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Boogoose posted:Try to guess which of these plot lines am I making up: lol, that's good. I'm assuming the Texas one is fake because I recognize the other two, but if secret dirigible was in a future book I never got to I want to know which one. I think the Canada one was too crazy even for Cussler (turns out Britain sold Canada to the US after WWI to pay off war debts, but the secret treaty was lost), since IIRC he never mentions the fact that the US annexed Canada again in future books. I just love the idea that 1980 Canada with Trudeau at the helm is just going to go, welp, I guess it says so in black and white here on this paper that Britain signed before any of us were born so okay everyone, turn in your citizenship cards and light all your healthcare on fire: we're Yankees now.
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Aug 16, 2021 17:50
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lmfao i forgot that also according to clive cussler, not only was abraham lincoln kidnapped and whisked away on a confederate ship ,but he died in egypt on that same ship in the desert. a fake abraham lincoln is assassinated in teh theater and clive cussler discovers this and rewrites american history i think somebody did touch upon this earlier when i mentioned sahara, but, tbh, i forgot about the whole finding abraham lincoln and a fake confederate lincoln being assassinated by jwboothe
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Aug 16, 2021 17:53
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thanks for planting the seeds of the "joe biden is a fake president made out of computer graphics" conspiracy theories, clive
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Aug 16, 2021 18:05
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The reason Dirk didn’t know he had kids is because he thought their mother died - when in reality she survived some ship thing but was maimed and didn’t want to burden him with her ugliness
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Aug 16, 2021 18:09
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By far the craziest book is the Atlantean one because the villains are Nazis and they are going to 2012 the world - with arks to ride it out. (I’m surprised he didn’t sue because it was a very close plot to the 2012 movie)
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Aug 16, 2021 18:13
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Xotl posted:lol, that's good. I'm assuming the Texas one is fake because I recognize the other two, but if secret dirigible was in a future book I never got to I want to know which one. I made up the one about the dirigible because honestly, who knows? QUIZ TIME: In Derk Pett's hanger full of planes and cars, one vehicle in particular stands out. Is it: 1) A motorised unicycle that he used to escape Chile, where he met Augusto Pinochet. 2) A lawn chair with several hundred Mylar balloons attached to it that he used to escape Haiti, where he met Jean-Claude Duvalier. 3) A 2005 Honda Civic. No back story, it just gets good mileage. 4) A claw-foot bathtub that he used to escape Cuba, where he met Fidel Castro.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:21
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Boogoose posted:I made up the one about the dirigible because honestly, who knows? I’m keeping quiet, I don’t need to phone a friend for this one.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:24
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He doesn’t just live in a hanger, he lived in a hanger at Reagan airport. Somehow.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:25
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Upgrade posted:He doesn’t just live in a hanger, he lived in a hanger at Reagan airport. Somehow. Lmfao Also remember that book where the scantily clad Congress lady and some rich heiress or business lady were sharing underwear and fawning over who gets to cook him breakfast Also that thing abt the woman he had kids with quarantining herself for being sick / ugly was so gross and sad. It had the reek of a confession/apology you make when you're not even sure why what you did was bad
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Aug 16, 2021 18:27
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*throws darts at map* hmm, looks like... India and the Bering Sea. *throws darts at bulletin board with dates * "1950's." *spins wheel* "Bad guys are... drug cartel." *draws paper out of box maked "end of the world"* Locusts? *picks up phone* get the ghost writers on something about Ghandi's secret super-locusts locked in a box under the ice cap and the heroes have to fight Colombians for it."
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Aug 16, 2021 18:27
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Boogoose posted:QUIZ TIME: No loving way none of these can be true, I won't believe it!  Uuhh 4? Upgrade posted:Al grinned back and gave Dirk a thumbs up. "Gabagool." These are really great by the way. 
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Aug 16, 2021 18:49
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It’s 4.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:52
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QUIZ TIME: What is the terrible secret of the Pitt family? 1) Dirk's nemesis, Kirk Pendulum, is actually his half brother. 2) Dirk's children are named Dirk, after him, and Summer, after his lover. Which is pretty yeesh if you ask me. 3) The Pitt family own Al Giordino. George Pitt won him in a pasta sauce drinking competition. Al sleeps in a cupboard underneath Dirk's stairs.
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Aug 16, 2021 18:56
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wait wait, my only experience with Clive Cussler is the movie Sahara. am I to understand that ALL of his books involve an old ship discovered anachronistically out of place in a weird location?
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Aug 16, 2021 19:49
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Bottom of the Marianas Trench, 1943: Inspector Reginald Hornfellow couldn't help but smile, unaware that his remaining life would be measured in minutes. It had seemed foolish when Scotland Yard had commissioned an underwater dirigible to navigate the ocean depths to search for valladium, the theoretical key to creating a new bomb that, in the words of the chief Scotland Yard scientist, was "one billion times stronger than any other bomb." But there, on the ocean floor before him was proof that it wasn't foolishness: a glowing pile of valladium a mile long. Enough to power a million mega bombs and end this war. The Plaza Hotel, New York City, 2021: Dr. Katherine Hepburn was late for an meeting to reveal her amazing discovery of a new element, valladium. As she hurried through the lobby of the Plaza Hotel focused on her goal she didn't notice the large men who stepped in front of her until she bumped into him, dropping her papers everywhere. As she mumbled apologies and bent to retrieve them she felt an iron grip seize her by the throat and lifted her off the ground and face-to-face with a tall blond man. "Are zee Katherine Hepburn?" he asked her in a thick German accent. Katherine nodded her assent, desperately looking around for help, but despite being in the lobby of one of the busiest and most famous hotels in the world there was nobody nearby. The man grinned and began to squeeze. "For the Reich. Heil Hitler. The world can never know about valladium!" Suddenly out of nowhere a yellow Taxi cab flew through the lobby windows and slammed into the man, crushing him and throwing Katherine to the ground. She watched, dazed, as a beefy Italian man - as wide as he was tall - leaned out of the passenger side window and shouted at the dead Nazi "ey! We’re driving here!" Out of the drivers side stepped an imposing man with rugged good looks and piercing green eyes. He walked over to Katherine and effortlessly lifted her to her feet. Glancing over at the dead body at their feet he let loose a carefree grin. "Nazis huh? Seems like another job for the National Underwater Marine Agency." Katherine felt her heart beat faster. Upgrade fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 20:10
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Kendo Karate gestured to the wall of weapons. He sneered and narrowed his already quite alarmingly narrow eyes. "You may choose any weapon you like, Pitt-san. But be assured, my culture will be the dominant one at the end of the fight regardless of your choice." Dirk scanned the array of weapons. Should he choose the sabre? The flanged mace? The FN Minimi, otherwise designated as the M249 light machine gun? But then the Oriental's words sunk in. Culture against culture. There would only be one true way to resolve this. "I choose" Pitt said levelly "The half dozen D-Cell batteries wrapped in a tea-towel". The duel was on.
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Aug 16, 2021 20:24
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Boogoose posted:Kendo Karate gestured to the wall of weapons. He sneered and narrowed his already quite alarmingly narrow eyes. Kendo stalked towards Dirk furtively unlike Dirk who marched Bravely and Heroically. Just as they were about to reach each other an enormous hot air balloon crashes through the ceiling crushing Kendo. Al Giordino, beefy Italian, leans out of the basket and grins at Dirk: sorry I’m-a late, I had to stoppa and get dinner, gesturing with the Italian sub held in one hand.
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Aug 16, 2021 20:27
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Statutory Ape posted:oh yeah now i remember one of the reasons i had such a fuckin weird taste in my mouth reading these books Rightwing men are big on incest because they're so xenophobic, the only women they can trust are those they're related to.
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Aug 16, 2021 20:34
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Upgrade posted:Kendo stalked towards Dirk furtively unlike Dirk who marched Bravely and Heroically. Just as they were about to reach each other an enormous hot air balloon crashes through the ceiling crushing Kendo. Al Giordino, beefy Italian, leans out of the basket and grins at Dirk: sorry I’m-a late, I had to stoppa and get dinner, gesturing with the Italian sub held in one hand. Al Giordino - as tall as he is wide, as wide as he is tall. A geometric paradox, an impossible shape. The edges of reality begin to tear. A light of a previously unimagined colour begins to flood the room, the building, the world. A blinding flash. In the howling wasteland, a single egg begins to rock, to crack. Emerging from it in the light of new suns, the Admiral screeches his birth-cry. A game-cock of a man.
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Aug 16, 2021 20:41
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Boogoose posted:Al Giordino - as tall as he is wide, as wide as he is tall. A geometric paradox, an impossible shape. The edges of reality begin to tear. A light of a previously unimagined colour begins to flood the room, the building, the world. A blinding flash. A line of a thousand women, beautiful, marching across a dessert, their names, accomplishments, even personalities lost like dust in the wind. Before then a giant totem pulsing green.
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Aug 16, 2021 20:59
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My contribution is this stunningly written excerpt from Wikipedia which is a work of art in its own right.Wikipedia page for Arctic Drift posted:There is an ongoing quest to save the earth from Global Warming. All of the world's scientists are looking for a solution. Some people are trying to thwart these efforts. The NUMA team, headed by Dirk Pitt, Al Giordino and Dirk Pitt's children, Dirk Junior and Summer, are trying to find a way to stop Global Warming.
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Aug 16, 2021 21:09
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I recall in one of the books, the plot was the bad guys wanted to mess with the oil industry which would force the price of a barrel to go above 20$ and plummet the US into a recession. I just checked and the oil price is way above that and there's no recession.
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Aug 16, 2021 21:16
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"You'll love this, Dirk," said portly naval historian St. Julien Perlmutter. "You see, when Alexander the Great died in 323 BC, legend says that one of his generals stole the body and relocated it to Alexandria, in Egypt, to show that he was the one true heir of Alexander. But there's a longstanding rumour that this was a fake, that his men actually buried him in a fabulous tomb in the mountains of Afghanistan, loaded with the spoils of a hundred conquered kingdoms. "Fast-forward to Afghanistan, 2001. The Taliban are on the ropes. As we later learned, American bombs uncovered some ancient structures deep in the mountains; we think they're Greek. Their savage leadership hid there for some months, before pressure finally drove them out of the country altogether. They retreated to the Caucasus, and intel says they paid their way with ancient gold coins of fabulous purity. While in the Caucasus they holed up in an old Nazi forward staging area from the war against the Soviet Union, where legends say that Hitler's corpse was spirited out to in the last bloody days of the Third Reich. The last place the Soviets would ever look for Hitler was deep in the Soviet Union itself, after all." Dirk nodded sagely. <ten pages of exposition later> "So, you're telling me that Osama Bin Laden has an advanced Nazi super-submarine loaded with the treasures of Alexander and Hitler's brain, and is hiding inside the Trojan Horse inside the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald?" "Mama mia", breathed Giordino.
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Aug 16, 2021 21:24
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Xotl posted:lol, that's good. I'm assuming the Texas one is fake because I recognize the other two, but if secret dirigible was in a future book I never got to I want to know which one. amazing drat i love this thread i haven't read cusslers books, but the format is identical to every other boomer fantasy book man i used to read such poo poo when i was a teen
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Aug 16, 2021 21:36
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Boogoose posted:I made up the one about the dirigible because honestly, who knows? clearly 3 Boogoose posted:QUIZ TIME: 2
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Aug 16, 2021 21:45
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ChubbyChecker posted:clearly 3 You are... half right! Clive Cussler clearly has issues about remembering the relationships between father/daughter, mother/son. However, fuel economy is not one of his concerns, especially now that he is dead.
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Aug 16, 2021 21:50
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If you're worried there will be no more books about the exploits of Dirk Pitt don't be; Clive's one and only son was the co-author of several of the latest ones and I'm sure he will take over now that his old man is writing books in heaven. Here's hoping for many more Dirk Pitt books, written by Dirk Cussler.
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Aug 16, 2021 21:57
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Rudy Gunn, deputy director of NUMA, burst into Dirk Pitt's office, a terrified look on his face. "Dirk, we have a huge problem." Dirk grinned. "Rudy, buddy, what is it? It can't be that bad! Did a Japanese zaibatsu hack our super computer? A Nazi left behind group take this moment to strike and seized the shipping ports in the South? African warlord poisoning the oceans?" Rudy looked shaken. "No Dirk, it's much worse. The Admiral's years of smoking cigars in his office has led to a cancer cluster. We're facing a large class action lawsuit by his former staff. And that's on top of the sexual harassment claims facing us due to Al's habit of grabbing women's chest's while shouting "Mama Mia!"."
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Aug 16, 2021 22:41
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In one of the books the bad guys use blimps to drop genetically modified carp into ecosystems to wreck them for ... reasons?
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Aug 16, 2021 22:45
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A lot of the real Cussler plot summaries sound like some one took a military fiction writer and pumped them full of drugs to the point where they're barely coherent but still manage to cling to their xenophobia.
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Aug 16, 2021 23:08
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i mean Sahara (the movie) loving rocked so honestly like this sounds stupid but give me more Cussler movies if this is what the books are all like
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Aug 16, 2021 23:12
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Torquemada posted:Well the second book the girl starts out sad because her boyfriend died in a car crash so Dirk slaps the poo poo out of her and fucks her on the beach to snap her out of her funk. Ummm you are glossing over the fact that he slaps the poo poo out of her because her husband died five years ago and she was sad for all that time which meant she wasn't having sex and it was unfair to the men who she came across during that time. And the book explicitly says he is mad at her for this.
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Aug 16, 2021 23:51
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Mandrel posted:wait wait, my only experience with Clive Cussler is the movie Sahara. Remember when I said "Imagine James Bond gets smacked in the back of the head with a 2x4 and loses 30 IQ points and now wants to play with boats"? Hit him again and now he's also Indiana Jones.
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Aug 16, 2021 23:57
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Apparently Dirk Pitt works for the National Underwater Marine Agency, so every book needs to have the plot revolve around a sunken vehicle or something else that's underwater.
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Aug 17, 2021 00:12
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I would blow through these out of order on the bus ride home from school as a preteen. The only lovely one I remember is the one where he gives the "you'll never be a woman" speech to the damsel in distress when he finds out she's trans.
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Aug 17, 2021 04:09
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im glad hes dead
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Aug 17, 2021 04:23
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B-Rock452 posted:Ummm you are glossing over the fact that he slaps the poo poo out of her because her husband died five years ago and she was sad for all that time which meant she wasn't having sex and it was unfair to the men who she came across during that time. And the book explicitly says he is mad at her for this. In fact, I think he says something along the lines of ‘you belong to any man that wants you’.
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Aug 17, 2021 08:41
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Lawrence Gilchrist posted:I would blow through these out of order on the bus ride home from school as a preteen. The only lovely one I remember is the one where he gives the "you'll never be a woman" speech to the damsel in distress when he finds out she's trans. As previously mentioned, the end of ‘Iceberg’ is the most transphobic piece of writing in the last 70 years.
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Aug 17, 2021 08:43
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Torquemada posted:As previously mentioned, the end of ‘Iceberg’ is the most transphobic piece of writing in the last 70 years. In one of the later books, Al gets beaten up by a butch woman. When he eventually kills her, he has to check if she's got meatballs and what do you know it she does. Because no real woman could be as wide as Al Giordino.
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Aug 17, 2021 09:38
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I remember reading two or three of these. As a 12 year old kid in the 90's. And they were still a bit silly. Imagine reading them as a grown rear end man in 2021.
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Aug 17, 2021 10:31
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