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.
26,567 questions
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Low-budget fantasy movie scene where a sorcerer's apprentice creates a banana but has no idea what it is
This was a movie I rented on VHS, back in the late 1980s or early 1990s. It was a quasi-medieval swords-and-sorcery fantasy, clearly made with a very low budget. It's tone was mostly serious, but ...
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Looking for Sci-fi book about frozen capsule which contains alien form in frozen state which escape once human enter the egg-shape capsule [duplicate]
The book is about a space crew which discovers a frozen capsule in deep space which contains alien life which escapes from the capsule and threats life on space ship and nearby planet. The alien life ...
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A widower with 3 children wins a female android at a football game
A novel about a widower with three children in the future. He is given free tickets to the 49er game but the kicker is he asks a girl if she is a robot he gets to take her home. He wins and takes her ...
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Anime where the main character can fuse with spirits
I had watch an anime couple of years ago which the mc can fuse with spirits. It all starts I think it's a mountain with his best friend and without knowing this best friend of his is a spirit and also ...
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Story about youths in dystopian-type society who live in an old trash landfill & essentially become scavengers
I read this sometime in the 90s, so it could have been published pretty much anytime pre-2000. I think it's something relatively obscure book rather than anything especially popular.
It was about some ...
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Book with fairy - human girl who also has witch blood
I remember reading a book about a girl who is far but is bound to be human. Her father dies early on in the book (maybe a woodcutter). Then she unbinds herself and finds she also has witch blood. The ...
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Manhwa where the male lead makes a wish for the female lead to return to life
The female lead (FL) was incited by a woman — as far as I remember, she was a relative, either of the FL or the male lead (ML) — to sacrifice herself to a magic stone first, instead of waiting for ...
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Story in 1970s children's magazinee about leaping a literal gorge to get into the New Year
Sometime between (say) 1974 and 1978 I read a story in a children's magazine (possibly one that also serialized the cartoon "The Adventures of Tintin") about a society where each year ...
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Fantasy book with a chacter called Robin 9 finger
I'm trying to remember the title of a book I read maybe 30 years ago. It had a female character who was called Robin the 9 finger. This Robin character had only 9 fingers because of her bravery.
...
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Movie where everything turns out to be the test of new VR glasses in helicopter
The movie was probably made somewhere after 2010 in Hollywood. According to what I remember, it had rather contemporary visual effects and overall visuals.
The plot begins with CEO of some company ...
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Name the book with human embassy on small island
I’m trying to recall a sci-fi book. The story involves humans discovering a planet inhabited by an alien civilization. They orbit the planet in their spaceship, and the aliens eventually allow them to ...
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Book about a young man who joins his uncle's mercenary naval group
I read this book at least 20 years ago. It's set in the future. Nuclear weapons are banned, so conflicts are resolved by hiring mercenaries groups as proxies. Humanity lives in domed cities on the ...
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Manhwa where Fl is a genius with medicinal herbs but hides it so she doesn’t have to work hard
I read this awhile ago so I don’t remember much but there is a scene where a girl who bullied her is using a face cream to make herself more beautiful but the Fl reveals that it will soon melt her ...
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Manhwa about a man who, right as he is about to die, goes back in time to the day before the zombie apocalypse
The man was on top of a bunch of cars on a highway before going back in time.
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Space explorer finds chemical formula from ancient civilization that induces permanent high
This is a short story I read online maybe 5-7 years ago, though I'm unsure if it was a republishing of a printed story. I believe it was a more modern short story, but I could be wrong, and I cannot ...
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Sci-fi book about an alien discovered frozen in a capsule in deep space
In the 90s I read a sci-fi book.
The book is about a space crew which discovers a frozen capsule in deep space which contain alien life which escapes from the capsule and threats life on space ship ...
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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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Japanese manga about a young male MC becoming a hero in another world and coming back to earth after defeating the demon Lord
It is a Japanese manga. Art is normal manga style and black/white.
MC is a male lead.
MC became a hero in another world and came back to earth after defeating the demon Lord.
MC is lowkey an S-class ...
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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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1
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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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1
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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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1
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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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