Topic: Can anyone help me identify these 2 old books?
yeswab
Ex-Member
posted
CAN YOU HELP ME IDENTIFY THESE BOOKS? I only remember the books, not titles or authors!
FIRST BOOK
One was about some future "federation" of worlds, NOT Star Trek-related.
In this universe, starship captains wear the "ceremonial, antique, but deadly" .45 sidearm. I remember the author was very keen on describing the smell of cordite, whenever the plucky captain had to fire the thing. The standard weapon of personal violence in this world was the SF standby, the "needlegun" or "needler".
Other details: "Space Force" (or whatever it was called) Headquarters was somewhere in the American West, and that prompted several mentions about some well-known mountain peak having been melted away in a past nuclear war. There's a bar scene in which a couple of dancers, members of some anti-Federation underground, are arrested by security troops with needleguns, and of course, someone's face gets blown off with a needlegun (also described with blood-lusty, but deceptively casual-seeming glee by the author). Overall, good book, though.
--------------------------------------- SECOND BOOK:
Some scientist or group of scientists, discerns that sometime in the near future, the earth is going to undergo a catastrophic "reversal of the poles", which will virtually wipe out Civilization. The cries of warning are, of course, ignored by The Public and The Scientific Establshment.
Somehow, these knowledgeable good guys procure the resources to build a redoubt that will withstand the upheaval. Finally, The Time Comes, and all hell breaks loose. Walls of their cavern fortress melt and collapse, and people are horribly injured or killed in their "personal survival cocooons" (or whatever they're called). Amidst the chaos, Our Hero(s) flee their crumbling redoubt, and pause in their flight to mercy-kill a fellow would-be survivor who has been very badly hurt and whose "eyes implore them to release him" or whatever.
In potboiler fashion, the author takes time along the way to gleefully describe how hunky the chief good guy is, and how hot his woman is (of course). In the end, these two prime specimens of full-blooded humanity, are among the few to survive and begin to repopulate the planet and rebuild Society.
posted
Lee; good profile quote from WZ and good, oddly-Sex Pistols-aware Enterprise reference. A compelling combination of the edgy and the dweeby! (I mean this in a nice way, because that's a pretty good description of me!)
IP: Logged
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
The second one sounds moronically unrealistic much in the same way "The Day After Tomorrow" was, in that the main characters can predict catastrophic global changes that would presumably take centuries to develop within a few months or years of them actually happening.
posted
Magneto once tried that. Wolverine decapitated him. That'll teach him to be naughty.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
quote: Other details: "Space Force" (or whatever it was called) Headquarters was somewhere in the American West, and that prompted several mentions about some well-known mountain peak having been melted away in a past nuclear war.
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged
![[Embarrassed]](redface.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic
