Skip to main content

story identification - Trying to remember the title of a sci-fi book I read in the 80's?




I read this sci-fi book back around 1987 that my father had finished. My memory of the book is sadly very limited, but the emotion of enjoying it string prompting me to try and remember it. My clear memories are it is set in a spaceship, there is a crew (or team) that might have been space pirates or thieves of some sort. The encounter an alien of some type that I believe was described as spider-like with ultrathin (practically invisible to the human eye) legs that could slice through the members of the crew.


I know this is very little to go on, but does this ring a bell with anyone? I'd love to re-read it now that I'm older.



Answer



I think this may be George R. R. Martin's "Tuf Voyaging".


enter image description here


In the first part of the book, a team of archeologists and mercenaries discover the Ark, a huge and powerful ecological war ship dating from a long-past interstellar war. The team falls apart quickly as everyone tries to gain control of the ship for themself. One of the mercenaries gets control of the Ark's biological weapons system (monsters from hundreds of different worlds) and starts using it against the others.


Here's the spider-like alien with ultra-thin legs:



A spi­der, then. A weird one. The rocky ap­pear­ance made him think it was some kind of sil­i­con-based life. He’d heard of that, here and there. It was real god­damned rare. So he had some kind of sil­i­con-spi­der here. Big deal. Kaj Nevis moved closer. Damn, he thought. The web, or what he thought was the web … hell, the damned thing wasn’t sit­ting on the web, it was part of the web. Those fine, thin, shiny web strands grew out of its body, he saw. He could barely make out the join­ings. And there were more than he thought—hun­dreds of them, maybe thou­sands, most of them too thin to be seen from any kind of dis­tance at all, but when you looked at them from the right angle, you could see the light gleam­ing off them, all sil­very-faint.




And yes, the ultra-thin legs are shown to slice-and-dice very nicely.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.
Post a Comment
Read more

aliens - Interstellar Zoo story

I vaguely remember this story from my childhood: it was about an interstellar zoo that came to Earth with lots of bizarre and unusual species, and humans would file through and gape at all the crazy looking creatures from other planets. The twist came at the end when the perspective shifted to the other side of the bars and we discovered that the "creatures" were traveling through space on a kind of safari. They thought they were the visitors and we were the animals. Neither side knew that the other side thought they were the zoo creatures. Answer Got it. Zoo, by Edward D. Hoch. Published in 1958. Link to Publication History Link to PDF
Post a Comment
Read more

harry potter - What is the difference between Diffindo and Sectumsempra?

In the Harry Potter books, Diffindo is called the 'Severing Charm' and it’s most commonly used to cut ropes and the like. However, in the last book Hermione uses it on Ron but misses, creating a 'slash in his jeans' and his knee gets cut, causing him to 'roar in pain'. We've only seen Sectumsempra used once on screen when Harry directly uses it on Malfoy in the sixth book, but there it's mentioned that he is 'waving his wand wildly'. Wouldn't Diffindo, if used in such a fashion also cause a similar effect? Similarly, if it was able to cut Ron, it would also be able to, say, chop off an ear (George's)? In that case, how are these two spells different, except for Sectumsempra seemingly used exclusively to hurt humans? Answer While Diffindo and Sectumsempra both can be countered by other spells, Diffindo is far more easily countered. Reparo, a relatively common spell, can completely reverse its effect when used once. “He pulled the old cop...
Post a Comment
Read more

harry potter - How could Expelliarmus beat Avada Kedavra?

I want to be very careful about how I ask this question – I am not asking How did Voldemort die? [CLOSED] Below the text is the relevant passages from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows if anyone wants to review them (I'm sorry for the amount of text). How did Expelliarmus beat Avada Kedavra and kill Voldemort? I feel the reason Harry's Expelliarmus overpowered Voldemort's Avada Kedavra curse has to do with who was master of the Elder Wand and how the Elder Wand works. I've always had trouble understanding fully how the Elder Wand works, though. How much did the fact that Voldemort never truly won or mastered the Elder Wand factor into how Expelliarmus reacted to Avada Kedavra and caused Avada Kedavra to rebound and kill Voldemort? An answer based in book canon would be especially welcome, but any canon source really is fine. Harry heard the high voice shriek as he, too, yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco’s wand: ‘ Avada Kedavra !’ ‘ Expelliarmus !...
Post a Comment
Read more