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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Short sci-fi story about a prisoner and mind teleportation [duplicate]
I remember studying this short story in my school book of class 9 or 10 maybe (Indian CBSE board book) in the year 2004/2005. The short story was something about two people from two different planets. ...
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Short story from a 1970s era collection about aliens clandestinely selling perfect tech on Earth [duplicate]
It was in a sci fi collection, probably from the 1970s.
It's about a main character who is trying to figure out how another person has such perfect things from a brand name "P" (for perfect, ...
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Short story, probably from the '70s, where a new procedure would supposedly make people smarter
This is not "Flowers for Algernon." There was one very intelligent scientist who initiated it (as I remember) and the results were that the people who went through it started speaking in a ...
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SF short-story about an alien invasion of Earth by backward aliens [duplicate]
The aliens have discovered a star drive for interstellar travel but are very backward in all other technology. The have conquered other races. When they reach Earth, the air on their ship is becoming ...
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Looking for sci-fi short story about a time loop
This is a short story, I think I read it in an anthology of the author's work, possibly.
I don't remember too many details, unfortunately. It had a male character who has the choice to break out of a ...
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Story about automatic writing machine in a dispute between writer and editor
I'm trying to find a short story I dimly recall, with the following elements:
Within the story, there is a dispute between a writer, and an editor, about how the next scene of a science fiction story ...
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Christian priest discovers aliens are God's new chosen [duplicate]
I probably read this short story or novella in the 70s-80s but I think it could have been pretty old then.
The Earth has been invaded by aliens. The aliens are pretty horrible people, violent, blood-...
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Short story about a man who travels to another planet via astral projection, where he encounters an alien intelligence that exchanges minds with him
Looking for short story read in the '60s.
In the future, space exploration uses a sort of astral projection. The traveller is in the lab and hooked up to monitors, but they don't allow real-time ...
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I’m looking for a book of science fictionish short stories
I can’t remember too many stories but the one I do remember is about two kids, a boy and a girl. The boy, whose father is missing, is being bullied by the girl, who says “she’s in the wrong era” but ...
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Short story about discovering that geometry is inconsistent
I'm thinking of a story I read in the 1980s or early 1990s, which may have been published at any time prior. I probably encountered it in an anthology, but I cannot remember anything particular about ...
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Short fantasy with Merlin and Arthur's granddaughter in modern times
This is a short story from Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in the 1980s, I think. Merlin finds Arthur's daughter in a modern American city, for purposes I don't remember. The key thing I remember is ...
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Science fiction short story about a cashless society where they let a guy pay cash but his change is credit
I read this story in an anthology of science fiction short stories. I was in grade 6 and it was 1969.
It was about a man that goes to buy something with money but the store was cashless. Finally they ...
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1
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Short story: aliens change world at housewife's accidental request
This is a mid-'80s story from Asimov's, I think.
A woman is grocery shopping (or just finished) and in a bad mood — people are rude, her kids poorly behaved and U.S.-U.S.S.R. tensions very high. She ...
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A short story about a man who unexpectedly received in the post a machine which can draw pictures alone. found in an anthology audiobook
A short story about a man who unexpectedly received several packets in the post which finally result to build a somehow 'printer' which discover, surprisingly, that can draw fantastic pictures 'alone'...
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Short story from the 1980s - alien virus erases concept of space travel from modern humanity
This story might have been in Omni. Our hero learns that the concept of space travel has been erased from human memory by an alien virus - almost everyone just can't understand the concept even if it'...
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Nanotech arms-race short story - nanodevice kills people who have read Drexler
I think I read this short story online (and I think it was quitet short) around 2000. The main character has a friend who is enthusiastic about nanotechnology and has a copy of Drexler's Engines of ...
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Short story about a soldier(?) captured by aliens underground
And they skin his back and tattoo him, and he basically goes crazy from the pain and isolation and wanders about
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I am looking for a story from Omni about sentient aircraft of different types interacting in the atmosphere
I read a story in (I believe) one of those Ellen Datlow OMNI science fiction collections about sentient aircraft of different types (with different duties) flying around in the atmosphere and ...
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1
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Short story with a piano player on a space station who plays a bunch of old songs and, when asked why, claims he was "possessed by a ghost"
This one is a very sketchy memory because the main thrust of it was, I'm pretty sure, based on a misunderstanding. When I was a child, in the late 1980s to the early 1990s, I remember reading a short ...
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Short story about alien transmission which ends with the aliens' star exploding
Read this story online a few years back but I am quite sure it was far older, maybe from the 1970s or even earlier.
It has a pair of scientists receiving a transmission from a distant star system. ...
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50s SF story about a man who is burdened with being the "life" of any party or assembly
In the short story, he is a "life of the party" guy whom everyone admires and wants to be around, but when he gets home from the party, he sheds the burden of false animation and jollity as ...
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Earworm takes over the whole town
This is a children's fantasy story about a magical record that I read in grade school, during the time a certain Californian was president. But I think the story is much older than that, probably from ...
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Old SciFi short story on debt to society and a brain ship
There was this story I read when I was quite young that left an impression on me. Could have been anytime in the 70's. It would not have been a new story at the time because it probably came from my ...
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Fantasy in Asimov's magazine - words that cause bad luck to anyone who reads them
Around 1990 (plus or minus 5 years) I read a short fantasy in Asimov's Magazine about nonsense words that cause bad luck to anyone who reads them.
The main character (a person in modern times) reads ...
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Short story where a man corrects a machine and the machine combusts
I’m looking for a short story in which a man is with a machine (maybe in a cave) and the machine makes a false statement (similar to 1+1=3) and the man corrects the machine which somehow ends in the ...
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101
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Vintage short story of school kids studying a lethal alien design [duplicate]
I am trying to remember the title and author of a classic sci-fi short story / novella involving an alien invasion. It is difficult to fight the aliens because they use images designed to disrupt ...
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Short story involving parallel universes and a war between humanity and some dark version of humanity
In this story, as humans travel through closely linked universes, they eventually become distorted and changed. The twist at the end, I believe, was that humans were fighting vastly distorted versions ...
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Old story about plant symbiont-enabled simulated paradise [duplicate]
I'm looking for an SF short story in which the protagonist has a vision of the future in which all humans end up living in tanks filled with a plant-like or algae-like symbiont. The people in the ...
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Short story about people who are unknowingly imprisoned by aliens in some sort of giant dome or underground chamber
I'm trying to find a short story I read a while ago about people who are unknowingly imprisoned by aliens in some sort of giant dome or underground chamber. They don't realize they are imprisoned ...
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Time travel short story where a few people travel in a house and experience a large subjective duration
As the title says, I am looking for a short story I read probably one to two years ago. It's about three people volunteering for a scientific experiment concerning time travel. In it, they travel ...
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Looking for a short story about space crew who are taken over by an alien consciousness
I think I read it in a collection of horror or SF. The incident happens after landing on an alien planet. It may be Mars. I can not recall a physical entity being involved but somehow one of the crew'...
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Looking for a sci-fi text about investigation on countries and continents economic output
I guess this text belongs to Asimov, but I might be wrong. It was an investigation (auditory) about the economic output of countries and continents. There was a super computer that could predict it, ...
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Short story where a couple trapped in a fallout shelter is afflicted by roaches
A young couple is just getting started and they are happy to find an apartment with more amenities than they expected, and in a more central location in the city. The rub is that it's an underground ...
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1
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Sci fi short story about automation leading to less meaningful work
The opening of the story is about a particular software suite taking over the day to day management of a fast food store. The workers wear headsets and the computer tells them what their next tasks ...
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Short story from a '70s/'80s Playboy anthology, involving a boy/man who finds himself in a time loop
Maybe 40-50 years ago, there was a story in a Playboy anthology, with a white cover, of a man who awoke and found he was 12 years old (?) again, but had all his memories. He almost immediately used ...
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1960s Short story, robot assassin
I read this at least fifty years ago so very faint memories - an anthology in the UK - no thoughts on the cover or any other stories.
This guy is carrying on his humdrum life, one evening he's in some ...
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Short Story of a Boy with an Invisible Box that Contains Joy/Happiness
Looking for the name of a SciFi short story published in the 1970s about a boy who has an invisible box with joy (or happiness). He confides in his teacher, who experiences and is overwhelmed by the ...
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SF story published in *Analog* or *Asimov's* (1980s–1990s) that was about practical uses of counter-gravity/anti-gravity in racing/cars
I've already asked this in Reddit's r/tipofmytongue [1], r/science_fiction [2], and r/printSF [3].
The story was likely a novelette or novella, not a short story and almost certainly not a novel.
I ...
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Modern researcher communicates ideas to Elizabethan inventor resulting in accelerating technology feedback loop
I'll trying to find the name and author of a short story where a junior faculty or grad student develops a crush on an Elizabethan era inventor she is studying and somehow communicates with him ...
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Humans lose an interstellar war against humorous-looking aliens [duplicate]
This is from an anthology, possibly from the 1950s.
The ambassador/general is delegated to a prisoner exchange on an isolated planet.
From the illustrations I recall the aliens look like short fat ...
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1
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'The Needler' human alien war against the Soetti (sweaty)
This is a story from an anthology, I cannot recall the author but I may have first read it in the 1960's or 1970's.
The title actually refers to the protaganists superior, who charges him with solving ...
- 1,468
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2
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Short story about an astronaut who joins a "collective mind" by letting some sort of "blob" attach to his brain [duplicate]
I'm looking for a short story in a compilation that I read in the 70s/early 80s at the latest in which a couple of astronauts visit a village where everyone carries a "blob" attached that ...
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1
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Bear-like deity created small planet world
Story has bear-like creature that initially befriends visiting astronauts, then turns on them. A pair escape but are chased and killed at the end after circumnavigating the planet. While being chased, ...
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2
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Short story about earthlings landing on an alien planet and defending themselves from the indigenous inhabitants with guns that make no noise
I read a short story while I was in high school back in the late '70s, a science fiction story about earthlings landing on an alien planet and the indigenous inhabitants attack them. The weapons of ...
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1
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Short story involving a man who does battle at the molecular level in his own body
After I saw the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey in my youth I bought a paperback of the same name. Besides 2001, it had maybe two short stories. I thought all were written by Arthur C. Clarke but that ...
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Sci fi short story that ended with the protagonists drinking too much from a fountain of youth and turning into babies
As a kid growing up in the '80s/'90s, I remember reading a blue hardback book that was a collection of sci-fi space stories. One of the stories I particularly remember ended with the two spacemen ...
- 39
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1
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635
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Sci-fi story about a reincarnating evil spirit that possesses someone from time to time, leading them to commit evil actions
IIRC, it's one of those old magazine short stories from the '50s-'70s, written by one of the greats (although I don't remember which one).
It's about an evil spirit (or a more sciency interpretation ...
- 77
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1
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210
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Post-apocalyptic future in which almost no one can read
In the 90s (or early 2000s) I read a post-apocalyptic story in Asimovs about a man and a younger person entering an abandoned military facility to get supplies or information. The man is very old (...
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1
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684
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SF story where a young man wears a spacesuit made of fields
I believe I read this story in the early 1990s, probably in an anthology as opposed to a magazine. (It just feels that way to me, as though it were related - at least thematically - to the ...
- 104k
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1
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713
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Short story about a group of young humans raised in a sealed and sterile environment, who later become the first interstellar crew
I am trying to find a story I read in an anthology, probably from the fifties or sixties.
I believe it was written in the first person, about a group of young humans called Lapins (for experimental ...
