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Runcible Cat
May 28, 2007

Ignoring this post

froglet posted:

Looking at the reviews, that is most likely it. Thanks!

:cheers:

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Wanderer
Nov 5, 2006

our every move is the new tradition
I'm hoping to figure out the name and author of a dystopian children's/young adult novel. It couldn't have been written any later than 1990 or so, because I think I remember reading it in sixth grade.

It was set in a near-future America where pollution had rendered a lot of the world difficult to inhabit. The viewpoint character was a kid in a family that secretly grew tomatoes and raised rabbits for food instead of eating weird chemical crap, and nearly got in trouble for it with the local authoritarian law.

The ending involved the viewpoint character going into cryogenic storage, intending to let the Earth recover while he and his companions slept.

Any ideas?

uvar
Jul 25, 2011

Avoid breathing
radioactive dust.
College Slice
The Missing Person's League, by Frank Bonham? e.g. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/frank-bonham/the-missing-persons-league/

wheatpuppy
Apr 25, 2008

YOU HAVE MY POST!
That's definitely it.

Wanderer
Nov 5, 2006

our every move is the new tradition
Yeah, that's almost certainly it. Thanks.

paperchaseguy
Feb 21, 2002

THEY'RE GONNA SAY NO

paperchaseguy posted:

I read a quote back in the 80s or early 90s. I thought it was from Pat Conroy's _The Great Santini_ but was unable to find it in there.

I searched again and found it... it IS from _The Great Santini_:

quote:

"You went to the Olympics. You couldn't have been too afraid."
"I didn't go to the Olympics, Ben. I went to the Olympic trials. Before I die this town will have it that I beat the hell out of Joe Louis at Madison Square Garden. The boy who beat me in the trials nearly killed me, Ben. He beat me all over the ring for three rounds. I was blinded by my own blood when the referee stopped the fight. I had come to the limits of my skill as a boxer. The boy that beat me was knocked out cold thirty seconds after the first round began by the best boxer I ever laid my eyes on. That boxer went on to win the Olympic bronze medal, then lose his first five fights as a pro. Athletics is a strange world. You climb to your peak, but often that is not very impressive unless there are very small peaks around you."
"Then why play sports at all?"
"It's very important, Ben. Sports show your limits. Sports teach humility. Sooner or later the athlete becomes humble no matter how good he is. But he plays until he has reached as high as he can."

Sri.Theo
Apr 16, 2008
So I think this book was some sort of pre-80's British sci-fi - or at least had a very psychedelic cover.

It was about a galaxy which had a series of portals connecting planets and nobody knew who had created or them or why, but lots of civilisations used them including humans. There was a race of worms that were trying to map them all but nobody really knew how to talk with them. There were also human scientists (explorers maybe) that ended up getting trapped by what they wanted to study.

I want to find it again as I get the feeling it may actually have been part of a series?

Absurd Alhazred
Mar 27, 2010

by Athanatos

Sri.Theo posted:

So I think this book was some sort of pre-80's British sci-fi - or at least had a very psychedelic cover.

It was about a galaxy which had a series of portals connecting planets and nobody knew who had created or them or why, but lots of civilisations used them including humans. There was a race of worms that were trying to map them all but nobody really knew how to talk with them. There were also human scientists (explorers maybe) that ended up getting trapped by what they wanted to study.

I want to find it again as I get the feeling it may actually have been part of a series?

It sounds a little like a later entry in the Gateway series by Frederick Pohl.

wheatpuppy
Apr 25, 2008

YOU HAVE MY POST!

Sri.Theo posted:

So I think this book was some sort of pre-80's British sci-fi - or at least had a very psychedelic cover.

It was about a galaxy which had a series of portals connecting planets and nobody knew who had created or them or why, but lots of civilisations used them including humans. There was a race of worms that were trying to map them all but nobody really knew how to talk with them. There were also human scientists (explorers maybe) that ended up getting trapped by what they wanted to study.

I want to find it again as I get the feeling it may actually have been part of a series?

One of the Heechee chronicles? Though those were ships with unknown pre-programmed routes, not portals.

E:f,b

Sri.Theo
Apr 16, 2008

Absurd Alhazred posted:

It sounds a little like a later entry in the Gateway series by Frederick Pohl.


wheatpuppy posted:

One of the Heechee chronicles? Though those were ships with unknown pre-programmed routes, not portals.

E:f,b

Haha, interesting you both thought the same thing but after some googling I don't think so. This focused very little on actual space, all the action took place on a planet, and I think it was a lot more pulpy in writing style. If I remember the book is written mainly from two perspectives, the human explorer and a native being. The alien is very intelligent but not technogical and doesn't understand their tools (they don't have hands?).

And this is stretching but I think the book ends with a bad feeling about teaching these particular aliens about tool use.

Biplane
Jul 18, 2005

It reminds me of a book I think is called Helix? Like a bunch of planets in a helix formation and I think there are worms and some dumbfounded humans.

yaffle
Sep 15, 2002

Flapdoodle
It's way more modern but maybe something by Peter F. Hamilton? One of the alien races in the commonwealth books doesn't use technology and has access to a network of worlds in some mysterious way.

Carthag Tuek
Oct 15, 2005

Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
slægt skal følge slægters gang



There's also The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks

Sri.Theo
Apr 16, 2008
No it’s not any of those. I’m pretty sure it’s not a big name sci-fi author as I would have remembered. I appreciate the attempts though- I guess it turns out wormholes are a common trope!

Professor Shark
May 22, 2012

This is actually a BBC Radio Drama, but I figure this is a good spot for it:

I only remember the very beginning of this mystery drama. It starts with a gruff, cynical detective sitting on a bus while an older woman is (to his annoyance) telling him about a crime that she witnessed and how she is going to report it to the police. She is then killed as soon as she steps off the bus, causing the detective much anguish and him vowing to catch who did it.

That's as far as I got before I fell asleep. Now I cannot find it anywhere!

Liffrea
Jun 16, 2013

Your gacha-bragging struck a nerve and accidentally set off my self-defense instincts. Sorry about that.

Professor Shark posted:

This is actually a BBC Radio Drama, but I figure this is a good spot for it:

I only remember the very beginning of this mystery drama. It starts with a gruff, cynical detective sitting on a bus while an older woman is (to his annoyance) telling him about a crime that she witnessed and how she is going to report it to the police. She is then killed as soon as she steps off the bus, causing the detective much anguish and him vowing to catch who did it.

That's as far as I got before I fell asleep. Now I cannot find it anywhere!

Agatha Christie's Murder is Easy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_Is_Easy

EDIT: Should add that that link spoils the entire plot, if you want to read the book.

Liffrea fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Apr 7, 2020

Professor Shark
May 22, 2012

Looks like it! Thanks!

titties
May 10, 2012

They're like two suicide notes stuffed into a glitter bra

eating only apples posted:

Still looking for all three of these! :)

I don't know about the cover art but the piers anthony xanth book heaven cent is ya, features a mermaid as the main character, and a magic mirror is an important plot device so we're just gonna go with that you perv


I bought a fat stack of xanth books for pennies from the local used book store years back. I regret it.

Sri.Theo
Apr 16, 2008

Sri.Theo posted:

No it’s not any of those. I’m pretty sure it’s not a big name sci-fi author as I would have remembered. I appreciate the attempts though- I guess it turns out wormholes are a common trope!

Ah I think I’m mixing together two stories- thanks to a previous post which rung a bell i discovered one of the novels was Shakespeare’s Planet. It has the wormholes and the worm like beings, the alien (named carnivore) and the person trying to map the tunnels.

The other novel I’m trying to remember is also about human explorers on a planet with an intelligent alien - but the actual plot is simpler. There’s a very specific scene where the alien (which I think resembles a big cat) traps one of the humans using a simple trap - and that’s when they realise it’s intelligent.

There’s also some stuff about never discovering a purely carnivorous but intelligent life form before which is why it’s bad they showed it space or something...

Runcible Cat
May 28, 2007

Ignoring this post

Sri.Theo posted:

Ah I think I’m mixing together two stories- thanks to a previous post which rung a bell i discovered one of the novels was Shakespeare’s Planet. It has the wormholes and the worm like beings, the alien (named carnivore) and the person trying to map the tunnels.

The other novel I’m trying to remember is also about human explorers on a planet with an intelligent alien - but the actual plot is simpler. There’s a very specific scene where the alien (which I think resembles a big cat) traps one of the humans using a simple trap - and that’s when they realise it’s intelligent.

There’s also some stuff about never discovering a purely carnivorous but intelligent life form before which is why it’s bad they showed it space or something...

Van Vogt's Voyage of the Space Beagle? (It's a fix-up of several short stories; the one involving a teleporting tentacled cat creature is Black Destroyer.)

Carthag Tuek
Oct 15, 2005

Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
slægt skal følge slægters gang



Some Niven kzin story perhaps

Hughlander
May 11, 2005

Runcible Cat posted:

Van Vogt's Voyage of the Space Beagle? (It's a fix-up of several short stories; the one involving a teleporting tentacled cat creature is Black Destroyer.)

That's what I was thinking of. It's the story that introduced the Displacer Beast.

quote:

In the first section, the Space Beagle lands on a largely deserted desolate planet. Small scattered herds of deer-like creatures are seen, and the ancient ruins of cities litter the landscape. Coeurl, a starving, intelligent and vicious cat-like carnivore with tentacles on its shoulders, approaches the ship, pretending to be an unintelligent animal, and quickly infiltrates it. The creature kills several crewmen before being tricked into leaving the now spaceborne ship in a lifeboat. It then commits suicide when it realizes it has been defeated.

eating only apples
Dec 12, 2009

Shall we dance?

titties posted:

I don't know about the cover art but the piers anthony xanth book heaven cent is ya, features a mermaid as the main character, and a magic mirror is an important plot device so we're just gonna go with that you perv


I bought a fat stack of xanth books for pennies from the local used book store years back. I regret it.

Definitely not this, phew, you had me worried for a second

Sri.Theo
Apr 16, 2008

Runcible Cat posted:

Van Vogt's Voyage of the Space Beagle? (It's a fix-up of several short stories; the one involving a teleporting tentacled cat creature is Black Destroyer.)

That’s not it although remarkably similar. Thanks for trying!

Travic
May 27, 2007

Getting nowhere fast
I've got a weird one. Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask.

All I remember is a bit of dialogue. Someone is commenting on the state of language being simplified over time. He remarks that people in the future may not be able to understand their more complex language.

'Someday a person may be unable to comprehend the discussion we are having at this moment.' Or something similar.

oldpainless
Oct 30, 2009

This 📆 post brought to you by RAID💥: SHADOW LEGENDS👥.
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I’d guess 1984

Carthag Tuek
Oct 15, 2005

Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
slægt skal følge slægters gang



Yeah there's a whole bit about how newspeak will make dissent impossible to express

wizzardstaff
Apr 6, 2018

Zorch! Splat! Pow!
The passage in question.

quote:

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by eactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . The process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for commiting thought-crime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. . . . Has it ever occcured to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?"

Travic
May 27, 2007

Getting nowhere fast
That's it exactly. Thank you very much. I was reading the appendix on Newspeak and didn't see it so thanks for finding it.

Disgusting Coward
Feb 17, 2014
Oh Goons of Book Barn, hear my plea! When I was but a nipper I done read two young adult books, both of which I'd quite like to find again.

1) One was a fantasy series. The basic premise was two school bullies [a teenage boy and girl] are chasing a spergy nerd through the woods, and they end up accidentally stumbling into a fantasy world where violence had been abolished, and the fantasy races were getting rekt because some ancient evil had appeared and was militarising the goblins and there was nobody who knew how to organise a resistance. I remember one of the characters was a middle aged Welsh hippie who'd fallen into this realm by accident. It also took the fairly unusual approach of being pretty balanced with its characters - the spergy nerd was established as being a victim, but also being kind of a dick, while the bullies were shown in an even handed manner and kinda turned out to be good dudes. There was also a weird sequence with some goblins carrying around a spooky statue that would drive people mad with bloodlust?

2) The other was a post apocalyptic cosy catastrophe sci fi thing, three novellas joined together kinda. Subway excavations under London find some thing that drives everyone in the world mad and makes them both hate and fear any technology more advanced than a kinda medieval-peasant level of living. The book then follows three people who, for whatever reason, don't have this problem, and how their life goes. I remember one of the novellas being about a roving band of Afro-Caribbean people who were all immune to the madness, and the last one was about a kid who was exiled for being a witch cause he could work a torch and a handgun.

Either of these ring any bells to anyone? Both were as British as gently caress if it matters.

uvar
Jul 25, 2011

Avoid breathing
radioactive dust.
College Slice
Second one is The Changes by Peter Dickinson. https://www.peterdickinson.com/books/changes/

ulmont
Sep 15, 2010

IF I EVER MISS VOTING IN AN ELECTION (EVEN AMERICAN IDOL) ,OR HAVE UNPAID PARKING TICKETS, PLEASE TAKE AWAY MY FRANCHISE

Travic posted:

That's it exactly. Thank you very much. I was reading the appendix on Newspeak and didn't see it so thanks for finding it.

It's based on a linguistics theory that really hasn't panned out in any meaningful way. https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/does-your-language-influence-how-you-think?utm_source=sciam&utm_campaign=sciam

Carthag Tuek
Oct 15, 2005

Tider skal komme,
tider skal henrulle,
slægt skal følge slægters gang




That article makes the opposite conclusion.

ulmont
Sep 15, 2010

IF I EVER MISS VOTING IN AN ELECTION (EVEN AMERICAN IDOL) ,OR HAVE UNPAID PARKING TICKETS, PLEASE TAKE AWAY MY FRANCHISE

Krankenstyle posted:

That article makes the opposite conclusion.

That article posted:

Can the language you speak influence your thoughts, or can’t it? The short answer is: Yes it can, but it’s not the kind of mind-blowing influence that people usually have in mind.

I award you no points, and may god have mercy on your soul.

Harvey TWH
Sep 6, 2005

Want some peanuts?
Possible answers (from 2010 and 2011 posts, just zipped through thread this week)

Baggy_Brad posted:

I'm looking for a book that I can only vaguely describe.

It was an illustrated book with simple guides to performing hundreds of different things. Like fly a kite and cook stuff and tie knots and massage shoulders and build things. It was aimed at adults, not kids.

The illustrations were pretty simple, in steps running horizontally across the page and there were I think about 3 rows per page.

The book itself was quite large (perhaps a bit smaller than A3) and I think the cover was yellow.

I saw it in a Borders in 2008 and haven't been able to find it since.

Any chance this is from the series The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook? The original one had a yellow cover, and they were popular around the turn of the century. On the other hand, they were all a little small (maybe about 5 by 6 inches).


Darth Brookz posted:

When I was younger there was this book in the comedy section at bookstores about a guy who would write fake letters to people/corporations and get a real response back. One page would feature the note he wrote the other would be like a photocopy and transcript of the one he would receive back.

I've tried goggling various parts of what I posted but haven't found any clues about an author or title.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

A possibility: Consumer Joe by Paul Davidson? About 2001. Has reproductions of the responses.


Both those posts had several answers suggested, but these were not among them, and nothing was confirmed to be correct.



Help me find

1. YA novel (possibly a series) about a boy and a graphing calculator. I got this/these from the library in the early-mid 90s, and considering the tech involved they could have been up to a decade or so old. This kid's mom is doing research in the jungle or something and then goes missing (dad too?), possibly kidnapped. Through a dialup BBS he finds or is contacted by something that turns out to be an AI program that wants to help him out, and the AI gives him instructions to mod his graphing calculator to both host the AI and augment its abilities, so it can scan through satellite images of the jungle and stuff. Perennial searches with various keywords have come up dry.

2. Puzzle book I saw an older kid working on about 1990. I think it had the structure of a CYOA book, but it was primarily made up of detailed illustrations, and I think there was a series of glass tunnels with cameras all over and you had to avoid being seen or determine which cameras to take out. Monkeys may have been involved.

3. Short story, sci-fi, about an adolescent girl who lives on a moon colony and spends time flying around in a silo of oxygen or something, where updrafts and density differentials mean you just need a pair of wings, so it's a common pastime. The dynamic with her male friend is getting weird, and then she realizes she's developing her first crush or something. This may be a low ball, but I'm also hoping I can find the webpage I first read it on 5-10 years ago, which was part of a linked list of recommended sci-fi short stories, this being second or third, and I never kept on going with it.

4. Possibly unpublished children's book. In 1990 or so, 3rd grade, some guy came to our school (southeast PA) with a story that he handed out on photocopied manuscript pages, so perhaps he hadn't gotten published yet, to read it. I think the main character was a boy called Pa-Lad, and it was about the colors of the rainbow, possibly their invention or discovery by him.




I loved his work in Too Many Cooks!

Lemniscate Blue
Apr 21, 2006

Here we go again.

Harvey TWH posted:


3. Short story, sci-fi, about an adolescent girl who lives on a moon colony and spends time flying around in a silo of oxygen or something, where updrafts and density differentials mean you just need a pair of wings, so it's a common pastime. The dynamic with her male friend is getting weird, and then she realizes she's developing her first crush or something. This may be a low ball, but I'm also hoping I can find the webpage I first read it on 5-10 years ago, which was part of a linked list of recommended sci-fi short stories, this being second or third, and I never kept on going with it.

This may be Robert Heinlein's "The Menace from Earth".

Harvey TWH
Sep 6, 2005

Want some peanuts?

Lemniscate Blue posted:

This may be Robert Heinlein's "The Menace from Earth".

That's got to be it, thanks! I forgot about the other woman/jealousy part. Now to figure out what list it was part of...

wizzardstaff
Apr 6, 2018

Zorch! Splat! Pow!

Harvey TWH posted:

2. Puzzle book I saw an older kid working on about 1990. I think it had the structure of a CYOA book, but it was primarily made up of detailed illustrations, and I think there was a series of glass tunnels with cameras all over and you had to avoid being seen or determine which cameras to take out. Monkeys may have been involved.

Was this perhaps an Usborne Puzzle Adventure?

Selachian
Oct 9, 2012

Harvey TWH posted:

Help me find
2. Puzzle book I saw an older kid working on about 1990. I think it had the structure of a CYOA book, but it was primarily made up of detailed illustrations, and I think there was a series of glass tunnels with cameras all over and you had to avoid being seen or determine which cameras to take out. Monkeys may have been involved.

Was it a paperback? The Be an Interplanetary Spy series was a combination of CYOA and puzzles.

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NinjaDebugger
Apr 22, 2008


Harvey TWH posted:



Help me find

1. YA novel (possibly a series) about a boy and a graphing calculator. I got this/these from the library in the early-mid 90s, and considering the tech involved they could have been up to a decade or so old. This kid's mom is doing research in the jungle or something and then goes missing (dad too?), possibly kidnapped. Through a dialup BBS he finds or is contacted by something that turns out to be an AI program that wants to help him out, and the AI gives him instructions to mod his graphing calculator to both host the AI and augment its abilities, so it can scan through satellite images of the jungle and stuff. Perennial searches with various keywords have come up dry.



This sounds suspiciously like it's part of the "Microkid" series, the one I had was him, a friend, and his ai solving a mystery of a mysterious disease popping up in kids in his hometown, caused by someone dumping chemicals in the reservoir, which kids would sometimes go swimming in.

edit: Now that I'm on my desktop: https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Forest-Microkid-Ian-McMahan/dp/0027655709

quote:

ALEC, a disembodied personality inside the circuits of a giant computer system, helps Ricky Foster investigate his mother's mysterious disappearance in a forest wilderness.

NinjaDebugger fucked around with this message at 14:21 on Apr 21, 2020

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