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Two for you, goonbrain! STORY ONE : Felt 1960's era, most likely in a Sci Fi anthology Humans had spread into the universe, however they had not spread far due to something referred to in the book as 'the rubber band'. No aliens discovered. Seemingly hostile, rare-earth universe. You would set out in space aiming to go x distance, however you would freak out (psychologically) prior to reaching your destination, get homesick, and go home. Story was about a lone scout pilot and his (intelligent) survey ship exploring a space particulate cloud. This cloud was continually being explored, although the band effect was strong enough that few in-roads had been made. This scout pilot holds out long enough against the pull to turn homeward to find a planet in the cloud, and lands. Single biped walks up to the ship, and starts talking. Ship slowly starts translating the language, as the primitive alien asks why the spaceman looks weird. During their discussion, the alien figures out how to talk English, shows that it is intrinsically more intelligent than the spacer, explains to spacer that civilisation on the planet is 3 billion years old. Alien figures out humans suck, brainwipes the spacer and ship (adding a stronger rubber band), and sends him back on his way. Story over. STORY TWO 1990's or 00's short story anthology Main character, peasant female child in Africa caring for her brother Story impetus and flavour provided by strange, slowly advancing alien biological entity (large scale, growing from initial spore points and expanding out at walking pace into continent - spanning melange/fungus). The U.N was attempting to fight this growth, and having no luck. Young lady migrates through ghettos, escapes situations caused by being a poor female in what amounted to a concentration camp environment. This story had some cyberpunk overtones, with armed-up ghetto forces being modified and computer chipped. Felt like the short story may have been related to the District 9 universe, thematically. Help me! Isolationist fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 14:29
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Hedrigall posted:The neon dinosaur was like, literally a dinosaur neon sign thing coming to life, IIRC I read this one as a kid too: The Virtual Reality Trilogy, by Claire Carmichael.
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Apr 24, 2014 12:46
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Hedrigall posted:Yeeesssssss!! I really dug those books, too. Come to think of it, they're probably to blame for my interest in VR. Why did you make me buy an Oculus Rift, book?!
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Apr 25, 2014 17:11
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Book 1: Hunting a golden age (1940's-60's, at a guess) short story written similarly to Asimov, Clifford D Simak etc. Story centres on the pilot of a one-man Scout ship sent to explore a dust nebulae. Continual ships are sent out by humanity exploring space, however once people reach a certain distance from home they experience a psychological pull (a rubber-band) drawing them back to human space, either returning or going insane. In this story, the pilot is last in a long line of explorers who journey out into the unmappable dust cloud, looking for planets/suns etc. He proudly explains that he makes it up to xx days of outward-bound flight (much better than the other Joe Schmoes back at base!) before the jitteriness and paranoia of the homeward-pulling elastic band starts to kick in. Right where it starts getting terrible, he finds a planet and descends to land. He uses his trader computer systems to survey the planet, and lands in an open field. Quickly an alien ambles up and they start trying to talk - the human using a translation function on his hand held PC to build a vocabulary, with the alien handing over a small carved figurine. The alien displays a ridiculous intelligence by overhearing the discussion between the human and the PC and starts becoming fluent in English over the course of the communication. The PC alerts the trader human that the carved figurine is x.x billion years old, and this is an insanely advanced species. Story ends with the trader losing consciousness and waking up back in his ship with no memory (or electronic record) of the planet, but with a MASSIVELY increased pull towards home (the aliens want to be left alone by the jerky out-of-cloud crass humans). Book 2: The Goblin Reservation, Clifford D Simak (thank you xiw!) 60's novel again, suspect by Clifford D Simak, Sturgeon etc. Humanity exists in a loose coalition of races in the galaxy - friendly orcs, little spherical/egg-shaped aliens, and even a unique race (wheelers?) that is noted to be the only known species in the galaxy who, being shaped like a while, has the blood stay stationary at the bottom of the wheel while the whole body circulates (instead of the standard). Protagonist is involved in the art world, intrigues and painting trading lead to him finding an ancient/pre-historic painting that shows proto-humans being used as slaves, lorded over by the tyrannical egg-shaped aliens (weilding whips, etc). Turned out they were a malevolent species through all of galactic history, and merely pretended to altruism once species reached a certain technological/cultural level. Book 3: Tacky (modern style, so 80's at a guess? - I read this at the same time as Starhammer by Christopher Rowley, and both books were similarly grimdark Big Dumb Object stories) space opera in a utopian Human society involving an amnesiac young lady (possibly found in hibernation) and her large warship of unknown origins. The protagonist of the book goes on an adventure with her running from mysteriously exploding/destroyed pacifist utopian star systems, somehow staying ahead of the anonymous threat. At the end of the story, the young lady gets her memory back. Turns out that long ago in history, a dickish human government had basically operated a eugenics project, taking all violent/unusual/criminal humans and cramming them on 'scout' ships to the Lesser Megallanic Cloud. One of the ships had survived, and a civilisation had arisen there obsessed with revenge. All focus singly on developing the technology and infrastructure to start churning out advanced gently caress-you ships with a single occupant program ship to send in one after another into the human galaxy, destroying as much as possible as they went. The twist at the end of the story was that the Megallanic lady was the only known individual to ever be found (and she'd been in stasis for tens of thousands of years), so she had a background/off-screen existential crisis wondering what had happened to her culture back home, what had befallen them (shades of the WHAT THREAT IS OUT THERE like in the extended Dune universe with the Honored Matres). I've been searching for these three for about fifteen years, so any help would be appreciated! Isolationist fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Aug 2, 2017 |
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Aug 2, 2017 07:11
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Guy Goodbody posted:This is a super long shot, but I'm not sure where else to ask. I have vague memory of some kind of sci-fi book or movie or TV show that used "smoothies" as a derogatory term for a fictional minority. Does that ring a bell for anyone? The Amtrak Wars. Post apocalyptic, totalitarian US remnant colony of normal humans decides that the background radiation has dropped to a level where they can expand back out onto the surface, killing all the filthy tribal mutants (with skin malformations and bumps). Scout plane crashes, pilot (smoothskin ) is taken in by the muties. Seven book series.
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Aug 2, 2017 22:26
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Something I’ve read fairly recently. Possibly just one of the threads in a larger novel or some kind of a dream/hallucination within another story: a boy travels from a rural area to a large fantasy-type city. I think he might’ve been orphaned and the road was very perilous. In the city he becomes sort of an apprentice in the local police force analogue, although he could’ve gone the other way and become a criminal. Pretty soon he solves a big case/conflict/riot although he still has junior status. The city is possibly under threat of invasion or some kind of disaster? That’s all I’ve got, aside from a strong feeling all of this was actually happening on the sidelines of a wider sci-fi story. Shot in the dark here, but the galaxy-wide Edeard flashbacks in Peter F Hamilton's Dreaming Void series? Summary; Edeard, an orphan and apprentice, lives in Ashwell, a town in Rulan province. A gifted psychic, Edeard is trained by Master Akeem in crafting and modding. Initially a loner, Edeard comes to prominence in his village after designing an alternative pump mechanism for the local well. Unfortunately Edeard's luck changes for the worse after Ashwell is raided by bandits. Forced to flee, Edeard joins the local caravan and travels to Makkathran the capital of Querencia. In Makkathran, Edeard joins the constables and after a brutal couple of months in training, Edeard graduates.
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Nov 12, 2017 11:16
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froglet posted:In the prior stories his friend often talks about how he is visited by a version of himself from the future before he goes to bed at night and they just have interesting conversations. So in the story he finds his friend now an adult, he did build the time machine, does use it to go back in time to chat to his prior self and I think they use the time machine to keep the accident that left him in a coma from happening? The accident that caused the coma was the main character and friend (Egg, if Lockie Leonard) had a plan to build a winged bicycle and fly it off the roof to impress the love interest. Just before the launch, a main-character-from-the-future shows up and gives the main character a tail/rudder assembly and mentions he did similar stuff when he was a kid, and you can easily spin out and crash if you don't have a steering method. Man, I dug through about 500 books on various 'best Australian YA fiction' lists trying to find out for you, and I gotta say holy hell Isobelle Carmody and Gary Crew were killing it back in the 90's! Edit: Got it! John Larkin, Growing Payne (1996) Isolationist fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Jan 24, 2020 |
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Jan 23, 2020 14:21
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I've read this, but my memory is vague- it wasn't part of or an offshoot of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom/John Carter series, was it? The rich adventurer dude was a dick, and pre-launch got into a racist scuffle in a tavern of some description with the main character involved? Could be memories of Barsoom mixed with Stephen Baxter's The Long Earth series on my part though, I'm an old.
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May 7, 2020 02:44
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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. Children of The State, or Rammer?
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May 16, 2020 11:19
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Tsietisin posted:Apparently its probably not that one. The book length was probably about 1/3 of the length that outland appears to be. Otherland was about five different books, and any of them have a weird-eyed guy from The Grail Brotherhood (lead by Jongleur, weird eyed psychopathic antagonist dude was an Australian aborigine named John "Dredd"/Anubis Walgaru). A lot of ancient Egyptian iconography, worth running that past her  .
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May 27, 2020 09:15
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happyhippy posted:Scifi book I once read at random in the 90s from local library. Very good book, Alien Influences by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
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Jun 27, 2021 13:25
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Badger of Basra posted:When I was in middle or high school (so between 2004 and 2009) I read a series of horror books that I've been unable to identify and I was wondering if y'all could help me out. I believe the books were fairly new at the time I read them and there may have been more than the two or three I read. They were all set in the same town, and I remember each book had a cover that was mostly just one color on a black background (so one cover the scene and name was illustrated in blue on black, another yellow on black, etc). Graveyard School? Well written series.
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Sep 4, 2021 03:18
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Story #1: Looking for a scifi book I read around 2000, standard full novel length. Story: Dude finds a weirdo life pod with a lady inside while escaping from a random unknown attacking spaceship. Lady has amnesia or pretends to be unaware of where she came from as multiple random warships attack human settlements... or places that were previously known human settlements. Reveal/backstory: far back in human history, the government had done a massive purge (basically the English shipping the convicts off to Australia) - shipping all undesirables on suicide one way trips out on probe ships. One made it out to the Lesser Megallanic Cloud, established a FURIOUS revenge-based star culture (perhaps finding some ancient tech etc to give them a head start). This culture then built automated attack ships to send back and WRECK the 'English' confederation as they were at the point of exodus (thus the attacks on now-abandoned systems). Another reveal as the lady realises that her culture back home must have either moved on or died out, as there are no second wave attack ships. Story #2: Short story I read back in the 90s, felt like golden age Asimov/Clarke/Silverberg style. Story: human civilisation has found no other life in the galaxy and has expanded a bit, but not overmuch: turns out the further people get from their home planet the more antsy they get, eventually going nuts and killing themselves. This is described as being akin to a rubber band stretching the further away a person gets, eventually either snapping or forcing return. Humans are exploring a stellar cloud using individuals in singleships going out as far as they can - main character of the story is 40 odd days out (longer than anyone before, etc) and spots a planet, lands, encounters a biped. Biped alien is super intelligent and manages to break down and understand the human's language (the human is chatting to their autopilot/A.I), in a single conversation understands the danger that is humanity: aggressive and potentially expansionist, restrained only by the Rubber Band. Biped shows human a statue/trinket that the AI excitedly dates to show that the civilisation has been active/stable for x million years. Reveal: dude ends up back in his ship nowhere near the planet remembering nothing, A.I. remembers nothing. Rubber band instinct has been reinforced, OH poo poo GOTTA GET HOME. Story 3: Books: multiple, I think this was probably a 60s or 70s pulp Sci Fi series (I read them in the 90s,finding a few out of order books in second hand shops etc). Story: always centred around a single captain flying a specific ship. Humans have colonised several planets but don't really have a military, instead expanding outwards in pastoral pioneer settlements. An enigmatic alien race/ship keeps attacking these settlements, doing weird experiments on humans (merging them with inanimate objects or animals, causing catastrophes) but communicating or interacting not at all. Through the books the captain encounters them and the book describes them only as THE ENEMY. There's no combat from memory, just the (transport, or ineffective weapon) ship doing delivery/repopulation runs to colonies only to find that experiments have been done and half the people were melted into walls. Background/world building: I recall one of the books establishing some human traitors were on the ship, by flashing back to the totalitarian earth before the ship launched. Some psychopaths killed leading prospect crew members to secure themselves the role of Nuclear Engineer, etc. Short story 4: Likely in a best-scifi-of-(YEAR) COLLECTION Story: young kid of some humanoid species living in the industrial era leaves home, loses his penis (the McGuffin the story is centred around regaining, not a weird sex book) . The race have a socket groin, with the male gender swapping when they sleep together (dude loses his virginity and his penis in a one-off fling, with the lady departing the encounter now a man). Kid ends up trying to detective his way back into contact with this mysterious lady to regain the bits, working on some sort of armoured merchant Marine steamship in the pursuit. Isolationist fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Apr 30, 2022 |
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Apr 23, 2022 08:11
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Carthag Tuek posted:There's a Larry Niven short story that gets into that, where his favorite character Louis Wu is doing a "sabattical" (iirc) which means flying away from Earth until he feels like flying home. The alien has 3 eyes. I don't remember the title, but duckduckgo tells me it's "There is a Tide". It also reminds me of the short story where humanity encounters the Kzinti (tiger aliens), something about humanity being warlike even when they don't have weapons. Not part of a larger established universe - the story took place entirely within the singleship/in conversation with the alien. The background of the universe had humans basically being stuck in an inimical, unpopulated universe - unable to explore due to the psychological block. Man some of the background short stories (often written by authors other than Niven) in the Known Universe were rock solid - you're talking about the.. Baxter? one where the first contact was successful only for the humans because they used the drive as a fusion torch to attack the Kzin ship I think?
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Apr 30, 2022 11:48
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It's me, Ned! Ned Ryerson! Isolationist fucked around with this message at 13:31 on May 26, 2022 |
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May 26, 2022 13:23
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Checked all the Gardner Dozois listings I could find one by one, don't think it's in there (though I'll admit I read most of those anthologies) and MAN I'd ironically forgotten how rock solid Greg Egan is - Reasons to be Cheerful is great. Not Oceanic, but good suggestion (I'm honestly surprised to find Greg Egan stuff in both of the recent suggestions, didn't think he was well known at all - criminally underrated)
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Jun 2, 2022 14:18
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The Chad Jihad posted:Humanity is extinct or something, and some tree-like aliens resurrect them and also make them immortal. And then they sent them off in a spaceship, also possibly shaped like a tree, and the humans go off to find earth or something. Turns out theres a gigantic rotating gamma ray burst thing that wipes out all life in the galaxy every hundred million years https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Genesis_Quest and sequel?
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Jul 22, 2022 22:53
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Nettle Soup posted:Fantasy book where there's a biographer character who follows the MC from birth(?) and writes down their story. I thought it was Wheel of Time, but google is giving me nothing. I recall this being part of the Death Gate Cycle.. from memory I want to say there were people assigned to Elvish nobility to watch them from birth to death, even crouching next to them as they died on the battlefield (like vultures) just waiting to catch their last words. I want to say the giant tree planet, which would make it Pryan (book: Elven Star). Solid series - I strongly dislike fantasy, but I made it through as a kid.
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Oct 9, 2022 13:34
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xiw posted:(yes that's a nearly 6 year old post that's been bugging me the whole time) Bloody hell Xiw, thanks man! That's been bugging me for nigh on 20 years - AND while digging through ebay trying to find a copy (no ebooks exist) I found another one I've been chasing: The Eyes of Heisenberg. Man, I (and since it's been bothering you, you must have read it too) must have read a LOT of Frank Herbert back in the day.
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May 5, 2023 00:16
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Kerbtree posted:I think this might be Gregory Benford’s Galactic Centre books? One of which has micro-scale humans on a neutron star, humanity is fleeing/hiding from the “mechs” generally. That's nuts, Stephen Baxter's flux has the same concept (though it's in the Xeelee Sequence - which has always reminded me of Niven's Known Space in worldbuilding).
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Jul 7, 2023 08:51
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I remember it too, I think at the end with the abstraction they kept talking about wars across dimension stacks or potential stacks - wasn't a published story was it, it was an online/Web novel pushed by the author? Nice work freebooter! Just read it again in five minutes, poo poo that's impressively dense. Isolationist fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Apr 25, 2024 |
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Apr 24, 2024 15:22
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