#scifi nerds, I need your help identifying an #SF novel I read decades ago
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#scifi nerds, I need your help identifying an #SF novel I read decades ago.
The main characters each possess some sort of device which gives them essentially infinite power. They use it to create and destroy whatever they want, to travel all over the planet, basically anything.
They don't understand how the devices work. Turns out they're connected to giant machines—maybe originally for terraforming?—that are starting to break down, and the knowledge of how to fix them has long since been lost. -
#scifi nerds, I need your help identifying an #SF novel I read decades ago.
The main characters each possess some sort of device which gives them essentially infinite power. They use it to create and destroy whatever they want, to travel all over the planet, basically anything.
They don't understand how the devices work. Turns out they're connected to giant machines—maybe originally for terraforming?—that are starting to break down, and the knowledge of how to fix them has long since been lost.(I am thinking of this novel today because I believe that all-powerful machines which start to break down after humanity has forgotten how they were built or how to fix them because they provided for every need, strikes me as an apt metaphor for what generative AI is going to do to us if we go down the path that Altman and Musk think we should.)
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#scifi nerds, I need your help identifying an #SF novel I read decades ago.
The main characters each possess some sort of device which gives them essentially infinite power. They use it to create and destroy whatever they want, to travel all over the planet, basically anything.
They don't understand how the devices work. Turns out they're connected to giant machines—maybe originally for terraforming?—that are starting to break down, and the knowledge of how to fix them has long since been lost. -
#scifi nerds, I need your help identifying an #SF novel I read decades ago.
The main characters each possess some sort of device which gives them essentially infinite power. They use it to create and destroy whatever they want, to travel all over the planet, basically anything.
They don't understand how the devices work. Turns out they're connected to giant machines—maybe originally for terraforming?—that are starting to break down, and the knowledge of how to fix them has long since been lost.@jik maybe Moorcock's 1981 "Dancers at the End of Time"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dancers_at_the_End_of_Time
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#scifi nerds, I need your help identifying an #SF novel I read decades ago.
The main characters each possess some sort of device which gives them essentially infinite power. They use it to create and destroy whatever they want, to travel all over the planet, basically anything.
They don't understand how the devices work. Turns out they're connected to giant machines—maybe originally for terraforming?—that are starting to break down, and the knowledge of how to fix them has long since been lost.@jik Is it one of the Ship Who Sang series?
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@jik maybe Moorcock's 1981 "Dancers at the End of Time"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dancers_at_the_End_of_Time
That was my first thought.
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@jik maybe Moorcock's 1981 "Dancers at the End of Time"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dancers_at_the_End_of_Time
Yes! I think that's it as well! (I was a huge Moorcock fan in the 1980s)! It sounds wicked familiar! @reallyzen @jik
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#scifi nerds, I need your help identifying an #SF novel I read decades ago.
The main characters each possess some sort of device which gives them essentially infinite power. They use it to create and destroy whatever they want, to travel all over the planet, basically anything.
They don't understand how the devices work. Turns out they're connected to giant machines—maybe originally for terraforming?—that are starting to break down, and the knowledge of how to fix them has long since been lost.@jik
It's roughly the plot of the Soul Rider series by Jack Chalker, mass market paperback series started from 1984 -
@jik
It's roughly the plot of the Soul Rider series by Jack Chalker, mass market paperback series started from 1984@DelilahTech I don't think this is it.
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Yes! I think that's it as well! (I was a huge Moorcock fan in the 1980s)! It sounds wicked familiar! @reallyzen @jik
@DoomsdaysCW @reallyzen Hmm. So.
It turns out I actually have all three of the Dancers at the end of Time books on my bookshelf in the "books I haven't looked at in decades" section.
So it _could be_ that.
But I read the Wikipedia plot summaries, and they don't sound quite like the book(s) I remember.
Here's my theory: I probably read them when I was a pre-teen, so maybe a lot of the stuff in the synopsis just went completely over my head then, and didn't stick in my brain? -
@DoomsdaysCW @reallyzen Hmm. So.
It turns out I actually have all three of the Dancers at the end of Time books on my bookshelf in the "books I haven't looked at in decades" section.
So it _could be_ that.
But I read the Wikipedia plot summaries, and they don't sound quite like the book(s) I remember.
Here's my theory: I probably read them when I was a pre-teen, so maybe a lot of the stuff in the synopsis just went completely over my head then, and didn't stick in my brain?@DoomsdaysCW @reallyzen The thing that's tripping me up is that it seems like time travel plays a significant role in the Dancers books, and I don't remember that _at all_ in the books I read.
But like I said, maybe I just forgot? -
#scifi nerds, I need your help identifying an #SF novel I read decades ago.
The main characters each possess some sort of device which gives them essentially infinite power. They use it to create and destroy whatever they want, to travel all over the planet, basically anything.
They don't understand how the devices work. Turns out they're connected to giant machines—maybe originally for terraforming?—that are starting to break down, and the knowledge of how to fix them has long since been lost.@jik it's a bit outside of your description, but it sounds like what happens when Teela eats the tree-of-life root and becomes a slightly dodgy pak protector in Ringworld. Pak protectors featurein other parts of Tales From Known Space as well, notably they have an artificial world of islands on which they stock samples of every known race, but shit is a little bit broken there.
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#scifi nerds, I need your help identifying an #SF novel I read decades ago.
The main characters each possess some sort of device which gives them essentially infinite power. They use it to create and destroy whatever they want, to travel all over the planet, basically anything.
They don't understand how the devices work. Turns out they're connected to giant machines—maybe originally for terraforming?—that are starting to break down, and the knowledge of how to fix them has long since been lost. -
#scifi nerds, I need your help identifying an #SF novel I read decades ago.
The main characters each possess some sort of device which gives them essentially infinite power. They use it to create and destroy whatever they want, to travel all over the planet, basically anything.
They don't understand how the devices work. Turns out they're connected to giant machines—maybe originally for terraforming?—that are starting to break down, and the knowledge of how to fix them has long since been lost.@jik the other title I'm thinking of is more fantasy, being the Wind Singer
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@jik it's a bit outside of your description, but it sounds like what happens when Teela eats the tree-of-life root and becomes a slightly dodgy pak protector in Ringworld. Pak protectors featurein other parts of Tales From Known Space as well, notably they have an artificial world of islands on which they stock samples of every known race, but shit is a little bit broken there.
@northernscrub nah that's not it, sounds cool though
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@jik the other title I'm thinking of is more fantasy, being the Wind Singer
@northernscrub Nope, that's not what I'm thinking of. The plot isn't right and it was published much too late for when I would have read the book.
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@DoomsdaysCW @reallyzen The thing that's tripping me up is that it seems like time travel plays a significant role in the Dancers books, and I don't remember that _at all_ in the books I read.
But like I said, maybe I just forgot?@DoomsdaysCW @reallyzen I suppose I'm going to have to read Dancers at the end of Time again to settle this.
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#scifi nerds, I need your help identifying an #SF novel I read decades ago.
The main characters each possess some sort of device which gives them essentially infinite power. They use it to create and destroy whatever they want, to travel all over the planet, basically anything.
They don't understand how the devices work. Turns out they're connected to giant machines—maybe originally for terraforming?—that are starting to break down, and the knowledge of how to fix them has long since been lost.@jik it's not the novel you're looking for, and probably more recent, but there are similarities with Karl Schroeder's Ventus, which I really enjoyed a mere couple of decades ago, and will take the opportunity to recommend.
TIL there was a followup prequel, so thank-you for the prompt to discover this!
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@DoomsdaysCW @reallyzen I suppose I'm going to have to read Dancers at the end of Time again to settle this.
I lost my copy (or else I borrowed one from a friend). Now I want to read it again! @jik @reallyzen
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#scifi nerds, I need your help identifying an #SF novel I read decades ago.
The main characters each possess some sort of device which gives them essentially infinite power. They use it to create and destroy whatever they want, to travel all over the planet, basically anything.
They don't understand how the devices work. Turns out they're connected to giant machines—maybe originally for terraforming?—that are starting to break down, and the knowledge of how to fix them has long since been lost.The "Forbidden Planet" was published under the name W. J. Stuart (a pseudonym of Philip MacDonald).
In Forbidden Planet, the godlike capability is primarily from a planet-wide (underground) machine, not one handheld item per protagonist. It’s common for recollections to compress that into “devices” (e.g., personal access/controls) because the machine effectively makes thought into reality at planetary scale.
