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ScienceSeagull posted:That was a real art exhibition, and the book was DeLillo's Point Omega: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_Hour_Psycho#Aftermath Thank you!
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Apr 19, 2024 01:56
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Hughlander posted:I thought this was in All Systems Red but it wasn’t. Maybe one of the sequels. Doing a reread of Martha Wells still, a scene very much like this was in 'Network Effect' where the captain of the transport wants to negotiate to release the protags after they delivered free repair equipment. But in my head it was on a planet and the reversal involved them needing more help. But tentatively I'm thinking I just misremembered Network Effect.
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Apr 21, 2024 17:23
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Snuffman posted:Too much Helldivers 2 is poisoning my brain but also caused me to dimly recall a sci-fi short story that I'd like to read again: I'm sure I remember this one too but it doesn't seem to be in the James Tiptree or Alastair Reynolds collections which are the only sci-fi short stories I've read in the last couple of years. Does it begin with the main character enlisting, and there's a captured lizard alien/s in a cage nearby?
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Apr 24, 2024 14:58
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I remember it too, I think at the end with the abstraction they kept talking about wars across dimension stacks or potential stacks - wasn't a published story was it, it was an online/Web novel pushed by the author? Nice work freebooter! Just read it again in five minutes, poo poo that's impressively dense. Isolationist fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Apr 25, 2024 |
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Apr 24, 2024 15:22
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I've read that and want to say it was an Alastair Reynolds or Peter Watts short story..
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Apr 24, 2024 19:12
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Yep, found it - it's 'Scales' by Alastair Reynolds. https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/scales/
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Apr 25, 2024 02:14
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Could really use help sourcing a Shakespeare(?) quote, I recall some old outmatched swordsman about to die for his beliefs saying something like "some battles aren't to win or lose but to say you fought". I can't find anything on it so maybe it's from a different author or I imagined it entirely.
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Apr 25, 2024 07:03
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tomanton posted:Could really use help sourcing a Shakespeare(?) quote, I recall some old outmatched swordsman about to die for his beliefs saying something like "some battles aren't to win or lose but to say you fought". I can't find anything on it so maybe it's from a different author or I imagined it entirely. You could be mis-remembering Grantland Rice: "For when the One Great Scorer comes To mark against your name, He writes - not that you won or lost - But how you played the Game"
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Apr 25, 2024 08:24
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Hughlander posted:Doing a reread of Martha Wells still, a scene very much like this was in 'Network Effect' where the captain of the transport wants to negotiate to release the protags after they delivered free repair equipment. But in my head it was on a planet and the reversal involved them needing more help. But tentatively I'm thinking I just misremembered Network Effect. It's also ringing a lot of bells for the most recent in the series, System Collapse.
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Apr 25, 2024 10:33
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GotLag posted:It's also ringing a lot of bells for the most recent in the series, System Collapse. Haven't read it yet  But will soon, just started Fugitive Telemetry reread with the kid.
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Apr 25, 2024 18:13
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I'm looking for a book that a lot of people on a thread in these forums were reading a few years ago, I made a mental note of it and have of course forgotten the book and the thread I found it in. People were reading it in countdown Halloween time, it had a cast of classic horror characters (vampires, werewolves etc), I believe it was a murder mystery but I could be wrong on this point. Someone compared the tone of it to the Addams family or Munsters where horror is the theme rather than the genre. I think it had a title about 30 dark nights or something similar.
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May 6, 2024 20:06
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Tea Bone posted:I'm looking for a book that a lot of people on a thread in these forums were reading a few years ago, I made a mental note of it and have of course forgotten the book and the thread I found it in. A Night in the Lonesome October.
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May 6, 2024 20:21
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fritz posted:A Night in the Lonesome October. That's it, thank you!
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May 6, 2024 20:23
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There was this book we read in the 8th grade that was 3rd in a trilogy of young adult novels, the gist of the story is that the main character (some boy) wakes up and he finds that his mom abandoned him and his father (who happens to be a professor) it's a very melancholic book and takes place over a couple years, and characters from the previous two books visit the main character. I remember the one event in the book wad watching star wars in the movie theater, and the theme (according to my 8th grade English teacher) was "Every unhappy family is unhappy for a different reason" or something.
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May 15, 2024 00:33
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Cockashocka posted:"Every unhappy family is unhappy for a different reason" or something. I don't know if it helps but that's known as the Anna Karenina principle: All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
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May 15, 2024 02:05
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Cockashocka posted:There was this book we read in the 8th grade that was 3rd in a trilogy of young adult novels, the gist of the story is that the main character (some boy) wakes up and he finds that his mom abandoned him and his father (who happens to be a professor) it's a very melancholic book and takes place over a couple years, and characters from the previous two books visit the main character. I remember the one event in the book wad watching star wars in the movie theater, and the theme (according to my 8th grade English teacher) was "Every unhappy family is unhappy for a different reason" or something. This is "A solitary Blue" by Cynthia Voight, part three of the Tlllerman Cycle, which are worth reading, even as an adult.
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May 15, 2024 02:44
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yaffle posted:This is "A solitary Blue" by Cynthia Voight, part three of the Tlllerman Cycle, which are worth reading, even as an adult. Thank you
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May 15, 2024 02:54
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From a review/debunking of a work on ancient aliens : quote:He finishes off by recapping a science fiction story that he does not state is fiction but which cannot possibly be meant as fact in which microbes build spaceships and reactivate human corpses as slaves. I’m not familiar with the story, possibly Italian (he says he assumes his Italian readers have heard of it), but it’s similar to Plan 9 from Outer Space. The book under review was written in 1968, so the story must be older than that. Anyone know what the story is, and has it ever been translated into English?
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May 16, 2024 03:05
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Looking for an epistolatory children's book about a kid ending up in a jury trial. Full of different journals and diaries and legal documents to put together the wider mystery. I remember some really creative visual choices, a subplot with a zoo, and some gorgeous looking maps and pamphlets.
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May 16, 2024 16:10
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The National Postal Museum has a big long chronological list of epistolary novels, so it may be listed there.
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May 16, 2024 20:49
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Nerdietalk posted:Looking for an epistolatory children's book about a kid ending up in a jury trial. Full of different journals and diaries and legal documents to put together the wider mystery. I remember some really creative visual choices, a subplot with a zoo, and some gorgeous looking maps and pamphlets. Trial by Journal by Kate Klise?
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May 17, 2024 14:15
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froglet posted:Trial by Journal by Kate Klise? That's the one, thanks!
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May 17, 2024 14:28
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looking for a book whose blurb i read some time ago: it's SF and the MC is some kind of man-machine meld who lands on a planet with magic, but his AI master(?) can only deal with magic by interpreting it as dangerous anomalies in local physics
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May 19, 2024 13:01
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Doktor Avalanche posted:looking for a book whose blurb i read some time ago: it's SF and the MC is some kind of man-machine meld who lands on a planet with magic, but his AI master(?) can only deal with magic by interpreting it as dangerous anomalies in local physics There's a novella by Adrian Tchaikovsky called 'Elder Race' where the main guy is a technology enhanced human on an alien planet and the natives think he's a sorcerer and interpret everything going on as magic, but there's kind of a parallel text thing going on where the 'sorcerer ' is narrating the same events as science-based. Might not be the one you're looking for but it's pretty good anyway.
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May 20, 2024 01:33
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Unkempt posted:There's a novella by Adrian Tchaikovsky called 'Elder Race' where the main guy is a technology enhanced human on an alien planet and the natives think he's a sorcerer and interpret everything going on as magic, but there's kind of a parallel text thing going on where the 'sorcerer ' is narrating the same events as science-based. Might not be the one you're looking for but it's pretty good anyway. I loved elder race but that's not it
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May 20, 2024 03:27
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Quite possibly Lawrence Watt-Evan's The Cyborg and the Sorcerers or its sequel.
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May 20, 2024 03:48
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Hobnob posted:Quite possibly Lawrence Watt-Evan's The Cyborg and the Sorcerers or its sequel. Yes! Thank you.
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May 20, 2024 06:59
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I have no idea where I first encountered the line, it could have been anything from the worst internet detritus to high literature, though it was certainly many years ago but on occasion, I have had a line stuck in my head whose exact phrasing I cannot 100% remember but reads something like "I smote my head with heel of hand, consternated" possibly substitute "brow" for head, possibly change the verb tense to "smite." I am bothered by my inability to recall the context.
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May 21, 2024 00:55
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ScienceSeagull posted:From a review/debunking of a work on ancient aliens : Here's an English translation: https://archive.org/details/night-of-the-id-also-known-as-one-night-of-21-hours-written-by-renato-pestriniero/mode/1up It's definitely not clear how the reanimation works and in the story they don't seem to have any goals beyond wrecking stuff and dancing around. But the movie, iirc, has the "vampires" being more clearly willful, and they ultimately seek to possess the humans, use their spaceships, and find more humans. (along with a plot twist at the end that the next planet they're targeting turns out to be modern day Earth. So the main characters were not actually future earthlings as we might have assumed, which could fit with the author's ideas about ancient aliens) I dunno it's kind of a stretch from the description but it also sounds like maybe they mushed together the story and the movie and were fudging a lot of details? Or maybe this kind of plot was popular in Italy at the time Martman fucked around with this message at 08:43 on May 21, 2024 |
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May 21, 2024 08:36
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Martman posted:This reminded me of the 1965 Italian movie Planet of the Vampires, which is based on a short story called One Night of 21 Hours. Thanks! The timing checks out, and I wouldn't be surprised if the author of the ancient alien book was garbling together several difference sources. Looks like a fun read, in any case.
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May 21, 2024 12:49
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