possible in which case sorry for the derail and wasting people's time.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2013 18:14

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

ClearAirTurbulence posted:

I think it's funny that the radical post-scarcity civilization he imagines is basically a form of state capitalism with a minimum income, like the USSR or Red China. The "1000 credits a month" thing shows how hard it is to get rid of the idea of money.

It's not really post scarcity may be a reason. Space is still scarce from what I remember. (I read it when it was first posted and thought it was drivel then so maybe he magiked away space and I forgot about it.) Until you get to everyone lives in the Matrix, or we're bored so let's create a ringworld, it's not really post scarcity.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2014 15:35

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

ClearAirTurbulence posted:

I read a science fiction story a few years ago, it was set in a future where mankind had spread out to thousands of planets across the galaxy, and were ruled by godlike artificial intelligences. The AIs had spread some kind of nanomachines throughout all of these worlds which would record everyone's experiences and when the person died, they would be uploaded to the networks of the AIs. On one of these worlds, which was at a roughly early 20th century technology level, a mysterious being had conquered much of the world and was slaughtering tens of millions of humans in a systematic way. The main character was an agent of the AIs sent to stop this. He finds that the person responsible is from a more advanced world and is doing it to attack the AIs, destroying a person's optic nerves immediately before killing them causes some kind of harm to the AIs if it's done in large numbers. The main character discovers that the AIs are not collecting the minds of the dead to give them eternal life as is commonly believed, but are instead consuming their memories in a torturous fashion to keep themselves from going insane from sensory deprivation (they think so fast the only way they can keep from spending thousands of years of experiential time with no input is to have billions of minds to "eat").

I think I read it for free on the internet. Anyone recognize it?

I'm pretty sure you're talking about this Stross set of short stories http://www.antipope.org/charlie/fiction/monkey/yearzero.html Either I missremember the end or you have some of the ending details wrong though.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2014 18:54

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

ClearAirTurbulence posted:

That's it, I read only the first story and part of the second one before.

I'm glad. It's a little rough but it had a huge WTF moment for me when I realized that if we were all a computer simulation from within the simulation we wouldn't even notice if our frame rate was so low that it took more than a second to simulate a second.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2014 14:19

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

DACK FAYDEN posted:

Two old SF short stories - think small hardcover anthologies with yellowing pages from the library ten years ago.

1) Humankind is at war with aliens that are implacable and completely kicking our rear end. Follows a single pilot who's outrunning one of their ships at near-lightspeed. We find out that humanity made themselves immortal by murdering another immortal species, and that's why these aliens already killed all our immortals, knocked us all the way back to just Earth, and induced an ice age (which they claim was to speed our redevelopment of civilization.) Humans didn't learn anything, did the same thing again, and now they're trying to exterminate us altogether. The pilot keeps running away, and thanks to time dilation survives until the Big Crunch starts, and it ends with the pilot laughing at them, saying something like "Humanity made it to the end of this universe, and maybe there's a place for us in the next".

2) A robot is talking with some humans, then goes into routine standby mode. He wakes up when his battery is low, in the same place, but it's all old and stuff. Then he looks all over the Earth and finds no one alive, except one human he used to know, who says that everyone else got killed by a nerve gas that humans had only ever tested in small quantities that didn't "settle" as expected and so murdered everyone. The guy dies, the robot reactivates some factories and makes more robots who make spaceships and scour the galaxy looking for the aliens that killed mankind. In the end, they've only found caveman-level aliens, and eventually a robot realizes that hey, man did this to himself. And I assume there's a conclusion after that.

1) http://www.e-reading.ws/chapter.php/82872/53/Catastrophes!.html Stars Won't You Hide Me by Ben Bova.

I've read #2 as well but don't recall the details

# ¿ Jun 7, 2014 02:58

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 15:25

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Washout posted:

What was the series or author with the Vaun Neuman seeded machines that were some sort of infection (cubes containing the seeded machine and could make people into superhumans?) and humanity had to work and avoid the devils deal and also fight them off at the same time?

That could be almost Singularity sky which was basically how stupid age of sail in space is given that a few generations difference of tech would be I recognizable. Wiki page

# ¿ Jan 8, 2016 05:15

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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