|
Thanks for the help, Zola, but that's not it! Like your quote, though!
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2013 06:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 10:57 |
|
|
A friend and I both remember a book where the conquered populace of a defeated country (planet?) agree to surrender on the condition that their libraries and art galleries are not destroyed by the occupying army. The leader of the occupying force gets around this by sorting all the individual letters from the libraries into alphabetical order, and sorting all the individual pigment fragments of the artworks into colour order. Thus he punishes the populace without (technically) breaking his word. Can't remember a single drat thing more about the story.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2013 22:08
|
|
Sanford posted:A friend and I both remember a book where the conquered populace of a defeated country (planet?) agree to surrender on the condition that their libraries and art galleries are not destroyed by the occupying army. The leader of the occupying force gets around this by sorting all the individual letters from the libraries into alphabetical order, and sorting all the individual pigment fragments of the artworks into colour order. Thus he punishes the populace without (technically) breaking his word. Can't remember a single drat thing more about the story. That sounds like "Epic Dick Move" by Ariel Cox-Ucker. Seriously, it sounds like a medication-induced nightmare.
|
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2013 08:53
|
|
|
Pointlessly rude reply above notwithstanding. I almost remember something very similar or the same but I can't place it. I almost wanted to say it was the Foundation series or something by Asimov, but I didnt find anything when I looked around his work.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2013 16:11
|
|
|
Sanford posted:A friend and I both remember a book where the conquered populace of a defeated country (planet?) agree to surrender on the condition that their libraries and art galleries are not destroyed by the occupying army. The leader of the occupying force gets around this by sorting all the individual letters from the libraries into alphabetical order, and sorting all the individual pigment fragments of the artworks into colour order. Thus he punishes the populace without (technically) breaking his word. Can't remember a single drat thing more about the story. I know this one! The idea always stuck in my mind too even though it's not central to the story. It's a briefly mentioned aside in Iain M Banks' "The Player of Games", the second Culture novel, as something done by the conquering armies of the civilization the protagonist is sent in to destabilize.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2013 16:26
|
|
|
Hey guys! I recently saw a short film in a 48 hour film contest that reminded me of what I think was a short story that I read a while ago. It was about a woman who was in her house, drinking a glass of wine or something, and a man comes in her house and they talk and converse and then he kills her and it turns out that he is hired by the person he killed to essentially do what they can't do themselves. I feel like it's a fairly popular story, but my memory is possibly the worst thing on earth. Thanks so much!
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2013 17:21
|
|
|
Katiana posted:Hey guys! I recently saw a short film in a 48 hour film contest that reminded me of what I think was a short story that I read a while ago. It was about a woman who was in her house, drinking a glass of wine or something, and a man comes in her house and they talk and converse and then he kills her and it turns out that he is hired by the person he killed to essentially do what they can't do themselves. I feel like it's a fairly popular story, but my memory is possibly the worst thing on earth. Thanks so much! Wasn't that one of the story lines in Sin City?
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2013 20:38
|
|
|
Zola posted:Wasn't that one of the story lines in Sin City? Maybe? I've never read or watched Sin City. I am an idiot and found out that the thing I'm thinking of is actually from another short film from two years back. My poor, poor lovely memory.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2013 02:46
|
|
|
Fatkraken posted:I know this one! The idea always stuck in my mind too even though it's not central to the story. Thank you - I knew I had read that bit somewhere as well!
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2013 04:22
|
|
|
Hey, this is really vague, but I remember reading a sci-fi/fantasy thing (a novella, maybe?) some time ago that was cool. It was about this group of people who make golems, except they're not really called golems, I think. They write symbols and commands on long strips of paper, and this makes things they've created follow rudimentary commands. I remember there were some people who were good at building the machines and some who were good at writing the commands, and there was some special term for the commands I can't remember. The plot involved a dispute between the protagonist and one of the other, more senior command-makers regarding the ethics of creating a command machine complex enough to think on it's own. Any takers?soap. posted:This is for a friend. It's a book of scary stories for kids (young adults maybe?). Apparently, "it had two notable stories. One about a traveller who is invited by a little man to stay in his hut. The little man keeps asking him to put another log on the fire. In the end he refuses and the cabin and man disappears and he's standing on the edge of a cliff. If he'd reached for the last log he would have fallen to his death. The other is about the moon coming to earth in human form to save travelers from monsters on a road. In the end the monsters eat the moon. It also has a story about Black Annis and has her on the cover." IIRC there's a story very similar to the first one you described in Tales for the Midnight Hour, a scary story collection for kids. I don't think the rest matches though. Popular Human fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Dec 20, 2013 |
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2013 18:01
|
|
|
There was this sci-fi book I read ages ago that had: - the UK in space on a giant spaceship (complete with an assassination attempt against the Prince or Queen or somebody like that while they were in a shuttle going from place to place) - aliens who were quadrupedal and had a pair of tentacles at the side of their mouths, and turned out to actually be the bioengineered servants of some other species - some sort of weird space competition with a bunch of low-tech hard-scifi ships from different countries (spinning segments, crude space weapons, etc) - an FTL portal drive that made any metal it touched disintegrate, so the alien ships were all made of ceramics Ring any bells for anyone?
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2013 07:48
|
|
|
A 19th century pulp adventure novel. A small group of friends go adventuring in Africa, looking for diamonds(?). One of them is a Catalonian who keeps going "Caramba" at everything. The villains are a trio of bulky Boer brothers and a fake preacher / former penal colony inmate. There's a scene where a tent full of drunken gambling prospectors / fortune seekers is slaughtered by Zulu (?) warriors. (NOT King Solomon's mines, just in case you're wondering). Edit - Louis-Henri Boussenard's "Les voleurs de diamants". Xander77 fucked around with this message at 11:55 on Dec 21, 2013 |
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2013 08:10
|
|
|
I've got one stuck in my head from childhood so the gap for "when I read it" would be somewhere around 30 to 20 years ago. I think it might be older though, maybe even a short story. Basically, it's set in olden times (like 19th century england maybe?), and somehow this guy ends up killing this invisible thing, and he or a friend and him put clay or plaster of paris on it to see it and see the details, and find out these big scaly invisible monsters live in the world with us. I think it was a hardcover, and I am about 80% sure it was a short story or included in a hardcover collection of short stories.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2013 15:06
|
|
|
Popular Human posted:Hey, this is really vague, but I remember reading a sci-fi/fantasy thing (a novella, maybe?) some time ago that was cool. It was about this group of people who make golems, except they're not really called golems, I think. They write symbols and commands on long strips of paper, and this makes things they've created follow rudimentary commands. I remember there were some people who were good at building the machines and some who were good at writing the commands, and there was some special term for the commands I can't remember. The plot involved a dispute between the protagonist and one of the other, more senior command-makers regarding the ethics of creating a command machine complex enough to think on it's own. Any takers? That sounds like an exact description of Terry Pratchett's Feet of Clay except that that book is straight fantasy, not SF at all, and is a full-length novel,and they're actually called golems. So I guess not that close after all.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2013 16:06
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:That sounds like an exact description of Terry Pratchett's Feet of Clay except that that book is straight fantasy, not SF at all, and is a full-length novel,and they're actually called golems. So I guess not that close after all. I pulled up the first chapter online and this is definitely not it, although this seems pretty funny, so thanks! I remember the story (I'm pretty sure it was a short story) was very China Mieville-esque, but not actually Mieville. edit: what's driving me nuts is trying to remember the word for the programming/commands they wrote on paper that animated the creatures - it was some foreign word like logos or something. I know if I could remember that the rest would fall into place. Popular Human fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Dec 21, 2013 |
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2013 16:21
|
|
|
Popular Human posted:I pulled up the first chapter online and this is definitely not it, although this seems pretty funny, so thanks! I remember the story (I'm pretty sure it was a short story) was very China Mieville-esque, but not actually Mieville. In Pratchett it's called the golem's chem. In classical golems it's a shem or sometimes the specific Hebrew word emet. Any of that help?
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2013 17:22
|
|
|
Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:I've got one stuck in my head from childhood so the gap for "when I read it" would be somewhere around 30 to 20 years ago.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2013 17:39
|
|
|
Popular Human posted:
Is it nomenclature? It might be Ted Chiang's "Seventy-two Letters".
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2013 19:28
|
|
|
Unkempt posted:Is it nomenclature? It might be Ted Chiang's "Seventy-two Letters". DING DING DING! We have a winner! The words are called nomenclature, the creatures are called automata. I was a little off about the plot, too: the narrator wants to build machines that can build machines themselves, and comes into conflict with the rest of his guild. Really great story, the whole collection owns.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2013 20:33
|
|
|
Roadie posted:There was this sci-fi book I read ages ago that had: It's by Ben Jeapes and I think it's called His Majesty's Spaceship. Or maybe Wingèd Chariot?
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2013 21:42
|
|
|
House Louse posted:It's by Ben Jeapes and I think it's called His Majesty's Spaceship. Or maybe Wingèd Chariot? I think it's called The Ark and had a few sequels with the names you mentioned. I loved The Ark but was never able to track down the rest.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2013 05:17
|
|
|
I checked this  The book's either His Majesty's Spaceship (US title The Ark) or its sequel The Xenocide Mission. Wingèd Chariot is an unrelated book, but it is by Jeapes.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2013 13:12
|
|
|
Here's one that is definitely in my current library, but buried amongst the thousands of short stories in the many, many collections I own. I would have read this in the last year or two, and it is most likely from the Dozois-edited "Year's Best Science Fiction" series, possibly a volume number in the mid-to-late 20s. Although I read it recently, my memory of details is vague. From what I recall, some scientists (presumably) create virtual lifeforms, purely in computational space, which are allowed to evolve, and grow more and more intelligent. I remember the expirimenters could speed up and slow down the creatures' evolution by increasing or decreasing the computational resources available to the AI world. I really liked the story, but my brain is weird with details, sometimes. What I mostly remember is feeling that it was one of the best treatments I've ever read on the theme of evolving artificial intelligences. Once my brain settles on something like that, it tends to let other details fade.
|
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2013 20:08
|
|
|
Ok, I've been looking around for a while, but my goggle fu is not up to snuff to help me find this one. It was a short story that I remember reading back in High School English. The story starts in a not-quite future where everyone has been made 'equal', usually by putting weights on people to adjust physical ability, horrible glasses to mess up perception, and so on. The story concerns a sort of super-man, in the sense, who breaks free of these bonds in front of live TV, helps a dancer break free, and dances. And then he's shot, and the band is told to go back to playing it's bland music again. It may have been covered earlier on in the thread, but I haven't found it yet. I remember the English book we had also had the Scarlet Ibis in it, if that helps. EDIT: No more than five minutes after this post, I found it. Goons are awesome. J.A.B.C. fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Dec 24, 2013 |
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2013 21:18
|
|
|
Good old Harrison Bergeron by Vonnegut
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2013 21:23
|
|
|
Centripetal Horse posted:Here's one that is definitely in my current library, but buried amongst the thousands of short stories in the many, many collections I own. I would have read this in the last year or two, and it is most likely from the Dozois-edited "Year's Best Science Fiction" series, possibly a volume number in the mid-to-late 20s. Did the people running the simulation decide that it was cruel to let the simulated creatures suffer and do various things like ending death for them? I think that one was by Greg Egan but I can't find it right now. edit: This is the one I was thinking of. It's in Year's Best 26. Unkempt fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Dec 24, 2013 |
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2013 22:25
|
|
Unkempt posted:Did the people running the simulation decide that it was cruel to let the simulated creatures suffer and do various things like ending death for them? I think that one was by Greg Egan but I can't find it right now. That's the one! Thanks.
|
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2013 01:53
|
|
|
While visiting my late mother, I read an old book that stuck with me that I haven't been able to identify. It was several years ago, but this is what I remember about it. The book was written in the late 1940s. The main character had worked in a steel mill, he was connected to the management. He ended up fighting in WWII, and was on a ship that sank, because of faulty steel provided by the company he had worked for - he actually saw the company's stamp on a piece of metal, and was aware before he joined the war that an unscrupulous person in the company was increasing their profits by providing inferior steel. The story was set after he returned after the war, I think to Pittsburgh. He had a girlfriend that he knew before the war, and once when he returned on some kind of leave he saw her with a group of other girls who were trying to be picked up by sailors and soldiers. After the war she buys a fur coat on credit, and the store deceived her about the terms and the payments ended up being more than she could afford. She goes to a city alderman that she knew to see if she could get help about the harassment by her creditors, and he rapes her. The protagonist is trying to get justice, both for the person who sold bad steel and the city alderman who raped his girlfriend. I can't remember how it resolved, but I remember thinking it was well written, the prose seemed very modern for the time it was written, and the degree of cynicism about American institutions seemed pretty high for the era as well. I haven't had any luck finding anything about it, I think I may have even asked about it in a thread like this one (maybe this one) months or even years ago.
|
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2013 09:19
|
|
|
This is a pretty longshot, given I don't remember much about the book(s). I remember it being a distinctly young adult type book series, there being possibly three books, and the basic storyline was these kids on an island that was a secret military base or something like that - their parents worked on the island. The gimmick was that the island was self-aware. I *think* that there was some big "bad guy" they were trying to help the island stop, but I remember no details of this bad guy. I probably read these books about 15 years ago, and I seem to think they were recently published - so call it no earlier than 1994, probably more like 1998. I also remember that the books had primary color borders - like, artwork in the middle of the cover, and a bright red or yellow border around that, maybe 1/4" thick. I assume if there was a third book it was blue, but I only specifically remember red and yellow. Krakkles fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Dec 25, 2013 |
|
#
?
Dec 25, 2013 20:48
|
|
|
regularizer posted:I remember reading a summary of some book a while back about Russian scientists during the cold war or WWII who were working in some underground lab researching either people with superpowers or magic. It was supposed to be a dark comedy. It might have been originally written in Russian, and I think it was written a few decades ago. Anyone know what I'm talking about? Sounds like Monday Begins on Saturday, by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. They wrote the book S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is based on, too.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2013 05:47
|
|
|
Krakkles posted:This is a pretty longshot, given I don't remember much about the book(s). Could it be the A.I. Gang trilogy? They don't match your cover descriptions, but it's got the whole kids and parents on an island with secret baddies thing going on.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2013 10:52
|
|
|
Aphra Bane posted:Could it be the A.I. Gang trilogy? They don't match your cover descriptions, but it's got the whole kids and parents on an island with secret baddies thing going on.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2013 18:17
|
|
|
I'm trying to remember a hard sf novel that I may have heard about on the forums a couple years ago. It starts with a guy who gets all hosed up in a helicopter crash when he was trying to train ai to fly. I remember the way he communicated was with morse code similar to Johnny Got His Gun. Anyway, he ends up getting his brain sliced up and scanned into a computer to make an ai that won't try to kill people. The subsequent revisions of this ai eventually take over like a benevolent skynet to protect humanity. The ai's try to fix global warming, gently caress up, and proceed to send ai-piloted spaceships out into the galaxy to seed new worlds with people. Then the story updates every few thousand years way out into the future. Any clues?
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2013 02:07
|
|
|
Curly Shuffle posted:I'm trying to remember a hard sf novel that I may have heard about on the forums a couple years ago. Sounds like the "Passages" series of online novellas by Roger Williams aka "localroger" on the old kuro5hin boards. Archived on his personal site here: http://localroger.com/
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2013 05:08
|
|
|
What's that one terrible story where future america is basically hell because of capitalism but it's okay because the main character wins the lottery or something and goes to australia which doesn't have capitalism so everything is free and the people are like gods with magic virtual reality powers.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2013 11:13
|
|
|
Lot 49 posted:What's that one terrible story where future america is basically hell because of capitalism but it's okay because the main character wins the lottery or something and goes to australia which doesn't have capitalism so everything is free and the people are like gods with magic virtual reality powers. "Manna" by Marshall Brain http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2013 14:57
|
|
|
BatteredFeltFedora posted:Sounds like the "Passages" series of online novellas by Roger Williams aka "localroger" on the old kuro5hin boards. Archived on his personal site here: http://localroger.com/ That's it, thanks!
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2013 15:18
|
|
|
BatteredFeltFedora posted:"Manna" by Marshall Brain http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm Ta. This started off better than I remembered but the Australian super society is just so ludicrous that the story falls apart when it gets introduced imo.
|
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2014 00:37
|
|
|
Lot 49 posted:Ta. This started off better than I remembered but the Australian super society is just so ludicrous that the story falls apart when it gets introduced imo. I find this to be the case generally with ideological literature, especially singularitarian stuff, like this and the "Passages" stories linked above. Great ideas and interesting setups, but once the author gets wrapped up in "and we'd all live happily ever after if we adopted my pet idea" or "and they all embraced my personal bugaboo and died horribly/suffered forever" the quality drops like a stone.
|
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2014 01:35
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 10:57 |
|
|
Lot 49 posted:Ta. This started off better than I remembered but the Australian super society is just so ludicrous that the story falls apart when it gets introduced imo. I think it's funny that the radical post-scarcity civilization he imagines is basically a form of state capitalism with a minimum income, like the USSR or Red China. The "1000 credits a month" thing shows how hard it is to get rid of the idea of money.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2014 07:11
|
|