26
votes
Accepted
Golden Age short story about carnivorous aliens that pay humans a license fee to clone them for meat
Larry Niven's "Assimilating Our Culture, That's What They're Doing!" (ISFDB) from his The Draco Tavern stories as seen on the TV Tropes To Serve Man page.
A minor character tells the (...
- 213k
24
votes
Accepted
Short sci-fi story about traders who find an alien life form that absorbs heat
"The Pillows", a short story by Margaret St. Clair, first published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1950, available at the Internet Archive. You may have read it in one of these ...
- 157k
21
votes
Accepted
SF Short Story: Humans are attempting to join the Galactic Federation
I think this is "Conviction" by Brian Aldiss (as similar questions have been answered), available here
Humans are attempting to join the Galactic Federation. A small team are sent to ...
- 33.6k
18
votes
Looking for SF short story about first contact and humans have to destroy evidence before aliens reach Earth
Sshhh... by David Brin
The story opens with 2 Earth Survey vessels escorting Lentili
starships to Earth. The Lentili are a race of tall, long-lived aliens
who are far more technologically and ...
- 33.6k
16
votes
Obscure sci-fi illustration book showing speculative alien life forms on other worlds
I believe this is the 1979 Galactic Encounters series artbook Aliens in Space: An Illustrated Guide to the Inhabited Galaxy by Stewart Cowley (writing as Stephen Caldwell).
The cover art actually ...
- 115k
15
votes
Accepted
Movie about aliens that secretly invade earth
I think this might be 2007's The Invasion, starring Nicole Kidman, another retread of the Body Snatchers. The trailer for it, IIRC, showed a black man on a subway car telling Nicole she can fool the ...
- 25.6k
15
votes
Accepted
Book where Earth is flooded and the main character escapes in a spaceship with a sex robot
This is Venus on the Half-Shell (1974) by "Kilgore Trout," one of several pseudonyms used by Philip José Farmer.
Farmer wrote Venus on the Half-Shell (1975) under the name Kilgore Trout, a ...
- 104k
14
votes
Accepted
Which early 90s kids sci-fi TV show, maybe called 'X,' had an alien family fleeing to Earth?
This is Halfway Across the Galaxy and Turn Left (1994–1995).
It's an Australian TV show based on a 1985 novel of the same name by Robin Klein. She wrote one sequel, titled Turn Right For Zyrgon (1994)....
- 104k
9
votes
Can anyone identify this reposted artwork of a Grey alien?
I think I've finally managed to identify this, thanks to the wayback machine crawl that was posted earlier.
This is 'Anatomy of a Sky Creature' by British artist Rod Dickinson, but edited to be in ...
- 333
9
votes
SF novella or short story: Humans suddenly get the ability to grant their every wish
Blindfold From The Stars by Philip E. High? People suddenly develop mental powers. Turns out they had them in the far past, but they were blocked by aliens. Another alien race sends a virus, which ...
- 11.4k
9
votes
Obscure sci-fi illustration book showing speculative alien life forms on other worlds
I think this may have been the wonderful Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials. It does not contain an alien exactly like what you describe, although it contains two different quadrupeds which, taken ...
- 94.8k
8
votes
Accepted
A children's novel featuring a race of spider-like aliens
I think this is probably Sweetwater by Laurence Yep. It was published in 1973 so it's old enough for you to have read it 30 years ago.
On the planet Harmony, Tyree and his people are fighting to ...
- 94.4k
7
votes
Accepted
Sci-fi book from 90's-ish about aliens and apathy and weird souls
The book is Alien Influences (1994) by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
Bountiful is a sun-scorched, inhospitable planet, offering only one comfort to its small band of human colonists: the powerful ...
- 231
7
votes
Accepted
Short story about the last man on a colony planet who dies and is resurrected by aliens, then upgrades himself to understand physics
This sounds like "Understanding Space and Time" by Alastair Reynolds (2005).
A plague wipes out all people on Earth and the last surviving person is John Renfrew, who is in a base on Mars. ...
- 1,520
5
votes
Accepted
A new movie or series where planes float to the ground. Later we see an alien ship hovering over a city
This is the mini-series Childhood's End (2015).
You can see the planes landing in the middle of a crowded city street in the trailer below.
- 667k
4
votes
Earth enslaved by aliens. Last sentence of the short story gives added grimness to it
OK, not actually a recent question, but one I ran into recently.
"The Certificate" by Avram Davidson (1959), described here as:
Fifty years after the arrival of aliens, one of the small ...
- 213k
4
votes
Recent movie/TV series with black alien goop that takes over people
Might this be the 2017 film Life?
In the film, a six-member crew of the International Space Station uncovers the first evidence of extraterrestrial life on Mars. When members of the crew conduct ...
- 213k
3
votes
Book I read about 2017 with a society with alien orbs that enhance you
Is this Burning Midnight (2016) by Will McIntosh...?
Sully is a sphere dealer at a flea market. It doesn’t pay much—Alex Holliday’s stores have muscled out most of the independent sellers—but it ...
- 104k
2
votes
What is this film about a group of friends travelling with camcorders who encounter people whose faces were distorted?
Could this be There Are Monsters from 2013?
A group of students are on what is essentially a road trip, making a film project. They set up interviews and use camcorders a lot, but as it goes on more ...
- 3,834
1
vote
What is this film about a group of friends travelling with camcorders who encounter people whose faces were distorted?
Could it be The Phoenix Tapes '97?
“The Phoenix Tapes ’97” is a found footage sci-fi/horror film with an anonymous writer, director, and cast. The film follows four friends on a weekend getaway who ...
- 213k
1
vote
Book About Unknown Phenomena/Aliens/Bigfoot/Etc
This is late, but if you're still looking; I read, in about the same time period, a book called There Are Monsters In The Earth. It covered all of the most famous cryptids, with the largest two ...
- 548
1
vote
Can't remember an old movie and only remember a minor scene
This movie called It Came from Outer Space II (1996)
Aliens crashland near a small desert town, strewing odd bluish-glowing
rocks throughout the area. Townfolk notice something is amiss when
...
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