The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Q: i dont know the title or the author, but i remember things that happened in the book

5:54 AM

0

I read a book in high school, it was about a foster kid who ran away too many times so he got sent to a boarding school in the mountains. in the boarding school kids could bid on contracts for what chores needed to be done, they were in gangs and before they made the system where certain groups w...

novel young-adult

Q: Does Eru Ilúvatar mean anything?

7:10 AM

0

So I was wondering — (in-universe) does Eru Ilúvatar have meaning in and of itself, besides being the name of the Creator? Is it at all related to any words in Primitive Quendian, for example? And (out-of-universe) did Tolkien derive the name from anything? Or did he just make it up?

tolkiens-legendarium j-r-r-tolkien

7:25 AM

@xkcd Thank god social distancing jokes don't grow old at all.

Q: Harry Potter fanfic about Harry and Hermione dying and then going back in time to their first year selves

9:40 AM

0

There was this Harry Potter fanfic I read on Aldiko book reader. It was about Harry and Hermione dying and then going back in time to their first year selves. However Hermione doesn't remember right away! Harry ends up with the Dursley's. He goes to Hogwarts and is kind of a genius there because ...

story-identification harry-potter fan-fiction

Q: Short story in Sci Fi & Fantasy in the mid to late 90s about a girl scared to get implant

10:18 AM

1

I am looking for a short story I read in the magazine Fantasy and Science Fiction in the mid-1990s, like '94 or '95 maybe. The story is about a preteen girl who is afraid to get a communication implant. She is around 12 and her mom tells her to stop being a baby because all of her friends have al...

story-identification short-stories

Q: Anime about some teens that are trained to fly spaceships

10:37 AM

0

I can't seem to find the name of a space anime where some kids are selected to learn how to fly spaceships. Earth is still habited and the kids fly to outer space to board a vessel where they are taught lessons and have test flights on spacecraft. I remember that the main character seemed to be p...

anime spaceship space

0

Q: Why did Ramdha ask "Which sister are you?"

In Star Trek: Picard, when Soji meets Ramdha in the mess hall, Ramdha asks "Which sister are you?". But I don't remember there being anything about twin sisters in the Admonition. Was there? Or is Ramdha referring to something else?

star-trek star-trek-picard

Q: Was the cliffhanger ending of the animated series Reboot ever resolved in any media?

12:11 PM

1

I rewatched the 1990s CGI series Reboot for the first time since the '90s. I had forgotten that the final season ended on a unresolved cliffhanger due to low ratings shutting down production! Was the resolution ever published in any form? (There is a related live action/animated series on Netfl...

reboot-1994

Q: How did Ripley in Alien 3 get infected?

1:27 PM

0

Could the disgraced Dr. (Charles Dance) have infected Ripley with the injection? Yes, her survival tube was cracked, but we normally see the remains of the parasite after infection when it does the deed. When Ripley is using the scanner to 'see what's inside of her' (the hairline fracture) we ge...

alien-franchise alien-3-1992

1:49 PM

@Alex hope you don't mind... I needed an example with a widely-used username :P

2:21 PM

@NapoleonWilson lately it seems that XKCD as a whole is growing old

2:46 PM

@Jenayah That happens with any creative endeavour that doesn't re-invent itself (usually by bringing in new creators). Watterson famously ended Calvin and Hobbes before it degenerated into Peanuts.

When's the last time the 10th book in a single-author universe was as good as the 2nd?

(Has there been a first time?)

@Jenayah lately?

@b_jonas for about 2 months I'd say

@DavidW Hmm, how do you count "universe" for Asimov's robot & foundation book, and which one happens to be the tenth book counting that way? Never mind, there's a much better example, literature.stackexchange.com/a/263/139 the Poirot books by Agatha Christie. The tenth Poirot book is "Murder on the Orient Express", which is really good. I can't tell if it's better than the second book for sure.

@Jenayah I think xkcd grew old like five years ago.

@DavidW Though it'd be nice to know a more recent example.

Donald.McLean

@DavidW I suspect that Ben Aaronovitch might be able to manage that in his Peter Grant series.

You said tenth book because Deathly Hallows is the ninth book, right?

3:03 PM

Isn't it the seventh?

I guess G. Szabó Judit's book might also count, but they're somewhat thin books.

But I doubt it matters much for the essence of his postulation the how manyth is considered anyway.

@NapoleonWilson Ninth book in the universe, because the two companion (Quidditch through the ages and Fantastic Beasts) books are technically books too.

Oh my.

And yes, those two suck.

JKR should never have written them.

She's bad at worldbuilding, so writing companion books that try to do worldbuilding rather than a story just didn't work.

But yes, ten really good books in the same universe by the same author, that's a really high bar, and I'm not sure if I know any good examples other than Agatha Christie's two series.

Donald.McLean

3:10 PM

If you're going to include the whole universe, then Ben Aaronovitch wins. There's nine books in the main series, and then a bunch of extras, including a half-dozen graphic novels.

Miscounted - eight books in the main series, two novellas, and the graphic novels.

Plus a short story, three "moments" (flash-length), and an audio book

@DavidW ... Do Animorphs count? :-)

@b_jonas I meant the XKCD comics haven't been very funny for two months. They try to, but they're not

I'd think he kind of got that.

@b_jonas I was actually going to say 17th originally, but that seemed overly specific.

3:27 PM

More so than 10th?

@Jenayah You can count anything you like. :) I'm not necessarily sorry to be proved wrong on that point. :)

Well, if I say "17th" people are going to start asking "what series has 17 books in it?" "Why 17?" Whereas with 10, I only get the latter question. :)

What series has 10 books in it, though?

And as you've seen, people did interpret the 10 overly specifically, too.

Points on my side: Amber, The Mallorean, Conan, Dumarest, Xanth, (sigh) Taltos

Though obviously I will have to end you if you say that Moving Pictures (and following) are not as good as The Light Fantastic.

The Mandallorean only has 8 episodes.

Well, I was considering it as a continuation of The Belgariad, since I was talking universes not simply decologies.

3:36 PM

A reasonable approach indeed.

Oh, wait I see what you did there. Sorry, joke fail.

Don't worry, I'm sure they filmed parts of it in Belgrade, too.

3:58 PM

Wait. Discworld is a universe, right?

@DavidW Yes, that.

Isn't it first and foremost a world?

Rand al'Thor

4:49 PM

@DavidW Isn't the other Eddings thing similarly long?

Elenium + Tamuli

I never read it, because I didn't want Eddings to become like Trudi Canavan in my head, a hack who can only write one book series and just writes it over and over again.

5:05 PM

It's not as long; 2 linked trilogies as opposed to pentologies. But yeah, Eddings doesn't have as much authorial range as other writers.

Q: In which order should I watch all the content of Star Wars(including movies and series)?

6:48 PM

-3

I have checked this thread https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/346qai/what_order_to_watch_everything/?utm_source=amp&utm_medium=&utm_content=post_num_comments but can't find any mention of some of some movies and some tv shows which I can see in my Disney plus app Don't know anything ab...

star-wars

0

Q: Is Exterminatus ever used offensively?

It seems to me that it would be useful to send raiding parties deep into enemy territory, equipped with Exterminatus weaponry. Instead of just using Exterminatus as a kind of scorched earth tactic when they are about to lose a world, why does the Imperium not use it on enemy worlds? Or is thi...

warhammer-40k

FuzzyBoots

8:32 PM

@DavidW That does seem sort of suspicious.

@DavidW It's a weird case where he wrote a book or two before The Belgariad, and The Belgariad was essentially an experiment after a writing seminar of "Can I write an entirely cliche book and make it good", and the answer, in my opinion, was yes. And The Mallorean was, in some ways, treading the same ground, but also got into some deconstruction of the narrative with Belgarion having legitimate issues from being a king who grew up as a farmboy.

I never read the follow-up books, but I got the impression that Eddings basically said, "Well, this is what they want me to write, so this is what I'll write."

Q: What was the "Fuel" for Tangent Superman [Harvey Dent's] powers?

9:00 PM

0

The Tangent Superman is a high level psychic and even reality warper from a different reality (Earth 9). However, he started off as a normal human, who got his powers from prenatal gene manipulation using an experimental "Miracle solution" which the US government scrupulously released into a smal...

superman parallel-universe supernatural-abilities superpowers harvey-dent

9:32 PM

@FuzzyBoots It kinda felt like that, yeah. Plus the characters - even back to the Belgariad - tended to all have the same kind of tone.

Q: In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, why didn't the T-1000 assume the form of Todd or Janelle (John's foster parents)?

9:57 PM

0

Why didn't the T-1000 assume the form of Todd or Janelle (John's foster parents), or even just a stranger rather than remaining in the form of the police officer? The only reason John had a head start, and eventually escaped (with the help of the T-800), is because his friend warned him that a po...

the-terminator-series terminator-2-judgment-day

FuzzyBoots

@DavidW Kind of... they tended toward a certain stolid sensibility. In some ways, their ethnicities were what defined them. It's kind of weird listening to the audiobooks for that reason, although the real trip was one conversation between Silk and Belgarion in Guardians of the West where the narrator forgot to do Silk's accent, and it was very jarring to hear Belgarion speak with Silk's words.

There was a thread of dry, deadpan almost snarkiness that was common, IIRC. It's been decades, but I vaguely recall some dialog between C'nedra and Belgarath where it really didn't sound like a teenager talking to a thousand-year-old sorcerer.