Help me find this dimly-remembered SF novel, if you please. Near-future dystopia, high unemployment, unemployed people are treated in humiliating ways, they adopt mysterious insects as pets, the insects give off calming pheromones. More poorly-remembered details inside, one of them NSFW.
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posted by thehmsbeagle
on Dec 1, 2012 -
3 answers
[book-filter] Need help tracking down a sci-fi novel(s) read in the late 80's or 90's containing special abilities provided by nanochips.
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posted by eloeth-starr
on Oct 7, 2012 -
1 answer
[Asking for a friend]: There is some sci-fi book I read at some point which I think was famous enough to be known by lots of folks in which the term "to scree" or "to skry" (or something very similar) was used to see the contents of people's minds (?) or the future (?). Help. Whats the actual term? And, what is the book and or series and or author?
posted by googly
on Jun 28, 2012 -
27 answers
Please help me recall the title of a young adult novel science fiction that was a favorite of mine as a child
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posted by Poet_Lariat
on Aug 3, 2011 -
7 answers
Fiction filter: A science fiction book I recall reading in my youth involved a cabin or shed in which time goes by several times faster inside rather than outside.
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posted by oceanjesse
on Jun 20, 2011 -
4 answers
Searching for the name of a (trilogy? or longer?) of SF/Fantasy books I read in the late 1980s or early 1990s.
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posted by KirkpatrickMac
on Apr 23, 2011 -
8 answers
BookFilter: Help me find this formative (but possibly terrible) 1970s sci-fi book I read in my youth!
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posted by rednikki
on Mar 5, 2011 -
3 answers
Help me identify a pulp sci-fi/fantasy book from around the 1970's w/a male protagonist who ends up in a fantasy land and can "shift" objects to make them appear when he needs them.
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posted by dadici
on Jan 11, 2011 -
4 answers
Can you identify this book? I read it in the mid-1980s. It may or may not have been a YA (Young Adult) title. The protagonist was a young girl, and her society lived peacefully up in the trees. She was interested in seeing the world down on the surface. There may have been another society down there. At one point she lost her temper with someone (a pet?) and blurted out something like "I would like to
dead you!" at which her family was shocked and horrified at her violent thoughts. I particularly remember being struck by that part, that she understood the concept of killing but didn't know the verb.
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posted by tomboko
on Dec 27, 2010 -
2 answers
I'm trying to find the title of a specific Science Fiction book with a pre-Matrix "everyone is living in a computer simulation" plot.
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posted by kyrademon
on Nov 22, 2010 -
4 answers
Science Fiction character identification: Which SF story had a sort of Friar Tuck like character who followed all faiths simultaneously and had the symbols for multiple world religions hung around his neck?
posted by Artw
on Sep 29, 2010 -
14 answers
Bookfilter: In 2007 I read the first part of a science fiction novel that I would really love to find again. I'm pretty sure the basic premise was that the book was a historical/academic biography about a famous general or other important figure in a future (possibly post-apocalyptic) America. More half remembered details below!
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posted by cimton
on Aug 15, 2010 -
12 answers
Help me figure out this young-adult book from my childhood. It's about a boy and girl communicating telepathically.
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posted by hazyspring
on Jul 10, 2010 -
20 answers
BookFilter: Please help me identify a YA sci-fi book I read as a teenager in the 1980s. Full description inside.
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posted by halfguard
on Apr 1, 2010 -
8 answers
I am looking for a book from my boyfriend's childhood. What he remembers: kids controlling a spaceship who can't get the food replicator to make anything other than potato salad.
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posted by eleanna
on Jul 20, 2009 -
12 answers
I've just finished reading Let The Galaxy Burn, a collection of Warhammer 40k short stories, and I really liked it. What are some other good Warhammer 40k books?
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posted by thewittyname
on Jun 9, 2009 -
11 answers
ObscureSciFiBookFilter: Space opera-type book, wherein a cargo ship is taken over by pirates.
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posted by cereselle
on Apr 30, 2009 -
3 answers
ID That Story: novel (novella? short story?) in which a man is standing in line. Pretty much the entire story is his experience while waiting in line. It's a future/dystopia story. The man is waiting in line to make a complaint. He falls in love with the girl in front of him, though she's not allowed to turn and look at him. It's a parable about overpopulation. It was probably written in the 60s or 70s. That's all I remember.
posted by grumblebee
on Nov 20, 2008 -
8 answers
I am trying to find a SciFi book that I read the first couple of chapters of. It involved two companies racing to come up with some kind of genetic cure and in the process creating a monster or something.
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posted by rbs
on Feb 23, 2008 -
6 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.
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posted by Gudlyf
on Feb 7, 2008 -
9 answers
I'm looking for novels that are pageturners (genres preferred: science fiction/fantasy, magic realism, mystery/suspense/thriller) but also have psychologically acute character development. Any recs?
posted by Malad
on Dec 20, 2007 -
33 answers
As a kid, I once had a book about a rather detailed tourist trip to Alpha Centauri, with lots of graphics. Help me find it!
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posted by Harry
on Jun 16, 2006 -
4 answers
Which
Dune novel or novels by Frank Herbert or his successors refers to mentats as cultivating "the naive mind"? The only place I can find it is in the Wikipedia article on mentats (endlessly cloned around the Web).
posted by rwhe
on Oct 27, 2005 -
8 answers
Once I read a story about people who could give a disease to computers. Or possibly they could catch this disease through the keyboard. Citizens with this disease, I vaguely recall, were not allowed to use computers without rubber gloves. If you had AIDS or HIV you were protected and allowed unrestricted access to computer keyboards. Does this ring a bell for anyone?
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posted by dual_action
on Sep 14, 2005 -
1 answer
Looking for a book title - 70's science fiction. The protagonist was a straight (from cover picture) seeming phone phreak who had an electronic avatar that he discussed everything with. The avatar was his friend and ally. He would use his avatar to destroy the credit of a bad guy and etc. It was a paperback original I think and probably came out in the mid 70's. Any ideas?
posted by ptm
on May 15, 2005 -
9 answers
