The collapse of the Baltimore bridge jogged my brain
into nagging me about a novel I read late 1970's.

Vaguely recalled plot: The Energy Crisis is continuing
with lots of shutdowns, brownouts, etc.

A cargo ship, likely an oil tanker, is sailing from
Alaska to San Francisco. It's been hijacked by a
group of terrorists.

One of them (don't recall why...) is now a Good Guy
and working with the Feds, etc., to stop it.

He explains the only "anti terror" attack he
couldn't defend against (when he was with the
bad guys) would be while the ship would be
passing under the Golden Gate Bridge, and
cops/Feds/troops would rappel down.

Again, this is a vague and mixed/matched
recollection, but does it sound at all
familiar?

Thanks

_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

On 2024-03-29, danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com> wrote:

> The collapse of the Baltimore bridge jogged my brain
> into nagging me about a novel I read late 1970's.
>
> Vaguely recalled plot: The Energy Crisis is continuing
> with lots of shutdowns, brownouts, etc.
>
> A cargo ship, likely an oil tanker, is sailing from
> Alaska to San Francisco. It's been hijacked by a
> group of terrorists.

Sounds like a Clive Cussler or Alistair MacLean potboiler.

Despite what perplexity.ai confidently claims, it is _not_
"The Doomsday Hijack" by John Gilman, published in 1978.
Because that book doesn't exist.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

On Fri, 29 Mar 2024 14:43:52 +0000, Christian Weisgerber wrote:

> On 2024-03-29, danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com> wrote:
>
>> The collapse of the Baltimore bridge jogged my brain into nagging me
>> about a novel I read late 1970's.
>>
>> Vaguely recalled plot: The Energy Crisis is continuing with lots of
>> shutdowns, brownouts, etc.
>>
>> A cargo ship, likely an oil tanker, is sailing from Alaska to San
>> Francisco. It's been hijacked by a group of terrorists.
>
> Sounds like a Clive Cussler or Alistair MacLean potboiler.
>
> Despite what perplexity.ai confidently claims, it is _not_
> "The Doomsday Hijack" by John Gilman, published in 1978. Because that
> book doesn't exist.

What search string did you use? I'm particularly interested
in whether you included a year or year range.

On 2024-03-30, Charles Packer <mailbox@cpacker.org> wrote:

>> Despite what perplexity.ai confidently claims, it is _not_
>> "The Doomsday Hijack" by John Gilman, published in 1978. Because that
>> book doesn't exist.
>
> What search string did you use?

I copy-pasted most of the original poster's question.

The answer regurgitated the plot points from the question, confidently
assigned them to the fictitious book, and supported this by linking
to two recent news articles about attacks in the Red Sea and the
Wikipedia article about the Achille Lauro hijacking.

I was about to post Perplexity's whole hallucination here, but then
decided nobody would be interested. And of course I can't reproduce
it now.

> I'm particularly interested in whether you included a year or
> year range.

"a novel I read in the late 1970's"

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

On Sat, 30 Mar 2024 15:18:49 +0000, Christian Weisgerber wrote:

> On 2024-03-30, Charles Packer <mailbox@cpacker.org> wrote:
>
>>> Despite what perplexity.ai confidently claims, it is _not_
>>> "The Doomsday Hijack" by John Gilman, published in 1978. Because that
>>> book doesn't exist.
>>
>> What search string did you use?
>
> I copy-pasted most of the original poster's question.
>
> The answer regurgitated the plot points from the question, confidently
> assigned them to the fictitious book, and supported this by linking to
> two recent news articles about attacks in the Red Sea and the Wikipedia
> article about the Achille Lauro hijacking.
>
> I was about to post Perplexity's whole hallucination here, but then
> decided nobody would be interested. And of course I can't reproduce it
> now.
>
>> I'm particularly interested in whether you included a year or year
>> range.
>
> "a novel I read in the late 1970's"

It would seem to be not too hard to design into the bot the
capability to check its own work by a straightforward search
for the objects that it generates.