I'm trying to remember a book title, wherein the main character pretends to be in a coma, and is a telepath. He travels the 'net with his mind and at one point, comes across a number of minds that are in orbit on a satellite. They greet him, and this startles him so much that his life signs in the long term care facility where he's "parked" potentially(?) raise the alarm that he's conscious. (The book goes into some detail about how much control he has to leverage over his physical body to pull off the guise of a coma.)  The only other part of the book I can remember is a relatively graphic scene where a female character--I believe one of a team in pursuit of the main character--is descending in an elevator with a man, perhaps into the facility where the main character's "comatose" body is located.  For some reason I can't remember, she feels compelled to suddenly give the man oral sex and suddenly bite off his penis.  Any ideas?
44601
I read this quite a while back, part of my parents library (they're in their 50s now) I think the book was probably published in the 70s or 80s, my copy was paperback. I don't recall the cover art, but I have vague recollections of a satellite on the cover and maybe blue with grid-lines below it?  I've made concerted efforts to find it again but to no avail. My parents don't remember it either, but mum's an avowed book-aholic and buys a lot of books, reads them once and forgets about them, so that's not so surprising.  The key parts I remember:   Both the Soviets and Americans were working on psychic techniques and technologies, with real and tangible results including Remote Viewing. MK-ULTRA was explicitly namedropped in relation to the American psychic program. The Soviets and Americans both had orbiting superweapons, One was a microwave laser (or something very similar) and the other used slivers of the brains of psychics to blow people's brains up in a wide area. A super-psychic (male) took offence to the state of the cold-war and took control over the orbital weapons by manipulating the onboard computers psychically. There's a gruesome description of a psychic weapon being tested on monkeys in a lab, the POV character throws up afterwards in horror. I think there might have been more than one POV character. There's an extended description of the psychic orbital weapon as experienced by people in its area of effect. Similar to the monkeys, it builds up, starting with alzheimer-esque hand-shaking and building up to seizures and screaming before their brain liquifies fully and either comes out the nose and ears or outright blows the skull open. (this is one of the more vivid recollections I have of the book) I remember that the super-psychic was working wholly alone and did most of his psychic stuff from motels halfway around the world from events. I believe the super-psychic also killed other psychics explicitly. The weapon satellites had code-names Both weapons were used on cities in the course of the story I vaguely recall an office building getting targeted specifically at one point.
2569
I have vague memories of reading this in the 90s. It was a paperback, possibly an R.L. Stine book (it seems like the right sort of plot and I have this vague memory of it being similar cover art). The main character is a girl who's pregnant. She and her boyfriend go to an abortion clinic (a legal one, not back-alley). That's where things get a little jumbled in my head. I remember the girl bleeding out on the operation chair due to a botched procedure. I also remember her and her boyfriend being stalked by a girl of the same age including a part where the protagonist gets stabbed through the stomach with a pitchfork. I want to say that the sequence of events was that they got stalked by the girl, she got stabbed, and the scene then cut to her bleeding out on the chair with the implication being that it was either just a dying dream, or that the girl who killed her was the unborn baby trying to get revenge.  The reason I see it as either sci-fi or fantasy was that the scene played out like a nightmare where no matter where they turned, their pursuer was behind them with the scenery changing malevolently against them. I want to say that they died a few times during the story, each time with them waking up from a seeming nightmare only to get killed again in a different way.
63544
I read this book between 1999 and late 2004. I am pretty sure it had a blue cover and may have been published by Penguin. It was a paperback.  The story goes, as far as I can remember, that after an accident her body was too badly damaged and she was implanted into a cyborg or bionic shell, which had been cast aside by other wealthy people who upgrade their "cyborg bodies" when they get bored or for new upgrades. Undamaged real bodies were a premium and the poor could sell their healthy bodies for money to purchase older model cyborg bodies.  I think the protagonist has recurring memories or that they play a part in it somehow.
64430
I read this book once as a teenager, I think it might have been written in the 1970s but could be late 1960s or early 1980s.  The protagonist is left to die hideously by enemies. He is paralysed and left on some planet (I don't believe it was earth) in the habitat of some kind of crablike creature, which injects him with its young, and periodically returns to force nutrient and a paralytic agent down his throat, as the larvae grows inside him.  He is rescued, and his body rebuilt to some kind of superhuman abilities, but he is traumatised and bent on indiscriminate revenge for his suffering. He proves hard to defeat.   He is eventually defeated by trickery, when he is shown (or demands to see) something by some kind of video link or remote TV/monitor - perhaps he is told that people he wants revenge on, are held captive for him, I can't be sure.   I think maybe he takes hostages or makes a severe threat, and his demands relate to the people he wants revenge on. But he can't be physically reached, so what can be done?  They set up a video feed, to negotiate, or more likely, to purportedly show him they have what (or who) he wants, and he looks to see.  When he looks at the video stream, it's actually an image of the crablike creature. The shock of repressed memories flooding back, renders him re-traumatised and perhaps catatonic, and defeats him.
62873
I am looking for a book that I read back in the 90's about a guy who's lost his memory and figures out, eventually, that he's a god and part of the universal battle between good and evil, or maybe chaos and order (no, it's definitely not Chronicles of Amber, although some of the story line is similar). My memory seems to think that he fights as an indestructible flying golden/metal lion or something similar at times. I also seem to remember that he loses his first major battle and has to go off for a long time to heal before he comes back and eventually prevails.   I was thinking it was a story by Roger Zelazny, but I don't see anything in his bibliography that fits exactly. Also, the gods are part of a pantheon — I just can't remember which.
9424
I'm looking for a book of science fiction short stories. One of the stories describes the experiences of a man who finds himself in a corridor with a dead body. The corridor turns out to be a Möbius strip. I must have read that late 1970s.
27749
I remember a book in which the main protagonist is a human male and after witnessing alien activities he was forcibly whisked away. After being taken away he joins a type of galactic patrol type organization where one of his instructors/head instructor is described like an alien Big Bird.   Of the various scenes in the book, I remember the scene where the human man discovered the bird instructor literally "feeding the toilet". I also remember scenes with heavy drug use and scenes to make a sailor blush at least heavily implied if not described to some extent.  I read this book in middle school, so these scenes stick out the most in my memories. I have already checked and it is not a Steve Perry book. If I remember correctly, the one I read was paperback with a human male on the cover with a spaceship or space station behind him over a planet.  Could someone identify this book?
106236
I read it sometime in the 90's but it seemed at least 15 years old at that time. The title might be containing something with 'wolves' or 'wilderness'.  Alert - Spoilers below      The book tells of some (I think) earth cult that dictates the practice of meditation. This cult is somewhat of a scam as When reaching the top level of meditation the meditator is either teleported or his consciousness abducted (I can't remember..) to be used as a calculation machine by the abductors.   Any references would be greatly appreciated.
48922
I'm looking for a novel, of which I'm remembering mostly the end. It might be important that I've read the story in German.  Most of the story takes part in a strange, surreal world. Towards the end it is revealed that the protagonists are on a spaceship and the story took place in a  virtual reality generated by an artificial intelligence to entertain them during a long term travel. It was so real that they do not realize most of the time that they are in a virtual reality. Over time, errors accumulate and the simulations stop when people encounter too many of them.  There is a mythical figure mentioned several times (I guess it was something like "Der Wanderer", which roughly translates to traveler or wanderer).  It turns out that the whole crew is already addicted to the virtual reality, only one of them resists. All but this one get back into virtual reality.   The final scene: The one who resisted the virtual reality has a appearance of the mythical figure, which asks him what he wants to be. He answers he wants to be a plant in the desert, just feeling the sunlight and the live flowing through his body. The mythical figure tells him "that's how it plants feel", and he opens an airlock.
20027
Things I remember   I read this book in elementary school, but I don't know how much of a "kid's" book it is. Main character was male, and I think the title of the book may have been his name. I picture him as owl-like, but I know he had talons and wings at least. The book possibly started on his race's home planet, and they had to leave to live on space stations for some reason. Once they leave their home planet, there is a comment that their children will be born with flatter feet to accommodate walking on metal of the space station instead of gripping branches. I'm forgetting a chunk of the book, but the main character becomes separated from everyone else, possibly left behind somewhere on purpose. Somehow the main character becomes extremely powerful. He is able to fly through space on his own without a ship. Near the end of the book, he engages in a prolonged battle with some other hyper-powerful character (The fight might start on a water planet). Their fight spans the galaxy. Main character ends up in a black hole, omniscient and observing a planet (possibly Earth?). A boy from the planet dies and shows up where our main character is. Main character and boy talk about whether anything in life has meaning or affects anything.
81724
I am trying to identify a fix-up novel, where I think I only remember a sub-story from the middle.  It was probably published at least fifteen years ago, but I cannot pin down the date better than that.  The main character volunteers to travel to an alien world (maybe with the first intelligent aliens humans have identified?).  A remote probe had sent back some visual data on the aliens, before the aliens destroyed the probe.  The main character has some history as an amazing explorer or risk-taker, and he is sent to try to establish communication with the aliens.  His chance of coming back alive is rated as being very low.  I don't think it's clear what happens to him on the aliens' planet.  Maybe he doesn't remember it, or he thinks that his mission was a failure, and he eventually decides to return to Earth.  However, upon his return, it turns out that the aliens have modified him, in an attempt to enable communication.  He has become an overpowering telepathic projector; every thought and emotion in his mind is communicated to everyone near him.  This is extremely unpleasant at close range.  (I think there's a scene where his girlfriend is really, really trying to have sex with him after he comes back, but she is ultimately unable to.)  Eventually, he decides that he cannot live around people any more.  I don't recall where he goes, although I think the last part of the book features people from Earth trying to get him back for another mission (perhaps one for which his uncontrollable telepathy might be useful).
64144
I read this book probably 10 or 15 years ago. I remember it starting out with a  young woman (I think) talking to a computer and altering her appearance in a mirror. I believe she was making subtle changes that were up-to-date with what was popular for the time and I believe the book explained that other people had chosen to make less subtle changes and go full-on were-animal.   The book follows her and her father who becomes a leader of a new civilization, when the main computer is hit by terrorists or something. They fall into the dark ages and have to resort to surviving like they did in the middle ages. It was very descriptive at one point as the woman was trying to figure out how they used to handle menstrual cycles without technology. I remember there was bad guy, and I believe he was were-tiger or panther man, but he wanted the girl. He started raiding the small settlements that had arose in the aftermath, and became like a warlord wreaking havok, pillaging, and raping. The girls boyfriend fought the last battle with him and lost his arm.   I'm pretty sure the book was written in the 1950s. I remember thinking that it was strangely accurate and advanced for when it was written. I have been trying to remember this book for the last 10 years because it was open-ended and I believe it was part of a series. I remember this book being one of the best I've ever read. It could make you clench your teeth, laugh and cry all at once. Can anyone help me find it?
89272
I'm looking for the name of a science-fiction novel/series, which I read sometime between 2001-2005. The only things I can definitely remember:   There are "pleasure bots" (there's a name for them in the book, but I forget), actually very life-like, that are stored in some sort of case when not in use. (Sort of like the ivory dittos from "Kiln People", but these are more-or-less autonomous, if a bit empty-headed.) No one is really sure where these androids came from, but at some point in the book (or later in the series) it is revealed that they were created by a woman scientist-type (who might have been the protagonist in an earlier book in the series) for the purpose of population control, and to reduce violence against women. I think the woman scientist is near-immortal, or can time-travel; unless I'm getting different works mixed up, this pleasure-bot scheme is one of several interventions she performs across centuries, if not millenia.
98408
I think the guy was a private investigator. He has a sex change girlfriend, takes pills to get different boosts of sorts and has pills to give them a softer let down, I remember triangle and star shaped pills I think? I was thinking the triangle pills were blue.   Most also have a jack in port in their head that lets them gain new info and know things. This might be wrong, but I think he was one who had avoided getting a brain port, but in the course of the book he got one. I do remember that at the end he gets in a fight and plugs a black chip into his port and goes feral. He doesn't remember anything, but they tell him it looks like an animal had killed everyone there, everyone he knew was disgusted with it and left him basically under the power of the manipulator who had gotten him the black chip.  I found out later that this is part of a series of books, not sure how long. I read it 15 years ago or so, sorry if my details are lacking.
35007
Desperate to locate and re-read exceptional book/series, but cannot remember the title. The high concept: The U.S. has just sent the first successful expedition to Mars, and it has just landed. As the astronauts make their initial exploration outside their ship, a tear in the fabric of space opens up right in front of them, and they look through to the insides of a laboratory (at a California university?) and two students who just figured out how to create arbitrary portals between two points in the Universe. The rest of the novel/series is a consequence of this breakthrough. But I can't remember the author and title(s). Surely someone reading this forum will remember it well! TIA.  (Reposted .)
47430
This is a book I read about a decade ago. It is a science fiction type book and I got it in the young adult section of my public library. It is a standalone book, not a short story or collection of stories.  Characters The main character of the book is a youngish woman, I'm guessing younger than 30, but I can't remember her name. One of the other major characters/possible love interest is a man named Garth (I remember this name in particular because I had never heard of anyone named Garth and thought it was funny). They meet up with others along the way, somewhere around 10-20 people in total.  Plot The premise of the plot is that a bunch of people on Earth joined programs for "quitting smoking" or "quitting drugs" or "self-improvement". However, these programs were a front, and as soon as they attend their first meeting, they are told to go inside a room/device and suddenly find themselves transported to an alien planet. (One of the characters later jokes that it worked, because she hasn't smoked in weeks due to being on an alien planet with no cigarettes)  Once the main character meets up with other transported humans, they start trying to figure out what to do. They receive some sort of instructions from the aliens who put them there and they are told if they reach a certain place alive, they will be sent back to Earth.   A lot of the conflict centers around people arguing whether or not to follow the instructions they were given. The aliens themselves don't play a huge role until the end (other than giving instructions), and the book focuses more on what the people discover about themselves in the journey (which lasts weeks at least) to this mysterious end goal. I remember it as "a sci-fi sort of Pilgrim's Progress" (minus the heavily religious overtone), because all the different places/challenges they do are supposed to represent some real-life problem someone in the group was facing.  In the end, those that make it are returned to Earth with their memories wiped, but their bad habits gone.  For some reason I thought the title was "The Crystal Arches" for a long time, but I haven't had any luck finding it by that title. Possibly their end destination was a set of crystal arches or something.   I've asked this on a couple other internet sites but haven't had any luck. I didn't think to try here until I saw other questions like this.
48716
This is a short story, I think, but I might be wrong.  A man is recruited to enter an authors' dreams to try &amp; bring him out of a coma &amp; finds himself in a hackneyed barsoom type world where the coma victim is a muscle bound hero, it's a desert world with two suns, the damsel in distress is the typical scantily clad princess trope.  The "hero" basically spoils the authors' dreams by manifesting a pistol &amp; simply shooting the monsters dead at one point &amp; the author tries to write him out of the "story" by simply jumping forward several chapters &amp; is both surprised &amp; peeved to find him still there.  The author eventually comes out of his coma &amp; immediately assaults the man when he recognizes him from his dreams, he tries to strangle him if I remember right.  He enters the authors' dreams with some kind of experimental dream imaging tech, basically a two ECG sort of set up linked through a computer with him put to sleep with drugs I think.