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This book is a bit difficult as I have no idea when it was published, I read it when I was 12 or 13 which would have been around 2000 but it was already second hand. It involved the far future when humanity had been genetically modified/evolved into different races and castes. For some reason there isn't much technology used now but there's something with a tower. I remember that one of the races has beautiful butterfly wings - that don't work- they look good but can't actually fly. Except in one scene where one of the characters is hurt and manages to fly just before she dies. I remember it has the tone of a journey novel i.e. a group of people going out on a quest they travel through different weird places and also it seemed almost pornographic in places. If you can get it from that you deserve a medal!
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Jan 27, 2011 21:52
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Hughlander posted:Not quite right but there was a trilogy in the 70s by John Varley Gaea Trilogy Demon/Wizard/Titan (Maybe a different order) which was only near future but had a sentient moon who's inside was populated by creatures it created, one of them being 'Angels' that could maybe sometimes barely fly in the low gravity environment but not really. And I think a big part of one of them was involving getting to the center tower. Parts of it was definitely pornographic in the odd new wave sci-fi way of the times... That trilogy is astonishingly close to what I posted but not right - The cover though strikes a bell! It had the same kind of fantasy style cover but with the butterfly woman being intimidated by something on the front. I think. There's also something about a fallen empire... Really good guess though :-)
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Jan 28, 2011 01:18
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Gorbash posted:Is it a short book? Nightwings, by Robert Sliverberg? You are amazing! Yes it is, it all came flooding back as I read a summary - I confused castes with guilds Amazon posted:"Only at night, on the winds of darkness, can she soar. And it was Avluela the Flier's ebony and scarlet wings that led the Watcher to the seven hills of the ancient city from which, in a moment of weakness, the watcher failed his vigil, leaving the skies and deep space unguarded. The invaders came and conquered. With Avluela lost in the turmoil of the conquest, the Watcher set out alone for the Holy City -- home of the Rememberers, keepers of the past, and where the secret of Earth's salvation lay hidden in antiquity. But Avluela held more for the Watcher -- and Earth -- than love. Her wonder stretched beyond flight, for she knew the riddle to free all men.... It's a great combination of fantasy style writing in a very post-apocalyptic future, with aliens! Thanks!
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Jan 29, 2011 11:48
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Hey since my last request was such a success and there seem to be many people here who spent as much of their youth in libraries as me, does anyone recognise this sci-fi novel? It involves humans travelling to another planet - I think to capture samples of wildlife but they eventually discover that there is an intelligent form of life on the planet - and its purely carnivorous. Which they find shocking. I also remember that these creatures had the ability to direct their own evolution or mutate or similar. I vaguely remember the ending which is the spacemen taking off and wondering what will happen when these creatures, which have now been introduced to tool use, develop space travel. And also the creature (which looks like a big cat) contemplates changing some claws into a hand although "not the front two as they were too useful for catching prey". It may have been a short story rather than a novel. Hopefully someone's read it!
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Mar 4, 2011 11:32
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Thanks guys but I don't think that was it. Although very similar themes I think I would have remembered the ancient civilisation stuff. I remember a scene where two spacemen are debating whether the creature was intelligent enough to set a trap. And if it learnt how from them!
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Mar 6, 2011 21:38
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Hey I wonder if anyone can help me find an online copy of a very popular sci-fi short story - its the one where Earth is invaded by aliens however it turns out that space flight is actually very easy and humanity just missed it by chance. Therefore Earth is actually more technologically advanced than the invaders. I also think that the invaders may look like teddy bears, although that may be wrong. I'm sure its quite famous but I can't remember the title or author. Thanks!
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Apr 5, 2011 12:33
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Thanks, that was fast! You don't by any chance know if there was a follow up or expanded version of this do you?
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Apr 5, 2011 14:34
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I'm looking for a Winnie the pooh book that contains this quote:quote:"How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye hard" Everyone attributes it to AA Milne but I'm unsure which book its from, would love the help!
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Sep 4, 2013 23:08
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Fatkraken posted:There are only two Winnie the Pooh books, Winnie the Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928), but searching through the full texts of both, neither seem to contain your quote. It may be a misattribution or a paraphrase, or it might come from some attendant writings rather from one of the 20 Pooh stories from the books. Thanks very much. I wonder why the internet decided to attribute it to A.A. Milne of all people, I thought that was George Orwell/ Mark Twain's job.
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Sep 9, 2013 11:20
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So I think this book was some sort of pre-80's British sci-fi - or at least had a very psychedelic cover. It was about a galaxy which had a series of portals connecting planets and nobody knew who had created or them or why, but lots of civilisations used them including humans. There was a race of worms that were trying to map them all but nobody really knew how to talk with them. There were also human scientists (explorers maybe) that ended up getting trapped by what they wanted to study. I want to find it again as I get the feeling it may actually have been part of a series?
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Apr 4, 2020 18:12
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Absurd Alhazred posted:It sounds a little like a later entry in the Gateway series by Frederick Pohl. wheatpuppy posted:One of the Heechee chronicles? Though those were ships with unknown pre-programmed routes, not portals. Haha, interesting you both thought the same thing but after some googling I don't think so. This focused very little on actual space, all the action took place on a planet, and I think it was a lot more pulpy in writing style. If I remember the book is written mainly from two perspectives, the human explorer and a native being. The alien is very intelligent but not technogical and doesn't understand their tools (they don't have hands?). And this is stretching but I think the book ends with a bad feeling about teaching these particular aliens about tool use.
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Apr 4, 2020 18:36
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No it’s not any of those. I’m pretty sure it’s not a big name sci-fi author as I would have remembered. I appreciate the attempts though- I guess it turns out wormholes are a common trope!
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Apr 6, 2020 22:59
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Sri.Theo posted:No it’s not any of those. I’m pretty sure it’s not a big name sci-fi author as I would have remembered. I appreciate the attempts though- I guess it turns out wormholes are a common trope! Ah I think I’m mixing together two stories- thanks to a previous post which rung a bell i discovered one of the novels was Shakespeare’s Planet. It has the wormholes and the worm like beings, the alien (named carnivore) and the person trying to map the tunnels. The other novel I’m trying to remember is also about human explorers on a planet with an intelligent alien - but the actual plot is simpler. There’s a very specific scene where the alien (which I think resembles a big cat) traps one of the humans using a simple trap - and that’s when they realise it’s intelligent. There’s also some stuff about never discovering a purely carnivorous but intelligent life form before which is why it’s bad they showed it space or something...
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Apr 9, 2020 19:08
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Runcible Cat posted:Van Vogt's Voyage of the Space Beagle? (It's a fix-up of several short stories; the one involving a teleporting tentacled cat creature is Black Destroyer.) That’s not it although remarkably similar. Thanks for trying!
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Apr 12, 2020 12:08
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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 sounds like a recent novel from a famous Chinese author- is it set in a city that changes shape?
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Apr 30, 2020 19:04
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ScienceSeagull posted:Saw this in a StackExchange discussion: A mote in gods eye
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Dec 9, 2021 20:37
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Runcible Cat posted:Rebecca's World by Terry Nation. She has to follow a map with clues to find the last GHOST tree. The couple are the National Society for the Furtherance of Bad Habits, in between the Tongue Twister Monster and the Swardlewardle creatures who breathe out laughing gas. Wow that’s a blast from the past. I used to love that book but have never really heard anyone discuss it.
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Nov 12, 2022 19:30
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That reminds me of a book I was looking for before. It was a space based book but I remember there was a b plot with these medieval talking wolves? I think at some point the wolves and the space plot converge.
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Jan 5, 2024 23:43
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Thank you! That’s it 
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Jan 6, 2024 10:22
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