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

silvergoose: Mar 18, 2006; IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS

Okay discussion on lab grown meat has made me remember this book of connected short stories.

The premise is an engineer on a worldship or somesuch that can do large scale terraforming projects is the only person who lives through some catastrophe on the ship, and hires himself out to "fix planets", so the short stories are just the problems he encounters and how he fixes them.

The one I'm remembering is he goes to a planet that is having overpopulation issues, agrees to help with food but warns them they really need to work on the overpopulation thing, then comes back and they just grew population due to the food, then he creates lab meat factories, and then the same thing happens, and then he makes some manna from heaven kind of thing, but laces it with something that lowers population growth (sterilization, lower sex drive, I forget what), so a genophage basically.

Does this ring a bell for anyone? Gotta be 15 years ago at least that I read it, it's not at all a new book. It had some title like "blah name, world engineer" but a bit more grandiose.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2019 22:11

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 17:42

silvergoose: Mar 18, 2006; IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS

Khizan posted:

Tuf Voyaging, by George RR Martin.

Oh yup that's the one, thanks. And that kinda explains why the morals of the stories didn't actually seem particularly moral whatsoever. :v:

thanks

# ¿ Feb 11, 2019 22:18

silvergoose: Mar 18, 2006; IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS

Oh Gwendolyn uses powdered dragons blood to great effect in Charmed Life, yes.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2023 14:00

silvergoose: Mar 18, 2006; IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS

Now that I read the question, it's gotta be that. Not all magic is done with dragons blood, but some of the big stuff is.

Lives of Christopher Chant is the other main one that feels similar, Witch Week and Magicians of Caprona are also in the set.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2023 14:02

silvergoose: Mar 18, 2006; IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS

Fork of Unknown Origins posted:

Ok I cannot for the life of me find this via google.

There is a book that apparently my 1st and 2nd graders both read (or had read to them) at school, where a cat goes and lives in the forest for a while and then when it returns it’s kind of mangled up and refuses to go back inside its house. Apparently in the end it does go back inside the house. It is not Into the Wild. I have no idea what book these kids are describing to me.

My 3rd grader who has read basically all of those warriors books says yes, it's definitely one of them, he can't remember which one but definitely.

So start looking through the plot summaries I guess!!

yaffle posted:

One of the Erin Hunter books maybe? They are all about gangs of cats that go and live in the wild, but there are about 100 of them so it could be any of them.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2024 13:36

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