Jazz Marimba posted:

this sounds cool as hell and i’m saving it for later

Take the plunge! Okay! posted:

TA: rape as plot device in this one

Beef Hardcheese posted:

Watching the lovely preview for "The Tomorrow War" reminded me of this story I've been meaning to find and re-read forever.

A veteran returns home to some vaguely defined point in our past. He had been recruited to fight in a war at the end of time against a parallel timeline, in a universe-spanning war. His side won, which ensures their existence, and survivors get to go home still equipped with their weapons which are basically superpowers they were given. The rule is "go home and live your life but don't use your powers". It's alluded that there are a small handful of people who manage to use their powers but not gently caress things up too bad, like Jesus and the Greek pantheon. The main character finds another veteran who is misusing his powers/weapons, and main character has to kill him. The main character beats him up easily in 3D real world meatspace, but the real damage is in the other dimensions and planes of existence where the "grafted" power weapons exist. The moment he unveils his true form to the bad guy he says "Holy poo poo, Colonel Bone! I had no idea it was you!"* and shits his pants because he realizes he's completely outclassed. The fight is one-sided and over quickly, but because time travel is involved and their weapons/powers involve time travel, this means he erases the bad guy from having ever existed. Which means he never fought in the war at the end of time, and since his absence could Butterfly-effect it's way into making them lose the war, the main character has to go back and re-fight the war because of this guy. And the end implies that this happens a lot because people can't stop being jerks with their powers.

*Half the reason I remember this story is the fact that the main character was named "Colonel Bone" and I was like 12 when I read it.

Edit: Of course I find it immediately after I post this and resume searching http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/quietwar.htm

Edit 2:

Hillary 2024 posted:

I've probably mixed up my memories now but I remember reading a sci-fi book about a dude who gets conscripted into a space war as some sort of armored trooper, catch is that the humans have been enslaved by some sort of alien race which uses them as cannon fodder. It ends with the alien entity controlling his particular ship being killed in a battle and the remaining human troops on the ship mutiny and kill their officer corps who turn out to have been some sort of alien-human hybrid anyway. Then the troops decide to take the ship and head out to go colonize a planet somewhere out of the way. I can't remember what it was called or who the author might have been.

I also seem to remember that the armored suits start as a puddle of T1000 type glop that the troops step into and the suit forms around them before battle. After the alien dies the suits won't form any more.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't a Joe Haldeman book but I don't seem to be able to get any other hits.

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

I've read that book, but the only line I remember clearly is, 'You need to make friends with your suit'. I was thinking Christopher Anvil was the author maybe?

ScienceSeagull posted:

A short story in which one's status in the afterlife is determined by whether anyone alive remembers their name. As long as your name is remembered on Earth, you stay in some kind of limbo, but once it's finally forgotten you can "move on" (something that might not have been explained in detail). I think the story focused on one guy from ancient Sumeria who wanted to move on, but couldn't because there was a stone tablet bearing his name in a museum somewhere.

Lemniscate Blue posted:

Poor Ea-Nasir.

ScienceSeagull posted:

A short story in which one's status in the afterlife is determined by whether anyone alive remembers their name. As long as your name is remembered on Earth, you stay in some kind of limbo, but once it's finally forgotten you can "move on" (something that might not have been explained in detail). I think the story focused on one guy from ancient Sumeria who wanted to move on, but couldn't because there was a stone tablet bearing his name in a museum somewhere.

happyhippy posted:

Scifi book I once read at random in the 90s from local library.
Humans and an alien race are living together, getting to know each other, and the alien kids go through a 'puberty' of shedding their hands or limbs.
Some human kids end up dying trying to cut their own hands/limbs off in some sort of gang thing, but turns out some were murdered instead.

Skrill.exe posted:

Trying to remember a book I read a few years back. I think the main character is a professor. He gets on a plane to go to some conference and falls asleep, there's some issue and the plane has to make an emergency landing in a fictional country he can't identify and where he doesn't speak the language. Eventually he just goes on living and integrates with society. Does that ring any bells? It was on the shorter side, definitely big-L Literature. I'm almost positive it's not originally an English-language book.

Skrill.exe posted:

Trying to remember a book I read a few years back. I think the main character is a professor. He gets on a plane to go to some conference and falls asleep, there's some issue and the plane has to make an emergency landing in a fictional country he can't identify and where he doesn't speak the language. Eventually he just goes on living and integrates with society. Does that ring any bells? It was on the shorter side, definitely big-L Literature. I'm almost positive it's not originally an English-language book.

Numbuh 212 posted:

- The scariest one, that kept me up that night. Two siblings buy some kind of silly-putty type stuff, with a packet of directions. They read the directions backwards for some reason, and the goo expands to fill up their whole house. I remember the ending was their parents coming home from a date night and the main character tries to warn them, but can't (maybe the goo has turned out the lights?)

Numbuh 212 posted:

I wrote this up for the white whale thread, so I thought I'd cross post here.
The book that I'm looking for is one I read in the late 90s/early 00s, also a collection of scary short stories. I remember it looking kind of cheap - the cover was a brightly-colored illustration, not the kind I see on most of the ones I'm looking at that are dark and gothic. I don't think it had any notable names attached (i.e. Bruce Coville). I think it had 7-10 stories in it. The ones I remember are:

- The scariest one, that kept me up that night. Two siblings buy some kind of silly-putty type stuff, with a packet of directions. They read the directions backwards for some reason, and the goo expands to fill up their whole house. I remember the ending was their parents coming home from a date night and the main character tries to warn them, but can't (maybe the goo has turned out the lights?)

- A character travels to the Amazon for some reason (her older brother is maybe involved?). She falls into a river with piranha, and thinks she'll be okay because they only attack when they smell blood. Then the ending is her remembering a tiny cut she got earlier that day.

- A third story I barely remember, something about a summer camp where one camper has to do something (cross a long bridge? climb up a hill?). The gist of the story was that the counselors are essentially sacrificing a camper for some reason, and the main character realizes this and then gets got by whatever they're sacrificing her to. I feel like this bridge or hill or whatever might be what's on the cover.

Eric the Mauve posted:

Man, I don't think it's the same book I'm remembering, but I remember those stories too.

I'm trying without success to find yet another of those children's short horror story collections that I remember from the mid-90s. The two stories I remember are:

1) A girl and her cousins get stranded on a spooky island that turns out to be full of water dwelling zombies. She escapes, her cousins don't, but the story ends with her zombified cousins dragging her into the water. I'm pretty sure "It's a nice night for a swim" is the last line in the story, and I think I remember it being the first story in the book. e: I think her name was Amanda or maybe Alisha?

2) A boy that I'm 98% sure was named Robbie who has a scar on his chest goes to live with his uncle and cousin, they're really weird, it turns out the cousin is a robot and--surprise!--it ends with Robbie discovering that the scar is an access panel and he is also a robot.

There was also a story I'm 90% sure was in the same book about a couple kids buying a video game that turns out to be a portal to hell and so forth, but that's such a cliche it was probably in every 90s collection of horror stories.

Eric the Mauve posted:

Eric the Mauve posted:

drat, you got it in one. So much memories Thanks my man!

Rupert Buttermilk posted:

Ok, it might be Scary Stories for Sleepovers? There were a bunch of them. It's gotta be in there. I had a few, and I'm sure that the robot story is in there. Might be in "More..." because I remember that skeleton face on the cover.

Edit: I think it's "What's the Matter with Marvin?"

And reading through the titles, I'm pretty sure that "The Lesson" ended with the main character literally being eaten by whatever the monster of the story was.

A Proper Uppercut posted:

Oh my god, the cover of the book in that link just like blasted me back to 1995. Holy poo poo.

Rupert Buttermilk posted:

So how do I go about reading these online? I only really want like 2 stories.

Edit: holy poo poo, openlibrary.org is letting me digitally borrow it! I'm only doing it for an hour, in case that prevents anyone else from trying that.

Edit:



Jesus christ, this loving uncle creates sentient life and then just fucks with it.

quote:

On a SomethingAwful page entitled 'The identify that story/book thread', user Dell_Zincht posted a similar request on 31 May 2020. On 31 July 2020, an r/whatsthatbook user (who has since deleted their account, but based on this post in r/Teachers may be u/Paint_Her), made yet another post looking for the book, with a similar description. More users claimed to have read it but didn't remember much. Someone even claimed to have seen a film trailer with a similar plot and a famous actor.
...
On 9 January 2021, SomethingAwful user Sobatchja Morda posted a similar request as part of a larger post asking about multiple books. This entry added detail and descriptions that weren't included in other requests, to the point that it almost sounds like a different story. They also claimed the book was Dutch or Flemish, while previous posters believed it was Swedish, English or Australian.
...
Looking through the posts, something doesn't add up. The vague descriptions, repeated verbiage and the fact that nobody remembers key details (title, author) are reminiscent of many fake Internet stories. Polybius, an experimental arcade game supposedly created by the CIA, comes to mind. Accounts were nebulous: geometric design, strange gameplay, strange impact on players and 'men in dark suits' inspecting the machines. According to a 2017 Polybius documentary, the story is untraceable past a magazine story on the 'rumor' in the late 90's or early 00's.

All the posts on the book were made within a four-year span, so it wouldn't be unfeasible for one or two people to make posts about it on different websites. Someone could also have read a joke post and made an earnest post on another site searching for the same thing. But why? Many fake Internet stories are based on a simple misunderstanding, stereotypes of other cultures or some sort of cautionary tale. This book description is simply bizarre, random and morbid. If it's imaginary, the backstory may be even more interesting.

wizzardstaff posted:

Update on the "boy turns into a petrol pump" saga. Truths have been revealed! Posters in this very thread are implicated as CIA psyop agents spreading disinformation about a book that never existed!

http://www.thecourieronline.co.uk/petrol-stein-or-the-modern-polybius-the-strange-world-of-internet-book-searching

demostars posted:

While drunk, I suddenly had a flashback to a book that I remembered reading in elementary school probably around 3rd grade, which would be circa 2005 for me (I really hope this doesn't make anybody feel too old in this thread but that's also about the same age a friend introduced me to Something Awful). Basically all I remember about it is that it was targeted to my age group, relatively contemporary, and had a plot strikingly similar to Sword Art Online where it involved going into a VR world where if you died, you died IRL. Possibly, it involved a high fantasy theme (I was really into swords and other medieval stuff because of Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda) and may have been published by Scholastic, because I remember a lot of my elementary school library's books being published by them (or maybe I just remember all the books I got in their book fairs ). It could have also been connected to a larger but otherwise unrelated between the titles series like Goosebumps, except I'm close to 99.9% sure it wasn't Goosebumps. Otherwise, I don't remember much else except really liking the concept to the point where in the 4th grade I accidentally rented it again because I'd forgotten I'd read it the previous year until I'd read the first few chapters once more.

wheatpuppy posted:

Complete stab in the dark, but maybe Epic by Conor Kostick?

demostars posted:

reading in elementary school probably around 3rd grade, which would be circa 2005 for me