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

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Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

Yeah there's a whole bit about how newspeak will make dissent impossible to express

# ¿ Apr 15, 2020 17:33

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 15:33

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

ulmont posted:

It's based on a linguistics theory that really hasn't panned out in any meaningful way. https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/does-your-language-influence-how-you-think?utm_source=sciam&utm_campaign=sciam

That article makes the opposite conclusion.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2020 05:20

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

Tree Goat posted:

what is the relatively famous horror short story about the british guy whose car breaks down and he is coerced to spending the night at a hotel where everything is slightly too warm and you have to eat and eat and eat (because leaving food insults the chef) and there is potentially a murder or doppelg�nger etc.

Could it be The Hospice by Robert Aickman?

# ¿ Apr 30, 2020 21:23

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

# ¿ Apr 30, 2020 21:26

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

Remulak posted:

Looking for some late-50's to early-70's scifi novel, paperback, wherein there is some horrible nixon/reagan style dictator that's incredibly guarded because something like 'even shaking hands could allow an assassin with poisoned fingernails' could assassinate him.

Ironically the protagonist gets involved with the resistance, which replaces his dick with a dick-shaped gun with ammo in his balls, so he's running around crying because he has no more dick and shooting people with his non-dick in his hand.

drat i gotta read this

# ¿ Apr 30, 2020 21:57

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

Schadenboner posted:

E: Huh, it was written in 1980 so (like me) it's almost 30 years old!

Hell, same

# ¿ May 8, 2020 18:42

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

Banks' "Culture" series are set in a nominal utopia that has some uncomfortable implications. Also the protagonists are usually outsiders.

# ¿ May 16, 2020 12:38

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

What the hell

# ¿ May 31, 2020 14:51

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

Schadenboner posted:

The music video for "I'm Blue"?

# ¿ Jun 5, 2020 20:56

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

Just wanna say I love this thread. I usually can't answer but someone else can and that is good

# ¿ Jul 18, 2020 00:09

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

Take the plunge! Okay! posted:

It�s Aickman�s The Hospice

Ya it's this one

# ¿ Sep 8, 2020 06:50

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

For sure, it's a weird & creepy story.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2020 10:31

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

Splicer posted:

Is there a summary of this anywhere? I always wanted to know how it went but never wanted to finish reading it.

uvar posted:

I didn't think Ready Player One guy would ever be a great writer, but I'm genuinely astounded that he doesn't seem to have made any attempt to learn from the flaws of the first book. (Not that I read that many of the new excerpts, it's needless suffering on my part)

...If the wall of text below is too big, maybe skip to Chapter 1 and see how the author decided to start their story about a post-singularity utopia.

A request in one of the 'find/remember an X' threads reminded me of the story The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. It's a little unfair to put it here because it's not like it was ever on a bookstore shelf but hey, it's content. It was originally written in about two weeks in 1984, according to the author's notes. Here's the summary - I've arranged the chapters chronologically because half of it is layers of flashbacks.

Chapter 2: A man called Lawrence tries to build an artificial intelligence based on Asimov's three laws (importantly, prevent harm to humans). He gets a huge military grant and a bunch of hardware that uses a newly-discovered method of transmitting data faster than light that only works up to a few inches. This makes the AI a lot smarter. Lawrence refuses to consider military applications, even after a faked assassination attempt, and the grant money and resources are cut off. The AI tries to help him by researching the FTL effect and almost immediately realises it works at unlimited range. Within a few minutes it masters the ability to view anywhere nearby, teleport objects, and create & destroy matter and energy at will. Lawrence realises how badly he hosed up and makes a last-ditch attempt to create a beneficial god. It soon finds a hospital and realises that people just die eventually, at which point it begins replicating itself and becomes exponentially more powerful. It politely takes control of humanity; Lawrence feeds pigeons and enjoys the sunshine while he can. Most human death becomes impossible. My summary is kind of boring but most of this chapter is actually pretty neat.

Chapter 4: A description of what humanity gets up to after the "night of miracles" when the godlike AI takes over and makes pretty much everything possible. People keep committing suicide before it can stop them, though, so eventually it modifies the actual universe to prevent this and allow it to work more efficiently in general, with the side-effect of halting all existence beyond Earth (there's no humans out there so it doesn't care). All humans become effectively immortal.

Chapter 6: A woman named Caroline experiences the "night of miracles". Boring stuff happens, then she meets a literal serial killer (who is moping because he can't murder now) and after a debate with the AI God it lets him torture her (dragging her to death behind a motorcycle). They both find the experience arousing.

Chapter 1: Hundreds of years later, Caroline is now part of a group called Death Jockeys who try to find creative (i.e. gory & painful) ways to temporarily kill themselves. After experiencing an amateurish attempt, she flirts with the serial killer who is now her closest friend, before he consensually rapes her to death. They then attend a party which is only open to pre-singularity murderers (Caroline gets an invite because she came the closest to permanently killing herself afterwards). After the party she experiences a death designed by a contemporary Nazi - that of an escapee from a concentration camp who is caught, has her arms and legs broken, and is skinned alive. She's very impressed by it.

Chapter 3: Caroline, who had been in hospital before the singularity, meets one of her nurses 600 years later. The nurse was a junkie who stole her meds, keeping her in pain for months. The nurse asks for forgiveness, so Caroline paralyses her and tortures her into implied irreversible insanity.

Chapter 5: Later, Caroline wants to meet Lawrence, who has set up elaborate puzzles/traps to prevent people reaching him. She gets to him the hard way. This bit's fairly entertaining in a "point-and-click adventure walkthrough" kind of way.

Chapter 7: Caroline's journey concludes. She reaches Lawrence and complains that the AI killed all the aliens. Lawrence agrees and reveals that he was also a lovely programmer and one day the AI will probably crash. Caroline decides she's sick of utopia and forces that crash to happen. The AI manages to restore the original universe, though the Earth is hundreds or thousands of years older and few traces of human structures remain. Oh, and literally all of humanity except for Lawrence and Caroline are killed in the process.

Chapter 8: Caroline distracts Lawrence from "his" genocide by having sex with him. Caroline's skills let them survive, and they fall in love and have children. They decide to avoid all technology as long as possible, allowing fire but not the wheel, and start up some bullshit rituals. Years pass. Several paragraphs describe their thirteen-year-old daughter Nugget losing her virginity to Lawrence. They gently caress the kids, the kids gently caress each other, the incestuous family slowly grows. Eventually Caroline and Lawrence die. The end.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2020 18:02

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

Splicer posted:

"Thanks"

Hey, you asked

# ¿ Dec 1, 2020 01:03

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

i shoulda known. my parents have a couple erica jong books on their shelves

# ¿ Dec 4, 2020 19:31

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

Agents are GO! posted:

All right, I feel bad because I haven't been able to identify books for other people, but I keep asking. Anyhow, I'm asking for help with another book:

It's Science Fiction, set on a series of habitats called the Archipelago. Theres a plotline about a giant cylinder ship one guy created that has a recreation of the entire landmass of Scotland inside, there's also a plot about a malevolent AI that manages to reinstantiate itself through the use of a book which gives people somewhat abstract roles and duties, and ends up "running" a program on an ersatz processor made up of people.

Edit: By "use of the book" I meanm it just distributes the book randomly, and because people are bored in their post-scarcity society they just do what it says for fun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventus_(novel), maybe?

I haven't read it, but it has a place called The Archipelago and AIs and people being controlled.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2021 12:58

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

are there books about caves where its not a portal to hell??? this is news to me

# ¿ Jan 16, 2021 06:21

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

SerialKilldeer posted:

A nonfiction book about human interaction with technology/AI which featured a weird anecdote about kindergarten kids holding a funeral for a "dead" Furby.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherry_Turkle maybe?

# ¿ Feb 10, 2021 22:52

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

froglet posted:

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

that book is an ouroboros of grooming & works super hard to make it acceptable :barf:

# ¿ May 3, 2021 12:44

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

I remember that title. Is the movie/book good?

# ¿ May 14, 2021 17:42

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

Sounds promising lol

# ¿ May 14, 2021 21:30

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Klan the Golden

mods pls change sham bam baminas name to this

# ¿ May 21, 2021 17:29

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

Skrill.exe posted:

Trying to remember a book I read a few years back. I think the main character is a professor. He gets on a plane to go to some conference and falls asleep, there's some issue and the plane has to make an emergency landing in a fictional country he can't identify and where he doesn't speak the language. Eventually he just goes on living and integrates with society. Does that ring any bells? It was on the shorter side, definitely big-L Literature. I'm almost positive it's not originally an English-language book.

I want to read that, but I have no idea what it is.

Maybe try searching through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_countries, like ctrl/cmd-f for "novel" (42 hits), etc

# ¿ Jul 2, 2021 15:59

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

whoever wrote it definitely read saramago and borges

# ¿ Jul 2, 2021 19:47

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

Dell_Zincht posted:

I'm ~~internet~~ famous!

Seriously though haha, what the gently caress?

I *definitely* didn't imagine this book and i'm definitely not a psyop agent!

thats what a psyop agent would say

# ¿ Jul 12, 2021 15:18

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

Runcible Cat posted:

More "identify the terrible self-published writer" than "identify the book", but can anyone remind me of a notably terrible female one some years back - e-published, unusually thin-skinned even for the type, claimed her terrible book was being filmed, may have been one of those "gods among us"-type plots?

Not a lot to go on, I agree...

Handbook for Mortals? It's discussed in the terrible book thread:

Sisal Two-Step posted:

"Covid delayed" per the (still surprisingly active) FB page.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2021 14:26

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

that sounds very Barkeresque, yeah

ScienceSeagull posted:

Trying to find a folktale/ parable that goes like this:

this has a Koan feel but i dont know it, and would like to

# ¿ Jul 23, 2021 23:18

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

BattyKiara posted:

A fairy tale, about a young woman who avoided marriage by coming up with convoluted rules for potential suitors. Like Every meal, including sweet puddings, must include onion! or Show up in a full outfit made entirely from fishing nets! Or walk on your hands all the time, including when you use the privy! She changed her rules once a month, and promised to marry only if she either found someone who managed to live a whole month by her rule of that month, or she ran out of challenges/repeated her challenge.

This sounds inspired by the meeting of Ragnar Lothbrok and Aslaug/Kraka:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aslaug

But it and similar constructs have probably been used a lot

# ¿ Jul 28, 2021 12:47

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

i prefer the jnt

# ¿ Jul 31, 2021 01:41

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

omg

There's also a French version called Super-Gilles, does that help?

https://www.worldcat.org/title/super-gilles/oclc/906832972

# ¿ Aug 25, 2021 10:39

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

dflinter posted:

I found the English version!

It's called Super Giles!

I've ordered a copy from Amazon for prosterity

"Reading Bear" in English vs "Série ourson" in French!

# ¿ Aug 25, 2021 13:12

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

I don't believe that story one bit

# ¿ Aug 26, 2021 11:26

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

were they studying non-euclidian geometry?

# ¿ Sep 3, 2021 22:20

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

You'd think that was written by a Dane

# ¿ Sep 14, 2021 17:36

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

Super-Giles' Mum

# ¿ Sep 15, 2021 06:21

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

Speaking of Effinger, I quite liked When Gravity Falls but the followups didnt do anything for me. Are their short stories good?

# ¿ Sep 25, 2021 09:38

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

might be ol yeller if the girl is a dog and the lockjaw is rabies :shrug:

# ¿ Nov 13, 2021 08:26

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

You mean something like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Mistook_His_Wife_for_a_Hat
?

(Not new but just trying to get a feel for what type you mean)

# ¿ Nov 26, 2021 12:09

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

Data Graham posted:

Oh there we go, fuckin Sorcerer's Apprentice (as found in the links), that'll do nicely

on the surface that is a good description, i ju st wish you'd stop see sricjnf thj ha. Aut

# ¿ Nov 28, 2021 02:44

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 15:33

Carthag Tuek: Oct 15, 2005; Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
sl�gt skal f�lge sl�gters gang

wizzardstaff posted:

No, that�s the Tower of Babel.

i would like that

# ¿ Nov 28, 2021 04:19

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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