KittyEmpress posted:When I was working in a FEMA call center 4-5ish years ago I picked up a book at barnes and noble to read between calls since I worked 8pm to 8am, the slowest shift of the day. It sounds a little bit like the Renegade/Healers Quest series by Jessica Palmer - the main character Zelia is originally from a nomadic tribe, but is sent away to become a priestess.
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# ? May 7, 2020 06:57 |
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# ? Apr 25, 2024 07:23 |
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It was definitely newer than either of those, because I remember it having a sequel that was meant to come out like a year after I read it. I unfortunately lost most of my books in a big move.
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# ? May 7, 2020 07:34 |
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It was a children's book, 8.5 x 11 or larger, color drawings, probably 1970s or late 60s, American or Anglophone origin. Called "Peoples of the world" or something similar and it showed drawings of what were certainly well-intentioned but probably incredibly racist drawings of the various cultures of the world (Masai tribesmen and Orthodox Jews were two I remembered but there were lots), "well-intentioned" because it was all in that bullshit cold war "brotherhood of man" nonsense. The last couple of pages were a world where everyone was of the same culture and it was all grey and boring? is of little use with search terms as vague as my memory. Any help? Schadenboner fucked around with this message at 15:38 on May 7, 2020 |
# ? May 7, 2020 15:31 |
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KittyEmpress posted:When I was working in a FEMA call center 4-5ish years ago I picked up a book at barnes and noble to read between calls since I worked 8pm to 8am, the slowest shift of the day. could it be the tombs of atuan
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# ? May 7, 2020 15:41 |
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Schadenboner posted:It was a children's book, 8.5 x 11 or larger, color drawings, probably 1970s or late 60s, American or Anglophone origin. Called "Peoples of the world" or something similar and it showed drawings of what were certainly well-intentioned but probably incredibly racist drawings of the various cultures of the world (Masai tribesmen and Orthodox Jews were two I remembered but there were lots), "well-intentioned" because it was all in that bullshit cold war "brotherhood of man" nonsense. The last couple of pages were a world where everyone was of the same culture and it was all grey and boring? Could be "People" by Peter Speir? https://www.amazon.com/People-Peter-Spier/dp/038524469X
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# ? May 8, 2020 10:31 |
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yaffle posted:Could be "People" by Peter Speir? E: Huh, it was written in 1980 so (like me) it's almost 30 years old!
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# ? May 8, 2020 14:47 |
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Schadenboner posted:
Is it 2010, again? What a relief.
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# ? May 8, 2020 15:39 |
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Schadenboner posted:E: Huh, it was written in 1980 so (like me) it's almost 30 years old! Hell, same
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# ? May 8, 2020 18:42 |
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Oh gently caress, I read tons of this guy's stuff when I was an literal childe. He did the one about the people who go to the grocery store. E: also Tin Lizzie
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# ? May 8, 2020 18:44 |
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Schadenboner posted:Oh gently caress, I read tons of this guy's stuff when I was an literal childe. He did the one about the people who go to the grocery store. He is one of my favorites, "Christmas" is great, so is "The cow that fell in the canal"
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# ? May 8, 2020 22:25 |
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A science fiction story, possibly by Larry Niven, about a man who wakes up from some sort of last chance cryosleep into a dystopian world that want him to pilot an interstellar scout ship (for some reason) he escapes when he realizes that relativistic effects mean they can not make him do anything for them.
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# ? May 16, 2020 10:33 |
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yaffle posted:A science fiction story, possibly by Larry Niven, about a man who wakes up from some sort of last chance cryosleep into a dystopian world that want him to pilot an interstellar scout ship (for some reason) he escapes when he realizes that relativistic effects mean they can not make him do anything for them. World out of Time is the novel, can't remember the name of the short story it's an expansion of offhand.
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# ? May 16, 2020 10:40 |
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Runcible Cat posted:World out of Time is the novel, can't remember the name of the short story it's an expansion of offhand. Children of The State, or Rammer?
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# ? May 16, 2020 11:19 |
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Runcible Cat posted:World out of Time is the novel, can't remember the name of the short story it's an expansion of offhand. Thanks, It's "Rammer" btw Does anyone have any recommendations for dystopian space travel short stories? Preferably more modern than the ones I can remember?
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# ? May 16, 2020 11:24 |
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Banks' "Culture" series are set in a nominal utopia that has some uncomfortable implications. Also the protagonists are usually outsiders.
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# ? May 16, 2020 12:38 |
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yaffle posted:Thanks, It's "Rammer" btw Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Dead in Irons is the most dystopic one I can think of.
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# ? May 16, 2020 12:39 |
Carthag Tuek posted:Banks' "Culture" series are set in a nominal utopia that has some uncomfortable implications. Also the protagonists are usually outsiders.
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# ? May 16, 2020 15:19 |
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yaffle posted:Thanks, It's "Rammer" btw I can't think of any short stories offhand, but Stephen Baxter's 'Titan' is one of the most dystopian space travel novels I've run across.
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# ? May 16, 2020 18:23 |
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Alistair Reynolds has some grungy ship stuff that kind of fits the bill for dystopian space.
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# ? May 16, 2020 20:29 |
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A short novel rather than a short story, but The Void Captain's Tale is bleak as all hell. Cordwainer Smith also had a line of weird space travel stories, like "Scanners Live in Vain," "The Lady Who Sailed the Soul," "The Burning of the Brain," "The Game of Rat and Dragon," and "The Colonel Came Back from Nothing-At-All," among others.
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# ? May 16, 2020 21:05 |
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Selachian posted:A short novel rather than a short story, but The Void Captain's Tale is bleak as all hell. Ian Watson has some seriously gloomy space travel shorts too, though I'm not going to remember titles unless I can find my collections of his - his titles tend to be... somewhat gnomic.
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# ? May 16, 2020 21:44 |
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How you can help my wife with this one Sci-Fi/Fantasy never, probably released sometime between 1995-2005. Believe it was a series of books. The main sorry revolves around a group of people who time traveled, possibly realm traveling. When traveling you would end up in the body of someone else (Much like Travelers), however your eyes would remain the same. This is how The travelers could identify other travelers they knew. Specifically the bad guys who has very distinct eyes. Any ideas?
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# ? May 25, 2020 16:24 |
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That's the right time/genre/basic plot for Otherland by Tad Williams. The characters do change bodies iirc and I have very faint memories of a bad guy with unusual eyes but it's been too long to remember the details.
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# ? May 26, 2020 10:08 |
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Apparently its probably not that one. The book length was probably about 1/3 of the length that outland appears to be.
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# ? May 26, 2020 16:28 |
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So I read this weird I guess graphic novel when I was a kid (probably 80s) where a group of humans in space end up colonizing the Earth while humanity was still in caves. It starts with them trying to establish a colony isolated from the cave people but then eventually people start comingling, having families and such and there's some incident where a local gets blasted by a laser for some reason. Ring a bell to anybody?
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# ? May 26, 2020 17:32 |
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I guess this is the place to post this. My wife has been pondering a mystery novel she read somewhere in the hazy age of 2006-2010. Really trying to dig deep about what the name was. I have transcribed her memory rant and post it here. She bought it at a Barns and Noble. Mystery section. British, all the words had u's in it. The cover has two tones: a green jacket incorporating a key shape and a gold inlay. It wasn't a series. Adamant on that. 470ish pages, THICC paperback. Would fit in her big purse, but not her small purse. Structurally it was like Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Tonally like Atonement. Story details are as follows: It was about twin girls: one good one evil. This guy employs a writer to find out the mystery of these twin girls. A dude who isn't a detective becomes a detective. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
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# ? May 27, 2020 08:30 |
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cda posted:I'm looking for a science fiction short story. The premise is that because of overpopulation or something, people only live on alternate days and they get put in stasis on the other days, so for example one person would live Monday Wednesday and Friday, and the other one would live Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and then maybe every other Sunday or something like that. My memory is hazy and Google hasn't helped. It is contained in "Invisible Planets:Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction In Translation" The story in that is Folding Beijing by Hao Jingfang I have closed my loop. I'm OUT
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# ? May 27, 2020 08:36 |
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Tsietisin posted:Apparently its probably not that one. The book length was probably about 1/3 of the length that outland appears to be. Otherland was about five different books, and any of them have a weird-eyed guy from The Grail Brotherhood (lead by Jongleur, weird eyed psychopathic antagonist dude was an Australian aborigine named John "Dredd"/Anubis Walgaru). A lot of ancient Egyptian iconography, worth running that past her .
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# ? May 27, 2020 09:15 |
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I think I posted my request in this thread ages ago, but I can't find it. I've been looking for this for over a decade now, everyone I've spoken to about it thinks I made it up, and I was convinced I was until I found someone on Goodreads asking about the exact same book. It was a children's book, possibly a short story in an anthology. Read it in the UK when I was in primary school, so no later than 1995. My memories are that it was by a British author because of the terminology used, but I could be wrong there too. It's about a boy who is fed up with life and wants to become a petrol pump (or gas pump.) He leaves school one day and walks for miles until he ends up by the side of a road somewhere. He sticks his finger in his ear like a pump and a man comes along and tries to pump petrol from him. The boy is nervous and can't so the man kicks him in the shins and then either he or someone else forces him to swallow an abacus(?) Eventually the boy becomes a working petrol pump and one day his parents pump gas from him. He recognizes them but can't tell them it's him because, he's a petrol pump. One of his parents remarks that their son loved petrol pumps as they drive away. Seriously i've tried Google, Goodreads, various other search engines and absolutely nobody knows what this story is. If someone could find out i'll happily reward them with an SA gift cert. EDIT - I'm pretty sure it's not by Paul Jennings, even though it's exactly the sort of story he would write.
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# ? May 31, 2020 09:02 |
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What the hell
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# ? May 31, 2020 14:51 |
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Carthag Tuek posted:What the hell
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# ? May 31, 2020 16:32 |
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Carthag Tuek posted:What the hell I swear it's real!
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# ? May 31, 2020 17:42 |
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Have you tried googling “boy gets pumped by parents”?
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# ? Jun 2, 2020 04:16 |
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Dell_Zincht posted:I think I posted my request in this thread ages ago, but I can't find it. I've been looking for this for over a decade now, everyone I've spoken to about it thinks I made it up, and I was convinced I was until I found someone on Goodreads asking about the exact same book. This sounds familiar, I think I may have read this but it would have been in the 80’s in the US. I have a vague memory of pretty unsettling (for a child) illustrations of the transformation in simple black and white drawings? Google brought up Shel Silverstein as a suggestion and it sounds like it would fit into one of his collections but I couldn’t find any definite connections.
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# ? Jun 2, 2020 06:04 |
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Section 9 posted:This sounds familiar, I think I may have read this but it would have been in the 80’s in the US. I have a vague memory of pretty unsettling (for a child) illustrations of the transformation in simple black and white drawings? Google brought up Shel Silverstein as a suggestion and it sounds like it would fit into one of his collections but I couldn’t find any definite connections. Had a look and it's probably not him. I remember the art style being colour and decidedly British. I'm 98% certain it was British author.
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# ? Jun 2, 2020 08:51 |
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Dell_Zincht posted:I think I posted my request in this thread ages ago, but I can't find it. I've been looking for this for over a decade now, everyone I've spoken to about it thinks I made it up, and I was convinced I was until I found someone on Goodreads asking about the exact same book. Is this the goodreads request? https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/19562796-boy-commits-suicide-by-turning-into-a-gas-pump-early-90s I'm intrigued. Have you tried other words for pump. (bowser, dispensor in particular)?
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# ? Jun 2, 2020 23:00 |
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branedotorg posted:Is this the goodreads request? https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/19562796-boy-commits-suicide-by-turning-into-a-gas-pump-early-90s quote:Rainbowheart quote:Leyna
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# ? Jun 2, 2020 23:14 |
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branedotorg posted:Is this the goodreads request? https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/19562796-boy-commits-suicide-by-turning-into-a-gas-pump-early-90s Yeah, that's literally the only other place on the internet i've found discussion about the book. OP is convinced it's a US book, i'm convinced it's British. (I did PM them a few months ago but didn't get a reply.)
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# ? Jun 3, 2020 01:50 |
Dell_Zincht posted:Yeah, that's literally the only other place on the internet i've found discussion about the book. OP is convinced it's a US book, i'm convinced it's British. It's pretty common for the US edition of British books, especially children's books, to be edited in regards to spelling and vocabulary, and vice versa. Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone was released as Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone in the US, for example. So originally it could be either, but at least that might be a sign that it was popular enough to get both a British and an US edition.
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# ? Jun 3, 2020 06:02 |
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# ? Apr 25, 2024 07:23 |
Dell_Zincht posted:I think I posted my request in this thread ages ago, but I can't find it. I've been looking for this for over a decade now, everyone I've spoken to about it thinks I made it up, and I was convinced I was until I found someone on Goodreads asking about the exact same book. You're sure this wasn't a bizarre dream? Searching "gas pump" and "children's book" finds quote:There are also gas station-themed children’s books including Pete, the Pup and The Gas Station Man by James L Hymes and Gas Station Gus by Dorothy Kunhardt. Gas Station Charlie by Karen Grassmuck Kraushaar is a non-fiction children’s book about a lovable golden retriever who helps out around the pumps – is that legal?
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# ? Jun 3, 2020 12:50 |