Questions tagged [story-identification]
Use for identifying a work of SF or Fantasy, including novels, movies, comic books, fanfic, TV series, video games, etc. Use with other tags to specify the type of media, eg. [short-stories]. Use [episode-identification] for identifying a single episode of a known series, whether TV, book, or comic. Use [actor-identification], [character-identification], [music-identification], or [object-identification] for those specific ID requests instead.
26,552 questions
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Girl Dies and Wakes up on an Autopsy Table in a Parallel Universe
From what I remember (read the book in 2017), the girl is from a family of witches and to awaken their power they have to die. Dying sends them to the parallel world, where everything is relatively ...
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A cartoon about a man who uses a magic flute to save a town from an invasion of rats, and later uses that flute to kidnap the children
I vaguely remember watching a cartoon movie whose plot goes like this.
The movie begins with a boy named Hans and a girl (I don't remember the name) playing on a meadow. The girl's kite gets trapped ...
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Time travelling paedo priest novel
I read this in the UK in the 1990s but it could have been older than that, I don't recall too much of the story.
Basically there's a priest who is a sexual predator to young boys, however he is ...
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Humans try to help aliens deactivate their defensive barrier
I read this short story in the 90s, it was in either a magazine or an anthology and probably written much earlier.
Humans were expanding in space and found a race of friendly aliens. Meeting them ...
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A giant wall in the middle of the ocean that splits the world in two
I watched what I think is a couple of episodes of a series a long time ago, maybe around 2002-2004 or something. Could be an older show. The show had a medieval setting.
In this show, there was a huge ...
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70s YA adventure 4 boys to moon in Apollo-style rocket/capsule
Summary - 4 boys go to moon in standard space rocket - one has helmet confiscated for snitching chocolate
In discussing childhood books today, I remembered one series that were similar in tone to ...
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An almost steam-punk short fiction about robot childcarers
I read this short fiction, probably novelette rather than short story, about 10 years ago. I read it in English, most probably in some collection. But it might be much older.
I said "almost" ...
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Scifi book set in Appalachia with mind-controlling aliens
I'm looking for the title and author for a paperback published probably mid 1990s.
Set in the Appalachian mountains. Main character is young woman trying to avoid notice because she can sense buzzing ...
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Short story with people hired because Murphy's Law is stronger for them [duplicate]
I remember reading this short story in the past 5 years, probably in a back issue of Analog.
A number of people for whom Murphy's Law seemed especially effective were hired to live in an underground ...
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Movie where a woman in an apartment experiments on corpses with a syringe, learns to possess people, and then takes over the protagonist's girlfriend
The movie seems to take place in an apartment with a man and a woman, likely his wife or girlfriend; I can't remember.
The villain, a different woman, is taking the bodies of people who died in the ...
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Anime/cartoon about a game where people collect elemental balls that house an animal inside
The cartoon or anime's idea is about a game where people basically collect balls of the same element. Each ball contains an animal that, once opened up, and fights the other. The winner then can ...
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An elementalist manga where female lead goes to past
I don't remember the name of the manga, but the female lead travels back in time. In her past life, she was sacrificed for her brother because she didn't manifest water powers. After traveling back in ...
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Sci-fi book with girl and boy with powers and a mark and maybe Atlantis involved
Looking for a sci-fi YA novel. I remember the cover being blue. The main character is a rich girl—maybe a princess? And her family has a mark (I think it had something to do with stars? And it may ...
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Trilogy that had a Damascus-steel sword
A more powerful and technologically advanced culture (that I seem to remember was coded roman) invades other countries with a set of rules. If they do not have total/majority control of the country ...
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Lightnovel where the main character kills people to keep his wife safe
I remember the male main character killing the wife's nanny who is currently her maid whom she trusted and he is misunderstood. Later it's proven that he did it because she tried to poison the wife. ...
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Two characters physically fused their body [closed]
Is there any scene where boy and girl fused their body to become one in anime or manga or manwha.like in the ningen fushin nick and Tania fused their body to become one
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1990s children’s book about parallel universes where the protagonists cause Guy Fawkes' failure
I would have read it when I was around 10 in the mid- to late-90s.
I remember it being about a small group of kids. The idea is presented that every decision you make causes a new timeline or universe ...
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Space trees that use sunlight
Book about trees that have a bubble around then and exist in space, get chemicals from gas planets, and use sunlight
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Light stops and people don't die anymore in a book read in the 80's
This is a book I started reading around 1980 about a person walking. He finds a spaceship on a hill, enters it, and pulls a lever. From that moment on, shadows remain fixed in their positions. People ...
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Gordon Dickson Serial in Analog re Assassin and Feud
Dickson had a serial in Analog, whereby an assassin was looking to end a centuries old feud between two clans, by killing the last member. He does not know the description of the target. He knows they ...
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In which book of the Vorkosigan Saga does Miles says something like "It changed my opinion of media"
I believe remembering a scene in the Vorkosigan Saga where someone asks Miles whether seeing the depiction of his parents in media/journals (or any synonym) changed his opinion about his parents, and ...
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Book series referencing "Tiger tiger" and "Stars, I have seen them fall"
A very long time ago (25 years +) I borrowed a sci-fi book from my local library, and I pretty much forgot almost everything about the book itself, but it did introduce me to several snippets of ...
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TV series with a smart female character whose brother or ex-boyfriend shows up who is smarter and is in some military/spy organization? [migrated]
I am pretty sure this is a sci-fi series, but there's a chance it isn't. For some reason, I was thinking it was Stargate SG-1, but I can't confirm it. I don't remember a whole lot, but here are some ...
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Looking for a novel about a chess player murdered by computer
The main plot is, more or less: A famous chess player is found dead after a contest. He used a brain injection device controlled by an AI to help him training. Some doubts are maybe the AI killed him, ...
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In what golden age short story / novella was the concept of "you can defeat a system by turning the handle farther than it was intended to go"?
I remember reading a short story / novella a couple of decades ago. At the end of the story, one character says to another that "you can defeat a system by turning its handle further than it is ...
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Guard mind controlled to "shoot the driver"
A memory recently popped into my head of a scene from a movie or TV show where a passenger in a vehicle mind controls someone else into shooting the driver, using the exact phrase "shoot the ...
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Who was the author of the short story titled "The Verdant Reign"? [closed]
Who was the author of the short story titled "The Verdant Reign? AI found the synopsis
On the planet Xylos, a vibrant, verdant world, the dominant life form wasn't animal, but plant - a ...
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Story identification: DeviantArt webcomic (around 2010) in a futuristic dystopia with a crazy protagonist
I'm looking for this webcomic I used to follow in DeviantArt around 2008-2012. It's a webcomic, done in the digital speed painting style that was so popular back then.
It's set in a futuristic ...
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Identification of early 21st century cartoon with theme song about "Megaman"?
As I remember it was a comedy series on US tv, English language, probably Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network.
The protagonist was a teen sidekick of a superhero, balancing his normal life with sidekicking....
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The Time Traveler's Other Wife
You know the story, The Time Traveler's Wife, correct?
I read a short story in Analog many years prior to the publication of TTTW about a time traveler who started at the end of his wife's life and ...
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Manhwa in which a female god transfers a guy's soul to other bodies to make him regret attempting suicide
In this manhwa, the main character (a guy) tries to commit suicide to escape reality, but a black/tanned female god is very harsh on him, so he regrets dying. I remember it involved transferring his ...
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Short Story about a planet run by a plant named core
Short story written in the 50s or 60s. Sci fi about a planet that humans land on, where the planet is controlled by a plant named "the core." 5 or 6 pages long. Possibly posted in a magazine....
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What Star Wars audio book had a pilot providing a password for a restricted region of space?
Years ago I listened to an audio book of one of the many Star Wars-verse stories, where a female pilot approaches a restricted region in her spaceship, repeating over the communicator a — from my ...
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Book with watercolor cover from early to mid 2000s
I've been trying to find a book that I started to read when I was a teen. I don't remember what it was called but I believe i set it down because it might've been to mature for me at the time
What I ...
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Paranormal Witch Book. Female lead is in hiding from assassins with her siblings
I am looking for a book I read a few years ago that had a strong female lead who was in hiding with her siblings from an assassin organization that modified and trained them. I remember the witch ...
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fantasy manga about op demon lord mc goes to human town through the gate
i remember i read fantasy manga about op demon lord mc goes to human town then that human town got attacked by some syndicate to open demon world gate but its turn out all demon that come out throught ...
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Harry Potter fanfic with a Luna/Harry/Hermione pairing where she expounds at great length about how various wizarding spells are about sex
Hogwarts: So why aren't the kids "doing it"? recently popped up and it made a fanfic pop into my mind, partially inspired by "splinching" showing up in a different story that ...
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I am trying to find a manga where the mc is reincarnated as an extra
I have read a manga a long time ago where the comic was in 4koma-style I think. He lived in a world that operated on manga rules/tropes, and he commented a lot about it. The most biggest one was where ...
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Looking for a young-adult book about kids that get stuck in a cave [migrated]
As near as I can remember, I read this book in 7th or 8th grade, so figure it would be written toward 10-15 year olds. I'm looking for a book where 2-4 (can't remember exactly) kids decide to explore ...
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The Expanding Menagerie of Station 17 Analog SF&F
Trying to find a copy and the author of a story published in Analog in the 80s or early 90s called "The Expanding Menagerie of Station 17," wherein more and more animals are ordered by a ...
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What was that early 1990s near-future dystopian novel with red corporate currency competing against green US government currency?
In the early 90s (1991-1993) I read a (then) near-future dystopian novel that I would like to identify so I can read it again.
The book was a soft-cover, a full novel set in the United States (set ...
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A Fantasy short fiction with adult, but very funny content
I read this short story (or maybe short novelette) twenty or more years ago, in English, in a collection.
A man finds two female breasts in his underwear drawer. Is it not at all gore, no blood, the ...
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Identifying a story within a black widower's story by Asimov
In More Tales of the Black Widowers, "Earthset and Evening Star", Dr. Drake says the following lines
“I just read a mystery,” said James Drake in his softly hoarse smoker's voice, “in which ...
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Manhwa where the class gets isekaied and then they all ask the goddess what happens to their family, but the main character asks to go back
When he asks to go back home, she teleports him in front of everyone, saying she teleported him back home, but she actually teleported him to a territory of monsters and none of his classmates know.
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Short story: Sci-Fi pilot discovers a massacre investigating mysterious signal
It's been years since I read this short story, I apologize if this is fuzzy or incorrect but it's been bugging me all day and I'd like to know what I read.
A pilot in a high-tech jet/spacecraft flies ...
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A programmer developed a program to read contracts and convert them to plain speech or make them abstruse
Programmer for a company writes a program for simplifying government contracts into plain speech so anyone could understand it. The software could also reverse it and make text abstruse. I think the ...
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Young adult novel, read in early '60s, about a spacecraft travelling from Earth to a mysterious purple planet
UK? YA novel. Travel from Earth in spacecraft which is actually constructed as an amphibious 'Flying Boat' - takes off from ocean and gradually gains altitude to space. Destination is a mysterious ...
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Story about orbiting brain / super computer
Please help identify this sci-fi story: The course of the story describes how a supercomputer / AI brain is going to be put in orbit, and when it finally is, all of humanity ends up frozen in their ...
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Manga where the main character gets kicked out of party then hero disbands party once he finds out
I’m trying to find this one manga where the main character gets kicked out of the party, one of those stories, but later the hero finds out why he was kicked out and then he disbands the party since ...
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2
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Manhwa/manhua in which a bunch of people were teleported by train to a strange city of monsters
Does anyone know a manhwa/manhua where the main character teleports to a strange city of monsters by sitting on a train? He has to go on various quests, like surviving at the station itself (that was ...
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