A short story is a literary work of fiction that is to small to be noted as a novel, usually contains less than 100 pages and no chapters.
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Pre-2006 sci fi short story, follows five (?) survivors who aim to take down rogue AI in a simulated reality?
I read it about 8 years ago. Very long on a pretty minimalist webpage. It was absolutely a short story, not a novel. All I remember is that there is a group of 20-somethings in a simulated reality, ...
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1970s story: man living alone with robot servants on an estate invaded by hoodlums
The setting is during or after the fall of social order, somewhere in England. An old man is holed up on an estate, his only company a robot butler and other robotic assistants. The house is invaded ...
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Short Story From the 80s
I remember reading these short stories when I was in middle school (early 90s), but I can only clearly remember the cover. There were two women jogging, wearing dolphin shorts. That's the only image ...
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Scifi short story with a star in a jar
When I was in elementary school, I remember borrowing a science fiction short story collection from the library. It had a number of great stories in it, but I've never been able to find it as an ...
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Story about a factory that produces precious stones but nothing useful
In the original question, the OP also asked about a second story that was removed from the question, and I've got my interest piqued. I assume it's also a short story - can somebody help me find the ...
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Find my short story: nurse/soldier romance in space
I think this was a set of YA short stories focused on space. The one story I remember is about a nurse on a remote planet outpost who patches up a really injured soldier. He's completely out of it, ...
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Short story about an Astronaut who buys an 'automatic' typewriter for daughter
Many years ago, at least 35, I read a story about an astronaut who bought a 'typewriter' for his daughter/niece. From what I remember, he was going to a space station and he bought an automatic ...
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Short story about Tibetan monks who want to know the name of God?
I can't remember the title or the author of the following story:
Some Tibetan monks want to know the name of God. They buy a supercomputer in order to calculate the name. Then...
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111 views
Eastern Europe story, possibly Stanislaw Lem
Ages ago, I read a science fiction short story in an anthology of Eastern European, Cold War-era science fiction. It involved a man leading an ordinary life who finds a lovely sports car at an out of ...
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136 views
Short story about a woman diver on a dangerous alien planet
I read this story in a German adaption/translation of Asimov's Science Fiction, probably in the 90s.
The protagonist is a young woman on an aquatic alien planet with a permanent human population ...
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1answer
713 views
Short story in which candidates for political office act as deities to tiny, synthetic creatures
I'm looking for a short story, probably from the mid '60s to mid '70s, in which two candidates, possibly senators running for president, undergo a public test of how well they perform as leaders by ...
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128 views
Arthur C. Clarke short story confusion “The Awakening”, “Nemesis”, “Exile of the eons”
I have been reading a lot of Arthur C. Clarke short stories recently. I read one called "Nemesis" in "The collected short stories of Arthur C. Clarke" which says that it was also published as "Exile ...
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171 views
Identify this short story: Malfunctioning robot destroys anything that moves, man is injured by robot, shines light on robot
Ok, I need your help. When I was young, I was reading some random book of short stories. I think the book was from 1960's. I can't remember the book name or the stories name.
But the story was ...
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112 views
Looking for a specific horror/science fiction children's anthology from the 90s/early 2000s
I'm looking for a specific short story anthology, I'm pretty sure it was a children's book. Among the stories in it were:
1) a story where a girl was investigating her friend's death in a car crash, ...
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1answer
154 views
ID of Golden Age SF short story about teleportation across the galaxy using alien teleport booths
In this story, two male astronauts are on Mars and find a booth-like structure. One gets in and disappears. IIRC the second one follows him and is transported to a distant planet inhabited by ...
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1answer
108 views
ID of Golden Age SF story about a colonized planet of telepathic plant life
All I remember about this story (possibly a novel or novella, possibly by Poul Anderson) is that the butterflies on this planet are plants. The author uses a clever latinate word based on "phyto" to ...
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97 views
ID of Golden Age SF short story about robots on a farm after the collapse
Several types of robot work on an automated farm. One by one they realize there have been no communications from the City for some time, and the humans may be gone. They stop working, decide after a ...
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sci-fi short story about a car that endlessly drives itself
When I was in middle school I read a short story about a self-driving car that becomes self aware and locks a family inside. It drives the same circuit endlessly and stops at the same service station ...
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1answer
116 views
Short story including aliens who are identified with Loki and Thor (from anthology c. 1970)
I ready this in an anthology in about 1972. The title may have been a reference to Twilight of the Gods or Ragnarok. If I remember correctly, an alien lands on earth fleeing from imprisonment. The ...
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1answer
125 views
Identify this Dragonlance(?) story with clever use of footnotes
Please help me identify a short story I remember reading ten or twenty years ago. It was probably in one of the Dragonlance books (maybe in the Tales series). I don't remember much of the plot. ...
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132 views
Man whose job is to destroy broken robots on Mars
Could anyone help me please. I am looking for a short story where the setting is on Mars, protagonist a human waste disposal worker. His job is to shovel broken down robots into the furnace and they ...
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126 views
Short story about a huge blanket blocking the sun, thereby freezing earth
What I can remember about story. A man invents a material that can be made in space; It blocks 100% of the suns energy (details as to why can not remember). He decides to create a massive blanket that ...
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Name of a short sci fi story about 2 astronaunts [duplicate]
I read sometime ago a short sci fi story.
Its about 2 astronauts from Earth traveling to an other planet.
On their way to that planet they get intercepted by an alien vessel.
The captain of that ship ...
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1answer
217 views
Want to identify a short story about a fake spaceship/station
In this story an astronaut is questioned regularly by a psychiatrist. He thinks he's on a spaceship, but he's actually in an experiment. The astronaut also thinks the psychiatrist is part of the crew, ...
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Trying to identify a short sci-fi story about a human that is “resurrected” by malignant aliens
I'm trying to locate a short sci-fi story I read years ago about a human that is "resurrected" by an arrogant and malignant alien species that discovers him in a "museum" on an earth where the ...
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Story about prisoners on a spaceship forced to perform repetitive tasks
In this short story, the main character is locked in a small plain room. Creatures of different "shapes" enter the room each "day" and monitor him as he is forced to watch a bubble in a tube and ...
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3answers
200 views
I'm looking for a short story about super intelligent/ Telepathic children
I don't remember the story exactly but I know it has to do with an experiment or discovery that made a group of children extremely intelligent or telepathic. I don't exactly remember the plot all the ...
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252 views
looking for a short story about a college/high school kid who lives billion of years and witnesses the end of the universe
A few years ago I read a great online short scifi story about a boy (either in high school or college) who kept wondering what the point of life is. The story then describes how immortality became ...
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109 views
Short story about perpetual historical tourism
Trying to remember title/author of a story I read some years back. I probably read it in one of Gardner Dozois' collections, or another anthology, so I couldn't tell you the year of publication.
In a ...
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102 views
Short story about a psychic awakening his true potential
I read this short story in a sci-fi anthology probably between 5 and 10 years ago, possibly one of the Year's Best SF anthologies. It's set in a world where psychic powers are common, and people with ...
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2answers
259 views
Identify story: A man owns creatures that build statues of him
I am trying to recall the name of a story I read when I was fairly young (maybe 20 years ago, but not sure how old the story is).
What I remember: A man acquires a set of creatures that he keeps in ...
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Short story identification: A boy visits a futuristic zoo and gets injured by a gorilla
A boy, on a trip to a futuristic zoo with his father, suffers an accident involving a gorilla.
He is rushed to surgery.
After a futile attempt, the surgeon informs the boy's father that he was ...
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205 views
Identification of a short story with a sentient weapon
I am searching for the title of short story I have read several years ago. I think it was included in one of the Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories (or maybe some Nebula or Hugo short stories ...
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209 views
Story about a multiverse theory of immortality
Please help me identify a short story I read about a guy who believed that the multiverse was true, but the one that we experienced was the one in which we lived the longest. He was also contemplating ...
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1answer
155 views
Strange creatures that bite you and never let go
I read a short story years ago and don't remember what it was called. It was about a man in a desert who had heard about strange creatures that were likely to come after you and if they bit you their ...
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152 views
Looking for a story about a girl and her experience with technological advances throughout her life who becomes immortal
I'm looking for the title of a short story I read on the internet somewhere a while ago.
It began with a girl living in the modern age and explores her life growing up over the next couple of ...
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1answer
106 views
Short story sub verses a spaceship
Looking for the name of a short story.
It was about an AI submarine that woke up one day and did battle with an invading spaceship that was hiding underwater in preparation to invade the earth. The ...
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202 views
Short story: post nuclear holocaust, the human race has mutated into an ape-like being and old style humans are viewed as an abomination
I'm trying to identify a short story I read (probably in the 80s) where the protagonist, a young woman, is captivated by the beauty of a servant, a bronzed, muscular youth working in the garden. The ...
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2answers
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Can you identifiy this short about teenagers on a raft getting swallowed up by an oil slick?
In the spirit of all the story identification today, I'm looking for some kind of TV episode about some teenagers who were at a lake.
Slowly, one by one, they get swallowed up by some kind of oil ...
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Short story about a boy & girl enclosed in an experiment and given injections to age rapidly?
The story is told from the point of view of one of the scientists. He meets the subjects in the experiment as they play in the lab before being put into the enclosure that will become their ...
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1answer
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Story-Identification - A berserker defence fighter
I read a short story in the 90s (but possibly much older) based on Berserkers as created by Fred Saberhagen.
AFAIR the occupants of a salvage ship had retrieved a smallish device/craft of unknown ...
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1answer
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Looking for late 70s short story anthology, we'd call it YA now. May have included Leiber's “A Pail of Air”
Read this in the school library - all the stories were very dysotopian. One involved a character named 'Emelen' who by the end of the story discovers they are just one of many discarded clones (MLN). ...
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1answer
256 views
Science Fiction short story where men have to kill each other to settle some sort of conflict
I'm trying to remember a science fiction short story where men have to kill each other to settle some sort of conflict. They are on a small planet or asteroid with low gravity and no oxygen and are ...
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2answers
153 views
Alien Rock found and contains a mind controlling alien being
The story in question is about a strange rock that is found then the person that touched it is taken over by an alien being. The town is eventually taken over but a young boy who is in love with his ...
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Earth visited by an enormous creature
I'm trying to remember the author and title of a short story about the Earth in the far future which is visited by an enormous creature (maybe like a continent sized salamander) which devastates the ...
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217 views
Identify a short horror story about a mysterious girl
Please help me find this short story that I read about 20 years ago:
The story is set in the late 1800 / early 1900 in an American / English city, where a young man rents an apartment whose former ...
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Short story: Primitive savannah man taken into a tower city and made sophisticated.
I read a short story about 30 years ago about a hunter-gatherer man living on an African-type plain or savannah where these strange tower structures rose into the clouds. He went to sleep beside one ...
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Looking for author - IASFM late 1980s - first contact short story
I am looking for the author and title of a short story that appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in the late 1980s: likely 1988 or 1989.
The plot is that the main character has a job ...
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1answer
111 views
Short story collection search 70s again
Looking for a book that had 6 or 7 stories all written by same author I believe. 2 of the most memorable were the opening story that involved a group of people that crash landed on an alien world. ...
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1answer
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Searching for short story in 70s anthology that was post apocalyptic. Character's name is Saura
A very powerful story written by a "new" writer at the time in a collection of short stories sometime in the 70s. A mother and daughter (named Saura) live in a cabin and discuss going further South ...
