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navyjack posted:Random, but I’m thinking of a story. Fantasy or Urban Fantasy where there is a basilisk or cockatrice or Medusa thingy that turns people to stone, but just their skin and the resulting heat cooks the meat inside which is what the critter eats. Maybe Laundry Files or the Seanan McGuire Crypid books but I’m not sure and don’t want to do a re-read if I don’t haveta Probably Concrete Jungle
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Sep 14, 2022 09:12
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Many years ago, in the early to mid 90s (though it was second hand so could be older) I read a book about a British sailors and Pacific islanders in the age of sail. It might have been historical fiction based on Cook or the mutiny on the Bounty or perhaps more just inspired by those events. The main female character might have been a princess and went off with the sailors. It felt like a mix of trashy romance and adventure and I mainly enjoyed it because it had some VERY saucy scenes. I think the cover was largely red in colour, possibly with said lady/princess looking alluring. Having read more about the Bounty and its history I remembered the book and tried to find it just out of curiosity and it's driving me crazy that I can't find it. Would be amazed if anyone was able to ID it from these half remembered snippets that might all be wrong, but any help would be super appreciated.
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Sep 18, 2022 11:29
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There's a graphic novel (or comic series) about a Miss Moneypenny-esque character who has to become a badass superspy in her own right when some sort of poo poo hits the fan. And I cannot for the life of me remember more than that, and definitely not what it was called. (Maybe the main character's name started with a V?)
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Sep 22, 2022 02:48
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Short story that I would've read in some fantasy or sci-fi anthology, I would've read it in I think the past 5 years but no idea when it was published. Basically about a society that's found an equilibrium point in some sort of medieval-ish era level of technology and social structure, and people who question things too much are I think killed off so nobody gets to the point of building nukes and things again
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Sep 22, 2022 04:36
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woke kaczynski posted:Short story that I would've read in some fantasy or sci-fi anthology, I would've read it in I think the past 5 years but no idea when it was published. Basically about a society that's found an equilibrium point in some sort of medieval-ish era level of technology and social structure, and people who question things too much are I think killed off so nobody gets to the point of building nukes and things again So, that sounds like A Canticle for Leibowitz but that's a novel and not a short story. But the novel is cobbled together from 3 short stories, so it might still be it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz
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Sep 22, 2022 04:46
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Fighting Trousers posted:There's a graphic novel (or comic series) about a Miss Moneypenny-esque character who has to become a badass superspy in her own right when some sort of poo poo hits the fan. And I cannot for the life of me remember more than that, and definitely not what it was called. (Maybe the main character's name started with a V?) Velvet https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/velvet
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Sep 22, 2022 06:42
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woke kaczynski posted:Short story that I would've read in some fantasy or sci-fi anthology, I would've read it in I think the past 5 years but no idea when it was published. Basically about a society that's found an equilibrium point in some sort of medieval-ish era level of technology and social structure, and people who question things too much are I think killed off so nobody gets to the point of building nukes and things again It's Pavane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavane_(novel)
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Sep 22, 2022 09:55
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woke kaczynski posted:Short story that I would've read in some fantasy or sci-fi anthology, I would've read it in I think the past 5 years but no idea when it was published. Basically about a society that's found an equilibrium point in some sort of medieval-ish era level of technology and social structure, and people who question things too much are I think killed off so nobody gets to the point of building nukes and things again Did it involve a kid re-inventing the wheel and his grandad taking the blame so he was the one burned to death for it? That's John Wyndham's The Wheel.
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Sep 22, 2022 12:21
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Thank you!
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Sep 24, 2022 13:58
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regulargonzalez posted:So, that sounds like A Canticle for Leibowitz but that's a novel and not a short story. But the novel is cobbled together from 3 short stories, so it might still be it. Runcible Cat posted:Did it involve a kid re-inventing the wheel and his grandad taking the blame so he was the one burned to death for it? That's John Wyndham's The Wheel. These all sound like they're extremely my poo poo and I plan to read them but I don't think any of them are the one I'm thinking of, at least based on the wiki summaries. I realize I forgot to include a key element though, the framing of the story was someone stuck in a time machine that I think could only go forwards in time? So they saw empires rise and fall and I think nukes, and eventually the castle that's emblematic of the stagnant society is built, and no matter how much further in time the person goes they still see it. I very much appreciate the suggestions so far!
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Sep 25, 2022 18:58
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woke kaczynski posted:someone stuck in a time machine that I think could only go forwards in time? You mean you're not?
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Sep 25, 2022 23:00
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woke kaczynski posted:These all sound like they're extremely my poo poo and I plan to read them but I don't think any of them are the one I'm thinking of, at least based on the wiki summaries. I realize I forgot to include a key element though, the framing of the story was someone stuck in a time machine that I think could only go forwards in time? So they saw empires rise and fall and I think nukes, and eventually the castle that's emblematic of the stagnant society is built, and no matter how much further in time the person goes they still see it. There's a bit in Joe Haldeman's 'The Accidental Time Machine' that could be it, but it's a while since I read the book: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Accidental_Time_Machine
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Sep 26, 2022 12:38
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I remember that Futurama episode.
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Sep 26, 2022 12:51
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I'm looking for a young adult urban fantasy book that I read many years ago (like, probably in the early 2000's). I believe it was the first in a series. The main characters were teenagers who gained magic powers. One of them got a time travel power; she could only go back a short amount, but figured out she could chain together multiple jumps to go further back. The mentor figure (who I think might have been the grandmother of one of the protagonists) said that the enemy they had to fight was Abraxas (or some variant spelling thereof), who she described as "the darkness that tempted Lucifer into falling". Abraxas did not actually appear directly in the book, the main antagonist was a boy who had made some kind of dark bargain with it.
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Sep 26, 2022 22:01
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Unkempt posted:There's a bit in Joe Haldeman's 'The Accidental Time Machine' that could be it, but it's a while since I read the book: I remember that book. It's the only book I've read where "oh poo poo! It's Jesus! Run!" is a plot point.
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Sep 28, 2022 06:37
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:I remember that book. It's the only book I've read where "oh poo poo! It's Jesus! Run!" is a plot point. Well, I dug it out and gave it a reread and it's not the one the OP was thinking of anyway. It does sound really familiar though.
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Sep 30, 2022 19:03
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There's a children's duology of a species of insects that were discovered by a girl, and they need her to complete a ritual using boxes where if you turn the gears you can alter the flow of time. One thing I especially remember was that she discovered her uncle in the attic who froze himself as a statue so he can resync himself back to modern times.
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Oct 3, 2022 06:55
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Annointed posted:There's a children's duology of a species of insects that were discovered by a girl, and they need her to complete a ritual using boxes where if you turn the gears you can alter the flow of time. That's probably William Sleator, The Boxes and Marco's Millions. I always forget which one comes first.
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Oct 3, 2022 07:15
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wheatpuppy posted:That's probably William Sleator, The Boxes and Marco's Millions. I always forget which one comes first. HOLY gently caress THOSE ARE THE BOOKS! I loving LOVE YOU, THOSE WERE MY CHILDHOOD FAVORITES TO READ IN THE LIBRARY.\ Huh, never knew he was gay and died in 2011. Shame, he was a good writer imo. Annointed fucked around with this message at 08:58 on Oct 3, 2022 |
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Oct 3, 2022 08:01
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Oh my god, he wrote a sequel to The Boxes? I loving devoured everything he had written while I was in middle school but I guess I tuned out any works after that. My library’s copy of House of Stairs had a bunch of graffiti on the title page from prior readers warning you what a ride you were in for. I, too conscientious to deface a book, wrote mine on a slip of paper and stuck it in.
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Oct 3, 2022 15:35
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Man I'm pretty sure I read Marco's Millions before The Boxes and never realized it was a sequel. I remember actually thinking The Boxes was the sequel for some reason, maybe because of how surreal both stories were. Although I haven't read those books in forever, I should probably reread them sometime.
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Oct 3, 2022 16:04
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Between those books and Singularity and The Green Futures of Tycho, Sleator seemed really interested in time travel shenanigans.
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Oct 3, 2022 16:57
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Suddenly had a repressed memory pop in of a story that terrified me as a child. Almost definitely wasn’t a child’s story! It will have been a short story (or I wouldn’t have got through it) and I remember being shocked by the content, so it was probably included in a fairly innocuous book of sci fi or something. I definitely wouldn’t have been reading horror (still don’t) so it’s maybe not quite as terrifying as I remember but by god it troubled me. It gave me such bad nightmares I had to go and get in bed with my parents, so this can’t have been any later than A man is sitting in an old fashioned drawing room - comfy chair, roaring fire, big mirror. In the mirror he notices the door slowly opening and a spooky hand comes through and grabs his dog (cat? bird?) and drags it away. Later, his reflection gets got by whatever it is and there’s a graphic description of the monster eating his hand “like it was a chicken wing”. I think he runs round the house smashing mirrors so the monster can’t get out? Sanford fucked around with this message at 09:39 on Oct 5, 2022 |
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Oct 5, 2022 09:32
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Sanford posted:Suddenly had a repressed memory pop in of a story that terrified me as a child. Almost definitely wasn’t a child’s story! It will have been a short story (or I wouldn’t have got through it) and I remember being shocked by the content, so it was probably included in a fairly innocuous book of sci fi or something. I definitely wouldn’t have been reading horror (still don’t) so it’s maybe not quite as terrifying as I remember but by god it troubled me. It gave me such bad nightmares I had to go and get in bed with my parents, so this can’t have been any later than Could it be the short story "The Entrance" by Gerald Durrell? It's at the end of one of his short story collections "The Picnic and Other Inimitable Stories" which appears to be aimed at children, like a couple of other collections he wrote. I remember reading it expecting the usual Durrellesque whimsy involving animals and eccentric relatives and being totally traumatized.
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Oct 5, 2022 10:02
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yaffle posted:Could it be the short story "The Entrance" by Gerald Durrell? It's at the end of one of his short story collections "The Picnic and Other Inimitable Stories" which appears to be aimed at children, like a couple of other collections he wrote. I remember reading it expecting the usual Durrellesque whimsy involving animals and eccentric relatives and being totally traumatized.
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Oct 5, 2022 11:54
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Splicer posted:I accidentally read the wrong Roald Dahl short story book once. I read Lord of the Flies when I was 10 because I thought it was an adventure story. Which, yes, it is but. I did not learn my lesson and followed up with Animal Farm because animal adventure story!
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Oct 5, 2022 16:41
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xcheopis posted:I read Lord of the Flies when I was 10 because I thought it was an adventure story. Which, yes, it is but. Have you seen Watership Down or Plague Dogs? They are animated movies about animals.
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Oct 5, 2022 18:14
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jjack229 posted:Have you seen Watership Down or Plague Dogs? They are animated movies about animals. I read them a few years after. Really liked Watership Down.
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Oct 5, 2022 18:56
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Some book I read decades ago as a kid. It was probably aimed at teenagers or thereabouts. An alien kid comes to earth disguised as a human, I think for an alien school project, to rescue a boat full of kids who might have been orphans. The boat is being attacked by a submarine, and he saves them by hacking into the sub's computer system by figuring out the password, based on it taking the computer slightly longer to reject a password that starts with the right letter. The password was hendry_147. Anyone know the book?
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Oct 6, 2022 16:49
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yaffle posted:Could it be the short story "The Entrance" by Gerald Durrell? It's at the end of one of his short story collections "The Picnic and Other Inimitable Stories" which appears to be aimed at children, like a couple of other collections he wrote. I remember reading it expecting the usual Durrellesque whimsy involving animals and eccentric relatives and being totally traumatized. Not only are you absolutely correct, my parents still had the book:  This edition came out September 1988, so I would have got it for my 8th birthday at the start of December. That wasn’t very age-appropriate!
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Oct 6, 2022 20:40
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Sanford posted:Not only are you absolutely correct, my parents still had the book: Thats the edition I had, so I must have been at least 16 when I read it and still remember it being really scary. I wonder where it came from? It's so unlike his other stuff.
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Oct 7, 2022 10:06
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Fantasy book where there's a biographer character who follows the MC from birth(?) and writes down their story. I thought it was Wheel of Time, but google is giving me nothing.
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Oct 9, 2022 01:37
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Not from birth but Wheel of Time does have a writer character, Loial, who follows the main character a lot and writes down his deeds. I know you mentioned WoT but wasn't sure if you had ruled it out or just weren't sure.
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Oct 9, 2022 01:58
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I thought it was more rigid than that, so I might be mixing it in with another book. Like an assigned biographer who if they die will be replaced with another and over the course of the series isn't meant to interfere.
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Oct 9, 2022 02:07
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Are you thinking of Rhapsody and its sequels by Elizabeth Haydon? Been ages since I read it but I remember the framing narrative is that everything is being recorded by a narrator who isn't supposed to interfere.
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Oct 9, 2022 03:26
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Nettle Soup posted:Fantasy book where there's a biographer character who follows the MC from birth(?) and writes down their story. I thought it was Wheel of Time, but google is giving me nothing. I recall this being part of the Death Gate Cycle.. from memory I want to say there were people assigned to Elvish nobility to watch them from birth to death, even crouching next to them as they died on the battlefield (like vultures) just waiting to catch their last words. I want to say the giant tree planet, which would make it Pryan (book: Elven Star). Solid series - I strongly dislike fantasy, but I made it through as a kid.
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Oct 9, 2022 13:34
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That sounds like it, I know I read at least the first one! - This one is a long shot, and I've been looking for it on and off for a good decade now. Set in the UK, a boy and his mother run away from his abusive(?) father(?) to live in a caravan, maybe in like a travelling fair or circus. It had a very understated type of british magic in it, I'm pretty sure the title had "caravan" in it or something, but no amount of searching is bringing up anything other than links to the NSPCC. It wasn't enid blyton, it was probably from the 80s. There was a bit at the beginning where he sees a spiderweb in a hedge and he baits the spider with a leaf or a twig. It was one of the books I gave away when we moved house around 2008, and it's the only one I've regretted letting go of because I wanna know wtf it was called. Nettle Soup fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Oct 9, 2022 |
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Oct 9, 2022 15:16
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I'm looking for a sci-fi book where a crewed spaceship reaches a planet and the AI aboard the ship has lost its mind. I think the book is told from the point of view of the ship and it slowly dawns on the crew that the ship has it in for them? I'm a little hazy on the details. The only other thing I remember is that the author is a guy.
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Oct 10, 2022 22:36
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Fleetwood posted:I'm looking for a sci-fi book where a crewed spaceship reaches a planet and the AI aboard the ship has lost its mind. I think the book is told from the point of view of the ship and it slowly dawns on the crew that the ship has it in for them? I'm a little hazy on the details. The only other thing I remember is that the author is a guy. Destination Void by Frank Herbert?
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Oct 10, 2022 22:44
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yaffle posted:Destination Void by Frank Herbert? I think this might be the one. thanks!
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Oct 10, 2022 22:56
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