So I read a book back in school (2000s), didn't finish it for whatever reason, and have been unable to remember the name or anything outside of a few small details.  Note, it's not Ender's Game or The Giver.  The details I know are:   Main characters are boys aged 8-17ish. They're raised in a school/facility of sorts where everything adheres to a strict schedule. They sleep in 'pods' and have very little freedom. The main boys (I forget but I think there are 2-3) want to escape or to at least see the outside world. When they try to do so, the 'teacher' of sorts (as well as a security team) go after them. The teacher is an ex-soldier or special force unit, as when he gets hit in the face and his nose is broken, he is able to mentally move the pain around. As in, concentrate and move it from his broken nose to another part of his body to 'deal with later', so he can continue to chase after the boys.   That's all I have, but I would really appreciate any help! I've been looking for years. :(
6542
I can't really remember how long ago it was, but I think the book was marketed towards children/teens.  All I remember is the basic premise of the story.  Some story about these unusual little blue electric critters that only certain people could see, and these kids took it upon themselves to go about destroying them since they fed off energy or something like that.  Not sure whether they fed off people or off electricity... or both maybe?  I think the dominant method of destroying them was an electric baton that was taken from law enforcement.  I wanna call them buzz batons, but that's probably thanks to Artemis Fowl.
15734
My dad read a book series that he recommended to me last year. Now that I am ready to start it, neither of us can recall the title. He said there were several in the series but he can't recall how many.   The book is about traveling to a new planet, presumably with the goal of colonizing it. The crew are clones who have no memory. I think the goal was for the older original versions of the clones to transfer their consciousness into the clone bodies to be able to live on the new planet but something goes wrong.   There is an indigenous species on the planet who are humanoid but have kangaroo like tails.   The clone crew has markings on them that they don't understand until late. Apparently they are markings to indicate status or role on the new world. The person who they voted as there leader, it turns out, is marked as a servant or slave class.
76902
I read this story about five years ago (so make it about 2009) and the book (from the library) was reasonably tattered, but I'd say only 5 to 10 years old (this is just a rough guess). This was a novel, I think about 300 pages, but again I don't recall it very well so that could also be completely wrong.  I do remember it wasn't a huge tome though.  Most importantly: the narrative.  This story involved a teenage boy who was recruited by a man on a motorbike to help in some expedition; I think they were part of a group involved in some sort of missions against an evil group (again I can't recall exactly what).  This man (who I think was his Uncle 'Bob' or something like that) took him to a subway station and they only just made it to a portal to another world.  I think I'm missing a huge portion of the story, but at the end I recall they ended up in another world (through a portal of some description).  It was an ice world with a pre-Industrial civilization.  The key part of this novel that was members of this group trying to thwart the antagonists could only use a dog whistle; nothing else from a different world/time period could be used in that place.  This was emphasized regularly and when the main character went to the ice world, he got into considerable grief with his mentor (the Uncle Bob character) for using a torch from his original time period.  I think it was set about the early 2000s.  One last piece of information I recall was that this guy was regularly going on about three girls who were perfect at everything they touched.  He had a crush on one called Courtney.  Sorry for the vague details at the beginning, but hopefully the narrative description could prove useful.  Thanks ;)
35750
My son was telling me about a book that he read last year in class that had a picture of a bee on the cover, but where its abdomen is a syringe (with the needle in place of a stinger). It was kind of post-apocalyptic where people were being driven insane by bee stings or something. Somehow he's not even sure of the major plot points. :)  Anyway, we would like to figure out the title and author of this book. Apparently it is fairly recent, and a second book in the series was released this year.
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?
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.
111100
I read a book 12 years ago.  I believe it had Ever on its name.   It was about these high schoolers that went to sleep and woke up in a world of magic or medieval. I do know that when they went to sleep that would travel back and forth. I know it's not much but if you can help thank you.
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?
21468
I'm trying to identify a book (or possibly a series, as I seem to recall reading a sequel which still left the story unfinished).  I read the book or books in the early 90's and had picked them up from a jumble sale at school, so they were probably published in the 80's or possibly 70's. I guess you would class them as YA fiction, though that wasn't really such a thing back then...  As I recall the story began with a slave transport craft crash landing on an alien world, with only a handful of teenage and pre-teen humans surviving. They scraped together what they could, including a couple of functional 'sunguns' (basically, laser rifles) and began a low level guerilla rebellion against the alien race that were using humanity as slave labour on the planet.  I've googled 'sungun' repeatedly, thinking that this should be the best way of finding the story but the references that come up are all for other stories or conspiracy technologies.  Anyone got any vague recollections of a book or series like this?
74042
Here's what I remember:  The boy is 5 years old, and has been for some time, because there's a bit in which he recalls turning 5 (celebrating his 5th birthday) many different times  There's a robot nanny in the apartment with him that he learned to disable so that he can hang out with the girl, who he isn't supposed to know. (In my mind the nanny bears somewhat of a resemblance to Muthr from the Wondla series... however I definitely read this story well before reading Wondla)  There's a neighbor girl who teaches him to read (I think she's like 9), and when they first meet she asks how old he is (5 is the last age at which growth/development can be successfully (and safely?) suspended) and he lies, saying that he's 6, but doesn't know why he does.  When a child whose aging process has been stopped learns how to read, they begin aging normally again, so the parents don't want them to learn to read.  The children who have stopped aging are kept apart from other children who grow normally-- they have separate playgrounds and the like  The injection/serum used to halt the aging process was developed by a scientist, who when he first shared his findings had a 5 year old son and injected him, then told the onlookers/potential buyers/other parents to come back in 20(?) years. When they did, their children were adults and no longer needed them or were ungrateful layabouts, and the scientist's son was still 5 years old, cute, needy, etc.  The main character has a discussion about how he wants to turn 6 with his parents and they agree but only because he's already learned to read and it's irreversible.  It's kinda dark and emphasizes the need that parents have to feel wanted. Please help! I remember it so vividly and I'd love to read it again!
39107
I'm trying to recall the title of a young adult-targeted book. It was probably published by Scholastic, or at least sold through their take-home pamphlets, which means it was probably published before I started high school in 1996. It's about a group of teenagers who receive invitations to play a game at an invitation-only arcade. When they go there, they are put in an immersive VR game in which they must learn to survive on an alien planet. I believe the game ends and they wake up back in the real world after they fall asleep on the alien one. They are invited back the the game a couple times, and then it turns out…      …they go to play the game again, but they are unable to exit it. Eventually they realize that they actually are on an alien planet now, and that the previous game-playing sessions were just training for the real thing. I believe the epilogue states that all of the players have coupled up and the females have become pregnant, and they are optimistic about populating the new planet.   I think it was told in the first-person perspective of a female player. I don't think there was a real protagonist or strong conflict; just the group of players learning how to survive in the game. One of the other players had a photographic memory and used it to map the planet's surface. I think the cover art featured of a girl wearing a VR headset over her eyes, with her hair being blown back and her mouth open in surprise.
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.
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.
50948
I'm trying to help a teacher friend of mine with finding a short story he read when he was a teenager and has not been able to find since.  He described the story in the following way:  In a post-war world there is a setup in which Soviet/Russian soldiers are required to fight against American soldiers in an arena in which both sides have equal setup: a forest, a lake, etc. The winner of the 'game' has the right to govern for the next several years.  It's told from a first person point of view like you're watching the Olympic games and one American soldier gets shot, but is not killed.  He falls and other bodies fall on top of him so it seems the soviets win, however their last two soldiers happen upon him and he kills them first, rendering the United States victorious.  Given that he was the only survivor he has a sort of political amnesty in which he can do no wrong legally. He returns home and he essentially suffers from a form of PTSD.  The story ends with him watching a young girl next door get off the school bus; he walks to the neighbor's home, goes inside and, in front of the girl's parents follows the girl into her room and shuts the door, leaving the reader to assume whatever happens behind the door.  He's been looking for this story in different anthologies for some time.  Can anyone help?  Thanks so much! :)
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.
75032
I am trying to remember title (and author) of best sci-fi book i have ever read (at least thats what my fading memory tells me).  Plot revolves around multiple-universe theories - set on earth, 'hero' is given a brain implant that allows him to decide which future he wants to exist in (eg: coin toss produces 2 universes - one where it is heads, one tails) - he can 'choose' which of the 2 possible futures to take. The unchosen future is destroyed or disappears somehow(?).  Hero is tasked with finding a young girl who has same ability but can do it without implant. Plan is to find and kill her because the effect of her decisions (and now his) are affecting whole universe and aliens have wrapped solar system in some kind of event horizon to cut us off from universe until we sort out the problem.  Cant remember any real specifics; - lots of action (tech, guns etc), bladerunner-ish. Read it around 1990-5.  Googling hasnt got me anywhere but title potentially something like "sphere of influence. 2150"  If i can find this book, i will be eternally grateful.
102597
I'm not even sure if this book even exists or I have dreamed it. It's about a girl, I remember she had an older brother that went somewhere (war I think) once he reached a certain age. The oldest one died, and the birthday of the the middle one was just around the corner, so he was the next one to go.  I do remember they were really poor and lived in a somewhat caste society or there is some hierarchy. One day mom sent her into the city to do some work (tailoring?) but she had also some plans there so she tried to hide from guards. When she started to get out of the city some rebels made chaos, she almost got caught.