Escape Artists

Escape Pod => Science Fiction Discussion => Topic started by: childoftyranny on May 07, 2012, 11:00:38 PM

Title: Forgetting the Title and Author of a book spells doom?
Post by: childoftyranny on May 07, 2012, 11:00:38 PM

Its a long shot but I'm wondering if anyone else has come across a book where the plot revolves around the plot to break into a golden pyramid where people were cryogenically frozen and then weapons of choice where nanobot goos that would consume the material around them to form into tanks and ammunition and ordinance?

Title: Re: Forgetting the Title and Author of a book spells doom?
Post by: Listener on May 08, 2012, 07:39:54 PM

Slant, by Greg Bear? I seem to remember a lot of discussion about nanotech and wanting to break into something... but that's about all I remember.

Title: Re: Forgetting the Title and Author of a book spells doom?
Post by: childoftyranny on May 09, 2012, 10:03:08 AM

I think that might be it, the diagnosing toilets and transforming prostitutes do sound familiar, that sounds really weird as I read it after typing it.

Title: Re: Forgetting the Title and Author of a book spells doom?
Post by: Listener on May 09, 2012, 03:40:35 PM

Quote from: childoftyranny on May 09, 2012, 10:03:08 AM

I think that might be it, the diagnosing toilets and transforming prostitutes do sound familiar, that sounds really weird as I read it after typing it.

I believe Amazon calls those "statistically-improbable phrases".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistically_Improbable_Phrases

Two of the other scenes I remember from Slant are the bouncer-who-can-tell-your-gender-and-how-you-changed-it and the woman who "boldly" uses the Tetragrammaton.

Title: Re: Forgetting the Title and Author of a book spells doom?
Post by: childoftyranny on May 10, 2012, 12:10:06 AM

Conveniently my library has a borrowable ebook so I can read a few chapters and see if I'll bother buying a copy, I read the libraries last time and it was several years ago, thank you again for remembering the title though, oddly enough, I was convinced that it was a Greg Bear book for some reason.

As a bit of a tangent I was pondering Greg Bear books, thinking of Darwin's Radio and realized that it bears notable similarties to Childhood's End though the new humans in Bear's book were far less likely to end their parent species.

I think that after only a few pages we can add "the frozen dead" and  "corpsicles" to the list of "statistically-improbable phrases(words)"

Title: Re: Forgetting the Title and Author of a book spells doom?
Post by: Umbrageofsnow on May 11, 2012, 04:10:05 AM

Quote from: childoftyranny on May 10, 2012, 12:10:06 AM

As a bit of a tangent I was pondering Greg Bear books

Ha! Tangents was my first exposure to Greg Bear, it's the collection with "Blood Music" (another SIP?).

Honestly, although I haven't been as enthusiastic about Bear lately, I think I enjoyed Darwin's Radio more than Childhood's End, although they're both vitals of good SF.