Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

What the hell was That Book called? You know, the one where That Stuff happened in it...

Page: 1 2 3(4)5

18:28 / 11.03.09

Mistoffolees - your #1 sounds like Nicholson Baker's novel The Mezzanine. That's about an escalator, rather than an elevator, though.

18:48 / 11.03.09

That sounds like the book I was looking for. Thanks, Jack!

Now someone please find that horror short story. It´s supposed to be quite well known!

16:47 / 13.03.09

Mistoffelees, I'm probably wrong, but your description of the short story makes me think of The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains, by Marryat (a chapter from his novel The Phantom Ship, frequently anthologized on its own). There is no specific prohibition against looking out the window to the North, but the protagonist does witness strange things through his window at night.

17:53 / 13.03.09

My turn my turn!

Rght so it was a short story in a scifi anthology. Plague something or other no idea the author. Plot is giant epidemic has divided people and those who are virus free have sex via interlocking machine pieces while the infected get put in some sort of motley mad dog killer drugged up army.

A scientist working for a big pharm finds the cure and realizes the pharm makes too much money to ever let it be released. So he infects himself with the antivirus. Goes to find a sex worker to infect STD like (so he can bring his teenage son to her (?!?!).

He ends up finding a sex worker who has been on a mission she inherited from an elderly gay sex worker of sleeping with everyone to hopeful use her body to manifest the mutated 'safe' virus. She's Mary, sister something. Oh and yeah the scientist's wife refuses to have non machine sex any more so we are supposed to, I think, feel like he is justified or okay finding a sexworker.

The mad dog military types are melted by the heart of gold whore who will sleep with their ugly oozey selves.

Right. What the hell crap story was that that I read when I was 17?

18:45 / 13.03.09

You totally were actually reading the articles, weren't you.

---

Seriously, that sounds like something by Norman Spinrad that I read the jacket flap to about 10 or 15 years ago. But not the actual book.

18:58 / 13.03.09

No way man I was 17 I was there for the pictures of cybergrrls who were in monogamous relationships with their robot tanks. Or something.

I'm fairly certain the title had Plague in it.

Joy Division Oven Gloves

22:32 / 16.03.09

Journals of the Plague by above mentioned Norman Spinrad?

19:02 / 17.03.09

YES!!!! Thank you.

11:03 / 19.03.09

Tyhis is probably a reeeaaaly long-shot, but here goes:

My brother and I have been trying to figure out what the heeel this book we liked a lot when we were kids was called. Neither of us can remember too much about it, but there were definitely two kids who find a crazy creature (in a cave maybe?) This creature has a brown shaggy body, and maybe an elephanty trunk. Alaso probably suction cup-like feet. We think that he lived in a prehistoricish world where the children get stuck for a time and then rescued by the cutie creature.

I'm also pretty sure that there was a Saturday afternoon cartoon adaptation in the early 80s.

Not much to go on, I know, but any help will do!

20:34 / 19.03.09

Some kind of novelization of Sigmund and the Sea Monsters?

It would have aired in proximity with Land of the Lost, which featured caves and prehistory.

10:18 / 20.03.09

That looks much scarier than the one I'm trying to remember. It wasn't a proper show, but a one-off special. I think that the book is fairly obscure, so I'm not hoping for much...

Thanks anyway!

10:23 / 20.03.09

Clearly, my google-fu was not up to scratch when I looked for this a few days ago.

It's The Bunjee Venture...and I loved it.

But written by a cartoonist for the Dialy Mail?!?!? Oh, for my young ignorance!!

23:15 / 20.03.09

grant, I thought the exact same thing, it sounded like a Sid and Marty Krofft mashup with "Land of the Lost". Which I used to watch all the time as a kid, along with "Sigmund" and "Dr. Shrinker", a terrible and fun show.

00:36 / 10.04.09

Okay, I've been madly googling for a couple of days, and I'm rather hazy on the details.

It was either a book of short stories or a book of poetry that combined quantum physics and Asian history/mythology, Chinese I think. I believe that emperor was in the title, but that's all I got.

06:53 / 10.04.09

I can think of two books that might be what you are looking for:

The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav

The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra

They are both titles of the Quantum mysticism genre. You can find more titles with this link.

17:25 / 10.04.09

Hmm, this was definitely fiction, short stories and/or poems. And it was published in the last few years.

17:29 / 13.04.09

Wasn't something by Italo Calvino, was it? I don't remember anything specifically *Chinese* in his stuff, but there are some quantum stories in Cosmicomics.

11:08 / 14.04.09

Cosmicomics is great specifically, and Italo Calvino is great in general. But it wasn't that. Thankfully, I can probably solve this just by reading more Calvino.

14:08 / 14.04.09

There are a couple of Chinesey stories by Borges, but none that are explicitly quantum physics-oriented that I can think of.

16:10 / 15.04.09

I'm a fan of Borges, but it wasn't him. I'm starting to think that I dreamed this book up, that the daily input of information created what would be an excellent book for me to read.

Now that is certainly a Borgesian concept, a dream book that drives the waking man to search it. But it does inspire me to go reread a bunch of his works now.

19:35 / 15.04.09

I can probably solve this just by reading more Calvino.
How about "The Baron of the Trees"? That's a good one.

Sorry, I have no guesses on the other book. I just like Calvino.

16:52 / 27.04.09

Just as a followup, I was clearing out hundreds of items from my Amazon wishlists, and I think I found it. I was really misremembering the particulars, but I still might pick it up. It's called "Mad Science in Imperial City" by Shanxing Wang.

18:18 / 28.04.09

Oh, that sounds cool!

Is that Wang the one who wrote the fables?

21:53 / 03.06.09

I am trying to recall a specific childrens or YA novel I read as a yout' which featured Toad (of Toad Hall) prominently but was not by Kenneth Grahame, I'm fairly sure. It had a young boy narrator, I think, possibly over three settings - ordinary country life in England probably 1970s or 80s, Toad Hall, and I'm fairly sure there was some World War fighter pilot action in it somewhere too?

Spent abt an hour on amazon trying to figure this, and I really hope it isn't one of these William Horwood ones.

22:07 / 03.06.09

Dead Babies?

Whisky Priestess

11:10 / 19.06.09

Qunatum Mysticism stories: Garden of Forking Paths (by Borges I think)

Dead Babies the Martin Amis novel??? Has no toads in it that I recall. Dwarves, but no toads.

06:00 / 07.07.09

I read a great book about Brazil once. It was prob published in English in the late 80's/early 90s.

It took you from the earliest encounters between the natives and the conquistadores all the way up to the 70's where human rights activists were regularily beaten up by the cops. Along the way was slavery and the paterfamilias having legitimate children and children by his slave-women.

Specifics: I think one of the earlier characters is remembered later as having mythical powers like that guy in Song of Solomon who grew wings and flew away. There was a romantic poet who became a hard-nosed capitalist when he inherited the estate. There was a section where a guy fighting the capitalists from his jungle retreat joins the army so he can fight for his country. The section showing Brazil's war at that time was narrated in a Homeric style with the old South American and African gods intervening in the struggle.

Any idea the name of the book?

Whisky Priestess

15:39 / 08.07.09

Sci-fi story about "equal opportunities" where clever people get electrocuted if they think too much, the sppeedy are hobbled, the pretty are masked etc. ...

16:12 / 08.07.09

'Harrison Bergeron' by Kurt Vonnegut?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron

16:15 / 08.07.09

Weirdly, just been turned into a film called 2081 i see from the wiki.

Whisky Priestess

17:14 / 08.07.09

Thanks!

Whisky Priestess

11:49 / 24.10.09

Golden Age skiffy story by (probably) Sturgeon, Silverberg, Bradbury, Sheckley or one of that lot.

Man is heartbroken. Goes to funfair/fairground type place where a barker persuades him to experience perfect love with one of the sex dolls (or whatever) for 24 hours. He does so, and at the end of the 24 hours pays up and leaves (still heartbroken). Next door is a gunshop so the heartbroken men can buy a gun and go back and shoot the sex dolls ...

... or something. A guy in my class came up with an idea for a story involving bottled, mass-produced love and I thought this story would be interesting for him to read as another take on the subject.

15:26 / 26.10.09

WP:
Oooo! I read that one... But a sci-fi version, I think... Is it possible that the Carnival is set off-world on some sort of Pleasure Planet? The version I read it was an adolescent and it involves real women. I'll check some of my old anthologies at home to see if I can find it.

12:31 / 30.10.09

Anyone recall a story about a group of people on a journey and everyone carried their sins in the form of giant humps on their backs (hmm physical deformity = punishment for your sins, how dodgy is that metaphor?).

13:19 / 30.10.09

Chew On Fat, I **think** the book you mention is "An Invincible Memory", by João Ubaldo Ribeiro (Original title is "Viva o Povo Brasileiro". I myself haven't read it yet (actually your post reminded me that this one should get into my list of things to read), but from your description and from descriptions I read from "An Invincible Memory", I think there's a good chance that this is the one.

Page: 1 2 3(4)5