Questions tagged [soft-sci-fi]
Soft science fiction is a term for works in the science fiction genre which do not apply a rigourous scientific model for the universe. It can also be used to describe work where the science fiction aspect is incidental to the story (the same story could be told without the science fiction elements).
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TV sci-fi show with strong female lead who looks after artifacts and also had Nikola Tesla in it
I think it was in the 2000s, and the main lead is a strong woman who looks a bit like Lucy Lawless.
She, I seem to remember, had lived a long time and was good friends with Nikola Tesla, who dropped ...
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Novel or short story about glass so thick a widower can see his late wife walking around outside [duplicate]
A novel or short story I read probably 30-40 years ago about a man who lives in a cabin with such thick windows (or glass with special properties) that he can see light that was passing through the ...
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Black panther’s martial arts skills
In marvel comics when or In what comics issue was black panther first depicted as a master of martial arts? His initial abilities included cat like reflexes and agility he performed acrobatic movement ...
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Looking for a short story, romance scifi, about a person who falls love/friendship with a "mayfly" species of human that only lives for 3 days/3 weeks
All I remember is on Day/Week 2, the mayfly persona is very blasé about dying the next day/week, and the longer lived one is already kind of mourning/concerned. However the next day/week the mayfly is ...
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(Online?) short story inspired by those "choose a special power" CYOAs
It may have been on a blog, as a riff on those dime-a-dozen choose-your-own-adventure images shared on social media. There were some people (eight I think), each of whom chose a special power, I think ...
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Book about three asteroids hitting Earth, underground bunkers, tunnels, portals and ancient giant civilization, portals work by placing hand
This book was a trilogy, I believe.
There were three asteroids heading for the Earth. All powerful people are in underground bunkers awaiting the destruction of parts of the planet. A team of people ...
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Story about reaction with water that must proceed, ending with hurricane
I remember a story read to me as a child, but remember very few of the actual details. I remember that it involves some type of reaction that has to proceed once it is started, and the reaction ...
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Story ID: Corporate brands as massive invisible creatures attaching to human minds with creepy tendrils?
I saw this movie once, probably around 2013. I doubt it was made before 2005ish, given the level of CGI. Likely in English — maybe a UK production? — but my second guess is Russian with subtitles.
...
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Sci-fi or horror, guess from Mars
When I was young, I saw a movie from space. I remember just this scene:
bloody red sand, astronauts building a white oxygen tent. Inside, they take off their helmets, and from behind the tent window ...
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'70s/'80s SF book about a human cook on a space mining ship who finds an immortal alien while exploring a cave on an asteroid
A human cook on a space mining ship finds an immortal alien when exploring a cave on an asteroid. The alien is the last of its kind. I think the others of its species may have been accidentally killed ...
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Robot head, polo, transcendence and a helpful alien guide
I read this paperback novel in the mid to late 1980's, it was second-hand at this point and might have been 10 or 15 years old - so perhaps from the late 1960s or some time in the '70s.
There was an ...
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Story about 3 humans stranded on alien planet/ruins, solve riddles, rescue aliens from astral form?
Looking for a story read during the 80's or 90's wherein there are three humans (two men and a woman, iirc) who somehow become stranded on an alien planet / ruins, specifically on an island. Only by ...
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An animated movie or series (anime?). A huge spaceship found in a desert and the whole of humanity is trying to fix it
I'm trying to find an animated film or a series which I saw once in mid/late 90s on a TV. It might be even older. I remember a huge ship was found in the desert and the whole of humanity is trying to ...
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Series of books/novellas, involving a depopulated Earth, mass infertility, a religious cult, time travel, and Amazon warriors
There was a series of books/novellas in the '70s or so, involving a very depopulated Earth due to a chemical/drug error that made all females who lived in modern society infertile. A prophet had ...
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Sci-fi Show with Tech Magic/Psychic Powers
The show was on in the late 90's or early 00's. It may have been re-runs at that point though. It was on the SciFi channel. It was live action.
I don't remember much of the plot, but it involved ...
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Fantasy series three books, Australian woman on vacation, travels back in time to Welsh castle, Tae Kwon Do
Looking for title of a series of 3 (to 5) books, probably Australian author.
In the first book: A young Australian woman (and Tae Kwon Do expert) vacations in Britain, shortly after the death of her ...
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What’s the short story about a grandfather and a child living in a world where they have to watch adverts all the time?
I can’t remember the author and title. The basic premise is that the two of them are living in a world where adverts are streaming directly into their vision, for example when they see an object, a ...
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80's sci fi book, players picked random game elements to compete
I'm looking for the title of a book I read that always stuck with me. Some kind of sci fi society in which people competed in games. Each competitor picked random elements like "Cold", "...
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Name of late 70’s or 80s B grade sci fi - aliens disguised as police
I have been racking my brain and google for the name of this film for years. It’s nostalgia - my sister and I used to watch it.
My memory of it is vague - there’s a young boy who is chased by aliens ...
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Man playing computer in chess. Uses a book-opening with known typo to win one, uses deep lookahead for #2
Sometime in the 1970s (?), I read a science fiction story about a human playing a series of chess games against a computer. IIRC, he had to win at least three games.
One was won by finding a book of ...
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80s US sci-fi TV show - family try to escape a fascist state after being stranded in an alternative Earth [duplicate]
This TV show has been floating around in the back of my memory for years. I’m not even sure it’s real, and I just imagined it.
It’s an 80s US sci-fi TV show. I think I only saw be episode on British ...
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Book about a woman named Lessa
There were dragons, and she could talk to them. I remember the author's name being Anne maybe. I also think that the author may be dead. I read the first book in this series some years ago. I remember ...
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Book about "new man" or "new men" antagonist
Started a book long time ago about "new man" or "new men" attacking regular human settlements far from Earth but can't remember the title and didn't finish the book. The main ...
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Story identification - Childrens' Sci-Fi circa 1980s
Trying to identify a futuristic sci-fi with last remains of humanity (a boy?) lives in the wilderness hunting etc. allied with some mutant bear (maybe red?) called Baer. Some sort of control is ...
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Mid/late '80s paperback about a boy on a space station who steals a shuttle to visit a devastated Earth
Humans are living on a space station orbiting Earth (or possibly a colony on the Moon). They are forbidden to go down to the planet because there had been some kind of cataclysm (war, plague, or what ...
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Story identification - Desert planet with "Makers"
I recall reading a sci-fi novel that was set on a desert planet where the main character was part of the technologically backwards inhabitants of the planet, however there were some (at least two, but ...
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Old black & white movie with an ostrich-like monster
I am trying to find the name of a movie I saw many years ago. Should be from the '50s or '60s, since I remember it was black & white.
The creatures looked like "ostriches", but had some &...
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Identifying a near future Sci-fi novel where Rainforests are now a global treasure, with wars launched to take them over
I am looking for this book that I am trying to identify from memory:
It is a sci-fi novel taking place in the near-future
It was definitely printed before 2005, as I remembered borrowing it from my ...
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Scholastic sci-fi anthology book containing a short story about a planet with crystal monsters
During the late 1970's and early 1980's Scholastic would publish and sell books at elementary schools and I picked one up which had 8-10 stories inside which were all fantasy or sci-fi in nature. The ...
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Book about the 'aliens abduct humans to be soldiers' trope. It was comedic in style, involved blue skinned aliens
Quite a common trope I know but remember some details. I must have read it about... five or so years ago?
It was a pulp book I read on Kindle. It may have been a self-published eBook-only thing like ...
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Short Sci Fi about a young boy who grows up to be a famous musician
The story's protagonist was a young boy with epilepsy who is taken by his mother to some place with water, but not the ocean. There are shards of glass or pottery. It turns out that they are being ...
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Old sci-fi short story about bombs sent back through time and space by aliens to destroy earth [duplicate]
The story I remember and am trying to find: Humans had expanded out into the galaxy. Another race of aliens saw humans making their way towards their sector of space and feared us. That race was not a ...
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Old radio show or book about a group of marooned men on a planet with only one creature which they eat and then cocoon and change into that creature
Old radio show originally.
Only one type of creature on the planet, it had different types of “meat” which was eaten by the crew.
Some men went missing but were found to have cocooned and changed into ...
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1980s sci-fi British schools TV show with noseless aliens [duplicate]
When I was a kid, more than 30 years ago, I remember watching a TV show at school in the UK. Would have been mid-to-late '80s. I think it was probably part of an English language thing, where they'd ...
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Aliens invading Earth who control adults and are afraid of wood
Here's all I can remember :-
It was a sci-fi story but had a horror-taste to it.
It was about aliens from some other planet, who tried to invade Earth.
The aliens could not (or probably would not) ...
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Movie or miniseries about people shipwrecked on an island with an abandoned military facility and Aborigines
It was about some shipwrecked survivors. They get onto an island and one man is attacked in the water by something you can't see. Later at night he begins to mutate and goes to the sea. Then the other ...
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Early 2000s movie about robot that invades the world
I watched this movie when I was a little kid so my memory of it is not so good. I remember there being robots that kind of look like the Iron Giant invading a city and they had these antenna things ...
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Book where kids get powers and the girl goes crazy and gets electrocuted
I got this book from my middle school library in like 7-8th grade so it’s probably for younger kids.
The plotline was that a group of kids gain powers (I don’t remember how); I think the powers have ...
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Novel: Sentient lifeform enslaves all life on planet — colonises other planets by making copies of itself?
I'm trying to find the name of this book I read in the past couple of years.
The book was about a sentient lifeform (I can't recall what kind, something that normally isn't sentient — the planet ...
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Classic Sci-fi Movie depicting human slaves on a foreign planet wearing metal (dog like) collars that prevent them from leaving [closed]
Looking for a classic sci-fi movie (B/W?) depicting human slaves (a male and female) on a foreign planet wearing metal (dog like) collars that prevent them from leaving.
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Sci-fi about boy captured by an alien trying to find intelligent life on Earth
I found the (short) story about a boy (or a man, probably, can't remember) in a collection of short sci-fi stories. I can describe the story a little, if that helps:-
The story starts out somewhere ...
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Book where an undercover chess grandmaster is sent to an alien planet so that he can facilitate contact or avoid the forthcoming war [duplicate]
I last read the book in the early 90's, so it would have been written before then.
The main plot is about an Earth person being sent on an undercover mission to an alien planet of extraordinarily ...
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1980's (maybe 70's) Scifi book series about other planets which were colonized one by native Americans, one by Mennonites, one by Mormons etc [duplicate]
I'm trying to remember the name of a book I read in high school (about 1984) that was about other planets which were colonized one by native Americans, one by Mennonites, one by Mormons etc. Very ...
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Story with a 3-layered world [duplicate]
I read this story in the 1990s or early 2000s, I believe.
It was about a world with three layers or zones, and in order to travel from one zone to the next, travellers could only do so naked, ...
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0
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Help me identify this science fiction graphic novel involving spacefaring mice/rats that I read in 2013
I have been looking for the name of this sci-fi graphic novel that I read in 2013. I do not remember the name of the novel, only a brief summary of the story.
Here it goes:
The story is set on board ...
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2
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bad military sci-fi; from fending off Zerg-like hive to fighting the reified multiverse/sum of history
Every once in a while I recall reading this series, which was mostly notable for the number of trope and genre mashups it crammed in, and for diverging into silly fantasy territory at the end. I ...
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2
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Sci-fi novel or novella where "Eliza Tertia" was one of the main characters
There's a book I borrowed from my grade 8 teacher's lending shelf (in Ontario, Canada) that I've been trying to identify for years.
The main character was a man in a futuristic setting who... I think.....
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1
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247
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sci-fi book where everyone older than 18 was dead
This was a sci-fi book where everyone older than 18 was dead. The eldest was some boy who's 17, I think, and I believe that they all had superpowers, if not all then some of them. The book started ...
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1
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Story about a world of magic where science has been forbidden [duplicate]
I am looking for a book that I read in the 80s where magic is used to help with tasks and science is forbidden.
What I recall is that the protagonist (I think a boy) has to move a something heavy like ...
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50/60’s sci fi movie using Pi to communicate to aliens
What 50/60’s sci fi movie uses Pi to communicate with aliens?
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