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Surprisingly there is a successor to this famous movie, but it's only a book and probably a cash-in rather than somebody's vision, but not too bad. The main character, which is literary an ET and his friend, a robot, do things on their own planet. The later can lock his arms in place so heavy weights do not bother him which is the only thing I remember about him or the book. It's been over thirty years since I read it. Much has happened since then. That second E.T. book
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May 26, 2020 17:30
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Humans and aliens have been at war for a long time. Now a veteran pilot is assigned to a beat-up old carrier full of pilots who hate him. There's a long grinding slog of missions and then high command goes all in on blowing up the enemy homeworld. Their first attempt to do so is derailed by one of the pilots being an enemy spy. This is unfortunate for the hero because he was the only one who really trusted this pilot, everyone else kinda already thought he was a spy. Anyway they eventually do blow up the enemy homeworld but almost all the pilots except the main character die in the process, including his main rival. Twist: It's the novelization of Wing Commander 3.
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May 26, 2020 17:43
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The book follows the history of a frontier settlement on Mars, from its inception as the permanent camp of a time travel researcher who has been contacted by genetically altered humans from the far future, to its history as a small but growing town that is home to a few families and the drama that ensues from their interactions, to its place at the heart of a labor movement/insurrection against the terraforming company that controls the planet. We see the doomed adventures of the Greatest Snooker Player The Universe Has Ever Known, a religious schism between the prophet of the techno-angelic Saint Catherine and an artificially intelligent train which has rebelled against its owner, while all the while a time-displaced Glenn Miller provides a soundtrack for the revolution. Desolation Road, by Ian McDonald
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May 26, 2020 18:00
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Chapter 4 Kathy and Jason are in Kathy's small single room apartment. Jason dislikes the small space and Kathy's screwdrivers made from orange juice and cheap gin and soon enough, absurdly, picks up that Kathy has two apartments and this one is the poo poo one, and resents that as well. To complete the bad tinder date feel Jason notices a copy of Remembrances of Things Past by Proust on Kathy's nightstand, and yes, I only know that book as a Monty Python reference. She's not read it very far, and Jason admits he only knows it as his show did a dramatic recreation of a scene one time. Jason then notices Kathy has a Cheerful Charlie, which is some kind of talking robot doll. He starts talking to it and just when he's about to turn it off it says "hey, I know how you can get your name, game, and fame back! Go talk to your girlfriend." When Jason asks who that is, the Charlie says "Heather Hart." (Oh, no wonder I was thinking of Mary Hart earlier; Jason's showbiz girlfriend has the same last name.) Jason weirdly takes this in stride, and starts to ask about Kathy, but Kathy immediately hauls away the Cheerful Charlie, as she doesn't want it snitching on her. This is literally her given reason, and I'm glad we've come to a place where real life and Phillip K. Dick novels coincide, as Cheerful Charlie is clearly an Amazon Echo except with a better interface. This leads to Jason quoting a line from Finnegan's Wake (which Kathy has not read but seen the film four times) and when Jason, who's met the director of said film on his show offers to tell what the man is really like, Kathy stridently refuses. She wants to believe what she wants to believe, much in the same way she's more or less respecting that Jason is who he believes he is. Jason then lets slip that he is a six. Kathy has only a vague idea of what that means, but remembers that Jason said that, cranking Jason's paranoia up another notch. Increasingly, Jason is trying to manage Kathy like he managed Heather and Marilyn: in this case, trying to keep his date smooth sailing with a police informant. She removes the purple tracker dots from his documents. Talking about Kathy's cat leads immediately back to sharp reefs as Kathy manages to move from her cat to Mr. McNulty, her handler. Jason manages to squeeze out of Kathy that most of her money goes into Other Apartment, where she has some sort of weekly time-share arrangement with one or two other girls. Possibly not liking admitting things, Kathy confesses that her husband is alive, and in a gulag in Alaska. She's working with the police to keep him alive and safe, as well as for the money. So she's sending other people up the river to save one, and estimates she's sent about "150" up poo poo creek. Jason says that this is evil, which naturally pisses off Kathy. She says she gets letter from her husband, Jack, "all the time", which Jason points out are likely fakes and Jack is already dead. Kathy weeps with almost shocking intensity at this, so Jason lies and rationalizes "well it's probably cheaper to keep Jack alive and have him write letters than fake it", which gets Kathy to calm down. Man, lots of Tinder date memories for me here! Jason realizes Kathy is in an impossible situation from which she can't get out, but tries to get Kathy to give up this little life. She ignores him of course, but says Jason is a good person for trying. Speaking of good person, apparently Jack gave full permission for Kathy to have sidepiece action. And besides, Kathy hadn't met Jason before, and Kathy was in a psychiatric hospital for eight weeks one time, and she met two people who were totally convinced they were celebrates, too. Huh. Maybe she's moved back to her delusional stage again...anyway, that's why it was alright for her to gently caress a guy who thought he was Mickey Quinn named David, because it was Destiny, and she'd still pick Jack anyway because she cares for Jack more than the rest of humanity, and no Jason, I'm not going to turn you in after we gently caress, I love you. Jason objects, saying they've known each other only a few hours, but Kathy is very earnest and serious on the love issue. They decamp to an "Italian-type" restaurant where Kathy seems to know the staff, and both sit down to what Kathy describes as "really authentic" and Jason describes as "loving awful" Italian food. Jason now senses some crisis building in Kathy, and asks her what a fit from her would look like. She responds "toddler style tantrum with truckstomp profanity directed at anyone impinging on my freedom." And yes, she does feel like that's coming on, which makes sense, she hasn't been taking her medication. Kathy doesn't take her daily psych meds because it fucks with her mind. Kathy sees that Jason doesn't want to be involved with Kathy's incipient psychological episode, and invites him to leave. Jason refuses, both out of concern for her and convinced she'll rat out Jason instantly if he does. Kathy says that the people around her will take care of her, like that degenerate drunk at the bar, or that cook back there in the tiny kitchen who lacks A/C. Jason challenges her to take some fuckin' responsibility for her actions, and Kathy points out Jason can go gently caress himself, Kathy has not hurt Jason. Jason gives up, realizing he's totally in the thrall of this mentally ill police informant and they both know it. Kathy tries some sexy talk about how her love is a growing vine reaching for Jason, and Jason flags down a waiter and discovers they don't serve hard liquor here. Any sort of managing of Kathy now gone, Jason is honest with Kathy and said "this place sucks, let's bail." This provokes the psychological attack in Kathy. She begins screaming, throwing herself on the floor while swearing like she's channeling the collective unconscious profanity of the world's longshoreman. The manager and the waiter of the lovely Italian place, after assessment, pick up Kathy and dump her out on the street, and then extract a bribe of $300 from Jason to keep the cops out of it. Under the neon sign of Senor Luigi's or whatever, Kathy recovers. Jason realizes she called his bluff and won. She may not know much, but her manipulation skills are first rate.
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May 26, 2020 22:36
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Chapter 5 Kathy and Jason are holding hands as they walk down the street. Kathy is talking about love and auras; Jason is numb to the world. She eventually tunes in to his non-replies being non replies, but Jason is at a distance now, constructing his own psychological models. He's concluded that Kathy is a solipsistic narsscicist who's chief skill is manipulation, and any attempts at communication will just prompt a deflection or some other defense reaction. Her sheer hostility to any logic was the castle moat. She asks if he feels like catching a captian kirk. He's like sure, whatev. She asks if he wants to return to her place and screw like minks. This pegs his desire to get the gently caress away from Kathy, consequences be dammed. A conversation about honestly quickly leads to Jason saying he thinks Kathy should be in a mental hospital and he wants nothing more than to get away from her. And so he walks away, into the crowd. Wondering if he's just doomed himself, Jason finds a phone booth and using the gold Kriegerands payphones apparently take, calls Heather on her mega-ultra-secret line. Heather, naturally, has no idea who he is and instantly classifies him as a stalker, no matter how much weird personal info Jason can give about Heather. Several calls happen, where Jason basically bombards Heather with her secrets, and Heather is enormously freaked out because...who the gently caress is this guy? Things end only when Jason runs out of Kriegerands. Jason is behind himself with frustration and has damaged one of his silver fillings through grindings. Having tried that and failed, Jason can only fantasize about what a TV show his predicament would made. He gets lost in this reverie, and walks into a police checkpoint.
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May 28, 2020 02:17
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There is a man who lives in what are basically the suburbs but his tv is an entire wall in the house. His government has a very, very aggressive burnable trash program, with which he has a good job, but otherwise he enjoys a comfortable, somewhat pleasant existence with his wife. He resents this, possibly because he is a tremendous rear end in a top hat, and can be barely roused to report his wifes attempted suicide. He encounters a young girl, and like any repugnant person who is clearly an authors self insert begins stalking her. He becomes, quickly, obsessed with and of course takes up her passionate defense of owning physical media. After a bad day at work, having not seen this woman for a while, and ignoring his suicidal wife's wants and desires, wakes his wife up in the middle of the night and demands to know what happened to the woman he was stalking. She tells him the tragic fate, and our protagonist thinks yes, this is the time to go on a long tirade and really seal the rear end in a top hat deal. He decides to be an absolute bastard now. He rambles about how no one thinks, acts as though everyone, including his profession is beneath him. The rear end in a top hat literally yells how bad it is people don't just randomly slow down on the highway to check out flowers because appreciating flowers is apparently more important than safety and other people's wants and desires like getting where they want to go. He then ruins a dinner party by bringing illegal contraband to it and both terrifies and bores the other guests which aggravates them and he calls them stupid. At this point his fellow employees have had enough of his poo poo and giving him second chances, so they go to his home. His wife attempts suicide again and he does nothing, because he is just a poo poo of a person and his former coworkers help her leave him (finally thank god). He then refuses to do his job anymore or accept punishment for his actions and runs away from his coworkers and the police. While escaping he finds an enclave of similar, like-minded assholes. Each of them has memorized a book and uses that fact to lord over other people despite them lacking any discernible useful skills. Then, in order to make this smug piece of poo poo even more unlikeable and win against his government, war is suddenly declared by another country and a nuclear bomb blows up the entire city the rear end in a top hat used to live in. Wife, friends, family all dead but protagonist doesnt care. He and the other assholes decide to go back into town to rebuild society in their image. The author thinks this is about thinking people getting a chance to run society right this time, but from a readers perspective its catharsis. These dumb assholes didnt read any books on radiation sickness, just useless poo poo like the bible, and are going to certainly die as well. The end. Barudak fucked around with this message at 16:01 on May 28, 2020 |
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May 28, 2020 11:37
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Barudak posted:There is a man who lives in what are basically the suburbs but his tv is an entire wall in the house. His government has a very, very aggressive burnable trash program, with which he has a good job, but otherwise he enjoys a comfortable, somewhat pleasant existence with his wife. He resents this, possibly because he is a tremendous rear end in a top hat, and can be barely roused to report his wifes attempted suicide. Wow, what book is this and did Terry Goodkind write it?
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May 28, 2020 15:50
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It's a lot more famous and proof that being considered a classic doesn't make something good.
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May 28, 2020 19:15
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an old dope, cat man, hot woman, and a cowardly sparkle horse go to a big ring around a Star, like a Dyson sphere that isn't closed off. They were able to get there because the horse people made a really good starship hull. Once they get there, they ride hover scooters around, and encounter a storm, and the cat man gets hit by a laser sunflower. Eventually, it is revealed at the hot woman is genetically lucky somehow. At the end, I think most of the people leave? And I think the horse guy got wounded.
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May 28, 2020 19:20
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Moon Slayer posted:It's a lot more famous and proof that being considered a classic doesn't make something good. I knew it, it is Lolita Seriously though is it "Diary of a Incipient Serial Killer" or something e:vvv haha, wow Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 21:21 on May 28, 2020 |
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May 28, 2020 19:37
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Fahrenheit 451.
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May 28, 2020 21:13
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There is this guy in space stranded in a locker of a derelict ship, people can teleport anywhere on Earth by thinking about it and mayor of Paris (New York?) is super salty about it, the guy gets back to Earth and does some bad poo poo, secret Jesus church (might be the other book from the same writer), a guy who is basically Bright Ghouls from FNV has social distancing sex with a girl with a massive glass between them. Spaceguy turns out to be only guy that can do super important thing. There is a Blind Girl and terrible space guys fall in love but oh no she is a psycho too and they start an interplanetary nuclear war everyone dies (citation needed) the end. Tbh, it's one of the best sf novel I've ever read and hope I didn't ruin it for anyone reading or might read that in the future. Galewolf fucked around with this message at 00:07 on May 29, 2020 |
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May 29, 2020 00:05
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Nebakenezzer posted:Wow, what book is this and did Terry Goodkind write it? Fahrenheit 451, methinks
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May 29, 2020 01:42
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Lets traumatise children! Also they can turn into animals.
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May 29, 2020 01:50
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So there are these dudes and dudettes on a starship that can travel near the speed of light and when they want to slow down they find they can't because of a flaw in their reactor that means if they shut it off they die. In fact, the only solution to their dilemma is to go faster. Eventually they're going so fast that they're going to hit the end of the universe in their own relative lifetimes. Luckily for them the book was written before the discovery of dark energy and the fact that the universe's rate of expansion should always be positive, so the eschatological fate of the universe in the book is the Big Crunch. For the purposes of the novel the ship basically flies around outside the universe and they watch the big crunch and then there's a fresh Big Bang and a new Universe for them to live out their meaningless existences in. This book was adapted into the hit movie Speed.
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May 29, 2020 01:50
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oh but seriously I posted:Lets traumatise children! Also they can turn into animals. The Island of Doctor Moreau?
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May 29, 2020 01:52
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Filthy Hans posted:The Island of Doctor Moreau? Its good, but its not right
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May 29, 2020 01:54
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So there's this guy, we'll call him Jim. Jim is in a novel from the 1970s, so the main existential threat to humanity is overpopulation. That's not a problem with Jim, though: he's a fully bona-fide member of the 0.01% and the ultimate sign of this is having full medical. His medical insurance is awesome. He's going to a AI psychologist with this full medical, because Jim is the rare self made man, and he took some damage in his last line of work. (The book has a few simple illustrations, and one of those is of the AI psychologist's programming, which is done in BASIC.) Jim was born and grew up in 'murica, specifically in Montana, where he worked in the oil shale mines. In this future, food manufacture is good enough that the basic incredients are whatever gives enough CHON atoms to make food with, which is petrochemicals. (This was actually very much a '70s overpopulation thing. In the early 70s, everyone thought that existing fishing practices would change to reducing everything to fishmeal for max useage of avalible protein, and then, I dunno, reconstitute that fishmeal into something good?) Anyway, he's a miner making a living. Then, he wins the lottery. He wins not some sort of mega-millions prize but a healthy million dollars or so. He could buy and pay off a nice house in the area, setting himself for life. Instead, he takes all that money, and buys a ticket to Gateway. Gateway is an alien space station. So when mankind first started serious inner solar system colinization, they found signs on Mars and Venus of aliens. Soon nicknamed the HeeChee, they are maddeningly enigmatic, because while they built tunnel complexes in both planets, they only left behind the physical tunnels themselves, and inscrutible things soon nicknamed HeeChee prayer fans. But at one point somebody on Venus gets lucky and finds an alien spaceship, which flies them to what would be later be called Gateway. Gateway was a city-sized station with a vertical orbit around the sun. This station was aside from basic technology also stripped - except for thousands of exploratory space ships. Research and quite a few deaths later, mankind has figured out the spaceships...to a point. First: they have FTL drives, and nobody knows how they work, because opening the small box the engine is contained in causes a small nuclear explosion. The second thing people have a basic understanding of is the ship's navigation system. Gateway assigns "missions" to the ships. The ships go out on an autopilot to an unknown location. Then, once there, the ship's crew can explore as they like, and then initiate a FTL return. There is some sort of FTL nav system, but so far all anyone has learned is that messing with it more than a little means the ship is never seen or heard from again. Third: aside from FTL, the ships are limited like a spacecraft as we understand them. Limited oxygen, but also limited food and a conventional propulsion system. The food limit is what kills - y'see, thanks to the opaque navigation system, crews never know how long a trip is going to be. At FTL you move fast, but a trip out and back can take awhile - a few months. Humanity knows now with ships coming back without crews that some trips can take far longer than the food supply. Once a trip starts, you are stuck in the ride. Fourth: the ships are small. The ship types are called Ones, Threes, and Fives, as that is how many people they can hold. They are outfitted with completely mundane, normal sensors, and even have smaller lander-type pods, but imagine being stuck in a RV with two other people in a high stress situation for months, and you know what a trip is like. Ones are like a Soyuz space capsule. But mankind is desperate, so they make gateway work through capitalism and financial reward. The goal in 'prospecting' is to find more HeeChee technology, ideally something to unfuck earth and its crazy overpopulation problem. The Gateway corperation trains people (while billing them) to prospect, and then you owe so much the only way to pay your debts is to get out in a pod. Gateway has a vast list of things they pay for, but the real payday is new alien tech, as gateway holds the patents for said tech and then licenses it. The top five discoveries have created a few of the world's richest people, and they were just getting a cut from Gateway, which could pay for operations for the next century just from its cash reserves. The HeeChee often have bases or settlements at destination points, and sometimes interesting stuff is left there. Did I mention the death, though? Something like a third of all trips end in the death of at least one crewmember, and something like 20% of all missions end with a retured pod and the crew dead, or the whole thing vanishing. It's very uncertian when the HeeChee were in the solar system, and steller phenomona do move and change...like neutron stars or black holes. So Jim signs up for this, and dreams of the big score, while trying to stay alive. He makes a good friend, an researcher and expert even hotter for the big score: he's gone on 15 voyages. He also gets a girlfriend, and even goes on a trip or two with her, and they must *really* fuckin' love each other if they made it through that. When you are not risking your life, you are on Gateway, in a tiny stateroom, with the Gateway corp. constantly reminding you that your poo poo room is costing you astronomical (no pun intended) sums, and all the servants on Gateway are failed prospectors who owe too much to return to Earth, and are working there instead. This is intercut with Jim's psych sessions. Clearly something is wrong, but what that is isn't clear until the end: massive unprocessed survivor's guilt. Finally, on a Five, him, his GF and his friend make the big score. On the journey back to Gateway, they drop out of FTL right above the event horizion of a black hole. I forget the deets, but I think the Five was traveling with a Three as a lander. Anyway, the FTL takes time to recharge, which the craft really doesn't have. In desperation, Jim tries to save his friends: they pack the Three with all the mass they can (the swag, spare food and water, etc.) Then, they are going to separate, and by pushing off of one mass against another, gain enough time to zoop out of there...and Jim volunteers to be the guy on the Three to sacrifice himself. But, thanks to a delay in separation and the two ships rotating, the Five pushes itself toward the event horizon while giving Jim in his three just enough boost to warp out of there. So Jim not only survives but is rich beyond the dreams of avarice, as payouts mostly go to living, not dead prospectors. He finally processes this, and in the end has a really nice conversation with his software psychologist, basically asking them how they are doing. He's sorta bummed; the AI tells Jim you wouldn't believe how much sadness there is in the world, and it can be hard to cope, even as a AI.
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May 29, 2020 02:10
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oh but seriously I posted:Lets traumatise children! Also they can turn into animals. Listen, Animorphs deserves more credit than this.
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May 29, 2020 02:33
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Tulip posted:Listen, Animorphs deserves more credit than this. That's a pretty good legacy, the gently caress you ever done?
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May 29, 2020 02:48
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The ghosts of famous dead people are back and I think they might be stealing bodies? Al Capone figures prominently. There's an android D-Day scene. The goodguys blow up a skyscraper with orbital "plasma lances" and when I read it I thought that meant literal lances with plasma warheads, real rods-from-gods poo poo. The Naked God by Peter F. Hamilton. The only book of his I ever read, and I was very young and apparently it's the last in a trilogy. I liked it though and obviously some of it stuck with me.
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May 29, 2020 04:09
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Two kids form a club under the guidance of a strange old man. They build a spaceship and get sent by the old man on a mission to another planet. They bring a chicken along as their mascot. Once on the alien planet, the atmosphere makes everything tinted green, and they figure out that the only thing really wrong is that the aliens there have a sulfur deficiency, so they leave the chicken behind so the aliens can eat the eggs, and when the kids get back to earth, they find out that the old man was one of the aliens. Tulip posted:Listen, Animorphs deserves more credit than this. I think it was interesting when the extradimensional god aliens used them for bloodsports to prove who was better, but that was also around the point where I stopped paying attention to the series, so I guess not. Neat aliens though, like the taxxons and hork'bajir.
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May 29, 2020 06:57
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You really REALLY wish you hadn't read this book. You regretted reading its predecessor but you kind of forgave it as a first book and you enjoyed some of the concepts before they became clearly self-indulgent and creepy. Maybe the author has matured a little and is going to use this book to create something cool. But this time you think it might work out. Okay the concept is hackneyed, hell the best version of this story has already been written it's called Only You Can Save Mankind and it's amazing. But you've read that book so many times you've had to buy a replacement and you want something new and your computer isn't good enough to run multiplayer Arena Commander so this is going to be your fix for space fighter shooty bang bang. Early on you're already getting flashbacks. Endless lists of pop culture references setting off your endorphin sensors of "he likes what I like!" and fantasy technology to provide "immersive" escapism. You're starting to get very nervous that this is going to be a rehash, but there is this very cool subtext of filial bonds and genetic madness that might bear fruit, so you keep going. Past the poorly written combat (which is disappointing since that's why you got the drat book), past the painful dialogue and past the predictable twist, because you're really getting into this idea that there's a cool mystery with the protagonist's dad and you want to see it pay off. Then you get to the Love Interest and you nearly throw the book across the room. You can't remember her name but let's be honest her name doesn't matter, not even for the author. She is the Love Interest and as such she is desirable for the reader. Since this is a military sci-fi book she's not the cute geek girl from the first book, no she's Bad rear end. She's got shaved hair and tattoos and wears combat boots and piercings. But she's still nerdy. Those tattoos are geeky things like a quote from Aliens which the protagonist uses as a pickup line. Which works, because she's Love Interest and not a human being who's likely heard that joke too many times and is starting to regret getting the drat thing. Oh and she DRINKS during the briefing because she's Cool. And you officially hate this book. But you're not giving up. Lost Cost fallacy has kicked in and unless something really egregious happens you're going to see this thing to the end because goddamnit you want to know what happened to the dad. Then the dad shows up and he's this big badass military guy who's the best at everything and the protagonist is a chip off the old block and you finally throw the book across the room because there's 100 more pages of this drivel and anything to keep you interested has gone up in smoke so you drop the book in the neighbourhood book hutch and reinstall Wing Commander.
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May 29, 2020 15:51
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Renaissance Spam posted:You really REALLY wish you hadn't read this book. You regretted reading its predecessor but you kind of forgave it as a first book and you enjoyed some of the concepts before they became clearly self-indulgent and creepy. Maybe the author has matured a little and is going to use this book to create something cool. I haven't read it, but I'm going to say... Armada?
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May 29, 2020 23:33
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TheAardvark posted:I haven't read it, but I'm going to say... Armada? Yup.
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May 29, 2020 23:39
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Chapter 6 The guy immediately ahead of Jason evidently went to a poo poo forger, as he's immediately grabbed and thrown into a police quibble. But, Kathy does good work, as they pass inspection. The men attempt to give him grief about his tracker dot on his natpol card being scraped off, but he just says "I don't know what an electric dot is" and they let him pass. Kathy was lurking in the darkness. She pops out to say "see, I did good work". Jason realizes she's done it again; by proving the cards are good, Jason now owes her one, and has lost his status as Kathy's victim. Trapped again, Jason and Kathy head back to Kathy's poo poo apartment, while she tells him about her pet turtle (kept at the good apartment.) But somebody's waiting back at Kathy's: Mr. McNulty, her handler. He gets off Kathy's lovely couch and extends a hand to Jason; he reaches to shake it and McNulty corrects him: no, I'm not offering to shake your hand, I want to see your IDs. Jason gives McNulty his wallet. McNulty is late middle age, modestly dressed but impeccably groomed, smelling of onions and hot sauce. He's eyeballing Jason with interest. His real leather shoes, his lack of fear. He also notes that Kathy's forgeries are much better than he thought she could do. He asks who planted the tracker dot on Jason's person, and she confirms it was Ed, the hotel clerk. Kathy confesses she told Jason "some things", and McNulty asks about Jack being part of those things. McNulty then informs Jason that Jack is dead: killed three years ago in a traffic accident, and Kathy's belief about the camp in Alaska is a psychotic delusion. (Side note - that means Kathy is working for the police because McNulty is holding a delusion over her.) Kathy naturally denies this, that Jack is alive, and starts to silently weep large tears. McNulty is taking Jason in, naturally, but finishes up his business with Kathy, making sure they were square for the week. "After Jack gets out you won't be able to count on me at all" Kathy says; McNulty cheerfully rejoins that for Kathy, that day will never come, while cheerfully winking at Jason. Jason thinks "we live in a state of betrayal." Jason isn't being arrested, he's just being taken along to the station for some biometric ID recordings. Jason almost objects until Kathy shoots him a warning look. Processing at the station must be a bit different from today, as Jason is put in a vast waiting room filled with people waiting to be summoned. Some gizmo McNulty pinned on Jason's lapel gets him moved out of that room and processed - fill out a form, footprint, voiceprint, EKG scan. McNulty and the officer identify him as - Jason Taverener, age 39, Diesel Engine Mechanic from Wyoming. This is wrong, obviously, but the record is clean and no other records come up in the database, so bingo, that is who Jason is. He's free to go. Then they pull a classic Columbo; at the police station entrance, a loud page calls him back to processing. They have a 15 year old photo of "Jason", and he is ugly and doesn't look anything like Jason aside from being white and male. McNulty says "you've had plastic surgery" and Jason runs with this, saying "yeah, I mean look at the old me." He explains where the evidently large sums of money came from by improvising a story from scattered details he's glanced at from "Jason's" form. This satisfies McNulty, and Jason is free to go. Then McNulty Columbos Jason *again* - he takes his old IDs and gives him a police temp pass instead. The temp pass is real, and universal, but only lasts a week, the idea being he'll have real IDs reissued by then. For the third time, Jason is free to go. Jason thinks he's traded up: a totally genuine and real pass for Kathy's forgeries. And the process getting genuine, abet mistaken IDs has started. So no worries about forced labor camps! Unless of course, they decide to arrest him for the counterfeit passes. Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 00:31 on May 30, 2020 |
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May 30, 2020 00:29
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Our hero is a struggling graduate student at MIT trying to invent time travel. He's broke and his adviser is getting impatient. Finally he succeeds in making a time machine. There are a few rules: the machine itself is the size of a breadbox. It can only transport the person holding it or if placed against a metal frame everything inside. It can only go forward in time. And every time it is activated the increment that it jumps forward increases exponentially. Also the location it jumps to moves, the distance also increasing exponentially every time its used. There's some shenanigans while this is being figured out but eventually our hero ends up in a big car chase for ... reasons that I don't remember. He's used the device enough at this point that when he activates it while going down the freeway he ends up ten years in the future and in the next county. He appears in a big stadium with a cheering crowd. Turns out his advisor found his research and took credit for it and is now rich and famous. Our hero is less famous as the test subject. He's understandably pissed at this, breaks out, grabs the device, and hops in his car again. He ends up in Pennsylvania a hundred years in the future. There's clearly been an apocalypse of some kind because all he finds are a bunch of rusted out cars and broken roads. He makes his way back to Boston and finds that it's at medieval levels of development and everyone is hard-core Christian. He goes to MIT and tells them he's a professor (technically true) and they believe him. They give him an office, a room, and a TA who's a hot young woman of course. TA's are now more like servants and so she lives with him. There's a lot of discussion about the fact that this culture for whatever reason doesn't have a nudity taboo. Anyway he bullshits around feudal MIT for a while and then he's told "hey, Jesus wants to see you." Uh, okay. He goes to the chapel and a big hologram of Jesus appears and starts asking him questions. He figures out its an AI of some kind. He runs off, he and his TA go into an old bank vault and use the device. They end up in Utah several centuries in the future. The nice Mormon family whose backyard their bank vault appears in takes it in stride. Everything east of the Rockies is apparently still under the control of an AI that EMP-ed everyone back to the tenth century and pretends to be Jesus in order to keep control. It shoots down anyone going over the mountains. The rest of the world has decided its best to just leave it alone. Our heroes, who are now romantic of course, decide the only way back is forward so they borrow a boat and appear in the western Pacific in like the year 5000. They get picked up by an AI who treats them to dinner but is kind of creepy so they bust out and steal a spaceship. Now they're tens of thousand of years in the future and try to get into Australia but are almost shot down by the giant fortress that is now where Australia is. Something about them being impure or they think they're working for the AI because they're in the ship. I don't know. And then I'm sure some other stuff happens but I don't remember how this all ended. Also don't remember the name or author. It wasn't that bad but the young assistant he picks up and later bangs is not a very good look. You're welcome!
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May 30, 2020 17:15
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On a planet where stone doesn’t work, some people go on a road trip with a giant, some lizards and some ant people. At the end they all gently caress to make stones work again. Then one guy turns into a tree. Three book series.
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May 30, 2020 21:48
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Sonderval posted:On a planet where stone doesn’t work, some people go on a road trip with a giant, some lizards and some ant people. At the end they all gently caress to make stones work again. Then one guy turns into a tree. Three book series.  so what does it mean when you say "stone doesn't work"
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May 31, 2020 01:26
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Sonderval posted:On a planet where stone doesn’t work, some people go on a road trip with a giant, some lizards and some ant people. At the end they all gently caress to make stones work again. Then one guy turns into a tree. Three book series. it's been a while but is this shannara
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May 31, 2020 02:40
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Pick posted:it's been a while but is this shannara If it is there are a hell of a lot more than 3 books. Edit: can we do fantasy books here too?
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May 31, 2020 03:27
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tbh ALL I remember about shannara is that someone turns into a tree and "elfstones"
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May 31, 2020 04:26
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I don't see whats so unmemorable about the third book. See there are these twins who live in the woods who can sing a song that makes whatever they want true. The book then hammers home that doing this has "severe" repercussions and like wishing yourself not having to do a days worth of chores messes up the color of nearby trees for a few years. If your curious why anybody would give a hoot about consist foliage coloration, the great magical people of this world are Druids and they are exactly as stupid as you think. Their leader is named after a secular alcohol rehab program, and if this bit of trivia is wrong to hell with you. Anyway, there is this book written by demons and contains like, all the evil ever, but its cool it was lost forever. Except it wasnt because the Druids decided to catalogue every book ever and "tome of unspeakable evil" wasn't exempt from that because like all fantasy novel mystics, the Druids were dangerously stupid. Anyway some evil guy wants the book and it will let him do evil stuff, probably end the world in a cool CGI effect if this were a movie. So the last remaining of the Order of Very Stupid People in Brown Robes Who Are In Tune With Nature (Member FDIC) goes to our woodsy hillbilly twins and tells them they need to save the world as one does. As is custom, he offers the twins a detachment of elite redshirts and some vague prophetic bullshit. He also then rambles off some bullshit about why they cant just wish the problem away and really, at the point where our heroes have to walk on foot to confront the great evil because they cant use their magic powers this book should be called the Logistics of Shannanara. Anyway after a long journey of very uninteresting adventures and the twins getting split up somewhere in all these pages of various Sir Not Worth Learning My Name dying one twin makes it to the final objective. They immediately get chumped and i guess the book can possess people? Anyway its possessing them because I guess it wants magic useless wish powers that havent done a drat thing for after it rules the world or ends it or whatever its up to. The other twin then uses their magic wish power to put in a video conference call with their twin which breaks the possession because its that kind of a fantasy story. The now unpossessed twin then I think just non magically lights the book on fire and the world is instantly saved. While congratulating them, the horrible woods enthusiast reveals this has somehow caused all magic to die. Given that magic seems either useless or world ending, this is probably a good thing except to people who are sick of trees and their refusal to be different colors. The end, woods twins, enjoy your life of no thanks and no healthcare alone in the woods!
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May 31, 2020 10:29
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Nebakenezzer posted:
Brian Stableford - Genesys Series Serpents Blood Salamanders Fire Chimeras Cradle From what I remember an arc ship dumped a load of people on a planet and hosed off. Every thing looks good then they realised that the planet ecology rots everything including stone so they constantly have to rebuild everything eventually dumping them back to semi medieval tech level. Before that happens some sci-fi gene splicing fuckery goes on with the indigenous people and folks carry on. The main story is the group trying to get to the “cradle” (gene fuckery ground zero) long since lost, to do a thing to stabilise the rot, or something I dunno it’s been 20 years since I read them and now I think about it while it’s got a sci-fi premise it’s pretty much 99% fantasy set. gently caress. However a dude does turn into a tree at the end.
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May 31, 2020 22:57
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Barudak posted:I don't see whats so unmemorable about the third book. oh god i remember this now. drat it barudak
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Jun 1, 2020 04:44
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Ok real sci fi this time with a badass cigar smoking bounty hunter guy! Book One : I gotta stop an old general selling us out to the aliens ... and save the galaxy! Book Two : I gotta find the space prince before his evil sister starts war with the aliens ... and save the galaxy! Book Three : I gotta find a paperweight before the aliens declare war on us ... and save the galaxy! Book Four : I gotta save my daughter from pirates and other more hosed up aliens ... and save the galaxy! The aliens kinda look like Satan and don’t like to waste piss. Also one of his friends is a Wookiee wearing a kilt.
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Jun 1, 2020 22:56
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Chapter 7 A man in a luxurious quibble sits in the parking lot atop the police HQ. He reads the above-fold headlines, then carefully places the newspaper on the back seat. He's General Felix Buckman. He's a police general. The novel sketches the command structure (above Felix are Grand Marshall, and above that a mysterious Director) but the impression the book gives is that Buckman is the head of all natpol in at least Los Angeles if not California. He's coming in to start his day when the day shift is just ending. He's mid fifties, known by all, concerned for his subordinates well-being. He walks through the office of now empty and clear desks for agents, and notices one desk still messy: this is McNulty's desk. To Buckman, McNulty is an enthusiastic dummy; a necessary kind that must be tolerated. Buckman starts reading what he's working on; apparently there is a Jason Taverner, and he doesn't exist. His assistant, Herb Maime, meets his boss as he reads McNulty's notes. The notes are weird and interesting enough that Buckman gets Maime to call McNulty at home. Buckman quickly interrogates McNulty about what he's found so far. Jason Taverener, handsome dude, apparently wealthy, got Kathy the forger to make *unusually good* forgeries, good enough to pass a pol checkpoint. Then, briefly, what happened last chapter. Taverner still had a tracker dot on him, and a good thing too: trying to find out more from the world data banks has shown that he's missing from all of them. What was a low level thing with ident cards is now maybe national security - the ability to remove oneself entirely from *all* databases is extraordinary. Where does Taverner get his money? Who does he work for? Well, now he has the eye of the General of Police. In his office, Felix finds his sister, Alys, asleep on his couch. This is intensely irritating to him. She's mid thirties, and dressed no-poo poo like a punk. Skin-tight black pants, a man's leather shirt, hoop earrings, with a metal studded belt with a wrought-iron buckle. I guess this is also fetish gear, (which Alys is totally into) but if Felix is the model of law and order, Alys is rebellion and personal power personified. She also *may* be his fraternal twin, but honestly it's difficult to tell if that's just drug talk later on Alys's part or Dick just forgetting he wrote both characters with a 20 year age gap. Anyway, she's stoned, and so *of course* she uses Felix's poo poo to break into the police HQ to pass out in his office. Naturally Felix gets into a puritanical snit about it. One thing here is that it's really difficult to tell if anything Alys does is actually illegal - her position as family of a police general would likely make her immune to consequence, but as the two discuss it the issue is that it bothers the poo poo out of felix to have a sister who's basically a chaos imp implacably opposed to everything good, IE The Law. Alys brings up her being a political weakness to her bro, which he dismisses, as she's already "well known" to the six marshals and the one director above him. The argument continues through Buckman's suite of offices, with even Buckman threatening to shoot her not phasing Alys. Just while he's working himself into a good puritan fury about what a degenerate pleasure seeker she is, McNutly calls. His thesis is confirmed: his staff compared all of Taverner's bioinformatic data, and none of it exists anywhere on earth. Jason Taverner is not only an alias, he's someone with no paper trail at all. He doesn't exist.
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Jun 4, 2020 03:50
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An architect is very good at designing buildings in a train focused future, so people know his name, and he is well respected. He is handsome, affable, intelligent and a rapist but she liked being overpowered so its ok it just means he is manly. The government decides that it would like him to design them a building and so he does. Its a really nice building, people like it, even his victim. Maybe all of his victims do, this isn't their story. The government then surprises him and says "oh, some poor people will live in this building". This does not sit well with our protagorapist. Despite being a famed architect he apparently has never heard of work for hire and just melts down about this, like full on starts a campaign of train bombing terrorism. Too bad there were no warning signs of his past behavior that might indicate he is unhinged and dangerous. Maybe the trains will grow to like being bombed. They do not, so he joins a big super train bombing organization led by a mystery man on the radio. It turns out this mystery is both very rich, and very very long winded. So so so many words and nothing to say. He keeps talking and our hero listens rapturously to every word. The rest of the world, presumably, turned that self indulgent poo poo off and did something else. Anyway they successfully bomb the trains in a way that permanently cripples the government and it falls to anarchy. Our hero then retires to a secret commune run by radio terrorist which is protected by an invisibility machine because seriously, otherwise in 5 seconds everyone is going to murder these people. This community of train bombers then live in perfect harmony without any of those pesky poors who do things like ship them bomb parts, make their drafting paper, and grow their food. The end
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Jun 4, 2020 04:29
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Barudak posted:An architect is very good at designing buildings in a train focused future, so people know his name, and he is well respected. He is handsome, affable, intelligent and a rapist but she liked being overpowered so its ok it just means he is manly. IIRC this novel has a scholarship foundation that can pay for thousands of dollars of your college education.
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Jun 4, 2020 04:38
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I'm gonna do all the Honor Harrington books over the weekend and nobody can stop me. I'm just trying to decide if skimming Wikipedia to keep what books have what bullshit in them is in the spirit of the thread or if I should just wing it even when it turns into a mess of "and then I think this happened."
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Jun 5, 2020 23:49
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