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25 votes
Accepted

Paraplegic who becomes a centaur

Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson. From Wikipedia: "Call Me Joe" is a science fiction novelette by American writer Poul Anderson, published in Astounding Science Fiction in April 1957. It later ...
LogicDictates's user avatar
23 votes
Accepted

Novel with a scene where a mother is compelled to pile blankets on her newborn

Guardians of the West by David Eddings has such a scene. Ce'Nedra is mind-controlled by an unknown baddie into piling blankets onto her newborn son. Garion looked through the doorway. Ce'Nedra was ...
Moriarty's user avatar
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20 votes
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Film (possibly made for TV) where everyone wears a headset which controls thoughts by suppressing IQ

You're describing Harrison Bergeron (1995). Everyone wears an IQ suppressing headband and everything's very '1950s'. Harrison: Last night, seeing those programs I realized that...Everything looks ...
Valorum's user avatar
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17 votes
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Analog story - US provides food machines to other nations, with hidden feature

Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men by Rick Shelley. Nanotech device using local materials: And there are sources people can help provide . Plastics, wood ash, organic waste . This system can liberate ...
Andrew's user avatar
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15 votes
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Episode of TV show where nobody was allowed to be smart

Thanks very much to the people who suggested Harrison Bergeron (1995). The memory of somebody watching his death but - wearing a headset - being too stupid to know why they are upset (Harrison's ...
itsbruce's user avatar
  • 471
11 votes
Accepted

Find sci fi short story about invisible creatures on everyone's heads

Pretty sure this is a duplicate of this question; Novel with psychic parasites from Earth. Originally, a novella by Jack Vance, The Brains of Earth, published in 1966.The protagonist, a scientist ...
KenM's user avatar
  • 6,139
11 votes
Accepted

Novel where a woman is able to shake off mind control due to a broken microwave

I think this is the book Hosts, which is the fifth book of F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack series. The possessed girl is Jack's sister Kate, and the possession is by a virus called Unity that has a ...
John Rennie's user avatar
10 votes
Accepted

Short sci-fi story about mind control hijacking

This looks like "Murder Will In" by Frank Herbert. The being you refer to was actually a symbiotic pair sentience, whose two members are identified by "Tegas" and "Bacit"....
LSerni's user avatar
  • 9,720
9 votes
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SF Novel About Mind Control Device

Possible you're looking for Joe Haldeman's Tool of the Trade, a 1987 novel about a scientist who develops an ultrasonic device that makes people hyper-suggestible. Nicholas Foley, the scientist, has ...
KenM's user avatar
  • 6,139
9 votes
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70s TV miniseries: antagonist gets followers to his pacifist ideology through mind control devices

Le Mutant? (The Mutant, 1978, France) From Wikipedia, translated: The various nations of the world have decided to make peace and destroy their weapons, while society's control over all activities ...
Jenayah's user avatar
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8 votes
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Movie about cop with a control chip in his head which breaks

I found it, Nightmare City 2035. It was filmed in Bulgaria at 2007, so I thought that it was from the late 90s. Good plot and ideas, but bad anything else. Not worth a second glance. The future. ...
MEZON's user avatar
  • 171
8 votes
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Pre-90s movie about brother and sister with telekinesis abilities; sister makes a bird explode with her mind

Parts of this sound like Scanners III: The Takeover. It was made in 1992 starts with the brother accidentally pushing a friend off a balcony and putting himself into exile features a telepathic woman ...
James McLeod's user avatar
  • 4,539
8 votes
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Short story about mind-hijacking aliens (60s or 70s)

This is "The Hour of Battle" by Robert Sheckley. You mention: Earth's early-warning system proves ineffective when the aliens simply use mind-control to make the Earthlings ignore their own ...
Organic Marble's user avatar
8 votes
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Film about ancient hypnotist magician who uses hypnosis to control people around him

This is The Shadow (1994) Our hero fights a Mongol descendant of Genghis Khan with a fancy flying psychic knife called the "Phurba".
Valorum's user avatar
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8 votes
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Telepathic alien uses mind control at close range

"Legwork", a novelette by Eric Frank Russell, which was also the answer to the question Alien scout outsmarted by humans; first published in Astounding Science Fiction, April 1956, available ...
user14111's user avatar
  • 171k
7 votes

What happens if a Confessor tries to Confess an already Confessed person?

No canon answer. From the books, we can learn that: A Confessor's touch removes something of a person's self. As the magic takes it away (to the Underworld), the person touched is an empty shell, ...
TimSparrow's user avatar
7 votes

What 90's movie had one surviving alien on a ship controlled by its brain?

Is it possible that this was the TV version of Steven King's "The Tommyknockers"? The alien spaceship was buried under the earth near a small town. The aliens' technology drained life energy from ...
James Forde's user avatar
7 votes
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Story (series) identification: Mind controlling satellite, a return to Earth, and two warring alien species

That sounds like the Homecoming Saga (A trilogy) by Orson Scott Card. It starts out in a very ancient city (40 million years) on a world where the people are kept from developing along certain ...
Baronet_Canid's user avatar
7 votes
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Book with alien on spaceship who wears helmet to control slaves

Niven, Known Space, stories involving the Slavers? One of the stories was adapted for animated Star Trek. Alien. Empire (dead by the time of the story, however). Psi-amplifier technology.
o.m.'s user avatar
  • 5,319
7 votes

Film (possibly made for TV) where everyone wears a headset which controls thoughts by suppressing IQ

Is it possibly 2081? It's a short film adaptation of Harrison Bergeron. I also don't see Terrence Knox listed among the cast, but perhaps the poster was mistaking the identity? Here's a trailer: ...
3d12's user avatar
  • 171
6 votes
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Story involving children mind-controlled using food to take care of magical creatures after dark

This is "The Tale of the Hatchling", episode 12 of the second season of the original Are You Afraid of the Dark? show. .... A vehicle pulls through the gates of a boarding school called &...
FuzzyBoots's user avatar
  • 239k
6 votes

Episode of TV show where nobody was allowed to be smart

"Examination Day" is the first segment of the sixth episode from the first season (1985–86) of the television series The Twilight Zone. The segment is based on the short story "Examination Day" by ...
Dosco Jones's user avatar
6 votes

Can these characters be mind-controlled by Poison Ivy?

Poison Ivy, at the very least, is able to control Superman as seen here: Source: Batman #611 (March, 2003)
sudhanva's user avatar
  • 6,787
5 votes

50s/60s movie with round disks on the back of people's necks

Barring some discrepancies, it could be It Conquered the World (1956). From IMDb: One of several remaining members of its race, an alien from Venus is guided to Earth by disgruntled scientist Tom ...
Jenayah's user avatar
  • 58.3k
5 votes
Accepted

TV Show episode with a psychic baby looking for a father

This sounds like it is probably season 1 episode 5 of Misfits (2009). After having sex with Alisha whilst Sam is looking for him, Curtis eventually sorts things out so that Alisha is his only ...
TheLethalCarrot's user avatar
  • 144k
5 votes
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First example of mind control changing eyes?

In The Facts of M. Valdemar's Case, an 1845 short story by Edgar Allen Poe, a mesmerist attempts to hypnotize a man at the moment of his death. Poe pays attention to the eyes at different points of ...
sutton002's user avatar
5 votes

What is the hypnotized person thinking while under the control of Loki's scepter?

I think better citation from the script for Avengers is: NATASHA Clint, you're gonna be alright. CLINT BARTON You know that? Is that what you know? I ...
Mithoron's user avatar
  • 1,786
5 votes
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Guard mind controlled to "shoot the driver"

This is Mind Games: Part 1, S1.E12 of Spider-Man: The New Animated Series (2003). In the opening scene of the episode, the psychic Gaines Twins, Roxanne and Roland, are being transported through NYC ...
LogicDictates's user avatar
4 votes

2010s (?) YA sci-fi short story book with eerie or disturbing endings; one involving mind control and a baseball player

Darkness Creeping: Twenty Twisted Tales by Neal Shusterman In the short story Soul Survivor boy dies because plane crashes into the second floor of the house where he lives with his parents. But his ...
Ayshe's user avatar
  • 13.3k
4 votes
Accepted

Does the Jedi mind trick only work on sentient beings?

No If the question is referring to influencing animals or other such beings with the Force, we have many canon examples of it. Indeed, according to Quinlan Vos, using the Force to control animals (or ...
Adamant's user avatar
  • 119k

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