In 1991/2 I read this book that involved a supernatural boy who emerged somehow, or arrived in a space craft, who was befriended.  The being was an adolescent boy, and physically superior to the one who befriended him, but was possibly dying?  Maybe he did die?  I think I remember a foot race, maybe a heart issue?  The book could have been from the 80s or 50s, who knows?  I didn't want to read it, but the teacher had it in her loaner collection.
120703
I read this book in the 1980s. It's probably aimed at young adults, and set in the 1800's or early 1900's.  A family adopts a child who was found in the woods, I believe. Other children have been found as well. The protagonist is the son of the family growing up with the strange child who ages quickly and has a weak heart.  I remember a race where the child and another of these found children race and the other found child dies.  Can't remember more.
31114
This is a novel I read when I was young; it would have been sometime in the 1970s. I thought I remembered the author being Peter Dickinson, but I just checked a catalogue of his novels and found nothing that seemed similar (I suspect I was getting this book confused with his Changes trilogy, which I read at about the same time; there are some similarities in the setting but it's definitely not any of the Changes books).  Two present-day schoolboys travel (I don't remember how) into what they first assume is the past but then realise is the future. After some apocalypse, probably nuclear war, a medieval society has been rebuilt around a religion that forbids the wheel. I distinctly remember a scene where a heretic, accused of making a wheel, is executed by being tied to a giant (golden?) wheel and rolled down a ramp to their death. The two boys help overturn the oppressive regime (don't they always?), and then one of them returns to his own time, the other choosing to stay and help rebuild the world.  I remember a scene right at the end where the returned narrator doesn't know how to explain what happened to the other boy's parents, but it turns out one of the parents had dreams (presumably psychic) about what happened to their son and were willing to believe the truth.
22096
I'm trying to find a children's/YA book.  I remember it being about a family's robot that is about to be either destroyed or have its mind wiped.  The boy that it belonged to orders it to run away to save it.  I think it was thought to be defective for not following some of its prime directives.  The story is set on either the Moon or Mars and the people live in domes.  During the story, the boy meets up with the robot and both helps and is helped.  I don't believe it was I, Robot.  It wasn't a short story or stories, but a children's book.  At a guess, I'd say it was written for 10-14 year-olds. I keep thinking the book was called "Run, Robot, Run" but I can't find it by that title.    I don't know if it had a positronic brain, but it may have been something like that.  I mostly remember that the book started off almost immediately with the child yelling "Run, robot, Run!" and most of the rest of the book being about the robot trying to escape/hide with the boy's help and a growing sense of self.  Thank you!  It is the Runaway Robot, I remember that book cover.  Greatly appreciated!
97824
A group of people are exploring a huge spaceship. They are worried about supplies until they find cubbies that duplicate anything put into them. They discover this by someone placing their hand inside one of the cubbies and it duplicates their hand. Specifically, once something is placed in the cubby, whenever it is removed it is immediately replaced. So there's now always a hand in the cubby.  Definitely True   Everything in the above paragraph Read it more than 10 years ago.   I think...   I read it approximately 15 years ago. I have no idea how old it was when I read it. The ship was discovered in a glacier, or the arctic or something, which was reflected on the cover. It may have not been a spaceship exactly. I think there may have been interdimensional/tranporting doors and they were unable to go back the way they came.   I did not finish the book and would like to now, so I will not be able to answer clarification questions about later plot points and would prefer to avoid spoilers.
52727
When I was younger (lets go with probably about 20 years ago), I read a f/sf book that I've been looking for ever since, but I can't for the life of me rediscover it.  It centers around a boy who is rescued from (I believe) a flood, by aliens, who take him to a sort of a domed colony, populated by other humans saved from disaster.  The setting in this domed colony is more or less suburban, but there are robots that are considered caretakers, that keep it running, etc. (and actually, it turns out that the robots are the only ones left, and that their creators are not extant).  Over the course of the book, the boy travels to similar domed colonies that house other alien species.  In one, he comes across (this is a little fuzzy in my memory here) a fruit that enables transmogrification, which is used in an alien ritual of some sort.  The only other detail I can recall is that at the climax of the book, this fruit is used to become one of the robots' creators, in order to break into some sort of control center.  This has been bugging me for the better part of a decade - hopefully somebody here is familiar with this book.
42002
I'm trying to track down an old sci-fi book I read when I was a teenager.  The book was at the Cottage Grove, OR Public Library around 1982-1985.  The plot followed a brother and sister who were scientists or spies, or both.  The brother once used a series of pills to change his weight, height and appearance.  Towards the end of the book, the brother takes a space ship that his sister invented, removes a governor so that he can travel faster than the speed of light and goes back in time several hours.  This is really vague, but thanks for any leads you can share.
1093
A magazine connected with (Boy) Scouting, possibly "Boys Life", in the early 1950's ran a short story in which a group of interplanetary explorers on an extraterrestrial planet, which may have been postulated to have a breathable atmosphere, encountered a functional alien transport designed to travel across rough terrain.   The machine was half hidden or buried when a member of the team discovered it and when he reported back was asked to "roll it out." He replied, "It, 'er, walks."   The alien inventors turned out to be long gone. The machine resembled a large multi-legged insect. There may have been a drawing accompanying the story.  The link I'm attempting to add here may not work, but if it does it's the only source to the Boy's Life image of the alien walking machine that's currently accessible. Boy's Life issues from 1950 are not to be found. If the link works, open Boy's Life November 1950 issue and scroll down to page 21.
80984
I know this is going to be a long shot but my father read a book around 1965-1967 about a space explorer who goes to a planet (he believes it is Mars) where he meets two warring alien tribes. One tribe is short and fat and one tribe is tall and skinny. He also remembers part of the story where the explorer believes one alien is urinating into the water supply and contaminating it but the alien is actually purifying it. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Thank you in advance.  ETA: He says this is not the novels with John Carter in them.
7148
This is a novel that I think I remember reading somewhere in the 1990s courtesy of my brother (who does not remember the book). Only a few details are coming to mind at the moment. It's a male protagonist. Something was not quite right with his legs, which led to him being nicknamed Frog or Leapfrog due to his usual method of locomotion, which consisted of pushing off from his legs to his hands and vice versa. Something happens and he winds up moving between a number of worlds (I want to say that he fell into a well or a hole in a field). There was a part which stuck with me where he's in a bottomless hole and finds he keeps falling faster and faster without end with the rushing wind becoming actively painful (I don't remember if he actually reaches a terminal velocity or if some aspect of the world prevented it while still allowing the rushing air to affect him physically).  Unfortunately, that's all I can remember. I don't remember whether he eventually gains companions on the voyage or how it ended. The most vivid memory is that of the nonstop falling.
18403
If I recall it correctly, this book has two main characters, both male, one of them big and well muscled. During the novel, they found evidence that the current human race descends from ancient Martian astronauts who traveled to Earth in prehistory, causing the extinction of prehistoric Earth humans, (which explains the Missing Link in human evolution).  Later in the novel the big guy travels back in time (no idea of how or why) to Prehistory.  And near the end of the book, the other main character, during an archaeological field research, finds remains of a human being who lived thousand of years ago, a human with large bones, and who holds an item that could not be made in that era (a gold plaque? A metal rod?)  That's all I can remember. I know it is not from the ABC, Asimov, Bradbury or Clarke.  Thanks in advance.
4376
I read a book from the late 80's when I was 13 or 14 about a boy who travels through time using a calculator. I don't remember too much detail...but I do know that he was on the run from a bad guy who was chasing him and trying to take the calculator. The bad guy might have had a time traveling calculator as well because I remember him chasing him through time.  He got the calculator from a scientist and he was friends with the scientist's daughter. I know that both kids were teenagers, but I don't remember too much more than that.  I never got to finish the book...and for some odd reason, I really want to.
116375
I remember reading this as a kid and it starts out with:   a boy in his home village where the other kids are mean to him during sports and they heat up their home with floating logs or something.   The kid is being hunted by some reaper character and that reaper finds him at a place called "The Edge" or something similar.   He buys a glove covered in an expensive dust that purifies things and is really rare.  In one book they had to climb down the edge for some reason.  There was another part where people only communicated telepathically and when sneaking into somewhere he only thought of light.  One of the main things is the floating ships and how he is really good at flying them and he assembles a team for a mission or something.  There is like float powder and stuff.  I read this close to 10 years ago.
22645
Some time around 1998 I read a book (which is surely older) suggested by one of my friends. Since this is the first time posting for me I'll do my best to give all the details I can recall.  The main protagonist is a white male (who I believe has cancer and/or is very old) on a boat that gets hit by a comet or meteor or some kind of astronomical event. He wakes up in the body of a young dying male in a desert and meets a telepathic cat that was bonded with the dying male.   The beginning of the book is about the protagonist learning to navigate his body, the bonds with the people his body knew and the telepathic cat. The two have to learn to trust one another. The "bond" is a two-way lifelink, if one dies so does the other.  We learn later that others on that boat suffered much the same fate shifting into new bodies in this parallel dimension including a female he had fancied or met back on the boat. Her body is also bonded to a telepathic "riding" cat. While I can't remember if anyone else on the boat also switched over, I feel like at least one other person did who was an antagonist but I can't verify it in my brain.  The protagonist is trying to find "something", but I can't remember what. I seem to recall jewels or gems and an important sword. Like, a hilt that's important and has an invisible blade? I remember certain scenes but without enough information for them to feel useful.  Such scenes as:   They end up in a huge palace with a verdant garden that they later escape from, for some reason. The protagonist gets super injured at one point and the cat struggles with him so they both survive. He keeps having flash backs to the incident on the boat. For a long while the cat hates this guy who basically has supplanted his master/friend, but it's okay since that guy dying would have killed the cat.   The only thing I can recall about the title is "The [blank] cycle(s)" and all my searching has come to naught. It was a series of books, I know that.  The cover showed the main protagonist, the female "love interest" and their cats in the sun bleached desert. I recall that the female has very short cut dark hair. The protagonist is wearing a white "turban" of some sort.
77892
A guy on a space ship picks up a distress call, a boy is stranded on a planet with a hostile environment. He &amp; his crew go to the rescue, stopping on the way to pick up an old man who comes with them. Most of the top of the old guy's skull is metal, from an old injury.  They've various adventures on the way (their ship is boarded by pirates/bandits/hostile forces at one point).  They get to the planet with the boy. They've limited time to save him as the planet is being moved back in time. (I can't remember why) When they find the boy, he's being attacked by giant wasp-type-things.   The boy is injured on the top of his head. The old guy dies protecting him. The boy gets shifted back in time with the planet and - you guessed it - survives, grows up and turns out to be the old guy.  Now that I've remembered some of it, the bits I can't remember are driving me crazy. I'd love to see this again, if I could identify it I might be able to track down a copy.  I'd swear I saw this mid 80's on morning TV, but it I could be out by 5 years either way. Thanks
98652
I once read a sci fi novel where the protagonist was a boy with one different colored eye, maybe gold colored.   It must have been sometime in the 70's. It was written in English. Unfortunately I have no recollection of the cover.  The time was in the not too distant future.   Actions, relationships and all other aspects of life were controlled by a central computer. As the boy grew he heard stories from his grandfather about how the central computer was built. When he became an adult he joined a group of free thinking rebels that planned to destroy the computer, but were foiled when they bombed the fake computer that was set up as a display/decoy.  One scene sticks in my mind. The group used to meet in a museum where one of the displays was an "antique" car and the people marveled that drivers had control over their own vehicles. One person remarked "I don't think that accidents happened as frequently as we have been told" or something like that. Another detail that I remember is the referral to an aluminum manufacturing plant, specifically an ALCOA factory.  He was captured and offered a chance to become of the "programmers" but eventually found and destroyed the real computer, which was right where his grandfather had said it would be.   The story ends with the now young man heading home in a helicopter as rain begins to fall during daylight hours, a sign that the central computer had relinquished control back to nature.
81091
About twenty years ago, I read a sci-fi novel where, if I recall correctly:   The protagonist is a guy, and probably a teenager or a young adult. Like most of humanity, he lives on land; but he's visiting an undersea colony (one of many?), and that's where most of the action takes place. He gets to know a girl there about the same age; maybe he's staying with her family for some reason? (Maybe they're relatives of his?) The girl had an older brother ("Ian", maybe?), but he died. He goes out of the city (i.e., goes for a dive) at some point, and gets in trouble, but is mysteriously rescued. He learns about an underground separatist movement of some sort. (I don't remember the details.) He eventually discovers that:       Ian is actually alive, and his family (or at least his sister) is still in touch with him; but they're covering up the fact that he's joined this separatist movement, and (like some other separatists) has modified his body to have gills so he can live out in the ocean.      Ian is actually who rescued him mysteriously.     I would guess, in retrospect, that the novel is from the 70s or so; but I don't really know.  I read the novel in English, and I don't think it was a translation.
81566
I read this story in middle school or high school and I cannot for the life of me remember the name of it. I think it started off in a small clan of people, there was a young boy who had just come of age and he had some kind of gift that related to the books? Also I think the injecting was illegal, because I vaguely remember the boy encountering an old man who had a bunch of books that he had to keep hidden. There was also a city and he met a girl there that was Special some how. I may just be merging memories but I think at some point the boy and girl went to an underground city?  Does anyone know what I'm talking about?