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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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.
I don't remember much of the plot, but it involved characters on a larger ...
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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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short science fiction story where a bank clerk/teller gets heachaches and discovers he's smarter
I read this short story when I was a teenager. I had thought it was
Asimov, but can't find reference to it. I would like to know the author and name of story if anyone knows for my own teenage son. ...
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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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3
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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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1
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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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1
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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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2
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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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0
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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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1
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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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0
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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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4
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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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1
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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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0
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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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0
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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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1
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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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11
votes
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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votes
1
answer
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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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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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1
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Title of science fiction novel from the '80s or early '90s with small furry aliens [duplicate]
There was another alien species that was invading Earth, and the little furry aliens helped us out. I think they liked having sex all the time and ended up having sex with the humans as well.
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1
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Book series about pairs of clones, Pratwa, that were mentally linked [duplicate]
There was a great sci-fi book series that I read about experiments with clones (Pratwa?). The lab produced sets of 2 clones that were linked mentally. When they meditated and merged consciousnesses ...
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0
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Movie about two kids who find an astronaut in the desert
The setting is an Earth-like desert. A brother and sister find an astronaut they believe to be an alien, although he's entirely human in appearance (as are they). I don't remember much about the plot, ...
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2
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Looking for a book about talking dragons with no humans
When I was a kid I remember going to a relative's house and reading the beginning of a book about warring factions of Dragons. I was not able to finish before the weekend visit was over. I've never ...
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1
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Short Story "Slow Topiary"
Short Story: Woman suffering from terminal cancer meets weird guy who has a topiary in his isolated home that is the size of a large oa
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1
answer
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Sci-fi TV series about medicine/virology/pathogen/germ warfare investigation
Unfortunately, the only details I am really sure of are the specific scenes I mention below. The rest I am quite hazy on.
IIRC it aired sometime in the mid to late 90s (maybe even early 2000s?) and it ...
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1
answer
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Book where the world is divided into seven parts where each part only lives for one day of the week and is in suspended animation for the rest [duplicate]
There was a book I read quite a while ago where due to population problems the population of the world was divided into seven parts. Each part actively lived one day a week and were in suspended ...
6
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0
answers
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Pre-1990's sci-fi novel about a man who becomes a legionnaire in a Roman/Romanesque Empire
I remember reading it in the late 1980's or early 1990's. If I recall correctly, it was:
set in the future
based on the Roman model of civilization and empire
about a guy who was training to become a ...
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2
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0
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101
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Children's book about a long neck blue alien wearing a turtle neck sweater
I read a book in the 1980s that I am looking for title and publish date.
Book Type: children's picture book
Plot:
A long necked blue alien visits earth and disguises themselves by wearing a turtleneck ...
10
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0
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Looking for an old sci-fi book/series about kids crashed on a planet
Ok, so it might be a long-shot, as I was around 12 when I read this book (or books?) — which was 30 years ago.
I'm not sure if it was a series of books, or just one book which I never finished.
The ...
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0
answers
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looking for science fiction short story about boy and friends who jump through planet gates to watch star explosions
This story is relatively new. It's short probably from one of the most known sci/fi magazines (Asimov, Analog, The magazine of fantasy and science fiction, Clarkesworld) I just read it earlier this ...
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