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I haven't read it myself, but I think that's Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear.
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# ? Feb 28, 2021 12:26 |
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# ? Apr 26, 2024 09:50 |
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Nathilus posted:This has been driving me crazy. I hate my lovely memory. Could be "Anvil of Stars" by Greg Bear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anvil_of_Stars
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# ? Feb 28, 2021 12:27 |
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Both absolutely correct!
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# ? Feb 28, 2021 14:01 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 9, 2021 14:14 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 9, 2021 15:10 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 9, 2021 15:21 |
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 am almost certain I have seen an anthology that had individual chapters of Bradbury's novels along with short stories.
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# ? Mar 9, 2021 16:09 |
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Doctor Jeep posted:Fantasy series, only read half of the first book. 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 |
# ? Mar 9, 2021 16:39 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 9, 2021 18:08 |
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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
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# ? Mar 9, 2021 19:55 |
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Splicer posted:This sounds delightful and I would like to read it Beat me to it, that's definitely the one.
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# ? Mar 9, 2021 22:42 |
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Splicer posted:This sounds delightful and I would like to read it yes, how the hell did you find it, I tried googling all kinds of stupid poo poo and nothing came of it thanks
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# ? Mar 10, 2021 03:18 |
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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 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).
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# ? Mar 12, 2021 12:29 |
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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!
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# ? Mar 12, 2021 14:49 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 13, 2021 06:41 |
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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 |
# ? Mar 13, 2021 07:14 |
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The teeth one sounds like a fever dream
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# ? Mar 13, 2021 07:53 |
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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 |
# ? Mar 13, 2021 12:20 |
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GhostDog posted:Edit: Got curious and googled this. Is it Dentaphilia by Julia Slavin? Pretty sure that’s it. Thanks!
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# ? Mar 13, 2021 16:04 |
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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? 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.
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# ? Mar 13, 2021 17:21 |
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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
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# ? Mar 14, 2021 16:08 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 15, 2021 05:36 |
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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?
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# ? Mar 16, 2021 15:47 |
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Is this it? It has the swan. There's various other ideas here.
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# ? Mar 16, 2021 16:06 |
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Ripley posted:Is this it? It has the swan. 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!!!!!
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# ? Mar 16, 2021 16:08 |
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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).
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# ? Mar 16, 2021 18:12 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 16, 2021 20:06 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 24, 2021 21:01 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 26, 2021 12:04 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 26, 2021 12:31 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 29, 2021 20:51 |
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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.
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# ? Mar 30, 2021 06:09 |
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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?
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# ? Apr 1, 2021 08:52 |
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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.
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# ? Apr 2, 2021 14:52 |
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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.
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# ? Apr 2, 2021 21:53 |
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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?
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# ? Apr 2, 2021 22:00 |
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ToxicFrog posted:Jaran/Crown of Stars by Kate Elliot? Yes! Thank you.
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# ? Apr 3, 2021 02:45 |
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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.
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# ? Apr 3, 2021 03:01 |
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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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# ? Apr 3, 2021 03:31 |
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# ? Apr 26, 2024 09:50 |
oldpainless posted:I love long fantasy. How long we talking? Seven books, well over 5000 pages.
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# ? Apr 3, 2021 03:44 |