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Maha posted:A book of short stories, most of them pretty dark and cynical, all having animal protagonists. It's not Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris is it? I can't remember the contents of that very well but it was a lot of cynical stories featuring animals.
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Aug 18, 2016 23:03
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Hedrigall posted:It's not Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris is it? I can't remember the contents of that very well but it was a lot of cynical stories featuring animals. Came out too late to be it, 2008 at the latest.
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Aug 19, 2016 00:43
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Trying to remember a book I read. Can't recall any details except for one weird scene. One of the Generation V books by M.L. Brennan.
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Aug 19, 2016 19:35
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Barbe Rouge posted:One of the Generation V books by M.L. Brennan. These are actually pretty good
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Aug 20, 2016 03:52
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Cool! Oh yea, books were surprisingly good actually. Way better than I thought they'd end up being.
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Aug 20, 2016 19:18
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navyjack posted:These are actually pretty good Yes they are, IMO. Too bad the publisher isn't interested in books 5 & 6.
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Aug 22, 2016 16:10
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Barbe Rouge posted:Yes they are, IMO. Ugh, is THAT why there's nothing about a 5th book??
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Aug 22, 2016 20:17
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navyjack posted:Ugh, is THAT why there's nothing about a 5th book?? I suppose so. I'm hoping when/if Brennan writes another book/series it'll do better and maybe raise interest in Gen V as well.
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Aug 23, 2016 17:05
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I'm thinking of a short story I read years ago. I think it had dark fantasy/ horror overtones but was set in a western or pioneer type setting. The main character fights a demon or something by tearing pages out of a bible, or tearing the bible in half, but remarks that god isn't real and he gets his power from something else.
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Aug 24, 2016 18:24
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Poldarn posted:I'm thinking of a short story I read years ago. I think it had dark fantasy/ horror overtones but was set in a western or pioneer type setting. The main character fights a demon or something by tearing pages out of a bible, or tearing the bible in half, but remarks that god isn't real and he gets his power from something else. It might be "The Crawling Sky" by Joe R. Lansdale.
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Aug 24, 2016 21:45
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Ornamented Death posted:It might be "The Crawling Sky" by Joe R. Lansdale. You sent me on a google trail that lead me to "Deadman's Road", also by Jor R. Lansdale. Thanks!
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Aug 24, 2016 23:45
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I just read And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side by James Tiptree Jr. I thought I'd read it before, but quickly realized it's not that story at all that I thought I'd read. The story I had in my mind was about an astronaut or a space traveller in general being stuck on a planet and having a relationship with an inscrutable and strange lifeform that ultimately becomes sexual in nature. Now it's possible my brain has created this story out of whole cloth based on just the title and premise, but it might also be an actual story. It's definitely not Kij Johnson's Spar, but the atmosphere and premise would have been a little similar.
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Aug 26, 2016 11:26
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Antti posted:I just read And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side by James Tiptree Jr. I thought I'd read it before, but quickly realized it's not that story at all that I thought I'd read. Harlan Ellison's "How's the Night Life on Cissalda?" perhaps? Although that was more humorous in tone.
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Aug 26, 2016 13:44
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It was definitely not comedic in tone, no, and the protagonist was alone on the planet aside from the alien.
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Aug 26, 2016 20:09
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Hey, I just had a massive wave of nostalgia for a slightly horrifyingly illustrated kids' book I had when I was little. Damned if I can remember the title, but I kind of remember it was about a marvelous egg or amazing egg. The illustrations were what I liked most, they were this weird unsettling artistic style that was like halfway between Goya and Hieronymous Bosch? I also remember one illustration that had this really imposing lion-like monster that I think was called King Ticonderoga. I don't really remember fully, but I think everyone was fighting over this egg that hatched a little bluebird or something. If anyone can find it for me, I will love you forever.
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Aug 29, 2016 03:27
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It's been eating at me, but I have this memory of this fantasy series where there is a world where people use illusionary magic all the time, until I think the main character starts using magic that actually changes the property of things. Any idea what that might be?
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Sep 3, 2016 01:41
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im Nein! Mein kammerad ess llkalesussen qerden un go but es meinkamerad .
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Sep 3, 2016 15:10
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Antti posted:It was definitely not comedic in tone, no, and the protagonist was alone on the planet aside from the alien. Perhaps this faithful adaptation will help.
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Sep 3, 2016 18:23
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Shageletic posted:It's been eating at me, but I have this memory of this fantasy series where there is a world where people use illusionary magic all the time, until I think the main character starts using magic that actually changes the property of things. Any idea what that might be? Is it Garth Nix's Seventh Tower series?
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Sep 4, 2016 16:34
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I read this short story online some time ago. I don't know if it was originally published in print and then put online, or if it came from some short story website somewhere. It's a science fiction story about a black hole or similar phenomenon destroying the earth. A scientist sees the sky flash a different color (perhaps redshift?) and knows what's happening. So he races home to be with his daughter. At the end they're being pulled into the sky by gravity, but because of time dilation everything sort of freezes or something. This is driving me crazy. Searching with keywords like "black hole" "father" "daughter" "scientist" "redshift" seems to only get me results about Interstellar.
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Sep 8, 2016 19:43
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ZoeDomingo posted:I read this short story online some time ago. I don't know if it was originally published in print and then put online, or if it came from some short story website somewhere. It's a science fiction story about a black hole or similar phenomenon destroying the earth. A scientist sees the sky flash a different color (perhaps redshift?) and knows what's happening. So he races home to be with his daughter. At the end they're being pulled into the sky by gravity, but because of time dilation everything sort of freezes or something. The Blue Afternoon that Lasted Forever. Echo Cian fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Jul 6, 2017 |
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Sep 9, 2016 14:10
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ZoeDomingo posted:I read this short story online some time ago. I don't know if it was originally published in print and then put online, or if it came from some short story website somewhere. It's a science fiction story about a black hole or similar phenomenon destroying the earth. A scientist sees the sky flash a different color (perhaps redshift?) and knows what's happening. So he races home to be with his daughter. At the end they're being pulled into the sky by gravity, but because of time dilation everything sort of freezes or something. I remember this! It was a great story. I remember it talked about how his daughter was crying and her tears were going up instead of down. I hope someone comes up with it.
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Sep 9, 2016 14:11
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Thank you! That's so weird: I really felt sure that the word "blue" was in the title, and that the word "forever" had something to do with it. And yet, I never came up with it with those search terms. Bookish posted:I remember this! It was a great story. I remember it talked about how his daughter was crying and her tears were going up instead of down. I hope someone comes up with it. It is a really good tale. Thanks, folks!
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Sep 9, 2016 14:36
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I read this book over 20 years ago, sci fi but I think it starts as fantasy. At some point they find a bunch of cyborgs underground then at the end of the book they are on a spaceship with a choice of 2 planets to go to. They are different colours, one guy insists they go to one and then it turns out he is an alien/vampire whos was hiding with them from the start. Beyond that I cant remember a thing.
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Sep 11, 2016 15:03
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Sonderval posted:I read this book over 20 years ago, sci fi but I think it starts as fantasy. Exodus from the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe, the last volume of Book of the Long Sun.
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Sep 11, 2016 15:50
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Maha posted:Is it Garth Nix's Seventh Tower series? That's my guess too. Another YA book. Dystopia where a family is limited to two kids. It's from the perspective of a third child who has to hide his entire life. I think his name was Luke, and his brothers were Matthew and Mark. It was at least a trilogy.
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Sep 14, 2016 21:04
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I figured this one out on my own, but sharing here because it was driving me crazy. I remembered in the 1990s I had an older (1960s-70s) paperback that was a YA novel where all the characters have amnesia and are wandering around rural England trying to put things together. I recall how the cover looked, and that one character was the Man in the Bowler Hat. The part that should've been the easy-google was that I was pretty sure the title included the name "Jem", but googling "ya novel jem" or "sci fi novel jem" kept swamping me with hits for either the Jem who's in To Kill a Mockingbird, or the 1980s cartoon Jem and the Holograms. Finally I took a different angle, and I remember that the cover had a margin of color around the whole front, which I recognized as being really typical to the publisher. Even though the book was a little dark, my memory of the cover really resembled the Dell Yearling style (and I associate that border of color with the horse logo). Turns out googling "dell yearling jem" got me my title: Spirit of Jem, 1947 novel by P. H. Newby, who didn't normally write kids' stuff. Cheerily summarized on WorldCat as "A nightmarish adventure in which a strange young man tries to take over the world by means of an amnesia-inducing poison."  Tinypic acting up, here's cover: http://www.orielisbooks.com/shop_image/product/000969.jpg So that's my adventure, not being able to figure out the book was driving me crazy, feeling clever now.
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Sep 15, 2016 00:00
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Another YA book. Dystopia where a family is limited to two kids. It's from the perspective of a third child who has to hide his entire life. I think his name was Luke, and his brothers were Matthew and Mark. It was at least a trilogy. This is Margaret Peterson Haddix's Shadow Children series. The first book, about Luke, is called Among the Hidden.
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Sep 15, 2016 00:30
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That would be it, thanks. I never read the second, I didn't like the end of the first one.
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Sep 15, 2016 02:44
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I sure hope someone can figure this one out. Good luck! I read a couple of books about a decade ago about a world where virtual reality was, basically, the new world. The first book centers around a main character who is one of the few people left who still has his real life body and can visit his parents in virtual reality, where everyone lives forever and does whatever they want. You can only stay in virtual reality for so long before you have to get back to your real world body, otherwise you're stuck in VR. If you choose to make the transition, your real body is thrown into a furnace. Back out in the real world, other weird poo poo is happening where a super religious cult is trying to gather forces and nuke the virtual server, since (of course) it's an abomination. Right around here is where the first and second books kinda melt together for me. I know that the main character falls in love with a virtual girl and that's why he eventually transitions over. I know the second book centers around a soldier (or detective?) in the real world handling the religious cult and some hybrid woman. Oh yeah, also there are hybrid people in the real world, who have their DNA mixed with animals. Furry paradise, right? Anyway, I know the second novel ends with him discovering the main bad guy (head of the cult) is cloning himself and transferring consciousness between clones, while also being a horrible pedophile I guess, because he wasn't bad enough already. More things I remember: I think the first book technically starts off with the inventor of the virtual reality watching a recording of someone choosing to die (you can die in the VR world if you fully, consciously choose to, otherwise you can jump off bridges for fun) in order to study what they see at the time of death. The person chose to die by being struck by lightning in the middle of a vast field and the last thing they see is their parents in a light. I also remember that the cult successfully nukes the server but the twist is that the inventor actually has dozens of servers flying through space, replicating what the main server was doing, but now that it's nuked, each server in space is now a separate reality but nobody notices because everyone's having too much fun in their virtual utopia. And that's the last of what I can remember. Thanks for helping!
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Sep 16, 2016 22:30
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You're looking for a trilogy by W.T. Quick, the last of which is Singularities.
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Sep 17, 2016 08:00
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As a kid I read a surreal young adult novel. A young teen who finds a bizarre old man living like a hermit inside an abandoned house. He starts caring from with him with I think a female friend. There's a bit where he smuggles Chinese food to him, and eventually it's revealed that the old man is apparently an angel. The book ends when his wings return. There's also a subplot about the boy's youngest sister being born, who's eventually named Joy. Because of that last part I'm pretty sure the author is an Anglophone (I read a translation). I think the author also wrote another surreal young adult novel. It's about a young teen who joins a sort of cult in his school led by the local weird kid. They gather in a ritual in a cave where they circle around a knife, and the weird kid whispers to whoever the knife points to. This causes them to fall unconscious. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Sep 17, 2016 |
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Sep 17, 2016 20:55
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:As a kid I read a surreal young adult novel. A young teen who finds a bizarre old man living like a hermit inside an abandoned house. He starts caring from with him with I think a female friend. There's a bit where he smuggles Chinese food to him, and eventually it's revealed that the old man is apparently an angel. The book ends when his wings return. There's also a subplot about the boy's youngest sister being born, who's eventually named Joy. Because of that last part I'm pretty sure the author is an Anglophone (I read a translation). No idea if he wrote anything else though.
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Sep 18, 2016 09:35
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The other book sounds like it must be Kit's Wilderness by the same author. A group of boys play a game called "Death" where they meet in an old mine and spin a knife to choose who will "die".
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Sep 18, 2016 09:42
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Thanks!
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Sep 18, 2016 12:56
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Maha posted:Is it Garth Nix's Seventh Tower series? No unfortunately not. At least I don't remember all those details mentioned in the wikipedia article.
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Sep 18, 2016 13:56
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I have a weird one here... a short story from a collection of shorts, a late 70s, early 80s collection I read multiple times at my local library when I was a kid. A young man is hiding from giant bugs, they're after him in some kind of bizarre post-apocalyptic setting. He seeks refuge inside a barrel or some other sort of hole in the wall, and the bugs eventually find him and come after him. Their long, skinny, gross bug/roach legs are reaching in to pull him out and he starts flipping the gently caress out and screaming. There's a reveal at the end that he's actually just high on some kind of insane drug, hiding on the street in some shithole, and the giant bugs are actually cops who do the whole stereotypical "Found another one, eh? Yeah, another one high on that poo poo, freaking out." anti-drug message bullshit thing. I remember there was some art that went with the story. It was black & white line work, the boy's view of his own feet and hands from a first-person perspective, looking down at his own body, with the round hole of the barrel sorta like a porthole in a ship in the background, with the giant bug things visible thru the hole standing in the distance. Anything anyone can give me, even just someone remembering this story somewhere and telling me I'm not crazy... just anything will help. Thanks.
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Sep 18, 2016 20:31
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Peztopiary posted:You're looking for a trilogy by W.T. Quick, the last of which is Singularities. Edit: And after just looking at a long list of the best books about virtual reality, I discover it is Circuit of Heaven and End of Days by Dennis Danvers. DaveKap fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Sep 19, 2016 |
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Sep 19, 2016 09:12
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YA novel from the 1970s. Ants have become sentient. Anthills are moving around attacking people. Gross, detailed scenes of people being gobbled up by anthills and melted by acidic ant spittle. Lots of thinly veiled messages about how artificial fertilizers and pesticides are bad, and how humans are doomed now that women can choose to use birth control without needing permission from their husbands. I think the book was set to The Netherlands, but the main characters were Swedish teenagers on holiday? Or something similar. Could have been Dutch people in Denmark. Absolutely had a 19 year old hero described as having "thick, wavy, angelic blond hair" he hoped he would pass on to his future children. Cheesy '70s style cover and artwork in psychedelic colours. I need the title for the terrible book thread in PYF BattyKiara fucked around with this message at 12:17 on Sep 19, 2016 |
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Sep 19, 2016 12:13
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A bit of a long shot but: A book I read during the 90s at primary school in the UK. It wasn't complex and had maybe a sentence or two on each page along with an illustration as it was for kids in the 5-7(?) age range. (so for uk people key stage 1 or 2?) The story was a man on a space station (or spaceship?) and something was on board, he checked all the security camera feeds but couldn't see anything, then in the last one he saw the door to the room he was in was open. Then he turns around and is confronted by an alien, and I think it ends like that.
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Sep 19, 2016 16:12
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