What sci-fi market might be a good match for my shorts? And, in what fashion should I attempt to sell them? [more inside]
posted on Aug 12, 2008 - 23 answers

Recommendations for Sci-Fi while on the Treadmill? [more inside]
posted on Jun 3, 2008 - 25 answers

Is there a best order to read the Culture novels by Iain M Banks? [more inside]
posted on May 20, 2008 - 21 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

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. [more inside]
posted on Feb 23, 2008 - 6 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

Help me find some great or good scifi watchables. [more inside]
posted on Jan 27, 2008 - 60 answers

I have a couple plot/setting-related questions about part of Battlestar Galactica's first season, and was hoping to get non-spoilery answers if possible. [more inside]
posted on Oct 12, 2007 - 21 answers

Why don't sci-fi and fantasy novels indicate they're sequels or parts of series? [more inside]
posted on Aug 31, 2007 - 12 answers

ScienceFictionfilter: Suggestions for gift subscriptions of science fiction magazines, journals printed in English and dead tree format [more inside]
posted on Jun 18, 2007 - 10 answers

Looking for a (maybe) 1970s Science Fiction movie or television series episode that has male infertility as a theme. [more inside]
posted on Jan 8, 2007 - 18 answers

[Iain M Banks Filter] In The Algebraist, much is made of the lack of supralight communication with the rest of the galaxy thanks to the collapsed wormhole portal. (And now we get spoilerish.) [more inside]
posted on Dec 26, 2006 - 4 answers

Where can I learn about the possible consequences of future global warming, sea-level-rise, etc on the climate of the continental US? [more inside]
posted on Nov 19, 2006 - 5 answers

In search of an episode of what I thought was The Outer Limits, but it's not listed in the episode guide, [more inside]
posted on Oct 30, 2006 - 9 answers

Science fiction book recommendations please. [more inside]
posted on Oct 12, 2006 - 43 answers

Remember my request for sci-fi music? Six months later, I'm finally ready to make my CD mix. Almost. Last night I figured out how to record mp3 audio from DVD on my Mac, and now I want to rip key dialogue snippets from classic sci-fi films. I went for Khan spitting at Kirk from his grave, but there's too much incidental music. I think maybe I can get Ripley signing off. What other short, iconic soundclips from sci-fi films should I look for? The intro to the old Battlestar Galactica? Something from Logan's Run? Blade Runner bits? Eerie, ethereal, otherworldly, outer-space stuff is best. (Bonus points if you can direct me to a source that's already done the work for me; right now I'm looking at a several-week Netflix slog.)
posted on Sep 19, 2006 - 67 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

Help me with the hard science behind a sci fi idea. [more inside]
posted on Jun 22, 2006 - 19 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! [more inside]
posted on Jun 16, 2006 - 4 answers

Please help me name books/stories/movies where scientific experiment opens some kind of link to another dimension or timeline, with horrific results. [more inside]
posted on Mar 22, 2006 - 59 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

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? [more inside]
posted on Sep 14, 2005 - 1 answers

[Can'tSeeTheForestFromTheTreesFilter] I'm trying to recall the author and title of a scifi novel I read a few years ago. [specific details inside]
posted on Jan 5, 2005 - 10 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

I, too, am vaguely remembering a short story. It was a young adult sci fi dealie, where, in a grim future, orphan teenagers are used in a Pavlovian experiment. Most of the novella takes place in a seemingly endless tangle of stairs...
posted on Dec 13, 2004 - 6 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

AppropriatedPhilosophyFilter: Does the SF Author David Zindell's concept of asarya have any factual historic basis? I assumed that like his usage of ahimsa, it was an actual school of thought. If it's not real, what do you think are its closest inspirations?
posted on Nov 14, 2004 - 5 answers

What science fiction-ish periodicals do you read and recommend?
posted on Sep 24, 2004 - 4 answers

Where did the science fiction convention of using like question marks to convey psychic communication come from? The first time I've seen it was in Animorphs; I'm reading Speaker for the Dead and it also uses it.
posted on Sep 22, 2004 - 7 answers

Who can recommend some good time travel fiction? (Yes, I'm a geek)
posted on Jun 10, 2004 - 46 answers

Let's play name that Sci Fi [inside].
posted on May 5, 2004 - 13 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

My niece just called and asked about a book. Her description didn't strike any chords, so I thought I'd try the denizens of AskMe.

The theme is a future where noone has a name, only a number. Noone thinks in terms of individuality, and terms like "I" and "me" are not used. The protagonist of the book meets someone who is not bound by those strictures and learns to think like an individual. The last line of the book is something along the lines of "I am" or "I am (somename)".

Ring a bell with anyone?
posted on Jan 9, 2004 - 22 answers

Like many other geeks here, I grew up reading sci-fi and fantasy. But I gradually got tired of it, because so much of it was poorly written or antithetical to my tastes. But I still yearn for other worlds at times, so I'd be interested in recommendations. [more inside.]
posted on Dec 16, 2003 - 65 answers