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
I had an urge yesterday to read a fantasy novel (or sci-fi, sure) about a young, powerless, and reluctant hero(ine) being caught up in events larger than them and growing as a person. I went to the bookstore and didn't really find anything that seemed appropriate. Recommendations?
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posted by jsturgill
on Mar 7, 2012 -
77 answers
Help me figure out what this YA science fiction novel was! It had very deep cities, an escape having something to do with cabbages, and some kind of rural life outside. Maybe.
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posted by hought20
on Feb 11, 2011 -
9 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
Feminist science fiction novel written between 2001 and 2004, featuring (IIRC) women with psychic connections to their hunting mount animals. I believe the title is a combination of a few letters at the beginning, then a three- or four-digit number, like
NNN-####. What is the title?
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posted by cog_nate
on May 18, 2009 -
7 answers
I have an idea for a SF novel (/screenplay?), but I have the nagging feeling that it isn't at all original. Have you read or seen this concept before?
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posted by zardoz
on Apr 3, 2009 -
36 answers
Is there any first contact science fiction (or other types of scifi, more generally) where the characters have actually READ first contact science fiction before?
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posted by OmieWise
on Mar 24, 2009 -
23 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
Please help me identify this 50s, 60s or 70s science-fiction novel. The bad guys are evil alien jellyfish who lived in a lake, but you never see them, and the spaceships are nuclear/steam powered.
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posted by w0mbat
on Sep 18, 2008 -
2 answers
I've just finished re-reading the 4 books in the Rama series by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee, and was wondering about the sequels by Lee solo, set in the same universe, which by all accounts are not very good. Has anyone read them, and would you like to summarise?
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posted by Orange Goblin
on Mar 7, 2005 -
1 answer
