62
votes
Accepted
Old story where computer expert digitally animates The Lord of the Rings
"The Accomplice" (April 1967), by Vernor Vinge
"The Accomplice"
Originally published in Worlds of If Science Fiction, 1967.
Bob Royce, CEO of Royce Technology, Inc., and his ...
- 17.5k
54
votes
Accepted
Tony sent Pepper to get some files off his work computer. Why couldn't he do that himself?
Tony did not want to tip his hand to Obadiah Stane that he was suspicious of him. Obadiah had been cordial up to that point (and given that Obadiah tries to kill him afterward, Tony's fears would have ...
- 53.7k
38
votes
Accepted
Identify this 80's movie about a force-field shaped like a bubble
Probably Explorers:
Ben Crandall is a young teen living in the suburbs of Washington DC who experiences vivid dreams about flying through clouds and over a vast, city-like circuit board...usually ...
- 31.7k
38
votes
First fictional programming language in sci-fi or fantasy?
What about Gateway from 1977?
Interspersed throughout the book are excerpts from the main character's sessions with an artificially intelligent psychiatrist program (which he calls Sigfrid von Shrink),...
- 793
38
votes
Accepted
Early 1980s short story (in Asimov's, probably) - Young woman consults with "Eliza" program, and gives it anxiety
Found it!
Transference by Sharon Webb, and available here
Anxious woman:
While she was waiting for the elevator, Marilyn Taylor decided she had
eaten too much lunch. She always ate too much when she ...
- 60.5k
37
votes
First fictional programming language in sci-fi or fantasy?
The earliest I can find of what I believe is a fictional programming language is in Jurassic Park (1990). We see Dennis Nedry's code and then Ray Arnold digging into it to find the problem. As far as ...
- 144k
36
votes
Accepted
Robotic Spaceships have a human prisoner to maintain them
Outer Limits, new series, season 5, episode 7, The Human Operator.
Based on a short story, so you might have remembered that.
- 5,319
35
votes
First fictional programming language in sci-fi or fantasy?
Valentina: Soul in Sapphire (Joseph H. Delaney and Marc Stiegler, Baen Books, 1984) talks about MODULISP. Here are a few lines quoting that:
She could write new machine language routines, of course, ...
- 5,747
33
votes
How could Mr. Fantastic’s computer see distant planets in real-time in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer?
Is the scene in the video clip below the one you're thinking of?
REED RICHARDS: I've been cross-referencing the Surfer's radiation through every astronomical database. Altair Seven... Rigel Three... ...
- 134k
32
votes
What is the earliest portrayal of cell phones as we know them now?
The Joymaker from Pohl's 1966 "Age of the Pussyfoot" comes remarkably close.
This article elaborates:
The principle of it was clear enough. It was a remote input-output
station for a shared-...
- 60.5k
30
votes
Accepted
1950s short story where the universe is running out of space to store data
MS Fnd in a Lbry by Hal Draper? It was published in 1961 so near about the time-frame you recall.
There are no "nudged atoms", but there is mention of "nudged quanta":
Out of his ...
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29
votes
First fictional programming language in sci-fi or fantasy?
"The Black Cloud", Fred Hoyle, 1957. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Cloud
The hero (or at least the chap who consistently made the right decision) pulled an all-nighter writing an ...
- 1,083
27
votes
Accepted
Which programming languages are used in the Star Trek universe?
C++
No, seriously, they still use C++. Heck, they're even still doing their own memory management!
In Star Trek: Discovery 1x03 "Context is for Kings", Stamets asks Burnham to "...
- 52k
26
votes
What is the earliest portrayal of cell phones as we know them now?
This answer is based on my answer to the old question What sci-fi work introduced handheld wireless communicators?. A pocket telephone from 1915 and a pocket videophone from 1930, no mention of ...
- 171k
25
votes
Accepted
Which story involved computers that used humans to avoid being frozen?
This is almost certainly The Beast Adjoins, by Ted Kosmatka. First published in Asimov's Science Fiction, July-August 2020. No synopsis yet on isfdb, but the full story is available directly from ...
- 366
22
votes
Accepted
Short story about a programmer fired by mistake who can't be rehired
Job Inaction by Timothy Zahn. I read it in his anthology Cascade Point and Other Stories.
The programmer is Charley Addison and he works at Key Data Services. He comes into work on a Monday morning ...
- 117k
21
votes
Two computers buried under the earth
Could this be Colossus by D.F Jones?
There are two computers, one in the West (the titular Colossus) and one in the East (Guardian) tasked with managing their bloc's nuclear deterrent from inside ...
- 718k
21
votes
Is "Miss Clarke and the Computer" (1973) the first published song written from an intelligent machine's point of view?
Earlier came OZ and its strange inhabitants:
From the musical “The Tik-Tok Man of Oz”, 1913.
Words by L. Frank Baum.
Music by Louis F. Gottschalk.
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License 3.0 ...
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20
votes
Accepted
Film where a damaged ship can't count down sequentially during a self destruct
I think the movie you are looking for is Battle Beyond the Stars
The ship you are referencing was the one flown by Richard Thomas' character Shad.
That ship had an AI/Computer called Nell. At the end,...
- 9,364
20
votes
Short story about a man who pretends to be a supercomputer
Appointment in Tomorrow by Fritz Leiber. It can be found on gutenberg.org.
Two factions compete for power in a post nuclear world: Thinkers
(scientist) have had a lot of power and popularity due to ...
- 13.3k
20
votes
Accepted
In-universe, who provided the voice of Starfleet's computer interfaces?
In Star Trek Legacies: Captain to Captain, it's noted that the computer voice is modeled after Commander Una Chin-Riley as per the Memory Alpha entry for computer voice.
Captain Una Chin-Riley is ...
- 239k
20
votes
1980's short story about people being harmed by reading something on a computer?
Blit by David Langford, perhaps? In this story (see wiki article):
highly dangerous types of images called "basilisks" (after the
legendary reptile) have been discovered; these images ...
- 60.5k
20
votes
Accepted
Short story about huge computer that answered philosophical questions. Preceded 'Deep Thought'
I believe this is Simak's "The Answers" (1954), originally published in Future Science Fiction as "... And the Truth Shall Make You Free." If the Internet Archive is working you ...
- 143k
19
votes
Science fiction story that ends with "Let there be light"
This has got to be The Last Question, slightly misremembered. In this story, a series of people ask the computer of their era the question of what happens in the end. Until the end, the computers keep ...
- 4,349
19
votes
What is the earliest portrayal of cell phones as we know them now?
I offer this from 1897:
There is no doubt that the day will come, maybe when you and I are forgotten, when copper wires, gutta-percha coverings, and iron sheathings will be relegated to the Museum of ...
- 1,083
18
votes
Accepted
Does the Flash have use for a computer/programming and if so how does he deal with their slowness?
In most incarnations of the character, Barry Allen, is a forensic scientist. He uses a computer for the same reason most forensic scientists would. To collect and organize data for the later use of ...
- 214k
18
votes
First fictional programming language in sci-fi or fantasy?
Programming a computer is often mentioned in (Science) Fiction but rarely any details are given.
It usually isn’t needed for the story itself. And many authors themselves had only a vague idea how ‘...
- 3,404
16
votes
Accepted
Are the dot pattern printouts in "I Have No Mouth, and I must Scream" meaningful?
According to Wikipedia they are in International Telegraph Alphabet No 2; the first one reads "I THINK, THEREFORE I AM" and the second "COGITO ERGO SUM".
(Read each character vertically; there are ...
- 143k
16
votes
How many computers has James Kirk defeated?
I'm counting androids/robots in with this. Some minor spoilers if you've not watched TOS
The Return of the Archons
A Taste of Armageddon
The Doomsday Machine
The Apple (Vaal)
The Ultimate Computer (M-...
- 53.7k
16
votes
First story of brain augmentation using computer implant?
It was probably difficult to imagine, prior to transistors and miniaturized electronics, that some device could be placed in the brain to augment a human. However, someone did.
The subject of E.V. ...
- 16.4k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible