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Here we go. First one is a book that I read back in the late 70's early 80's however I think it is much older than that. In fact the tone of the book feels as though it might have been written in the 20's. Protagonist is a teen boy who meets up with an old righ guy who happens to be an inventor/mad scientist type. He somehow invents an antigravity metal (it falls up) and his house is demolished in the process. They build some sort of airship with the remaining metal and travel the world, ending up on Krakatoa. The islanders have some sort of steam tech that draws on the volcano. However, like Atlantis, they go too far or something and cause the island to blow up as history shows. Our heros escape, naturally just in time. For some reason I am lead to think that one of the characters is a giant boy who grew to 20 odd feet tall because his digestive system is perfectly efficient and converts 100% of his food to nutrients. However, I'm not certain if he was in that book or just one I read contemperary to the Anti-gravity metal one. The second one I read more definitely in the early 80's. A space fighter pilot's fighter is hit just as he does some sort of warp to escape the battle in which he's fighting. He crashes on a backwater planet populated with viking like barbarians who worship him as a god. However, he tries to contact a city state he's heard of who might have a metalurgy tech base he has a chance of training up to effect repairs on his ship. He gives emisarries from that state a recorder with instructions of what he needs but they are killed by the Viking Barbarians because they had "stolen the god's voice" (the recorder). Frustrated by this, he takes a pill from his crash kit that puts one in hibernation until rescue arrives. Except he wakes up like 10,000 years later and well... I can't remember any more. The last one has been driving me nuts for years, well, they both have!
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Jan 31, 2008 22:26
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HB posted:You're combining at least three books here. HAH! Thank you sir! Upon gazing the Wiki entry on him, I realized it was in fact a hodge-podge of 3 of his novels. The Twenty-One Balloons, Peter Graves(Had the anti-gravity metal) and The Giant I must have read them one after another because they all were certainly mashed together in my brain.
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Jan 31, 2008 23:19
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A couple of requests after scanning back a few pages to see if they'd been requested and found yet. First one I read sometime in the last 10 years. An expedition of feline aliens come to a system where the 2nd planet is a lush tropical paradise ready for colonization. The 3rd is uninhabitable, high temps and toxic atmosphere, despite being in a better orbital zone for life. While checking out the system, they find buildings on the satellite of the 3rd planet. Inside they find a vault with many great works of art and the record of the last days of humanity succumbing to pollution and war. Most of the book is them watching the tapes and learning about human art and self destructiveness. Second one I read back in the mid-80s. Space fighter pilot is shot down buy some new weapon that warps him to some unknown planet. He finds, and is revered, by a tribe of the locals who are copper age at best. He sends a hand recorder with a message with some traders from a slightly more advanced culture hoping they can make the part he needs to fix his FTL communicator. His local primitive friends kill the traders because they've "stolen their god's voice." Pilot gives up trying to fix the FTL and since the radio beacon will take decades, if not centuries to call for help, so he takes a hibernation pill and sleeps. He wakes up in a 20th century type city, messes around, and takes his last hibernation pill. He wakes up and his radio picks up the battle in orbit and he realizes the weapon hadn't displaced him is space, but in time.
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Jan 11, 2018 22:36
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