I once read a story about the future!  Brain cybernetics were common. If you were &quot;average&quot; you got average brain implants. If you were wealthy you got the latest-and-greatest tech. It was illegal to replace implants (or add new tech) at a later age. One of the characters did so anyway (ended up being hired as a hacker for one of the major leaders in the book). He had a phrase like, &quot;doc, you might as well just close my skull with a zipper 'cause I'll be back&quot; or some such.  Kids coming out of hypersleep/cryogenics would turn on their implants, which turned everyone walking around them into NPC characters in their games, and start running around playing games.  The book had a strong theme about sanity, mental disorders, and how they were embraced productively rather than shunned socially. I remember an old guy who painstakingly re-drew his tattoos rather than having them permanently inked because it would drive him nuts seeing them go blurry with time (he also overfocused on his work and had to be told to eat, he drank something frothy).  The protagonist was a multiple-personality. One of them was, well... randy. (Sorry, I'm a guy, we remember stuff like that.) Getting the multiple personalities to work one-with-another to get the protagonist out of trouble was a key theme in the story. One of the personalities was stark raving mad (considered socially to be a bad thing), but ended up being useful because the madness allowed her to see the dangers lurking in &quot;hyperspace&quot; (I'm not sure that was the word used) so navigators could avoid them. The madness of one of her personalities was critical in saving the ship near the end of the story.   At a guess, I read this back in the mid to late 90s.
1220
I'm looking for a story about a youthful (late teens?) female protagonist who begins the story by making an emergency escape from an orbital habitat. The protagonist is actually host to multiple disassociated (as many as seven?) identities, of whom she is initially unaware. They are capable of holding council internally, however.      Some of the identities/personalities are more sexual than others, leading to intercourse that only some of the personalities actively consented to.   Another spoiler-free notable story piece is a race of aliens who mark their 'naturally present' personalities/identities with a glyph or character on their bodies before venturing into public spaces.  FTL in this story must be performed by a non-human pilot, while the remainder of the occupants are either put to sleep or in suspended animation (I don't recall), due to eldritch somethings in the great beyond that will drive human pilots mad.      The driving action in the story is the protagonist's flight from corrupt human government groups that brutally experimented on her as a child to deliberately induce disassociated identities in an attempt to yield a viable human FTL pilot. The experiments were in fact successful, and the climactic scene involves the protagonist, now reconciled to her multiple personhood, piloting allies through an FTL jump.   I believe it was written in either in the late nineties or early aughts.
52494
About a decade ago, I encountered a novel or a novella that I cannot locate.   The setting was Earth, about one century into the future.  I remember vampires and a mesh of satellites around the Earth that were burning up in the atmosphere.  This motivated a mission to deep space to find the intelligence responsible for the satellites.  Most of the novel focused on the crew of the mission &mdash; I recall that they were not "standard" humans.  They had modifications to their minds and bodies, possibly for the mission.  At the time, I had gone on a binge, reading many short stories, novellas, and novels in quick succession.  I fear that I might be combining several stories into one, especially the vampires and the deep-space first-contact mission, and so I am fully prepared for an answer of the form, "No such story exists."  Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
21872
Some sort of battle school (no, not Ender's Game), where teens are being trained as military commanders.   The control system for their army hinges around some sort of system that requires extremely fine motor control -- being able to "push" around digital representations of military units using a special interface that interprets minute finger movements.  The boy protagonist eventually meets a girl in the battle school, and is astonished to learn that most people do not live as well as he does -- for instance, he gets a fresh jumpsuit outfit every day and disposes of the old one; this is a luxury.  One scene I recall is them kissing for a moment in some sort of underground passageway; the boy protagonist notes the exact length of the kiss, as he has been trained to have heightened time perception.  I don't recall much about other commander characters; I think they have different special abilities, and one other major character might have physical deformities, possibly because of postwar-radiation-related birth defects.  They have been training for an upcoming, prearranged final battle between all the existing national governments; the military units are very possibly robotic or entirely digital in nature, so as to avoid wasting materiel / human life.    They ultimately win the battle, just barely; I think the girl protagonist gives them an edge in the competition by hacking the timing / control system in favor of their team, causing a discrepancy which only the boy protagonist notices due to his heightened perceptions.  It was agreed that the winning government gets dominion over one of the few islands of land left that was not irradiated in some previous war; the protagonists get to live there as a reward for their victory.  I believe the boy protagonist later realizes he's gradually losing his ability to exactly quantify the passage of time.  Published no later than 2004, likely somewhere between 1980-2000, probably sometime in the '90s.
19591
Probably in the late 1960s or early 1970s I read a book the general plotline of which was: a teenage boy builds his own spacecraft that operates by pulling and/or pushing gravity. He takes the home-built craft to Mars where he is stranded when one of the vacuum tubes in the device burns out.  I read the book probably 40 years ago so publication most likely 60s or earlier. A key component of the gravity gadget was a vacuum tube, so that almost certainly pens it in the 50s. Doubt if it was from foreign source, the writing was quite American biased.   I think he traveled alone, but that follow up question made me think his girlfriend might have gone with him.  It has been too many years for that detail to be remembered.   Light sci fi, nothing dark in the storyline. Situational jeopardy, no bad guys. I hate to spoiler the ending just in case someone wants to read it, but I can add if it would help.  OK. It was suggested I include the ending, so (SPOILER ALERT!!!)      After being stranded and surviving quite well, a team from earth arrives to look for him.  A member of the expedition was either his mother (I think) or his father.  What happened was, back home they figured out what he had done, but were unable to duplicate the technology.  And the space agency REALLY wanted that drive.  So the "rescue" mission was really just to try to recover the technology, as they had never expected to find him still alive. Surprise surprise...
113732
I think I read this online in the last ten years, so after 2005 or so. In the story, everyone is online, I think 24/7. People are jaded and always looking for new experiences. The protagonist (or at least narrator) is a woman, I want to say in her 30s (or at least appears as that age), who is considered to be an expert in the area of torture ceremonies. I want to say that her appearance is of her being scarred and twisted by her experiences, although I don't know if that had to do with her meatspace body, or was simply how she portrayed herself.  The only other bit of plot that sticks out in my head was that early in the story, someone (it was a male, and she was thinking of him as being incredibly young) challenges her with a scenario to prove himself, and she was idly commenting how he went for horrific disfiguring torture too early, and tried to compensate by going directly to rape, but that she found his efforts banal.
108350
This is a young adult novel I read within the last 5 years, but I can't say it was new at the time.    (what I remember) Near future.  The main character is a high-school boy.  There is a new computer game.  But you cannot buy it.  Someone gives you a disk with the game copied onto it.  But you have to agree to conditions: you will play only in private; you will not reveal outside the game anything that happens inside the game... After you play a while, the game starts to ask you do perform some seemingly meaningless tasks in the real world.  Most of the time we, the readers, are trying to figure out what is going on: is there something sinister behind this game?    Obviously I remember this book.  But I do not remember the title.  What is it?
23414
Plot Summary/Details  The sharpest memory I have of this one is that it was unusually dense reading. Much more difficult going than most of the sci-fi stuff I'd read by that time (I was 10 or 11, I think).  What I remember in terms of plot is that there is a starship, sent either to explore, or colonize, a distant star system.  I don't remember the names of any of the characters, but I think maybe they discover they are clones?  In any case, something happens to the computer system that the onboard AI becomes sentient and develops a measure of omniscience and omnipotence.  It effectively becomes a god of sorts.  The next part I can remember, and I'm not sure this is the same book or not, is that the ship has forcibly settled the crew on a hostile planet.  All sorts of nasty indigenous life forms live here, and guards are post on the wall outside the settlement to destroy them as they try to enter.  I remember there is a female character standing watch, and she goes over the bestiary in her mind.  One particularly nasty creature paralyzes you, and then burrows up your spine into your brain (or something like that) if it gets a hold of you.  That's all I can recall.  Not a lot of detail, unfortunately, but I'm having a tough time remembering much about this one.  I never finished the book(s), as they were mostly "over my head" at that age.
119449
I read a story in a sci-fi short story collection (about 35 years ago) in which the POV character is fleeing invading aliens with his child in his arms (I think the wife is dead).  He knows he's about to be caught and killed by these rapacious, violent aliens who just want to destroy. Finally, the alien emerges from the trees and the story describes how the hero looks - feline, with a tail.  The hero confronts the killer - man!  It was a cool story that blew my 8th grade mind.  BTW, its not Frenzy.
83993
I'm trying to recall a story I read in the 1960s or 1970s, but which I suspect was older than that.  It was about a quasi-immortal family in the twentieth century who lived in a rural area and kept a low profile. It was a stand-alone story and only the family, and perhaps distant relatives, had unusual powers. I don't think they were aliens, just some offshoot of humanity.   They were of varying ages, ranging from relatively young to thousands of years old. They had lived in Europe before immigrating to the American colonies. Each person had a distinctive set of psi powers, ranging from the grandpa, pa, ma and son. I believe the youngest, just called Baby, was the most powerful and least human looking, and lived in the attic. He slept most of the time.  Nothing remains in my memory of the plot.  As I recall, the story had a Theodore Sturgeon feeling to it, with a humorous, ironic touch, but it probably wasn't his. I haven't been able to identify it from looking at a list of his works.  I probably read it in an anthology, but I might have seen it in an old magazine. I'm just not sure.  If anyone can help me identify it, I'd be grateful. Then I can scratch that mental itch.
37010
Can someone remind me of the name of the author, the name of the hero and the name of the series if any? Adventure Sci-Fi books, short by today's epic standards ( = about same length as Heinlein's shorter youth books), probably published late 50s?, early 60s? by Bantam? or Del Rey? I think at least 30, possibly more than 40 books in the series. Not comic books. The author is not a well-known writer. At least, I don't remember seeing the name on any other books, ever.   Subject: a man who can move and respond to threats extremely fast learns about a secret potion that allows a person to change bodies with someone else and thus control them. A powerful organization does not want the secret to be known, because they use the potion to control politicians on many planets. The organization's goons are people who had surgeries to remove their emotions, and function like organic computers. They can communicate over interstellar distances and follow and murder anyone who learns the secret. I remember the following detail about the potion: there are two nearly identical molecules that have to be assembled in a certain sequence. Two of the components had to be switched around and that determined who would be dominant and who would be controlled during the mind switch / body swap.   Every book finds the hero on another planet with new adventures, and usually taking another deep-sleep-passage to another world, fleeing his pursuers. The background story about the secret potion is dished out little by little in each book.  One book in the series starts like this: hero is on very hot planet, diving for valuable marine life, catches a deadly fungus disease and is rescued last moment in exchange for his catch...  One of the themes that returns often is that the hero is an excellent knife fighter.  Of course he's a womanizer. In the second (or close to 2nd) book in the series, he's involved with a woman who rules a planet.  To travel to another world, he usually takes the cheapest dead-sleep passage, and there's always a 10-25% risk you won't wake up from that.
87825
I am looking for a story about the future of mankind, in which most people have been enslaved in a virtual reality. It ends with the revelation that the people are just lying there imagining their lives with their heads in a trough of feed.  It explains that chemists began to create compounds that could be released into the air to manipulate citizens - causing them to live, shop, think as desired by whoever was in charge. Eventually these tools got subtle enough that they could simulate reality using just these airborne compounds.  This was clearly a prescient view of what later became computer-based virtual reality fiction.
4681
I have very vague impressions of a book I must have read as a child/teenager in the 1980s (so probably published in the UK in the 1970s or early 1980s).  It featured a man who had been technologically enhanced with special powers that he could activate only for short periods (probably because they took a lot of energy), possibly by tonguing one of his teeth.  They gave him:   Much faster reactions; everything around him slowed down. Greater strength/speed. Metal fingernails/claws. Possibly some sort of enhanced vision, too.   I think it described him engaging these powers as: He activated. or similar.  He may have been a mercenary type, who had paid a lot for them; they were rare or unique.  I don't recall any plot or other characters; it was probably a techno-action story.  (No magic, armies, warrior races, telepathy, vampires, or mutants, and I don't recall aliens or space travel.)  It may have been part of a short series of 2 or 3 books.  I'm afraid this isn't much to go on!  I'd completely forgotten about this book until recently, and my impressions are very hazy, so any of the above could be wrong.  (I remember enjoying it, though.)  I've not found anything I recognise on this site, or others; nor in lists of adult and young-person's SF for that period (so it probably wasn't a big-name author).  Does it ring any bells for anyone?
31123
I recall everything about this story except the author and title. Humans have evolved in that women now give birth to six or eight babies in one gestation.   Three couples selected to be colonists by stasis sleep to a known world wake up and find that one girl is dead, (although her six babies survive) and they are on a different planet than the one their ship was aimed.  When the surviving five adults emerge from their spaceship,  they see a multitude of distant floating golden aliens genuflucting to them,  then the aliens form a giant golden double helix in the sky,  then depart in their own spaceship.    The colonists now decide to make the best of this new world,  and populate it.  They call it Viridian,  as it is green and fecund.  There are plenty of dangerous animals on the world. The radiation from the planet seems to indicate the planet is young,  but the presence of vertebrate animal life argues otherwise. There is nothing red on the planet except for the albino girl's eyes,  and  a rare fleeting glimpse of a red mushroom,  that vanishes if anyone tries to get closer. In the end,  everything is explained.    The names of the colonists are Teague,  the Captain,  and Alma (deceased) ; Carl and Moira; Todd (the protagonist) and April (albino girl with red eyes).   They name the three moons as Wynkin, Blynkin, and Nod.   I recall plenty more detail,  but this question seems long enough!  I'll add more detail if anyone thinks it helpful.
46074
I read this while up at my grandparents somewhere around 1990ish. Given how many books they had from when my dad was growing up, there's a decent chance that it's older. It was a novel where the government kept pretty strict control of society. They had some sort of mass entertainment covered because I remember a reference to the government giving the citizens "their bread and circuses" as a reference to the Roman practices. The biggish twist is that the resistance isn't so much actively fighting the government as that they're producing a pressure valve by using their hackers to set up telephone relays which act as support lines. Anyone can call and talk about their troubles. The telephone technology was relatively old — I think I remember them talking about mechanical relays — and they advertised the changing numbers (they had to keep going to new ones as the government shut down the old ones) on flyers that they posted all over the place.  The one bit of imagery that really stuck out to me was where a female member of the resistance was explaining to the male protagonist that, no matter how bad things got, they had to stay on the line, and she recounted one of her first calls involving a mother who'd locked her baby into a high-chair and was flinging spoonfuls of vitriol (acid, but they specifically used the word "vitriol") at the baby as she talked.  I don't think I ever got to finish the book, so I have no idea how it ended.
65447
I am looking for a short story I read long ago about the phone system 'waking up'. It talks about how the phone system had just reached the number of connections as the number in the human brain. They lead you somehow to wonder (maybe characters speculating?) and it ends with a 'baby cry' of all the phones in the world ringing. I think I read it at least 20 years ago, maybe as many as 30. I think it was after 1978 because I think it was after I went to work at Bell Labs - so the phone connection resonated:-). It was definitely pre-internet.   What was the title? Who was the author? Any more on the plot since my memory is very hazy? I remember really liking the story and this site has got me thinking about my ATF's.
40973
I thought this was a trilogy from Michael Moorcock - but maybe not. I can't remember the name of the trilogy or any of the books (the one I read was a three-in-one volume, like The Stainless Steel Rat was).  In book 1, the wisest political and scientific minds on Earth forsee a complete annihilation of the human race on Earth, and build a super spaceship to carry a remnant to a far distant planet - and no hyperspace here... The people were to be kept in cryogenic stasis for a time.  I think the second involves some of the people waking up for some reason.  The third involves several generations later when the people on the spaceship have begun to worship the ship itself (and its computer) as supreme beings, and have no knowledge of the actual facts (that they are on a computer-controlled spaceship vessel). One of the people on the ship dares to "go behind the curtain" (and violates all kinds of religious rules) and finds that they are actually on a computer-controlled ship, and that something has gone wrong and they are about to crash. He saves the day somehow.  UPDATE: Could be by Ben Bova too. I can't remember for sure.
105557
I had a memory surface today of something that I'd read a while ago, and I  can't remember what is was. What I remember was that there as an AI, female I think, who was born on the internet, or the star system-wide network maybe? She was connected/friends with a person, and at one point in the book, she is being sarcastic and he turns off his connection to her. It forces a big reevaluation of their relationship, and eventually, later in the book maybe, he "gives" her to a younger character to take care of?  Does any of this ring a bell with anyone?