55
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Alien invasion movie, giant robot aliens with long legs capturing people
By your brief description, I believe the movie you're thinking about is War of the Worlds (2005) since:
It is an alien invasion movie
It was released in 2005 - just over 10 years ago (at time of ...
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47
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Searching this story: Invasion of tiny aliens who are destroyed by a single footstep
This sounds like part of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams. An excerpt from Wikipedia:
G'Gugvuntts and Vl'hurgs
Two species which existed in the distant past, a very great ...
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39
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Need help to find a sci-fi collection I read at school (mid 80s)
It's the 1977 anthology The Best Science-Fiction Stories; 750 pages, black cover, edited by Michael Stapleton. As for the stories you mentioned:
"Let's Go to Golgotha! by Garry Kilworth:
Simon ...
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36
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ID movie where aliens control humans from behind
I believe this is the 1994 film adaptation of Robert Heinlein's novel The Puppet Masters. While the president is a character in the movie, it's actually Donald Sutherland's character, a high-level ...
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33
votes
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Short story about alien invasion with a twist.
“Basic Right”
This short story by Eric Frank Russell was first published in Astounding Science Fiction (1958). If the questioner read it in an anthology roughly twenty years ago, it was probably ...
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31
votes
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1990s movie. Aliens infiltrating earth. Protagonist tries to stop them
The movie is The Arrival (1996) with Charlie Sheen.
After astronomer Zane Zaminski (Charlie Sheen) discovers a radio transmission that originated from space, he tells his boss, Phil (Ron Silver), who ...
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30
votes
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People recluded in a penal reservation, who believe they are on Mars but they are actually on alien-invaded Earth
This is Mars By Moonlight by 'Paul Flehr' (Frederic Pohl) which appeared in the June 1958 issue of Galaxy with illustrations by Wally Wood. Everything in your description is there - the desert, the ...
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27
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Book where Martians invade Earth because their own resources were dwindling
This sounds like The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells.
They come in a sort of 'capsule' that can change the amount of Gravity felt inside. I know this because of the fact that when they landed, the ...
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26
votes
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Black-and-white SF movie with giant octopus- or starfish-like creature attacking a city
I think this is "The Quatermass Xperiment", which is actually British but had an American lead actor playing the main character of professor Bernard Quatermass. From the wiki summary, two ...
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25
votes
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Science fiction TV series, priest bringing Bible to spaceship?
I think this is referring to a scene in "V: The Final Battle" miniseries from 1984.
There is a scene when the main villain in the series (Diana) is talking to a priest (Father Andrew), after reading ...
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22
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What was the first science fiction story that showed a successful alien conquest of the Earth?
1897: Auf Zwei Planeten, a novel by Kurd Lasswitz, translated into English as Two Planets. Some excerpts from Everett F. Bleiler's review (of a 1971 abridged English translation) in Science-Fiction: ...
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22
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Looking for film about an invader of earth that eats energy
This is probably Kronos (1957). Basically the plot is an alien robot comes to Earth to steal energy. The robot does kind of look like a skyscraper with legs.
Quoting relevant bits from the plot ...
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22
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Sci-fi story from the 1960s (probably) about a fake alien invasion
Operation Terror, by Murray Leinster. (A pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins. He wrote a great deal of science fiction under this name.) First published in 1962. Available to read for free at ...
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21
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Need help to find a sci-fi collection I read at school (mid 80s)
Let's Go to Golgotha by Garry Kilworth. Your description is accurate.
The Hibbie by James Alexander. If I remember rightly the viewpoint character is a spacer who comes home to find that the woman he ...
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17
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What short story is about an invasion from metallic creatures?
The name of the book is No Truce With Terra by Phillip E. High.
(Credit: @sueelleker)
A summary can be found here:
This novel begins with a scientist returning to his home only to find it ...
17
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Trying to find short story about somebody who knew everyone on Earth
I am trying to find a short story I read
"All the People", a short story by R. A. Lafferty, available at Project Gutenberg. It was first published in Galaxy Magazine, April 1961, which is ...
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17
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1990s-2000s horror alien movie with slugs infecting people through the mouth
This is The Faculty (1998).
The film features a prominent American football scene
And you get to see the brain slugs entering someone and taking them over on ...
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16
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Pre-80s short story, man walking in a deserted town enters a cafe and climbs down a pit with cables and pipes
A Trip to the City (also known as "It Could be Anything", 1963) by Keith Laumer. Originally read by me in Nine By Laumer. Available at Project Gutenberg.
He was looking down into a great ...
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16
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Short Sci-Fi story about tiny aliens invading Earth but getting squashed
Do you perhaps mean the G'Gugvuntts? Simply based on the timing (H2G2 was first published in 1979), and the similarity to this quote from the book:
the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of ...
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16
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Old Budrys(?) end-of-world/alien invasion of NYC story
This is "They Don't Make Life Like They Used To" (1963) by Alfred Bester.
The story begins:
The girl driving the jeep was very fair and very Nordic. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a ...
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16
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A telepathic race hides its intelligence from invading humans
I think this could well be a short story by A.E. van Vogt called "The Second Solution". I originally read it the the van Vogt anthology "Away and Beyond", but it is also one of the ...
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15
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Looking for sci-fi book about alien invasion where Earth builds a giant laser to stop an incoming alien fleet
The novel is Invader by Albert Fay Hill and David Campbell Hill. The story matches your description at every point: alien saucers, interceptors destroyed, huge gamma-ray lasers (called Grasers), ...
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15
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Movie with weird Predator-looking creature that gets energy from a cigarette lighter
This is definitely Howard the Duck. The car lighter scene was fairly disturbing but I guess they had to have a disturbing scene to make up for the scene with Lea Thompson in bed with a duck.
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15
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Aliens like giant grasshoppers invade earth, give black people power over whites
Deathday
This is DeathDay by William Dietz. Its sequel is EarthRise.
The most notable detail is confirmed by TV Tropes:
In the Deathday and Earthrise duology, Earth is invaded by an alien race known ...
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14
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What is the name of this sci-fi novel with a male soldier and a lesbian lizard sidekick?
This is probably William Barton's When Heaven Fell.
From the Wiki entry:
Earth has been taken over by the Master Race, a galaxy-spanning empire of artificial intelligences, and the best of Earth’s ...
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14
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Story in which God is on the side of aliens invading earth
"For I Am a Jealous People", a 1954 novella by Lester del Rey. It has appeared under various covers. In the early 1960s you might have read it in the 1963 printing of Star Short Novels ...
- 157k
14
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Short story ID: Alien invasion from Sigma Draconis
Basic Right by Eric Frank Russell. Previously identified as the answer to Short story about alien invasion with a twist.
However you have misremembered the star. It is Sigma Octantis not Sigma ...
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14
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70s-80s SF book, a series of short stories each set X years ahead. In first one aliens placed domes over cities before wiping out everyone else
The Turning Place: Stories of a Future Past, a 1976 collection by Jean E. Karl in her Clordian Sweep series.
Review by Charles N. Brown in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Spring 1977, ...
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14
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TV show where an alien starship hovers above the Earth. At first, it seems the aliens are here to offer help. Then it turns out they have a hive mind
This mostly fits the plot of the 2009 remake of the 1983 mini-series "V" (V standing for Visitors) with Morena Baccarin as the Alien queen Anna. Alien ships hover over Earth cities, the ...
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13
votes
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SF Short Story: alien apes invade during nuclear war
I think this is Christopher Anvil's Pandora's Planet. Pandora's Legions has the complete collection of the stories.
The aliens are more lion-like than ape. Their tech, except for FTL, is way behind ...
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Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible