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instantrunoffvote
Jul 23, 2007

I haven't read it myself, but I think that's Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear.

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yaffle
Sep 15, 2002

Flapdoodle

Nathilus posted:

This has been driving me crazy. I hate my lovely memory.

A sci fi story about a bunch of kids on a starship. They are wandering the universe out for revenge against the unknown aliens that blew up earth with help from a confederation of other species who have had their home planets blown up. These aliens are the ones who built the ship and sent the children on their journey, under the ethical presumption that they are the ones who have the right to consider whether or not to xenocide the naughty aliens.

I believe this is the second book in a trilogy btw, with the first leading up to the destruction of earth and involving contact with the friendly alien confederation who are willing to save a portion of humanity from the catastrophe. And the third book being about the humans who were saved and their experiences in the period after the children on the revenge ship crew had departed. Relativity being what it is, this happens long after the subjective timeline of what the kids are going through in book 2.

Anyway more details about the specific book: the leader of the kids changes every subjective year IIRC and they're called The Pan, as in peter pan.There's a humanoid interface on the ship the kids call Mother I think, though it only intervenes with the kids in very specific circumstances for ethical reasons.

The kids eventually find a conglomeration of alien species that might have been the ones who destroyed earf. But it's intentionally unclear until after the climax whether it's true or not.

One of the big themes is about how very advanced species might rely on interstellar camoflage as their primary defense. The particular aliens the kids find have multiple layers of it going on, from intentionally making themselves VERY hard to find when looking into their system from the outside to not being exactly what they seem when they actually come into contact with other species.

Could be "Anvil of Stars" by Greg Bear
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anvil_of_Stars

Nathilus
Apr 4, 2002

I alone can see through the media bias.

I'm also stupid on a scale that can only be measured in Reddits.
Both absolutely correct!

The_Doctor
Mar 29, 2007

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."
In school we read this sci-fi short story anthology (which may have all been Ray Bradbury, I remember we also read his The Veldt). One of the stories was about a guy living in a room which had wall-sized TVs, and he was excited about maybe getting all 4 walls turned into them. I think there was something about social class-based TV channels, and his social class wasn’t supposed to watch the upper class channel, but he snuck a look at the end.

I tried Googling for this, but all I found was someone else looking for the same thing.

wizzardstaff
Apr 6, 2018

Zorch! Splat! Pow!
That sounds like it could be Fahrenheit 451 which is notable for its full-sized "parlor wall" TV screens. There is a character who wants to upgrade from three to four walls.

I'm not sure if Bradbury used that device in a short story as well, though. Wouldn't be surprised if he did.

Doktor Avalanche
Dec 30, 2008

Fantasy series, only read half of the first book.
The MC is a young man who grew up in some kind of assassin school/monastery, and the moment he was supposed to be mentally primed with orders his superior has a heart attack and while hallucinating tells him to protect his friends instead of the real order ("kill without remorse" or some similar stereotype). So the MC sets off to find some friends to protect. Hijinks ensue.

Gnoman
Feb 12, 2014

Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme




wizzardstaff posted:

That sounds like it could be Fahrenheit 451 which is notable for its full-sized "parlor wall" TV screens. There is a character who wants to upgrade from three to four walls.

I'm not sure if Bradbury used that device in a short story as well, though. Wouldn't be surprised if he did.

I am almost certain I have seen an anthology that had individual chapters of Bradbury's novels along with short stories.

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Doctor Jeep posted:

Fantasy series, only read half of the first book.
The MC is a young man who grew up in some kind of assassin school/monastery, and the moment he was supposed to be mentally primed with orders his superior has a heart attack and while hallucinating tells him to protect his friends instead of the real order ("kill without remorse" or some similar stereotype). So the MC sets off to find some friends to protect. Hijinks ensue.
This sounds delightful and I would like to read it

e: is this it? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28385685-free-the-darkness

Splicer fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Mar 9, 2021

Ritz On Toppa Ritz
Oct 14, 2006

You're not allowed to crumble unless I say so.
If it’s Fahrenheit 451 - there were scenes on the highway where the billboards are gigantic to allow fast driving cars to have a chance of reading the ads.

If not it might be a theme he just used a lot.

Opopanax
Aug 8, 2007

I HEX YE!!!


There are tv walls in Fahrenheit but I remember a stand-alone story about a housewife going insane because of her tv walls. Sounds like it might The Walls by Keith Laumer but I can’t find a copy online

wheatpuppy
Apr 25, 2008

YOU HAVE MY POST!

Splicer posted:

This sounds delightful and I would like to read it

e: is this it? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28385685-free-the-darkness

Beat me to it, that's definitely the one.

Doktor Avalanche
Dec 30, 2008

Splicer posted:

This sounds delightful and I would like to read it

e: is this it? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28385685-free-the-darkness

yes, how the hell did you find it, I tried googling all kinds of stupid poo poo and nothing came of it
thanks

The_Doctor
Mar 29, 2007

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."

wizzardstaff posted:

That sounds like it could be Fahrenheit 451 which is notable for its full-sized "parlor wall" TV screens. There is a character who wants to upgrade from three to four walls.

I'm not sure if Bradbury used that device in a short story as well, though. Wouldn't be surprised if he did.

I’m now wondering if I’ve pushed two stories together. I looked up F451 and found the 4th TV wall passage, but nothing around it looks familiar at all, and we definitely didn’t read the full book.

The bit about class-based TV might be another story then? Different TV channels based on your social status, a visitor comes by this guy‘s place, guy later on checks the upper class tv channel (even though he shouldn’t) and finds the visitor was part of a prank show on there making fun of the lower classes (him).

Sanford
Jun 30, 2007

...and rarely post!


A short story where a man watches all the movies in his big book of movies, and then makes one final movie which is him hanging himself. That’s it!

sparksbloom
Apr 30, 2006
This is a long shot, but I remember reading a short story in a Pushcart Prize collection from either the late 80s or early 90s that focused on a woman growing teeth all over her body. Most of the story was about her husband's jealousy of her dentist. I've tried Googling this a few times and never had any luck.

M. Propagandalf
Aug 9, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER
I remember this from what I'm certain was an anthology of speculative fiction short stories that I read twenty years ago in high school, and the story itself is probably older than me:

It involves a society whose founder discovered a physical technique to astrally project and permanently leave his physical body, but retains the ability to repossess any dormant body. He shares this technique and gathers a community following, but the majority population remains fearful of this way of life.

The protagonist is a follower of this astral projection community, and at one point recounts getting baited into volunteering to lead a parade commemorating the founder’s discovery of the technique, which entails possessing the founder’s functional but out-of-shape body, and having to run a marathon with it.

The central conflict involves the protagonist and his spouse (also an astral projecterer) free spiriting around and discovering two exquisitely crafted dormant bodies that they decide are just too good-looking not to possess, but when they try them on, they find themselves trapped. They are then confronted by a group of astralphobists, who explain they are under arrest.

The protagonists bluff that if they aren’t released, they or the astral community will take them on and start possessing them alive (which the protagonist admits in his narration isn’t possible). The astralphobists don’t know this, and release them out of fear.

[edit: Answered on the Thunderdome Discord - Thanks Twist! "Unready to Wear" by Kurt Vonnegut]

M. Propagandalf fucked around with this message at 07:50 on Mar 13, 2021

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009
The teeth one sounds like a fever dream

GhostDog
Jul 30, 2003

Always see everything.
The teeth one sounds like Harlan Ellison

Edit: Got curious and googled this. Is it Dentaphilia by Julia Slavin?

GhostDog fucked around with this message at 12:30 on Mar 13, 2021

sparksbloom
Apr 30, 2006

GhostDog posted:

Edit: Got curious and googled this. Is it Dentaphilia by Julia Slavin?

Pretty sure that’s it. Thanks!

Z the IVth
Jan 28, 2009

The trouble with your "expendable machines"
Fun Shoe

Z the IVth posted:

Trying to find a novel/novella length sci-fi story that I read years ago on a forum. I think it might have been Stardestroyer.net?

Gist of the story is a near future sci-fi interplanetary war in the Solar System. Ends with the Earth being glassed and the survivors fleeing on a colony ship. Very Starlancer vibe. Specific details I recall were the Europeans being nicknamed "Yurps" and one of the main characters dying of radiation poisoning at the end.

Reposting this as I didn't get a response last time. Would love to read it again but the Stardestroyer.net forums are a gigantic mess.

Owlofcreamcheese
May 22, 2005
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!
Buglord
Can anyone help me find a short story I read as a kid? It was the future and some lady had a kid dying of cancer and they were like "oh yeah just give us your kid and we will remove his brain and will resurrect them on mars as mars rovers" then the lady does it, then goes to mars to go get her son back, then the twist at the end is like... the rovers are just random remote control cars that don't do anything and don't have anyone's brain in them and it was all a scam.

I have never been able to figure out what that story was or where I read it. but I probably read it pre-2000s

RC and Moon Pie
May 5, 2011

Columbine has been mentioned in a couple of threads elsewhere this week and it reminded me of something.

I was a senior in high school when Columbine happened. At that time, we were reading Hamlet. It was a section in a literature textbook. The same company likely did the same with Julius Caesar as it was part of a bigger textbook when we read it.

I'm looking for this textbook version of Hamlet or if anyone else has heard of it.

A few days after the Columbine shootings, we came to a portion in Hamlet with Ophelia and the flowers. They're columbine flowers. The textbook had various footnotes about symbolism and I'm pretty sure this one said columbine were "flowers of sorrow" or something very similar. Everything else I've read about the flowers say they represent something else, but that was in this textbook.

The claimed meaning of columbine stuck with me as much as anything else with Columbine.

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

I own a book. Trade paperback, old (pre-2000s I believe), sci-fi. It's a tourist's guide to a fictional solar system and its planets and the aliens who live on them. There are black n' white drawings throughout the book depicting the aliens. The planets range from one about underground tunnel-dwellers to one death-planet that's basically a giant jungle kingdom where the species there developed AI that went rogue and forced them back to a pre-tech era, and tourists are advised to not visit unless they're athletes/survivalists.

On the cover is a starship shaped like a swan.

Now I say I own this book, but it's in my unsorted book collection back at my folk's place and I want my folks to find it and mail it to me, but I cannot remember the title or author and I cannot google it because it doesn't seem to exist online. Help?

Ripley
Jan 21, 2007
Is this it? It has the swan.

There's various other ideas here.

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA


holy poo poo you found it

The Transgalactic Guide to Solar System M-17, I read that book until it's a bit tattered, thank you thank you thank you!!!!!

The_Doctor
Mar 29, 2007

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."
I loved those sorts of books. They were so evocative of space as this huge empty place with mysteries abound. Galactic Tours is a very similar sounding book about holidays in space you could take, operated by Thomas Cook (who actually went bust in 2019).

xiw
Sep 25, 2011

i wake up at night
night action madness nightmares
maybe i am scum

Cpig Haiku contest 2020 winner
Oh man now I'm trying to remember an 80s kids book version of the same idea - it was a small paperback with the premise that yeah you're just going on holiday to the moon and here's the handbook. The only detail I remember was a note and picture about how your helmet would have a scratchbad on the inside to deal with an itchy nose.

Benagain
Oct 10, 2007

Can you see that I am serious?
Fun Shoe
This is a bit of a reach, i can remember the story bits but I'm not sure if it was a short story that was part of a collection or what.

Basically opens with woman's internal monologue describing her not being satisfied with anything in life, she stands on a porch looking out on a rainy landscape and makes a comment about the weather sucking. A man next to her says "nah, it's a fine rainy day" and with that they slowly start dating and eventually have a full fledged relationship. The entire time, marriage, kids, she's narrating how she's just kind of going along with this and then he dies and she realizes she loved him all along and loses her poo poo. She recovers, and the end is her standing looking over a landscape next to a man who gripes about the weather and her responding "it's a fine rainy day"

Anyone know the name of the story or the author I would really appreciate it.

Lot 49
Dec 7, 2007

I'll do anything
For my sweet sixteen
The story is just called 'A Fine Rainy Day' and it's in the collection 'The Most Beautiful Book in the World: Eight Novellas' by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt.

Sanford
Jun 30, 2007

...and rarely post!


Sanford posted:

A short story where a man watches all the movies in his big book of movies, and then makes one final movie which is him hanging himself. That’s it!

Been talking about this with my friend who also kind of remembers it. The guy had a massive paperback book covering a lot of movies (we both think 3000 but we might be making that up). It talks about him watching them, and then carefully crossing it off in the big book. I think someone asks him what he'll do when he's seen them all. The final "movie" where he kills himself is described from the POV of the viewfinder oh his camcorder, showing a stepladder, him climbing it, then his dangling feet. Although it doesn't seem to have any sci fi elements we both mentally categorise it along with a huge number of sci fi short storied we read as teens. It would be from the 90s at the latest, but probably much earlier.

BattyKiara
Mar 17, 2009
A sort of "artsy", kind of magical realism novel, from around 1990. Set in the mid 1980s. After a nuclear war has left Europe a smoking ruin, but Britain has sort of survived. As in society has collapsed, because there is no more importing anything from abroad. Money has lost all value, bartering is the new economy. People with useful skills, like farming, builders, as well as people who know how to spin, weave, and sew are seen as extremely valuable, while what is deemed "useless knowledge seekers", like academics, are seen as horrible people who "fretted away valuable time, filling their head while exploiting proper workers".

Bright coloured clothing is very much frowned upon for some reason. Yet at the same time make-up, especially black lipstick and eye make-up, hair dye, etc are seen as essential. "No one would want to look like people from the old age after all".

Also, music plays an important role. Sex is no longer seen as something that gives you pleasure, more a necessary ritual, in order to breed new children. Few people are interested in reading for fun. Instead, music is used to express a range of emotions, and give performers and audiences orgasmic, physical releases. Yes, there are music orgies happening, including references to various kink.

GrayGriffin
Apr 30, 2017
A chapter book, probably for the preteen age range. It's about a family who goes to stay at a resort and finds a magic elevator that can take them to the worlds of their dreams, but soon after that the dreams start turning into nightmares. Also, another family who's staying at the resort has a genius inventor father who's invented a robot that can listen to commands although its voice processing is very poor. This is actually a very important plot point because it turns out the robot has no desires of its own and thus it can manipulate the elevator to take them to completely different worlds. Eventually they find a world with a bunch of lost kids living in it and one of the people is the family's long-lost dad/uncle. I think the title has the word "elevator" in it but I'm not completely sure. Some of the details may be off, the robot and its ability to manipulate the elevator is what I remember most.

Zamboni Rodeo
Jul 19, 2007

NEVER play "Lady of Spain" AGAIN!




GrayGriffin posted:

A chapter book, probably for the preteen age range. It's about a family who goes to stay at a resort and finds a magic elevator that can take them to the worlds of their dreams, but soon after that the dreams start turning into nightmares. Also, another family who's staying at the resort has a genius inventor father who's invented a robot that can listen to commands although its voice processing is very poor. This is actually a very important plot point because it turns out the robot has no desires of its own and thus it can manipulate the elevator to take them to completely different worlds. Eventually they find a world with a bunch of lost kids living in it and one of the people is the family's long-lost dad/uncle. I think the title has the word "elevator" in it but I'm not completely sure. Some of the details may be off, the robot and its ability to manipulate the elevator is what I remember most.

I'm gonna take a stab in the dark here and guess that maybe it's The Magic Elevator?

GrayGriffin
Apr 30, 2017

I Shot The Serif posted:

I'm gonna take a stab in the dark here and guess that maybe it's The Magic Elevator?

Nope, there was at least one sister involved, and no dog. The cover was also one of those illustrations showing a scene from the story, not abstract like that.

Doktor Avalanche
Dec 30, 2008

Sci-Fi/Fantasy. A series of novels.The setting of the first book is a planet that is slowly being colonized by an intergalactic empire, which also has subjugated humans. The local (iirc local in this case mean the sector of space, not the planet itself) governor is a human and his sister ends up joining the planet's natives who are set up in tribes, a mix of the usual "desert people" tropes. She hooks up with the chieftain of the tribe who turns out to be trying to unify them all against the foreigners that he believes will inevitably encroach on them.

ToxicFrog
Apr 26, 2008


Doctor Jeep posted:

Sci-Fi/Fantasy. A series of novels.The setting of the first book is a planet that is slowly being colonized by an intergalactic empire, which also has subjugated humans. The local (iirc local in this case mean the sector of space, not the planet itself) governor is a human and his sister ends up joining the planet's natives who are set up in tribes, a mix of the usual "desert people" tropes. She hooks up with the chieftain of the tribe who turns out to be trying to unify them all against the foreigners that he believes will inevitably encroach on them.

Jaran/Crown of Stars by Kate Elliot?

Doktor Avalanche
Dec 30, 2008

ToxicFrog posted:

Jaran/Crown of Stars by Kate Elliot?

Yes! Thank you.

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

ToxicFrog posted:

Jaran/Crown of Stars by Kate Elliot?

Crown of Stars isn't connected to Jaran at all, IIRC. Good series though, if you like REALLY long fantasy.

oldpainless
Oct 30, 2009

This 📆 post brought to you by RAID💥: SHADOW LEGENDS👥.
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StrixNebulosa posted:

Crown of Stars isn't connected to Jaran at all, IIRC. Good series though, if you like REALLY long fantasy.

I love long fantasy. How long we talking?

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Ornamented Death
Jan 25, 2006

Pew pew!

oldpainless posted:

I love long fantasy. How long we talking?

Seven books, well over 5000 pages.

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