What are some good sci fi novels/short stories that focus on robots? Difficulty: no Asimov. [more inside]
posted on Jul 19, 2008 - 23 answers
WhatWasThatBookFilter: a friend of mine needs help tracking down a fantasy/sci-fi paperback she read back in 1997. Full description below. [more inside]
posted on Jun 11, 2008 - 5 answers
Recommendations for Sci-Fi while on the Treadmill? [more inside]
posted on Jun 3, 2008 - 25 answers
Walter Tevis's classic sci-fi novel The Man Who Fell To Earth was published in 1963. Does anyone know how and why, then, the current edition came to contain a reference to the 1972 Watergate scandal? [more inside]
posted on May 23, 2008 - 12 answers 
Book-rec-filter time! Looking for sci-fi themed books for a young child. Can you suggest any? [more inside]
posted on Mar 18, 2008 - 9 answers
I'm trying to make an expansive and widely-varied reading list of time-travel books and stories. Suggestions? [more inside]
posted on Mar 11, 2008 - 43 answers
My girlfriend's mother and I have a real intellectual rapport, in some ways. Recently we've been talking about literature. She's extraordinarily widely read, but only really within the canon. I've been fronting, claiming that genre fiction like sci-fi has plenty of stuff of genuine literary merit in it. She's called my bluff and asked for a recommendation. What would you suggest? I was thinking something strange and ornate like Cordwainer Smith, but am open to advice.
posted on Mar 4, 2008 - 74 answers
In your opinion, who are the best female science fiction authors? What are the best scifi books written by women? [more inside]
posted on Feb 8, 2008 - 105 answers
Looking for the name of a sci-fi book. Man is injected with a serum that causes him to shrink forever, eventually discovering there are universes smaller than atoms. [more inside]
posted on Feb 7, 2008 - 9 answers
I'm looking for a series of hardback science fiction anthologies I dimly remember from childhood (sometime in the mid 80s). I think it had a one word title with a number, and the series went up to at least number five. I remember two stories in particular... [more inside]
posted on Jan 13, 2008 - 11 answers
Recommendations for dystopian sci-fi, with a Canadian twist. [more inside]
posted on Dec 17, 2007 - 18 answers
Science fiction book recommendations please. [more inside]
posted on Oct 12, 2006 - 43 answers
Help find a SF book that my friend can't quite recall, but remembers themes of? [more inside]
posted on Sep 1, 2006 - 7 answers
Which famous sci-fi author bet another author that if he wrote the worst book he could, it would become a hit? [more inside]
posted on Mar 21, 2006 - 25 answers
I'm looking for a book of spaceship art I used to look at in Waldenbooks as a kid.. [more inside]
posted on Nov 17, 2005 - 9 answers
I need recommendations for excellent science fiction books, movies, short stories (or anything, really) centered around life, scientific exploration, and/or research in the arctic, antarctica, or similar fictional extreme cold climates. [more inside]
posted on Nov 15, 2005 - 30 answers
SciFiLit: I don't get it. Help me to. [more inside]
posted on Jul 9, 2005 - 79 answers
As a kid, I had a coffee-table size book of sci-fi paintings. Each page was ostensibly the specs and history of a given spacecraft, and the paintings were quite detailed and in the "realist" mode. As you read about each craft, however, a narrative unfolded about a galactic war. The story arc was sussed out in little details dropped about each ship, famous engagements it took part in, etc.
The only ship I remember was an "enemy" ship, the Tarantula, which would ambush victims by hovering up out of a pit suddenly.
Anybody know the title, artist or illustrator?
posted on Jun 13, 2005 - 34 answers
Trying to remember the name(s) of a series of books I read, ooh, 10-15 years ago (ouch). Scifi/fantasy genre, female author. Susan something? Anyhoo, there were these big fortresses, and it was completely dark inside and all the people hid inside them while the big flappy things ruled the land outside. Your typical three-volume fallen from grace to rise again with the strength of our courage and sweat of our brows kind of thing, but (with a precious few moments) set entirely in these dark fortresses. [more inside]
posted on May 15, 2005 - 8 answers
I remember reading a book about a young girl living in an underground city. She decides to escape for some reason, and ends up taking a young boy with her too. They journey up to the surface, evading capture by some sort of authority figure. Help me! I want my daughter to read this. (It's a young adult book) [more inside]
posted on Apr 25, 2005 - 14 answers
Spoilerfilter: What happens in books 2 and 3 of Tad Williams' Otherland series? I read the first book and liked much of it, particularly some of the characterization, but dreaded the long, rambling stretches where characters like Paul Jonas wander aimlessly through a series of detailed-but-not-plot-relevant virtual landscapes. Reviewers almost always mention that the series drags in the 2nd and 3rd books -- "nothing significant happens," "the characters seem to jump from one exotic locale to another without any real explanation about why they're there" -- so I've decided to jump to book four. What useful plot information do I need from among the 1400+ pages of aimless wandering in books two and three?
posted on Feb 19, 2005 - 7 answers
I've enjoyed two books in what I would think would be an extremely small sub-genre of Science Fiction. Both The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein and Millennium by Ben Bova are about a moon colony rebelling against the Earth. I'd like to read more, can anyone suggest any others?
posted on Feb 7, 2005 - 23 answers
Since the AskMe crew seems to do so well at finding long-lost books, give this one a crack (MI).
posted on Dec 14, 2004 - 3 answers
What are some good sites on what's new/hot/recommended in sci-fi? Literature that is, not movies or TV shows.
posted on Dec 4, 2004 - 5 answers
I'm looking for a fiction anthology, and only vaguely remember the title or what the book looked like. [more inside]
posted on Nov 28, 2004 - 5 answers
Can you identify this science fiction story? My friend's been looking for a copy for years...[more inside]
posted on Nov 18, 2004 - 8 answers
i'm reading gibson's pattern recognition. i'd like something the same, but better. more inside.
posted on Jun 20, 2004 - 28 answers
Who can recommend some good time travel fiction? (Yes, I'm a geek)
posted on Jun 10, 2004 - 46 answers
Some years ago, I read a book called something like "Time Like a Slow (Flowing?) River". It was the sequel to another book in which environmentally indignant aliens had conquered Earth to save it from humans and placed strict restrictions on earthlings until they became better environmental stewards. People had to travel by solar powered paddleboats, abandon fossil fuels, etc.
I have had no luck on Google or Amazon (and it's not this). Does anybody know the name or author of either of these books?
posted on Apr 29, 2004 - 3 answers
Quicksilver. What am I missing? (more)
posted on Dec 9, 2003 - 16 answers
