Questions tagged [hard-sci-fi]
For questions about "hard" science fiction, use on [story-identification] questions when the work is hard sci-fi and for questions about hard sci-fi in general.
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Book about crowns that enhance mental abilities
I am looking for a book set in the future in "outer space" where children wear different colored crowns that enhance mental abilities.
The book starts at a boarding school where the kids are ...
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Short nerdy sci-fi story where scientists discover that the Earth is falling into a black hole
I remember finding a PDF of this on the internet a few years ago, so it may not be a published work. It is about a scientist who observes unnatural behavior in the sky, and after some analysis ...
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Alien invasion movie, including the line: "We are the food"
I saw this sci-fi movie once on TV, around the second half of the 90's.
In this movie, a huge UFO was found near the North Pole (or was it the south?) and an expedition is called to go inside.
Inside ...
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What is the earliest example of LLMs used for AI in hard-sci-fiction before 2018?
All the AI in fiction, and none that I came across thought it could be helped by brute-forcing language in statistical models.
What is the earliest example of large language models or something ...
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Old military sci fi book about a spaceship on the edge of disaster
This was a secondhand book I read back in the 90s, so it probably dates back to the 70s or 80s.
The basic plot was set on an old spaceship where morale is low and the captain has basically abandoned ...
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1
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Planets in interstellar space run on "slow speed" with people awaking for a few years, then sleeping for centuries
The book is no more than ~15 years old, and may have been reviewed on Boing Boing.
Set far in the future, civilizations on rogue planets in interstellar space (or perhaps orbiting brown dwarfs?) have ...
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2
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SciFi Book Find - Alien Precursor Attack Before a Large Scale Invasion (not in series)
Some overall details;
A book series I listened to as audiobooks in 2019-2022. They were newish books so published in the range 2010-2022. It had somewhere around 3 - 4 books. There was never a large ...
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Hopeful sci-fi book where humans are immortal, and both they and crabs love mathematics
I remember reading about this book in a blog post one time. There’s a group of people on a spaceship who are immortal, who spend 5000 years proving a mathematical theorem, simply because they can. ...
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Scifi movie identification about a guy on the run from a police organisation that can predict crime before it happens
Watched it early 2000's
Set sometime on the future
In a futuristic world where the police have the ability to catch criminals before they commit the crime
Basic plot details that I can remember:
...
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2
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Sci fi book from kindle unlimited about a teen mercenary who joins a military academy and gets an AI implant in his head called Chief
It centers around the main character and his AI assistant "Chief" that he was able to have implanted into his mind due to something called a "gemini gene". The human character and ...
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Sci fi movie that starts with a missing child and ends with reality slowly breaking down [duplicate]
I'm trying to remember the name of this sci fi movie. I'm pretty sure it's at least 2000's movie, not earlier. What I remember of the plot is, a married couple goes out on a date. 2 siblings stay home....
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1
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I remember reading a SF book (first in a trilogy) a few years ago, need help finding
Here's what I remember:
The first book is freely available on the author's website.
Second book is published, but is available through purchase only.
All the books are supposed to be made open source ...
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Trying to find two short sci-fi stories [closed]
A man, some sort of functionary arrives to a planet. The planet is I habited by aliens that are literally incomprehensible.
He talks to some of the scientists that try to establish contact, then, ...
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Female astronaut travels through a wormhole and finds out that she's being pulled into a black hole
I heard a short story (unfortunately not in English and without any title) as an audiobook, where the protagonist is a female astronaut Tessa Brunsack (or similarly named), who travels through ...
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first science fiction story that deals realistically with population genetics?
Many, many science fiction stories involve growth of a population from a small initial population (e.g. TV tropes' Adam and Eve plot). I just read H. Beam Piper's Genesis (1951), in which Homo sapiens ...
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A book about space traders travelling between stars. Captain was captured and then he managed to free himself using dust-sized maintenance robots [duplicate]
Should be easy to find.
A novel. Read it in early '00s. More likely it is much older. It might be a series of novels.
A fleet of traders traveling through space from star to star. They trade ...
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What was the first science fiction story to consider a Mars landing in a "realistic"/hard sci fi way?
What is the first science fiction story that considers the practicalities of getting to Mars, landing on it, and returning safely? I'm interested in stories that focus on things like consumables (air, ...
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Book where a generation ship is sent to avenge the Earth after it was destroyed by alien probes
Trying to identify a book where the Earth is destroyed by aliens, using some probes. A generation ship is sent to find and destroy the aliens.
Edit: more things I remember about the story (this was a ...
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Book about a man who is turned into a quadruped while searching for a colony ship on an alien world
A man in a ship lands on a planet with nothing but sharp grass and quadrupeds. He is trying to find out what happened to a colony ship that supposedly landed there. I don't remember why, but he starts ...
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Seeking sci-fi short story (1980s/1990s?) where a man puts his consciousness into an animal's brain, but then can't/doesn't want to leave
If I'm recalling correctly, a man takes a vacation by putting his consciousness into a horse or dog brain (I think), and he loves it so much—specifically, the freedom that animals' simplistic ...
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Science Fiction novel which takes place on a large cylindrical spaceship traveling through space
When I was in college in 1987, I read a science fiction book that I'd like to reread. But I cannot remember the name or author.
The key features that I recall, are
It takes place on a large ...
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What's Chelsea doing going to Heaven, did I miss something?
Chelsea, Siri Keeton's ex, may not be a militant radical but she was a Realist, to the point of taking her sex in the raw, which it is suggested the Realists don't even do any more. As far as I could ...
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Sci-Fi book featuring laser strikes on helicopters, and torturing suitcase sized AIs
I'm trying to identify a novel that I read (in English) in the mid to late 70's, or possibly early 80's at the very latest. The book would have been new during that time and I would have purchased it ...
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Space vampires and bounty hunters
I'm looking for a book I read some time in the late 90s-early 00s, translated into Hungarian, but I'm all right with the English title. A sci-fi title set in the mid-future with space flight. The main ...
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Looking for the name of a black and white graphic novel about space colonization from the 1980s? where the STL starship exploded
It was a black and white graphic novel or one-off SF comic book whose backstory involved space colonization in a star system after the slower than light starship (involving, maybe robots and ...
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A prison in the corona of a star holds society's only murderer
I'm trying to find this sci-fi book, I remember there was a prison, I think made of a hollow asteroid, orbiting inside the corona of a star.
It was built by this advanced society to hold their only ...
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2000s movie where mysterious black alien spheres surround the Earth
Can you please help me find the title of this movie, from about 2010, in which hundreds of black alien spheres position themselves evenly around the planet. The humans are unsurprisingly curious, ...
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Movie where a group of kids competing in what looks like "robot wars" meet aliens who watch black&white looney tunes?
So I asked a similar question to this awhile ago and was told I was thinking of "Arena".
I watched Arena yesterday and it brought me much joy but sadly it was not Arena that I was trying to ...
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Movie about aliens transforming people into slaves with a claw or weapon-like arm
When people get captured, they get dragged to some kind of portal. They transform into slaves and have one of their arms become claw-like or weapon-like. They are strong but not very fast.
They also ...
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Tracking down a short story with the term "abnotechia" or "abtechnological"
Hi I am curious about the term "abnotechia" which I encountered in a short story that I am now trying to look up, but google searches are coming up empty.
I am pretty sure the story appeared ...
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Comic about two children who live on an asteroid
I read this story recently but I am unable to find the story anywhere :-
The story starts with 2 children wearing space suits on an asteroid and expertly unearthing what seems to them like the ...
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This book about space/interstellar travel, permafrost, biological androids and mind meld technology, identify
I read this book as a child in the 80s or early 90s.
It spans quite a bit of time, more than a generation, possibly many.
Biological androids are common, but they are treated as subhuman or at least ...
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Sci-fi book featuring xenophobic aliens with hydraulic activated limbs
I am looking for the title of a sci-fi book with an interesting plot and have had no luck finding it.
The Plot:
Humans working at the edge of the solar system discover a xenophobic alien race that ...
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1
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Sci-fi movie that remember watching as a child involving a beetle-like creature escaping a space prison to Earth, and then going back
I believe the main plot of the movie involved an alien escaping from some space prison and coming to Earth. The two protagonists was a man and a woman and I believe one of them was a cop. In one of ...
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1
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Kids' sci-fi movie where a young girl sacrifices herself
I was watching a sci-fi movie or an episode of some TV series as a kid in the early 90s. The only thing I can remember after all these years was that there was a group of kids in a spaceship or on ...
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Unknown title 60's sci fi book possibility started with a G or the word star
I remember finding this book in my dad's old college collection so possibly publish in the 50-60's
Cover had a white or silver tower on a background of a lot of orange or an explosion
A boy or man ...
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Hard sci-fi novel where the protagonist uses a wormhole portal and discovers a second version of themself
Hard sci-fi novel. Protagonist uses a wormhole portal and discovers a second version of herself (sister? clone?). May also feature tree-like alien life forms.
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Hard sci-fi novel where "snowfall" is made up of microscopic creature skeletons
I remember reading a hard sci-fi novel. somewhere along the way the protagonist is part of a group that finds itself trapped in a building by what they originally mistake as a heavy snowfall. The &...
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Sci-Fi story where human astronauts barf up their guts like sea cucumbers
I read a short story where astronauts became infected with something that made them barf up their insides and regrow them, like sea cucumbers. In the end, this is how one of the characters learns that ...
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Book about a physicist who invents a device that swaps a sphere of matter from this world to another universe/time
I read this 10–20 years ago. It's a hard sci-fi book about a man — a physicist — who invents something that swaps spheres of matter with somewhere else. I think the swap was between universes, but it ...
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Book about a physicist who discovers how to create universes with different laws of physics
I'm looking for a book I read 10–20 years ago about a physicist who accidentally discovered how to create universes. I think she worked at a collider. (I don't remember if it was a real collider like ...
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1
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Sci-fi story about a utopia about some technologically advanced people living in space stations and some on planets
I read this sci-fi story at least 15 years ago. The story is about a far future utopia. There were two segments of people, technologically advanced people living in stations or ships, and not so ...
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I'm looking for a short story/novella about a plague through genetics that infects the world
I only read it this year but I think it could have been written in the last 4 or 5 years. It's seen through two different time periods. One is the far past where an explorer or maybe a missionary is ...
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1
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Book about an escape from a prison planet
Main plot is escape from a prison planet, and I can remember the artwork from the cover. Also one of the other inmates was a mind raper who psychically raped people. Time frame was pre 90s
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Science of Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children
I picked up a used copy of Greg Bear's book Darwin's Children recently and read it without initially realizing that it was a sequel. I didn't find it particularly involving, so I skimmed most of the ...
user2490
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Story about people trying to recover a ship, but can't because its engine is still operating [duplicate]
I read a short story a long time ago which, for a while now, I've lamented not remembering the name of, because I really enjoyed the concept so much.
I believe I read this sometime in the mid-80s, ...
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758
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First sci-fi story to feature electromagnetic railguns or mass-drivers?
What was the first story to feature electromagnetic railguns?
The answer could be a movie, a TV show, a book, or a short story.
The main difference between a railgun and most other kinds of projectile ...
user89104
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1
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534
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Short story where artificial life gets out of control [duplicate]
Please bear with me, memories are vague. I'm looking for the name of a short scifi story, by a fairly prominent author IIRC, where a person was evolving "pet artificial life" in their basement. ...
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0
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Sci-fi story/novella which involves intelligent probe exchanging messages with a group of children, contact diminishes over time
There's an artificial intelligence/computer/spacecraft flying away from Earth on a long mission. In the beginning, it exchanges messages with a group of children (I think it was 100), whose parents ...
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1
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3k
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Story ID: plugging vacuum leak with one's butt
I'm certain this story was no later than 1980, and written in the 1950s-60s is probably much more like it. I'm pretty sure I read it in a collection rather than a magazine, but of course that could ...
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