What's the best venue to submit a politically tinged left-leaning science-fiction short story?
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posted by Slap*Happy
on Aug 24, 2011 -
14 answers
Yet another sci-fi short story identification... this one about a jungle planet inhabited by giant destructive protoplasms. But it's *not* "Parasite Planet".
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posted by j.edwards
on Aug 24, 2011 -
7 answers
Dragon*Con is coming up and I have never been. Are there unofficial events happening in Atlanta that weekend?
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posted by polywomp
on Aug 22, 2011 -
12 answers
I'm tired of suspending my disbelief regarding FTL travel. Suggest some good books, series, and authors.
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posted by General Tonic
on Aug 8, 2011 -
28 answers
I'm looking for recommendations for time travel novels-- ones that I might specifically like-- and I'd like to ask the HiveMind what they think.
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posted by suburbanbeatnik
on Aug 7, 2011 -
60 answers
SciFiBookFilter: Looking for a book I read maybe 10 years ago in which a device is developed that renders explosives inert...
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posted by bullox
on Aug 6, 2011 -
15 answers
I'm trying to find a SciFi short story I read as a kid - I read this story as a kid in the '70s or '80s. It was in a paperback collection of SF short stories I got from the school library, it could have been published anytime from the '50s to the late '70s. I have no idea of the title or the author, just my memory of the story. It involved someone who was walking backwards through time to get home. Some scientific accident had propelled him hundreds of years forward in time. On the wreckage of the lab, he appeared, briefly, once every year (or maybe every decade or century?). From an observer's point of view, someone flashed in and out of existence predictably on that spot. I think a holiday formed around the appearance. From the person's point of view, he was walking backwards through time, from the far future back towards the date of the accident. Each "flash" was a step in that walk.
Anyone know what this story is called or who wrote it?
posted by Cranialtorque
on Aug 4, 2011 -
14 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
Help me identify a book! My Google-fu wasn't strong enough. Science fiction, part of a trilogy (or more?), published in the last 10 years with three (at least) alien species, one underwater, and a strong ecological theme. Written by a female former bbc war correspondent.
posted by mathtime!
on Aug 2, 2011 -
2 answers
Where did I read a story that included someone threatening to install DOS 1.0 on a robot/android/uncooperative computer?
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posted by Tesseractive
on Jul 27, 2011 -
3 answers
I'm trying to find a science fiction story that involves a future where people realize that they don't like people being able to see them when they're on the videophone, so they start wearing masks that hide their facial expressions while they're on the phone. Unfortunately, I can't recall the author or even whether it was a novel or just a short story. My Google-Fu is failing me; do you have any idea what story I'm thinking of?
posted by asnider
on Jul 26, 2011 -
4 answers
I'm looking for future-ish fiction that casts Western Civilization as the underdog in updated (fictional) retellings of historical events.
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posted by codswallop
on Jul 22, 2011 -
23 answers
Making a brilliantly funny Deep Space Nine-themed birthday card: I've got the design skills, but lack the humour and knowledge of the later seasons. Looking for the perfect combination of text and image. Can you help me out...tonight?
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posted by avocet
on Jul 16, 2011 -
9 answers
Help me construct a typology of fictional (but familiar) technological epochs -- along with the genre-conventions and stock-elements that characterize each.
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posted by foursentences
on Jun 28, 2011 -
7 answers
Give your best examples of the SF/ Survivalist/ Wish Fullfillment sub-genre "libertarian engineers do everything better" or "objectivist superman saves history". More specifically ones where someone is the last man on earth/sendt back in time and constructs a free market utopia through sheer smarts and rationality ( with himself on the top of it, of course).
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posted by The Whelk
on Jun 9, 2011 -
28 answers
Asking for a friend: vaguely remembered movie filter. Something about bodies and colors...
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posted by bug138
on Jun 4, 2011 -
5 answers
Book ID: Trying to find a sci-fi trilogy or series I started in the 90s. Set on earth, there was a black plague that had something to do with an alien race. The pyramids were involved. I think a pyramid may have been on the cover. Very vague I know, but that is about all I can remember. Thanks!
posted by meta87
on May 30, 2011 -
3 answers
Looking for a forgotten Sci Fi book - a slower-than-light and sentient ship is running a circuit of human colonized worlds. It occasionally transports one or two people in cryosleep from their world to one of the next, generally as refugees. Over the thousands of years, the colonies have diverged in random directions and the ship is getting lonely.
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posted by codswallop
on May 24, 2011 -
14 answers
Help me identify this Sci-Fi short story: bio-nano-tech, Africa, refugee camp.
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posted by signal
on May 15, 2011 -
11 answers
Help me find awesome SF books that aren't libertarian screeds, y'all. What are your favourite Science Fiction books that aren't just
swimming in libertarian ideology?
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posted by LMGM
on Apr 22, 2011 -
56 answers
Did electronic cigarettes appear in any science-fiction prior to becoming widely available in the real world?
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posted by unmake
on Apr 11, 2011 -
11 answers
[YA book filter] I would like to find some YA or easy-to-read adult sci-fi, speculative fiction, or dystopian fiction. Preferably, about the United States or other earthly country, not deep-space intergalactic stuff.
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posted by lockstitch
on Mar 29, 2011 -
37 answers
Hypothetically speaking, are there any known elements found only in outer space that might one day economically justify a renewed commitment to space exploration? (Helium 3 not included.)
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posted by egeanin
on Mar 12, 2011 -
20 answers
What is the name of this science fiction short story that has stuck with me since I read it in the 80s?
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posted by sparkatito
on Mar 4, 2011 -
6 answers
I'm getting back into reading for pleasure after years of avoiding it during college. I've found fantasy books easy to get back into, but have no idea where to start with sci-fi!
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posted by Logic Sheep
on Feb 20, 2011 -
40 answers
What alternatives are there to
IO9?
What are the cool review and news sites for science fiction and fantasy? For comic books? For sf&f tv and movies?
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posted by bonehead
on Feb 17, 2011 -
17 answers
Science Fiction identification: In high school (the 80s) I read a scifi book in which (I believe) a fat despondent boy's family is wiped out, and he is sent to either a school or a prison. Someone there makes him run around the perimeter for a long time, until he's in great shape. He goes from fat and soft, to lean and hard. He may subsequently become a soldier. That's all I remember. Can you help me find the name of the book?
posted by OmieWise
on Feb 11, 2011 -
10 answers
Just finished George Alec Effinger's Marîd Audran series, please point me to similar reads.
posted by moody cow
on Feb 10, 2011 -
9 answers
Looking for recommendations of horror stories set in space - movies, TV shows/episodes, books, comics, games etc. Bonus points for 'ghost ship'/'haunted house' story constructions.
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posted by slimepuppy
on Feb 6, 2011 -
43 answers
Short story. Plot involved a far-future factory city that is tuned exclusively to war, long after the actual war is over. The protagonist tries to confuse / stop the machine by intercepting some message and responding with some nonsense. I seem to recall it having to do with whole or skim milk, or some kind of sandwich. The ending was that they manage to shut down the city, but this makes it just fire off a new city-seed out of a big cannon. It made more sense in the story!
Possible candidates: Ellison? Vonnegut? I am thinking 60s or 70s.
posted by gregglind
on Jan 31, 2011 -
4 answers
Identify this Y.A. Sci-fi book from the 1980's - a boy learns how to meditate his way to flying.
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posted by dadici
on Jan 19, 2011 -
4 answers
Can you help me find a sci-fi movie from the '80s with a floating brain in it? I only saw bits of it at the video store.
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posted by qbject
on Jan 15, 2011 -
3 answers
SF book filter: cyberpunk novel in which a virtual-reality programmer discovers a way to make nerve-induction interfaces write thoughts and feelings to the brain, in addition to merely manipulating sensory perceptions. Powers that be do not like, hilarity ensues...
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posted by lordcorvid
on Dec 6, 2010 -
3 answers
I'm trying to remember a science-fiction (?) short story that I read about 10-15 years ago. Basically, a bunch of prominent citizens of Earth (including Miss Universe) are summoned to Mars to be harangued by a sarcastic alien who tells them they're all doomed.
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posted by Johnny Assay
on Nov 28, 2010 -
4 answers
I am trying to find a short science fiction story I read sometime in the last five years. It was about 3-D printing and/or self-replicating machines.
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posted by everichon
on Nov 10, 2010 -
6 answers