Questions tagged [short-stories]
For about a fictional work too small to be called a [novel] or [novella] - usually less than 10-20 thousand words and no chapters. Use to either identify the media on a [story-identification] question or disambiguate works where the tag covers the short story and its form in other media.. If you are looking for a particular anthology of short stories, use the [anthology-book] tag instead.
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Russian science fiction novella about a giant tower rising from the sea?
The story is about a deep sea drilling expedition that drills to an unprecedented depth and encounters an unknown form of matter deep in the Earth. It pushes out the drill bit and continues to extrude ...
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Fantasy short story featuring a character named Pepsi
10-15 years ago I read a short story collection that I would like to read again.
One story had a character named Pepsi. He was a boy of about 10-15 years old. There was a wonderful passage about the ...
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Collection of youth short stories about aliens 1990-1994ish
I am trying to remember the title/author/editor of a book I had as a kid. It was a collection of short stories about aliens. The cover had a one eyed green alien reaching through the bars of a cage.
...
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Looking for an old SF tv short story about blue men staging the future [duplicate]
Does anyone know a SF TV short story in which there were blue men who helped "stage" our world- at least the parts we saw, on a minute by minute basis.
So, at each minute, everyone would be in the "...
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Short story: Alien comes to earth and meets bratty girl
I remember this from school days - it was a story about a modern day earth, and a very selfish bratty little girl (9-10?) goes outside to play. An alien craft lands and she is the first earthling to ...
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Sci-Fi Golden Age, aliens who see X-rays
Around 1980, I read an anthology of stories by a Sci-Fi author from the 1930s. The aliens portrayed in these succinct short stories were extremely different from Earth creatures, and their peculiar ...
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Set of short stories, including one with a man with wings, and another about his strange family gathering
I was thinking today about this set of short stories, but I can't remember what they were or who wrote them!
One of the stories was about a strange family, where each member has some sort of dark ...
MattMcA
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A short story of a guy on a strange alien planet
A long time ago I read a short novel (can't remember the actual length, but not likely that it was more than 100 pages long) about a human astronaut on some sort of mission who landed on an alien ...
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And then her head fell off
I remember reading a compilation of children’s/bedtime/scary stories as a child, one of which was about a girl and a boy who eventually got married. Throughout the short story, she had a black ribbon ...
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Short story: Earth in a pocket of non-causality
I'm fairly sure it was in a collection of short stories, possibly a Year's Finest Sci-Fi or some such, but I haven't had any luck tracking it down.
The story takes place on an Earth that somehow has ...
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Sentient Bomb in a city on the moon?
I would like to know the title of the short story that I believe takes place on the moon. The setting is a mall or some other very public location and the main character is a police officer. She ...
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Identifying a short story about advertising
I remember reading a short story at least twenty years ago about a man who spends a lot of money to rent a hovel because there is no advertising in it. During any normal day everything advertises to ...
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Looking for an old story about genetically engineering humans to live on a methane planet [duplicate]
In the story it is easier to "terraform" humans to live on this planet than to change the planet.
The humans end up looking like the local life forms...crablike creatures.
None of the converted ...
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Looking for an anthology of horror short stories from the late 1970s or early 1980s
The story I am looking for involves a little girl who thinks she is hideously ugly. Her foster mother tells her that she is as well. The girl gazes out a window at the gardener who is a perfect ...
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Dome (or force field) appeared over a city (not Stephen King's Under The Dome)
Short story of a dome (or at least a barrier) that appeared over a city overnight - it may have been New York or Manhattan. There was not any explanation or claim of responsibility. An engineer could ...
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Looking for YA horror anthology from late 80s/early 90s
It was a collection of short stories. I can't remember how many.
The first one I remember quite clearly. It was about a family who goes to the seashore for summer vacation and the brother and sister ...
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Short story of a race who discovered primitive but subtle interstellar travel [duplicate]
Many years (20+?) ago in Analog SF magazine I read a short story where a culture discovered interstellar travel shortly after the start of their iron age. They could construct air-tight ships and ...
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Short story about Neurosurgeon uses nanobots to cure patients, 'reprograms' ex-wife to fall back in love with him
I read this story sometime between 1989 and 1991 in a SF&F magazine (Asimov's Science Fiction? The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction? Amazing Stories?) and
I've looked for it for years, in ...
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1
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Short story of a lone person at a military outpost/station that may have the quote "Hello, Brother" near the beginning
This was published in an anthology I read in 1975. The anthology may have been fairly recent at that time (new or 2-3 years old).
Plot: The lone person is viewing a video of the person who was there ...
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1
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Identify a short story featuring a comedian on a space colony
The story was about a comedian named Dylan on a space colony (might have been a Dyson sphere) named Skinner. The populace of the Sphere had been implanted with some sort of conditioning to ensure a ...
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Old pen-pal short story
I remember a short story about someone with an alien pen-pal; over the years he goes through ups and downs and shares with his pen-pal who is supportive always. Eventually he gets to see a picture of ...
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Short story about a future where people spend all their time in cars
I'm looking for a story where people are always in their cars, which are small, individual-sized, and are considered naked when they are out of them.
It's from the late 1960s or early 70s.
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Story about a future of over-production
I'm looking for a story I read in the late 1960s or early 70s about a future in which so much stuff is produced (by machines?) that people are obligated to work very hard to wear it all out.
The ...
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Is the movie "In Time" based on a short story? [duplicate]
Today I read a review of a new movie called "In Time", directed by Andrew Niccol. People have a certain amount of time to live, people can buy and sell time and extend their lives. I feel I have read ...
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Short story where aliens deal with humanity on the misunderstanding that Star Trek is non-fiction
I'm looking for a short (which I'm fairly sure I read online rather than on paper) which has as its premise that an alien civilization observing humanity thought Star Trek was real rather than ...
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Short story where everyone is using wearable personal computers, and the protagonist asks about being able to turn one's own off
What is the name and author of a short story where everyone is using always-on wearable computers, e.g. to help interaction with other people, like hints of what to say during conversation.
The ...
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A collection of stories about young monsters and vampires
There are a couple of books I have been trying to find for years. I found and read them in my school library when I was in either intermediate or middle school; somewhere around the late 1980's. I'm ...
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Short story where humans and aliens are in faltering negotiations to end a war
I'm trying to identify a short story where humans and an alien race are trying to negotiate to end a war, but the negotiations are failing.
Aspects of the story that I can remember:
An Earth child ...
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Collection of fantasy/horror short stories with one or two full color illustrations per story
First, this is absolutely not Scary Stories or More Scary Stories. I don't think there is any relation there.
From what I remember the book contained a collection of shorties that may or may not ...
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Short story about meddling time travelers [duplicate]
Sometime in the late 80's/early 90's I read a short story about a group of people (I think they were researchers at a university) who go back in time to change something, and then keep going back ...
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What is the story in which an alien was found on a barren planet and the media named it "Cutie-Pie"?
An alien was found on a barren planet by a space expedition, they catch it and bring it to earth. The alien did not live on that planet, it was just passing through. The alien was named "Cutie-Pie" by ...
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Short story where a character moves through dimensions via mental exercises
It's been about 25 years since I read a story in an anthology. The only details I remember from it are that a guy is told that if, while walking down a road (or something similar), he mentally forces ...
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Short story about two brothers leading an expedition to the prehistoric past, one (Orren? Owen?) is killed and erased from history
I read this story (must have been in an anthology; I didn't read SF/F magazines) when I was a kid, which puts the publication date before 1975. I remember it as being much older than that, though, not ...
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The Cold Equations - How could it happen?
For those who are unfamiliar with Godwin's 1954 short story (which is included in a number of anthologies, including the book The World Turned Upside Down found here in the 'Best of Jim Baen's ...
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Cannot find a short story named something like "Mask of the Silver King"
In the mid nineties I received a short story anthology as a gift. I believe it was either a Weird Tales anthology, or White Wolf. My favorite story was called Mask of the Silver King, (I think, I ...
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Short story about an astronaut who discovers an injured alien
I am trying to find a book of short science fiction stories that contains a short story about an astronaut crew that land on a moon or planet and one astronaut on an EVA (spacewalk) on the surface ...
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Short story in which a man on a train learns how to mentally control the rolling of dice
A long time ago, I read a short story in which there was a man on a train who learns how to control the rolls that come up on dice. The way it's phrased is that he maintains a certain pattern in his ...
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What was the Bradbury short story featuring birds whose songs were like musical compositions?
I may be mixing some things up here, but to my memory there is a short story in one of the collections by Ray Bradbury in which the protagonist is involved with transcribing birdsong so complex it ...
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Short story involving survival on a small asteroid; people stranded on it must keep off 'day' side
I have a strong recollection of reading a short story as a kid in the 1980's - 90's about a couple of guys (kids, maybe) that were stranded on an asteroid or moon after some disaster and needed to ...
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What short story from the 1960s is about future where there are no printed books [duplicate]
A friend recently reminded me of a story where two children hear/learn /read in a book about a time long ago when all books were in print, and it's very strange to them as they are totally electronic ...
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Anyone remember a Golden Era pulp mag short story about a sentient(?) implantable computer named Manche? [duplicate]
I believe this story was published in the late 1950s or early 1960s; it may have started as a short story and then been turned into a novel.
The basic plot was that the protagonist had created a tiny ...
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Differences between versions of "Nerves", by Lester del Rey
In 1942, Lester del Rey published Nerves, a novella about an accident at an atomic plant; in 1956 he published a new version of it, expanded to a novel. I read those two.
According to the ISFDb, there ...
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Which short story has a medical trial that goes better than expected
It was about a medical trial for a menopause treatment that ends up being essentially the fountain of youth (the reader can see this, the pharm company misses the forest for the trees), and then when ...
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In Jack Ketchum's short "The Box", what exactly was in the box?
In Jack Ketchum's short “The Box”, what exactly was in the box? I really want to know!
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What short story is about changing humanity into a hive mind?
An alien lands on Earth and is amazed that this species has come this far with all those separate minds. He decides to unite them and rule them. The hive mind that originates from this successfully ...
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Story where the number 3 is the monster?
I remember as a child (in the nineties) reading a story where the narrator was a little boy and how he was scared only twice a day – when the clock read 3:33. The 3's would be powerful enough (there ...
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What are the titles of the short stories about Drizzt?
I know there are some short stories about Drizzt Do'Urden out there. I have read most of the books, but I would like to read the short stories too.
Any idea what the titles are (and info on where I ...
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Short story with an old programmer about to lose his job who triggers a Trojan Horse that only he can fix
I remember reading a short story many years ago (1980s) about an old computer programmer who was about to be forced into mandatory retirement. After receiving the news from his boss he returns to his ...
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2
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995
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IChing and space travel identification question [duplicate]
There was a short that I read in an anthology, when I was on my anthology kick about 8-15 years ago. I am fairly positive that the story was from pre-1995, if that helps anyone. I know it wasn't a ...
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Which short story involved people betting on turtle races with one man always winning?
Please help me identify this story. It was about a holiday resort where the residents bet on turtle races. One man won every race he bet on. As the story progressed, it appeared that he could see the ...
