I wanted to start a thread where people can share your favorite (or one of your favorite) stories. It can be from any medium: books, comics, tv, movies, etc… Try no avoid spoilers (if you can).
One of my favorite tv shows, although I wasn’t alive to see it when it originally aired, is an episode of the Outer Limits called The Architects of Fear. A group of people are trying to unify all of mankind by faking an alien invasion.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the trilogy in 5 parts that is "The Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy". Might be a bit too classic, but it is genuinely one of my best read.
I also happen to like "concept" album that somehow tell a story through the songs. 2 comes to my mind:
-Metropolis Part 2: Scenes from a Memory, by Dream Theater.
-Heartland, by Owen Pallett.
Both are very good album by themsleves, but the fact that there is a storyline joining the songs toghether makes those pieces of art even better, in my opinion.
Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure. I have no idea how people can access it in this day and age but it's the single best story I've seen someone tell. (As opposed to novels/TV/movies)
Yes Phantaskippy, that is the amazing live show of Dave Gorman. His comedy is astounding because most of it is just a true story and not comedy.
Oh, goodness...now that I know what a googlewhack is, I absolutely must find several!
I was a Googlewhack once, because of a time when I started a LiveJournal to work on poetry.
I stopped when I met my future wife and showed her and she showed them to my sister and everyone laughed at me for months. They were the absolute worst. Fortunately there are more websites now that match that search, and even more fortunately I was able to get rid of that LiveJournal so there's no way anyone will ever send me a message telling me I'm a Googlewhack and my poetry is an embarrasment to human civilization ever again.
It is actually a lot harder to find them now.
That's it! I know it's two hours, but I really cannot recommend it strongly enough. I've shown it to several dozen people at this point, and no one has ever regretted watching it. (It really sucks you in.)
I've seen Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure several times - I used to have a friend who had it on DVD. That wasn't Dave Gorman's first such show - that was "Are You Dave Gorman?", wherein he tries to seek out a certain number of other Dave Gormans in the world (54 - one for each card in a deck, including the Jokers :D). Then there was Dave Gorman's Important Astrological Experiment (or something along those lines, I may not have the title exactly right) in which he follows his horoscope in precise detail for a certain amount of time (can't remember how long, maybe a month or something) to see if it makes him measurably more happy :D. The Googlewhack Adventure and "Are you Dave Gorman?" are also available in book form and he has done a bunch of other books since then in which he's engaged in various other strange/silly adventures - I recall one is called "Dave Gorman Unchained" (travels around America and stays only in independently-owned places, no chain hotels or anything) and another is something like "Dave Gorman Versus the World" (he goes in search of people to play games with).
If you like those, it may also be worth checking out the books by his friend and former flatmate Danny Wallace...in fact, it's Danny who sets the target number of Dave Gormans for Dave to find in Dave's first book :D. Off the top of my head, there's "Join Me" (he starts a cult by accident), "Yes Man" (which was made into a film that as far as I'm aware shares only the name in common...anyway, he basically decides to "say yes more"), and "Friends Like These" (he goes in search of a bunch of people he knew in pimary school). Danny also used to present a game show which I think was called "School's Out", in which various well-known TV people would undergo a series of questions themed around the kind of stuff they were taught in school (including a French oral exam). I remember seeing a few episodes and finding it pretty funny. Oh, and Danny also decided to start his own country, consisting of his flat (which I think was in London) and which he named "Lovely". He even got a national anthem written to it and I'm pretty sure I still know all the words :D
I dunno if you can tell, but I am pretty familiar with the works of both Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace :D.
You still do!
Dave Gorman also did a radio series called Genius (which was later turned into a TV series) where members of the public submitted ideas for inventions and he and a "celebrity" guest judged their genius, or not. I was fortunate enough to go see one of the (radio) recordings, it was a lot of fun!
I've always been a fan of the Chronicles series set in the Dragonlance realm. It has a lot or relatable characters and they each have their own motivations which get played out. I like the feeling of taking part of an epic RPG session as I read through it.
Ooh yeah, I forgot about Genius - I've only ever seen a couple of episodes of it ;).
Cool, I like the DragonLance novels too...in fact, I'm currently re-reading them for something like the third or fourth time :D. My favourite three races on Krynn also happen to combine into the title of one of the anthologies...
My favorite Terry Pratchett book is "Thief of Time". Covers so many themes I enjoy.
I like all the Discworld books. The ones involving Death and his family tend to be the most interesting for me. I am also a huge fan of "Small Gods".
I tried and tried and eventually looked up the question, "Are googlewhacks still possible?" which humorously leads to Dave Gorman's website, where he claims they are no longer possible due to nature of Google search these days. Sad day, not currently living in 2003.
I can enthusiastically second the recommendation for all of Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace's books (except the Gentlemen one, which I haven't read).
(While we're on Dave Gorman, found poetry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTZmDPhJ5NM)
Favourite story is an interesting question - probably Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy. To quote a friend:
"They're about politics and people and economic policies and refugees and government and the role of good and evil in ruling and they're about magic and nature and subversions or perversions of both... They're also about faith and religion and the nature of truth. And in that I think they're quite unlike anything else I've ever read. The ending managed to be entirely unexpected while also being satisfying and wrapping up all things that needed to be wrapped up. How? I have no idea. Magic. Wordsmithery. Sanderson has a very unique way of thinking, I reckon, and it shows in his writing."
I heartily recommend them.
Wow
Such a good thread...! You know, sometimes you just don't know what to read or watch? This thread will fix this problem for me for a bit...! :)
A lot of my favorites are ARGs to be honest. The Beast, I Love Bees, our very own little game here. I love the intersection of reality and game. Unfiction has a pretty good wiki.
BlueHairedMeerkat: If you like Mistborn, check out The Black Prism by Brent Weeks!
Favorite story. You want me to pick one? Hah!
I've been on a Seanan McGuire binge recently, so I'll talk about her stuff.
My favorite of her series is the October Daye series. It's urban fantasy about October Daye, a San Francisco changeling. But rather than the Halloween kitchen sinks that are so popular (vampires, werewolves, and witches), Toby's world is filled with fairies. And not the Tinkerbelle kind. Oberon, Titania, and Mab, Seelie and Unseelie, Coblynau, Banshee, Kelpies, Kitsune, Puca, Undine, and many more. Toby is a PI in the human world, and a hero and a knight for the fairies. Or at least she was - the first book opens with Toby being turned into a fish for 14 years. Yes, you read that right.
Every book title comes from a line of Shakespeare, which gives some hints to what makes this series different from so many other urban fantasies. These are not stories of modern magic. They are stories of ancient and unchanging faerie realms coming into contact with the modern world, and of the people who have to walk the line between them, and try not to fall off.
McGuire's other big series is called InCryptid. It's also urban fantasy, but rather than faeries, InCryptid is about (you guessed it!) cryptids. Chupacabras, Bigfoots (Bigfeet?), Nessie, Jackalopes, Aeslin Mice* and many more. The Price family used to belong to the Covenant of St. George, which is dedicated to wiping out all cryptids, but the Prices decided that policies of extinction made you the monsters, rather than the other way around, and they quit. They did not quit training, however, which is why the Price version of hide and seek involves pit traps, and no Price would ever be caught out of the house with fewer than five concealed weapons. Not even Verity, who wants to be a professional latin ballroom dancer.
I consider the InCryptid series to be lighter fare than October Daye, but they are great fun. And don't miss out on the two dozen (yes, really!) short stories that are posted on McGuire's website!
Sparrow Hill Road is a stand alone. It's technically in the same universe as InCryptid, but it feels very different. There are no cryptids on Sparrow Hill Road. Instead there are ghosts. Specifically, hitchhiking ghosts. Sparrow Hill Road tells the classic ghost story of the hitchhiking ghost, but this time it's told from the perspective of the ghost. Sparrow Hill Road was originally written as a series of short stories about Rose Marshall. They were rewritten a bit when they were collected, but it still feels like a bundle of short stories. But they tell an overarching story as well.
Every Heart a Doorway is another stand-alone (at least for now) and is a novella. The premise follows a teenage girl coming to a boarding school for children who have come back from Narnia/Oz style fantasy adventures, but would have preferred not to have returned to Earth. They've come back after years of adventures to find that only a few weeks or months have passed, and they've grown up in ways that their parents can't understand, so they come to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children where they don't have to pretend that it was all just a dream, learn to live in a world that doesn't fit quite right, and maybe, maybe find their doorway back home.
*the Aeslin Mice are McGuire's own invention, and they are quite possibly the best fantasy species ever invented. Sapient mice who are deeply religious and worship the main characters' family as gods. They greet most things and people with cheers and cries of "HAIL!", have perfect memories (and a tendency to turn mundane events into sacred holidays at a moments notice), and are easily bribed with cheese and cake. They are adorable, hilarious, and wonderful.
My favourite story is "Watchers" by Dean Koontz. It's basically a love letter to dogs disguised as a sci fi plot but is also filled with a lot of insight into depression anxiety and self isolation. This book got me into Koontz and I read a lot of his stuff for a while, but this is best work
What's on my mind right now is the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. I don't need to state why, because it has already been said. Excellent series. It needs to be a TV show or movie series.