The Protagonist is a suave, charismatic young man and his girl, ending up being persecuted by a rigid dystopian future state.  Some details I remember:    Featuring a possibly sympathetic military officer (who is an old family friend/acquaintance) driving a jaguar. which gets hijacked on a highway by hooligans. Being military, it's got an emergency button calling in a gurkha special force unit in helicopters. The hooligans are heading straight for organ transplant vats.  There is a tea ceremony metaphor, illustrating the pathological state of today's job market - if you can cook tea perfectly in front of an auditorium of white-coats you get the coveted job of assistant to some secret guy. on a motorbike, the young man and his girl head out of London north into the countryside, where life is still worth living and people are friendly.  on the way, they have to hide in some cave and sedate themselves to avoid detection by police and their brainwave scanners. They also do some rite-of-passage by jumping through a ring of fire.
21678
It was either a short story or a novel. I read it about 20 years ago, and some vague memory of it stuck.  It's set in a future where everyone's allotted role is decided by a series of tests once they reach a certain age. They are then classified into a group which decides what jobs they will do.  Our hero rather controversially gets a perfect score in the tests. Nobody had done that in a long time. and at first he worries about what this might mean. He is sent to work for the mysterious scientists who maintain the computer that runs society. Most people don't know they exist. He is disappointed to learn he has to be their tea boy, and learn a tea making ceremony perfectly.  In the process he learns how to fool the machine, and eventually to circumvent the controls society has placed on him. He makes several visits to an area outside the control of the machine - where people are living in poverty and lawlessness.  Can't remember the author, or the name, just that basic idea, and the fact that early in the book is a very grand "tea ceremony" where he must make the tea perfectly.
110575
I remember the main protagonist being female. She works with artificial intelligences in a virtual world, which I think was a bit like . There are no ways to build an artificial intelligence from scratch, so instead she is essentially raising them like children. Results are promising, but take years, and eventually, the platform starts shutting down. She and I think a handful of other people struggle to save these artificial intelligences, complicated by a lack of laws protecting them (I remember there being a subplot involving her learning that someone had copies of the AIs on a dark server where a clown was essentially performing torture porn on them). I also remember that, somewhere near the end, she and others have a way to save the artificial intelligences, but only by severely compromising their principles.  I read the story somewhere in the last decade, I think, on a website.
115246
For years I've been trying to find a book I read as a teenager (late 90's). It was written in English, and I was reading it in England. I suspect it was a teen level novel, but can't really say for sure, that may just be because of my age when I read it. My memory of the details is somewhat vague but I'll do my best.  It follows various perspectives throughout, beginning with a reptilian assassin sneaking through border control when entering a planet (possibly?). I think he is there to assassinate a girl, possibly royalty.  The other major perspective is that of a programmer/hacker who works through VR, and falls in love with said girl.  I recall one scene where the lizard goes into the slums and finds a bunch of other lizards there, who are potentially treated as inferior. He is treated with respect due to the colour of his neck - I think.  At one point the girl has a tracking bracelet on, and I think the hacker guy manages to redirect it whilst the assassin is going after her.  I don't have many more details than this, unfortunately, hopefully it is enough for someone!
119029
The general idea of the book was that a race of aliens in the form of trees travelled through space visiting other worlds and using their ability to send their minds into the brains of the creatures living in these worlds so that they could explore without being intrusive or being discovered.   They arrived on Earth and sent their minds into the animals they could sense and one found his mind in the body of a teenage boy in Glasgow, Scotland around the mid-to-late sixties.  Having found himself in the teenager, he discovered the primitive mind of humans had him trapped and unable to return to his tree body.  The story is a little comic and deals with the teenager finding his way in life and how he deals with things like his mother and girls while worrying the others on the ship would be coming for him as he was happy not to rejoin them.
72354
I've read this book about 15 years ago, but I think it's older than that.  In the story people use some sort consciousness transfer technology to travel to distant solar systems. So basically an alien from planet A would want to visit Earth, and you would like to visit the planet A, by mutual agreement you'd transfer your mind into the alien's body and alien's mind would be transferred into your body.  So the main character decides to travel and swaps bodies with an alien. However, he/she isn't able to return back to his/her own body and instead is transferred to another alien's body and so on. As the story progresses the protagonist jumps from body to body until he/she slowly loses his/her own identity.  Also the story is written in a funny/light tone.   I've read this story in Russian but I am sure that it was translated. The story was a part of collection of short sci-fi stories.
40431
I read the story over ten years ago while I was still trying to learn English, so I can only vaguely remember that the story is about a cop trying to track down a criminal who had superhuman abilities. Some of his abilities were pyrokinesis, using his mind to form a golem from earth and roam around while he stays in the room and stopping time. Eventually the cop was able to catch the criminal and shot him dead.   If anyone could identify the book I would be very grateful. I'd love to read it for nostalgic purposes.
40593
Here's what I remember about it:   The protagonist is sent a relatively short distance into the future (maybe a year? I've forgotten). When he arrives in this "future" he finds himself in a completely different world, with non-human inhabitants. The inhabitants use a machine to teach him their torturous language. He tries to return home, and (eventually) finds himself in a realm of chaos/nothingness. He laboriously reconstructs in his mind everything he can remember about his home and finds himself back there somehow. The twist is      that in his "home" reality everyone speaks the language he was taught by the non-human inhabitants at his first stop.
42035
It starts with a town that was hit by a mysterious explosion which transports that town into a desert. The weather is cold and people burn coal but they soon run out and send out an expedition to look for signs of life - they navigate the desert for a couple of days and come across a glass dome covering a city. Apparently they have been transported far in the future.  And that's where I stopped reading and want to resume now. Don't remember the title or the author and it's at least 20 years old.
20770
I read this book in Middle School and I can't for the life of me remember the title, but I can remember what it was about for the most part:  Takes place in the future, the government imposes laws that outlaw people from being different in appearance and skill level. For example, if you are fast or strong or tall, they will put weights on you to weigh you down so that you'll be more slower/shorter and more like the average. Another example, if you are pretty the government issues you "ugly glasses" etc.  Basically, it's all about making sure everyone is equal and punishing the extraordinary.  One of the main characters (a man) decides to literally loose himself of his shackles and weights, breaking them to display his power (if I'm remembering correctly).   Any ideas folks?
17992
Plot Summary/Details  The story takes place aboard an interplanetary cargo vessel whose route is between Earth and Venus (and vice-versa).  The vessels has an ion-drive propulsion system, which becomes central to the story.  The ion drives produce very low accelerations, making for lengthy transit times between worlds.  IIRC, the cargo vessel travels in elliptical flight paths, in order to take advantage of the planets' orbital position as they revolve around the sun. I remember a line comparing the cargo ship to the pricey passenger liners, which would burn enormous amounts of fuel accelerating directly between planets at velocities approaching 1/10th of a G.  This particular cargo vessel has a crew of two men.  One is something of an alpha male, and a bully.  The other, who is the closest thing to a protagonist in the story, is sort of a meek type who gets pushed around by the other man on a regular basis.  They work together well enough, but neither likes the other.  The crisis in the story comes when a meteorite storm or the like damages the vessel while it is en route to Venus.  Either the air supply or the air recycling system is damaged.  They radio home to Earth about the damage, and it quickly becomes apparent that there isn't enough air supply left to complete the voyage with both men. The realities of space travel make a rescue impossible.  As such, one of the two men will have to commit suicide.  I am fuzzy on how the story proceeds from there.  I do remember that the story becomes public knowledge on Earth and Venus, and IIRC, becomes something of a news sensation.  I also think the last message sent from the men before the ship arrives at Venus is that one of them has taken, or is about to take, the suicide pill.  The twist in the story comes at the end.  I remember the ending, but I am drawing a blank on the rationale for the resolution.  It turns out both men are still alive.  The meek man has holed up in the rear compartment of the ship, sleeping as much as possible to conserve oxygen. Somehow (and I remember, somewhat unsatisfying, from a reader's perspective) beat the odds.  Right before they arrive in orbit, he confronts the other man.  He tells the other crewman (the bullying one), that they cannot both exit the ship.  Not after all the media frenzy and whatnot.   I think the meek man points out to the other man that as the senior crewmember, regulations dictate he (the bully) must be the one who swallows the suicide capsule.   Again, my memory is fuzzy here, and I cannot quite remember the rationale.  Timeframe of Publication  I think this one is an older story - 60's or earlier.  I have a tendency to be way off on story eras of late, however, so I can't be sure of the exact era.  It certainly feels like an older story, given the theme and technological points.
55039
I'm looking for a short story or novella about an idyllic, utopian society with a hidden dark side: periodically (every week or month) its inhabitants would descend into madness, violently destroying everything around them and brutally murdering each other. This continued for a day or so, and when it ended, the ordeal was somehow magically undone, with even the dead returning to life. Then everyone would be left with only their memories of the experience, to enjoy their perfect society until the next time around.  The society was some kind of city-state with a vaguely Mediterranean feel, maybe on an island or isolated peninsula. There was a strict rule about visitors, but I can't quite remember what it was: either they had to leave before the violence started unless they agreed to immigrate permanently, or they couldn't leave until they had experienced it at least once.  The story was posted online on what looked like someone's personal website (possibly the author's), split into a separate page for each chapter. I read it sometime in the last several years, and I feel like the writing style reminded me of Jorge Luis Borges.
37142
The story is about 2 war robots who have survived a war that wiped out humanity world-wide.  There may be more of the robots functional elsewhere, but since the long-distance communication robots broke down they have no contact with anyone else.  I don't recall if there was an accompanying illustration or just a description, but I have a mental image of a roughly spherical body with 3 short legs underneath and 2 long arms, terminating in long claws, at opposite points on the midline.  The limbs were segmented, like flexible tubing.  One of the robots is more thoughtful than the other and realises that if they can't find a way to repair themselves they will eventually run down.  It tries to construct a smaller robot with hand-like manipulators instead of the claws they were built with for killing.  Making the critical linkage, its claw accidentally causes a short circuit, slagging the brain and destroying the robot.  In anger and frustration, it shreds the construct and gives up.  In the final scene, the 2 robots are trudging through snow, one of them trailing its no-longer-functional arms.  Its arms snag on an unseen rock and it falls.  It doesn't get up, and the other walks on.  I would have read this story almost 40 years ago, in an anthology from the (then local) library.
51099
Please help me identify this story.  I think it is a short story, not a novel but I could be wrong.  A scientist works on genetically engineering super intelligent cells.  He has some successes.  I don't recall the details but his research comes under scrutiny and the funding agency decides to end the experiment and destroy the test cells.  The scientist decides to save his intelligent cells by ingesting them.  The protagonist first comes down with a terrible illness.  From here on out, the writing is in the style of someone in and out of lucidity.  Essentially the cells are battling the scientist's immune system.  Eventually the intelligent cells win and begin re-engineering the human body for their needs.  Using the human body as a reservoir of resources, they expand, change the human body into more of an amoeba structure and eventually invade the city water supply through the protagonists kitchen sink.  At one point one of his colleagues checks on the scientist and the intelligent amoebas capture him/her (I think it's a her).  The implication is that the cells will eventually destroy the entire human race this way.
21437
I'm pretty sure this was in an anthology of older stories that I read in a paperback in the 90s, although the book may have dated from when my parents were growing up in the 60s and the 70s. The protagonist is a country boy who goes into town. There a sort of a Coney Island setup with booths and items for sale. I remember there were prostitutes named something like "pork-upines" with vaginal openings scattered all over their bodies as well as a shooting gallery where you practiced on live targets, although I'm not entirely certain if they were robots of some sort, or genetically modified. The protagonist is horrified at the excesses of the city, but samples the wares of one of the prostitutes, falls in love with her, and buys her freedom.       Somehow, in the course of the story, he becomes disillusioned and he arranges for her to be a target at one of the shooting galleries. The story ends with him aiming his rifle at her.   I know it's a very vague description, but I'm hoping those salient points strike a memory in someone. It was in English. I read it while in the United States somewhere in the 90s, and I'm pretty sure it was one one story in an older paperback, the sort with the cheap paper that browns with age. It's also possible that it's one of the shooting gallery targets he purchases, although I'm pretty sure it was one of the prostitutes.
79237
I read this book in the mid-nineties, probably written in the 80s or 90s.  It’s set in the near future, where the world has experienced a sudden glaciation.  Most of the United States and Europe is now covered with ice.  Civilization has collapsed for the most part. The protagonist is a drifter with strange-colored eyes (yellow, I think).  Because of his weird eyes, he’s never really fit in anywhere.  He moves from place to place just trying to survive, but somehow he discovers that the new ice-age did not occur naturally.  It was engineered by extraterrestrials, to make their work easier.  They’re looking for the plans for a super-weapon - a weapon that can cause any star to go nova.  A rival group of aliens hid the plans for this weapon by encoding the information in the human genome millions of years ago.  The marker to identify humans who carry this gene is - you guessed it - yellow-colored eyes.
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?
83802
I remember reading a series when I was around 7th or 8th grade about aliens who had taken over Earth by putting metal caps on people when they were "entering adulthood" to control them (not direct control, but it would keep them from rebelling). There was a faction of people who able to escape and had fake caps and would save teens who were about to be capped.  The main protagonist was a teen boy who was a boxer (or training to be a boxer or something). The aliens would hold tournaments for the humans and whoever won would be "worthy" to serve as personal slaves to the aliens.     The protagonist won and was able to get inside to try and learn more about the aliens from the inside.