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I'm looking for the title/author of a short story. I read it in the last year, but I have been checking out SF short-story compilations from the school's (sizable) library endlessly, so I have no idea when it was from. The story begins with a snowy day, people fighting their way to this presentation (dissertation defense?) where the student had created a program designed to write poetry or prose at the same level of skill as a real human being. There are various characters present - faculty members, some of the science faculty and some of the arts faculty. There is a drunken artist-in-residence poet. They need a short 'seed phrase' of some sort to give the program a central idea to write the story about, so they use a bit from a physics textbook about two mirrors, facing each other, about how the reflection each time gets darker and further away. The computer writes a story that's basically the same as the story up until that point, except the characters are more blunt and more dirty. They go through the same thing, three or four more times, and each time the story is darker, shorter, blunter, and the characters are more direct. The very last story is something really short, just "Hope." Then it has "THE END" five times in a row (one for each story). ...Halp?
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Oct 17, 2008 06:29
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 11:02 |
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criptozoid posted:
I actually think I'm going to go to the library and do some trolling through the books to see if I can find it. Now that I've been thinking about it, it's really bothering me. I didn't see it on the Recursive SF page, but then again, that is a pretty long list, so... yeah.
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Oct 19, 2008 07:38
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Ignoranus posted:I'm looking for the title/author of a short story. I read it in the last year, but I have been checking out SF short-story compilations from the school's (sizable) library endlessly, so I have no idea when it was from. Someone else found it for me - it's entitled "Silicon Muse", by Hilbert Schenck. Published in the Oxford Book of Science Fiction, ed. Tom Shippey. Unfortunately, it's in the library of my old school, and not my current one, so I'll have to go to greater lengths to get it...
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Oct 26, 2008 17:49
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A few years ago I read one (or maybe two?) SF books that I'm trying to identify. They clearly left off with a sequel setup and I'd like to know if my assumptions were right, but it seems that I must have borrowed the book from the library because I can't figure out what it was and it's not on my bookshelf. The book opens in a future where an advanced race of benevolent aliens have come to Earth. They have a mastery of biotechnology, including human-compatible biotech, so they trade their specially-engineered cells to humans. I think they are some kind of special cell that can be used like a stem cell and replace any human organ and heal any problem. These aliens are weird and religious but seem harmless. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it turns out that they are not so harmless. They have received a tachyonic message from the future that they believe to have come from God; this message says "bring all the intelligences you can to me here, at the end of time", so they've taken that on as a long-term quest. When some Earthly governments or spy agencies or something figure out that the aliens are not so friendly, the aliens pull the trigger and attack humanity. All the biotech they gave humans starts changing and anyone with the cells in their bodies gets cocooned by their own flesh and kidnapped by the aliens. Humanity manages to get through this attack (I don't remember how). I'm not actually sure if that's the complete first book and the remaining stuff I remember is a book 2, or if this is all in one, but humans build ships and travel out to look for where the aliens came from. I think they build colony ships, travel to new stars, make colonies and live as long as they can before the aliens show up and attack them again. These colonies build more ships and continue to run. At the same time, the expanding wave of humanity is looking for the aliens. Eventually they find a major alien stronghold, which is enclosed in a bubble of relativity-manipulated time so that the aliens can travel forward in time without aging to reach the "end of time" and meet their god. There's also a plot thread in that second section about humans seeding a colony in close orbit around a neutron star. When they reach this colony, they find that the people they placed there have become super-advanced in a short time because the relativistic effects of the gravity of the star mean they've had a lot of time to develop. Does anyone have any idea what the hell I'm talking about?
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Sep 25, 2023 21:46
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:I vaguely recall reading something like this, but damned if I can remember what. I figured it out - it's the "Salvation Sequence" books by Peter F. Hamilton.
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Sep 27, 2023 16:39
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 11:02 |
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Narzack posted:Very very long shot, but it was a short story in one of our 6th grade English(Reading) textbooks, so mid-nineties. It was a story about a guy stuck on a planet by himself being stalked by some hideous monster, and at the end he sees himself reflected in a puddle of water and you realize that he's the monster. All scraggly hair and wild eyes and junk. This sounds like HP Lovecraft's "The Outsider" to me.
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Mar 21, 2024 13:21
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