What the Internet needs is a searchable novel/book database to find authors, titles, or stories.

[Rabrrrrrr]

A few times in the last couple months I've tried to find the name of novels I'd read before and didn't remember, and by gum, never could find the books I was looking for.

And believe me, I tried everything I could remember - but, of course, some of the books I couldn't remember very much.

Would be nice to have a place on the Internet that one could go to and search for book titles based on snippets of plot, characters, locations, etc. that one can actually remember.

Like now, I'm trying to remember the name of a science fiction book I read about ten years ago that took place on Europa, had a character named batacharya (I really figured that would be enough to get a hit on google), and some of the other main characters discover that they had all been created (or genetically engineered) in a lab at about the same time 30 or so years before and each had some kind of superhuman ability.

Not much to go on, but that's the way it is.

[taterguy]

1. That's what clerks at bookstores are for

Assuming you have any bookstores left in your town.

[Call Me Wesley]

2. Plot sounds a lot like something

Olaf Stapledon could have written, but that's only a very vague guess. And since I'm sure you looked for it thoroughly, I'm not even going to fire the Google up.

[MrCoffee]

3. What the Internet really needs is

some way to allocate a discreet "address" to an individual that would allow them to receive messages from other individuals...like if you wanted to send them a letter but skip the post office.


That would be so neat.

[kentauros]

4. You mean like a radio-mimeograph?

:P

[MrCoffee]

6. That's what the teletype is for...

get with the times.

[kentauros]

8. No, I think it's the facsimile machine.

A teletype, types, while a facsimile scans and sends via radiographic pulses, similar to Morse code, only faster and prints kind of like a mimeograph :)

[Ptah]

5. Montag.lib?

Montag then escapes to a local river, floats downstream and meets a group of older men who,
to Montag's astonishment, have memorized entire books, preserving them orally until the law
against books is overturned. They burn the books they read to prevent discovery, retaining
the verbatim content (and possibly valid interpretations) in their minds.

[TheMightyFavog]

7. EBSCO NoveList?

You might be able to acess it through your local Libray.