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+--- Thread: Trying to remember a book or series of books (/showthread.php?tid=13862)
Trying to remember a book or series of books - Bob Schroeck - 06-11-2020
I'm trying to recall the name/titles and author of a series of SF books, vintage 1980s IIRC, in which psionic teleportation is an established talent, and some kind of organization trains and employs all teleporters to handle interstellar shipping. The teleportation talent has very strict, very consistent rules -- a maximum mass somewhere just below 1000kg, needing to match velocities between origin and destination using an "elsewhere" full of energy that can be drawn on or added to, and a few other things that all apply to all teleporters equally.
The catch is, the organization conditions/hypnotizes/mind controls its trainees to be very unimaginative with their use of their talent. The protagonist's roommate somehow finds this out and because he can't figure out why anyone would want that he jiggers the device in their room that does this so they're not affected (then disappears from the story, I forget why). So protagonist grows up, gets his assignment, and starts working and making a good living without this conditioning... and when he ends up in the dangerous situations that make up the plot of the books, he realizes just how much of a weapon his teleportation talent can be if he does something like, say, take that just-under 1000kg of air, adds a lot of velocity from the energy space, and drops it on top of the enemy...
Does this ring any bells for anyone? Thanks.
RE: Trying to remember a book or series of books - nocarename - 06-11-2020
It sounds a lot like The Journeys of McGill Feighan by Kevin O'Donnell Jr. If the roommate also did something with a voice activated computer in their apartment, then you probably have your series.
RE: Trying to remember a book or series of books - DHBirr - 06-11-2020
I don't know, nocarename; if it was the McGill Feighan books, wouldn't Bob have remembered and narrowed the possibilities down by mentioning the whole "Chosen by An Alien Emissary" business from Feighan's infancy? As I recall, obsession with that incident often seemed to be close to constant among the characters. Granted, the description of the protagonist's line of work sounds pretty much spot on....
RE: Trying to remember a book or series of books - Bob Schroeck - 06-11-2020
(06-11-2020, 01:38 PM)nocarename Wrote: It sounds a lot like The Journeys of McGill Feighan by Kevin O'Donnell Jr. If the roommate also did something with a voice activated computer in their apartment, then you probably have your series.
That's it!
I have only the vaguest memory of the series, but that name rang the bell big time. Time to find copies somewhere, because I borrowed them from a friend to read and never had my own set.
Thank you!
RE: Trying to remember a book or series of books - nocarename - 06-11-2020
I've misplaced my copy of Volume I: Caverns, so I had honestly forgotten everything about McGill's childhood.
Different series question for me.
This would be a SF series aimed at young adults. No later than the nineties, but I'm not sure when they were actually published because I found them at one of the local library branches.
The characters are the children of workers on a terraforming project and the common insult of the setting is 'vacbrain' or 'vacskull'. I also think that there was some telepathy? Any hints would be nice.
RE: Trying to remember a book or series of books - aku - 06-11-2020
As a counterpoint, the first sentences of the description caused me to believe that it was Anne McCaffrey's Talent Universe but then it veered off.
RE: Trying to remember a book or series of books - Star Ranger4 - 06-14-2020
Well, I am happy to hear I was wrong. I was thinking it was the Anne Mccaffrey series "To Ride Pegasus" that evolves into "The Tower and the Hive".
RE: Trying to remember a book or series of books - Black Aeronaut - 06-15-2020
Yeah, I was thinking about Anne McCaffrey's works as well. Even the mind control bit twigged at first, because in the first of The Tower and The Hive books....
Gotta say, Anne McCaffrey had some really good drama going on in her stories.
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SpoilerRE: Trying to remember a book or series of books - nocarename - 02-21-2021
I was poking about on the Baen for other reasons (Mostly relating to the closing of the Baen's Bar) but it appears that someone at Baen snagged the ebook rights to the Journeys of McGill Feighan.
Only up to the first two books so far, but volumes appear to be dropping at one a month.
https://www.baen.com/allbooks/category/index/id/5073
RE: Trying to remember a book or series of books - Bob Schroeck - 02-21-2021
Oh, cool. Thanks.