Skip to main content
Search type Search syntax
Tags [tag]
Exact "words here"
Author user:1234
user:me (yours)
Score score:3 (3+)
score:0 (none)
Answers answers:3 (3+)
answers:0 (none)
isaccepted:yes
hasaccepted:no
inquestion:1234
Views views:250
Code code:"if (foo != bar)"
Sections title:apples
body:"apples oranges"
URL url:"*.example.com"
Saves in:saves
Status closed:yes
duplicate:no
migrated:no
wiki:no
Types is:question
is:answer
Exclude -[tag]
-apples
For more details on advanced search visit our help page
Results tagged with
Search options not deleted user 42769

For questions about a book of long narrative in literary prose, in order to distinguish it from other types of story. Do NOT use this tag for every question which happens to be about a novel. Use to either identify the media on a [story-identification] question or disambiguate works where the tag covers the novel and its form in other media.

50 votes
2 answers
5k views

Short story: Interstellar inspector senses "off" nature of planet hiding aggressive culture

Note that I'm tagging this as "novel," because I remember it as being a somewhat separated story, but not with its own title -- more like a vignette within a single book. …
Otis's user avatar
  • 14k
31 votes
1 answer
920 views

Novel: Woman lives her entire life, then finds out it was just practice

I read this book sometime between the late 1980s and the early 1990s. The story follows the life of a woman, which starts when she is a newborn in a kind of robotic creche that cares for her, teaches …
Otis's user avatar
  • 14k
19 votes
Accepted

Novel about a guy who is possessed by the divine essence and the world ends?

If not the novel, you may be thinking of one of the novellas from which the novel was formed. Additional details of the novella versions can be seen in this previous answer. …
Otis's user avatar
  • 14k
17 votes
2 answers
1k views

Novel with mind-trapping sculpture-like object

This is a paperback novel that I read in the 00s, but I am fairly certain that it was published earlier (probably circa 1970s). I believe that it was part of a series (the middle book of a trilogy?) …
Otis's user avatar
  • 14k
12 votes

SciFi book featuring an alien race called the Jillies or Gillies

Meredith's We All Died at Breakaway Station (1969), as referenced in this previous unaccepted answer to a question about a novel with a similar premise. …
Otis's user avatar
  • 14k
11 votes
Accepted

novel identification: alien scientists must save their civilization from future destruction

This sounds similar to the plot of John Brunner's The Crucible of Time, published in 1983. It has been previously asked about here (with no accepted answer) and here (with an author-supplied but not f …
Otis's user avatar
  • 14k
10 votes
Accepted

Sci-Fi book I read in the eighties. Dystopian future where violence is porn

This is likely to be E. C. Tubb's Century of the Manikin (1972). As summarized (probably from the cover blurb) at goodreads.com: Peaceful, happy, non-violent . . . the perfect society? Or was …
Otis's user avatar
  • 14k
9 votes

Sci-fi novel from the 1970's that involves multiple Earths

I found this review, which contains an aside that confirms Jimmy Carter is mentioned: (our own timeline is discovered late in the novel, and merits only a brief line about President Carter) As I recall …
Otis's user avatar
  • 14k
9 votes

Book with a plant that released its seeds every couple of years that corrode everything they...

Per the OP's comment above, this book was Dragonsdawn (1988) by Anne McCaffrey, part of her Dragonriders of Pern series. Per the plot summary available at Wikipedia: The planet Pern seemed a paradise …
8 votes

America broken up into separate regions, a journalist visits the Great Lakes region from the...

The fictional country is called Lakeland and is in the American Midwest: Greer’s novel is about a future nation in what is now the American Midwest that has managed to prosper by going backwards technologically …
Otis's user avatar
  • 14k
6 votes

Story about a civilization which repeatedly rises and falls, because individuals can't stop ...

This sounds like one of the key scenes from The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The aliens are called the "Moties" and, in addition to being specialized by roles as you mention, …
Otis's user avatar
  • 14k
6 votes
Accepted

Novel: Woman lives her entire life, then finds out it was just practice

I remembered enough to find this one with some searching on ISFDB. It's From the Legend of Biel (1975) by Mary Staton. An Amazon review by Doran Jensen mentions the essential plot point that I recall: …
Otis's user avatar
  • 14k
4 votes
Accepted

Scifi novel about two battling AI's, where one is trying to protect humanity and the second ...

Per my suggestion in comments above, it looks like the OP has confirmed (in a rolled-back edit) that the book in question was Colossus (1966) by D. F. Jones. As noted in that comment by the OP: For t …
Otis's user avatar
  • 14k
3 votes

What is the title of this then future Cold War era book

Possibly James P. Hogan's Voyage from Yesteryear? The Wikipedia article on it may seem familiar: The story opens early in the 21st century, as an automated space probe is being prepared for a mi …
Otis's user avatar
  • 14k
3 votes

Name of a book - Genius Space Squid Defeats bad guy, I *think* the word "Emperor" is in the ...

Per the OP's comment above, this book is Emperor Mollusk Versus the Sinister Brain, by A. Lee Martinez, publish 2012. The book summary at goodreads.com gives an overview of the plot: Emperor Mollusk. …

15 30 50 per page