most recent 30 from scifi.stackexchange.com 2025-08-06T20:21:49Z https://scifi.stackexchange.com/feeds/tag/novel https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/rdf https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/298495 7 FuzzyBoots https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/23243 2025-08-06T19:26:40Z 2025-08-06T13:09:29Z

<p>This popped up in my head recently. I'm pretty sure I own a Kindle book for this, but I'm not having much luck searching for it. The main character is a pudgy boy who is sent off to a magic school. I believe he came from a line of evil magicians, and is expected to follow in that line. He, however, is a reasonably decent sort. I remember him as being quite hapless, including, I think, losing his money from a thief while he slept on the train ride up. As is fairly typical for English schools, and books following Harry Potter, he is sorted into a house. He is frequently bullied by the other students. And I remember that he participates in some sort of a game that combines Capture the Flag with the use of offensive magic, with his first game ending with him hung upside down by a spell, his robes falling away from the lower half of his body, increasing his embarrassment.</p> <p>I'm pretty sure that I read the first parts of it about 5 years ago, although there's a decent chance that the book is older. I don't think that I bought the book, but rather found it as a free one. I am fairly certain that it was the first book in a series, although I couldn't say the length.</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/296391 3 FuzzyBoots https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/23243 2025-08-06T05:08:22Z 2025-08-06T20:19:38Z

<p>I think I read this as a free Kindle book somewhere in the mid 2010s. The real world is set somewhere in the not too far flung future, it is not uncommon for people to play the game to make money in the real world. The protagonist has to make a large amount of money in a short amount of time, although I don't recall why. He somehow winds up with a humanoid race that is extremely rare, maybe from a random pick. It has some sort of bonus to mining, and he decides to make that his gimmick. I remember that there was some way to set yourself up to do actions automatically, which is how he does his mining, but you always suffer the physical feedback afterwards, from the overwork, and it is extremely common for you to finish that task, and find that all of your gear has crumbled away from overuse.</p> <p>He manages to make a fair amount of money, although not enough for his needs just yet. He also uncovers some quests related to his race, I think revealing that they used to be rulers of the area. I believe that there is also the revelation that said race was created by one of the original programmers, who afterwards left the company, and people start to think that he has found a back door into the system. There is some sort of a reputation system on the city and region level. I remember him going to a particular city, and managing to unlock a secret path by finding a ball for a child, which lets him enter an exclusive inn. Later, I remember him doing some quests involving a tower, although I don't remember many details. I think that he has a female friend in the game, who is helping him in part for her own amusement, and in part because she realizes that he's on to something.</p> <p>I only read the first book, but I'm pretty sure that there were more of them on Amazon, and I think it might have even been a fairly well-known series at the time, at least within the genre. I don't recall the protagonist race, or nationality, but the book was in English.</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/289792 5 Nuff Nuff https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/179899 2025-08-06T09:35:37Z 2025-08-06T05:44:47Z

<p>So I'm trying to find a fantasy novel or series I read when younger(in between the age of 15-20,so it was 2009-2014 since someone had a problem with how i phrased that), but most of the details have been forgotten. Here is what I remember:</p> <p>The novel or series had a female protagonist whose name escapes me. I believe she wielded a sword and some magic. She had a male sparrow or just a small bird companion that she could converse with. The bird's entire bloodline had been cursed and transformed into the same species of bird many years prior.</p> <p>There was one scene in the book that really stuck with me. The protagonist lifts the curse on the bird's bloodline while they're at a harbor or on a ship. Suddenly, after being birds for many years, they transformed back into humans. Since birds have a much shorter breeding and gestation cycle than people, many of the young birds that turned into humans were second to third generation. They had no idea how to use their limbs and just plummeted from the masts and ropes of the ship to their deaths.</p> <p>That's really all I can remember. Sorry for only having the graphic part saved away in my memory.</p> <p>Edit* it is not the bird and the sword sadly, though it was a good answer and got my hopes up until I looked up the main characters name, I cannot remember it but it feels like it's on the tip of my tongue and I've used it in several games I've played in the past so if I read it I'll remember.</p> <p>Edit* protagonist had red hair</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/298251 17 Danny Mc G https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/20007 2025-08-06T06:02:16Z 2025-08-06T04:08:19Z

<p>I can't remember much about this story, I think maybe the 1980s in the UK when I read it.</p> <p>The memory:<br /> A struggling colony trying to establish on a planet, a random assortment of hostile creatures but mankind was dealing ok with them.<br /> There was rationing but rudimentary agriculture had began, however the rules (maybe from a controlling computer) didn't allow any useful vegetables to be grown, only flowers (<em>decorative</em> flowers only, no <em>edible</em> flowers).</p> <p>Periodically new batches of colonists would appear, having been vat grown on the colony ship ...the original colonists called the newcomers &quot;Ship Born&quot; I think (but I'm not certain) that planet born colonists were subject to mutation.</p> <p>I've been through the guidance and struggled to come up with anything else.</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/298328 20 skyjack https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/55025 2025-08-06T02:21:23Z 2025-08-06T22:24:00Z

<p>I am trying to track down a science fiction book I read in my early teens. This would be mid 1980s in the UK. The book was in the school library so I am thinking probably a British author but I can't be certain of that.</p> <p>I am keen to find this particular book as I know I did not reach the end of it.</p> <p>The book started with a spaceship arrived on an alien planet.</p> <p>The crew intend to investigate a strange labyrinth.</p> <p>Early scenes, probably within the first chapter are outside the ship on the planet in fog. Maybe waiting for some crew members to return. My recollection is a conversation on the entry ramp of the ship with one member of the crew asking &quot;Did you sound an alarm&quot;.</p> <p>The crew of the ship are not all human. One may be a bit doglike with a crest that stands up when he/it is alarmed. I remember a specific line of dialogue spoken to this character &quot;Did you sound an alarm&quot; as detailed in the paragraph above.</p> <p>Story may be written from a first person point of view. (Can't be certain of that, could easily be misremembering).</p> <p>I read this in the mid 1980s. So likely to have been written in the 1970s but could be earlier but from the style I would suggest 1970s is most likely.</p> <p>It could be something by Brian Stableford as I read a lot of his stuff back then. There was also a lot of Monica Hughes in the school library but the style does not seem right.</p> <p>I remember the cover as being brownish/orangeish and a bit abstract.</p> <p>Books with labyrinths we can rule out... Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys. A Maze of Death by Phillip K Dick. Rhapsody in Black by Brian Stableford. Although The Sargasso of Space seemed a likely match we can rule that one out too. I've taken a look and it's not the book I recall. Likewise we can rule out The Tartarus Incident too.</p> <p>Very little to go on but I'm often surprised by how quickly obscure titles are identified on this site.</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/298447 7 Madison https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/238206 2025-08-06T02:43:15Z 2025-08-06T05:11:45Z

<p>I read a book around 2021. No idea what it was called, what the covers looked like, or any name of anything, but I do remember the basic story and concept.</p> <p>The main character is a boy living in an abandoned school with his dad, who has a deadly sickness with a really simple name that I forgot. Apparently this kid is mutated to be some sort of superhuman or something, so he is of course immune to the disease because plot armor. So he lets his dad take his blood to give the dad an injection of said blood to help ward off the virus. My memory is kind of weird here, but I remember they both ate dog food.</p> <p>So eventually the dad does something and doesn’t return, which makes the kid want to follow. So this kid casually jumps a ravine full of weird apocalyptic stuff down there, then goes into a destroyed city where he finds more people like him but instead with animal traits and not a complete immunity to the disease (which now I think it was called the Waste or something like that). They were his age as well. So some stuff happens, and now, as my memory serves, they hide in a building from the military guys.</p> <p>I forgot what happens for a while, but I know that they all somehow go back to some weird lab where they eat real food, meet more mutants like a lizard kid, and the main character starts feeling out of place, I guess, because he’s like a human without animal traits. But again, he’s the only one with a full immunity, which is crucial to finding a cure to the sickness (Waste, I think). So they do stuff, and the rest of the book I’m not really sure.</p> <p>But I know that there was a second book where the reader finds out that the Waste gives people scoliosis, turns them into the hunchback of Notre Dame and stuff like that. That’s all I can remember. Can anyone help me?</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/284668 12 Malakai https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/172032 2025-08-06T17:38:32Z 2025-08-06T22:17:28Z

<p>Can anyone help me identify what novel this might be?</p> <p>From what I can remember it was about a group of human colonists who leave earth using some kind of teleportation technology with their ship. Some ships teleport into a star, black hole, or just interstellar space. But some end up in a solar system.</p> <p>I can't remember why the colonists are leaving, perhaps a dying earth situation.</p> <p>This story follows a ship who finds a frozen planet that has alien ruins. Some members of the ship experience some kind of telepathy? The alien structures calling out to them maybe?</p> <p>I may have read this in the mid 2000s?</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/298359 22 Corvus https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/237958 2025-08-06T00:52:32Z 2025-08-06T20:10:51Z

<p>I'm looking for a novel that I read several times growing up, from the 70s or 80s. I can remember many story elements, but not the title or author.</p> <p>A man is the 'pilot' of a living spaceship that ferries between colonies around the solar system. The major technology of this society is genetic engineering (GE). His companion is a GE leopard &quot;encyclopedia&quot; that he communicates with via radio using a GE implant in his head. He is asked to investigate Earth. He finds a station in LEO inhabited by &quot;dwarves&quot; and descends to Earth in an ancient shuttle. Landing, he finds Earth has recovered from the disaster that caused it to be abandoned an unknown length of time before.</p> <p>Some additional details: there is mention of the <strong>Fourfold Saraband</strong> in reference to GE; and a veneration of Yuri Gagarin (one line of a 'hymn' being &quot;<em>out of the Earth sailed he</em>&quot;); the main character's ship at the beginning of book is called a &quot;2 minute sweep&quot; referring to the time in which it rotates.</p> <p>The cover was the &quot;2 minute sweep&quot;, being a central core (with eyes?) with muscles/tendons attached to a ring a cathedral-like buildings, against a background of stars.</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/297770 15 DavidW https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/101407 2025-08-06T12:30:37Z 2025-08-06T15:42:09Z

<p>I believe it's been more than 10 years since I read this, but less than 20, so approximately 2005-2015. I think it was a novel.</p> <p>At some point in the story the viewpoint character(s) is(are) approaching a human colony on a tidally-locked planet. Since the star is a red dwarf, to make the planet more hospitable, the colonists have devised a means to give themselves brighter, more predominantly yellow, &quot;sunlight.&quot;</p> <p>They way they do this is by placing a giant ball of tungsten at the star-planet L2 point, powered by tapping the star's magnetic field so it incandesces. Just to clarify, the settled area isn't the ring of twilight at the terminator, it's directly underneath the star. The red natural starlight is augmented by yellow light emitted by the sphere.</p> <p>I may be conflating another story, but I recall the milieu being on where colonies around red dwarf stars are being relegated to backwaters as new FTL technology enables direct flights between more desirable yellow star colonies. (Trade among red dwarf colonies being done by STL cyclers.)</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/298333 -2 Mitch https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/237888 2025-08-06T12:22:48Z 2025-08-06T14:12:01Z

<p>So I really only remember this book series that had an evil god-like character stolen from his parents when he was a toddler. And there was a hero-like character combating him that turned out to be his brother that his godparents released into the world. Does anyone know this series?</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/298266 13 kraryal https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/59964 2025-08-06T21:01:16Z 2025-08-06T07:14:32Z

<p>Please help me find a science fiction novel I read about twenty years ago. The main character is a school teacher whose mind has been transferred to a different body. It turns out he's &quot;sharing&quot; the body with an assassin, as well as the assassin's target, and this was all part of a government project to transfer skills and beliefs between people</p> <p>There's a scene where he identifies his students from a class photo, but can't recognize himself in the photo. (His original body is dead, and the school thinks he is dead.)</p> <p>It was set in the USA, but a near-future USA where environmental concerns have transformed daily life; he can only drive his car every second day, for example.</p> <p>This was definitely part of a government project, and the assassin's target is part of a resistance group.</p> <p>I know it sounds a lot like &quot;The Simultaneous Man&quot;, but I don't think it was that; there's not a lot of Cold War plot points.</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/298269 22 Alfred https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/115682 2025-08-06T23:13:59Z 2025-08-06T19:47:40Z

<p>I read this SF novel about 20 years ago. I remember very little. The only scene I remember clearly is rather early in the story. Some kind of massacre takes place and a very young child, a toddler, two or three years old IIRC, escapes death by hiding in the water tank of a toilet. After that he manages to survive a few years in the wainscoting, so to speak, of society. Eventually his genius is recognized.</p> <p>Now the only scene I remember clearly could belong to a perfectly &quot;mundane&quot; story; no SF element at all, and not fantasy either. Remarkably clever children <strong>do</strong> exist. Granted this one is a bit extreme, but not impossible. Still, I am absolutely positive that, later in the novel, the SF character of the story becomes obvious.</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/298254 19 luke https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/237543 2025-08-06T10:23:29Z 2025-08-06T11:41:30Z

<p>I read this probably in the last 15 years, but might be older (but don't think so), it is on a high probability <strong>not</strong> one of the Sci-Fi well-knowns like Clarke, Reynolds, Heinlein, Asimov. It is definitely not <em>First Contact</em>.</p> <p><strong>Back story</strong></p> <p>It is referencing events from before the actual story, so there might be a &quot;first&quot; book but I never got into that. And as sci-fi books often just present fait accompli...</p> <p>Of the events &quot;before&quot;:</p> <ul> <li>The mains protagonist' sister(?) died in a reco(?) mission in space (in another star system) where humans clashed(?) with an alien ship</li> <li>One alien was captured and was brought to earth - and was hidden in a &quot;secret&quot; facility</li> <li>Main protagonist (he is military?) searching for answers as his sisters death seems to be a cover-up, finds alien, thus becomes involved in all future going-ons</li> <li>The alien is intelligent, can speak, is about half the size of humans, and looks like a monkey/ape(?) in bright colors(?), so basically very friendly looking</li> </ul> <p><strong>Story line</strong></p> <p>The humans possess star ships with FTL capabilities, and started exploring the universe (a while ago?). Through talks with the alien they realize that there are many other civilizations, and all of them are ruled by the aliens' race, which will incorporate new (found) civilizations into their ruling (basically without asking - why would they).</p> <p>The aliens have FTL as well, but not in the &quot;free-roam-fly-anywhere&quot; way humans have - they got &quot;star gates&quot;(?) (huge rings floating in space, wormholes I believe) which provide their <strong>only way</strong> of FTL travel</p> <p>The aliens over-rule other star system by providing star gates - as a way to distribute necessary goods to planets (by doing so making them absolutely dependent). If a planet falls &quot;out of line&quot; they usually just switch off the star gate so the system starves, I think there was a penalty system(?) like on &quot;nth-strike&quot; it will be turned off forever.</p> <p>Humans now know that there is trouble ahead, and trying to find ways to mitigate risk henceforth.</p> <p>Other stuff I remember:</p> <ul> <li>The aliens' race live a very prosperous live, as other alien races / civilizations provide their wealth through their star gate empire.</li> <li>Humans visit (under disguise?) one of these ruled system, to get ahold of a &quot;planetary&quot; database to get more information on the Overlords race / star empire.</li> <li>At one point humans find/found a system that has been cut off (because of penalty), so they can (scientifically) analyze the left over star gate, to see how it works.</li> <li>Humans build a forward-base on a rogue(?) planet(?), from which they eventually start an attack against the star empire</li> <li>Humans cut-off the core / originating system of the Overlords by destroying their star gates - so now they are stuck there and can't mobilize.</li> <li>The aliens' way of FTL travel is (mathematically) very much similar to the humans one, which a high-ranked alien scientist finds out near the end of the book, trying to duplicate humans FTL travel.</li> </ul> <p>I can't remember if I read it in English or German ...</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/201561 10 Buzz https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/48874 2025-08-06T06:21:57Z 2025-08-06T16:21:52Z

<p>A friend of mine told me that he remembers reading a science fiction novel when he was kid in the late 1970s or early 1980s, which he has never been able to locate again. It was in English, and he got it from a library in the United States, but based on the content, he thinks the author was probably from the British Isles.</p> <p>The book was old when he read it. It was probably originally written in the 1930s or 1940s, as it took place in a fictional version of the post-Second World War world. The action takes place on the Isle of Man, where the remnants of the democratic British and fascist continental factions are still engaged in a slow war of attrition. The rest of Europe (and maybe Asia) has been ruined and probably rendered uninhabitable, and the survivors on the Isle of Man have lost much of their advanced twentieth-century technology. In contrast, the Americas are relatively untouched, but the isolationist United State maintains a picket of warships to prevent anyone from crossing the Atlantic.</p> <p>EDIT: My friend says that he only remembers four isolated things about the book:</p> <blockquote> <p>1) It is the mid-to-late 20th century in the book, i.e. 'a little past nowish' from for when it was presumably written.</p> <p>2) The Isle of Man is inhabited by two camps of savages, clearly meant to be the English and the Germans. They live on opposite sides and, outside of mere survival, their only other actions are to periodically raid each other. Fighting the enemy is their entire culture.</p> <p>3) Europe is essentially depopulated. Africa has developed a stable, prosperous society and, say, 1930s level technology (orient express type trains, etc) and is slowly colonizing Europe.</p> <p>4) America stayed out of the war that caused the destruction of Europe and has advanced technology, their picket line of ships in the Atlantic is a line of levitating heavier-than-air ships.</p> </blockquote>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/298207 8 TerranGames https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/237315 2025-08-06T11:46:56Z 2025-08-06T12:06:40Z

<p>I remember reading this novel a long time ago (more than a decade, I think) on school trips to a local library, but I never managed to finish it, and one day I just wasn't able to find the book again, and I don't remember what the title was.</p> <p>I distinctly remember that the cover of the book had these trains (bullet trains?) that were going into portals, and that there was a section of the book that explained that the (US?) had discovered how to build portals to parallel Earths, and showed off a huge interchange of freight trains moving between different universes.</p> <p>I also remember that there was a (murder?) involving a (female?) &quot;Doppelganger&quot; and I think it was a detective novel, but I didn't get much farther than that.</p> <p>There was also a scene that I think was stated to be set in a parallel Manhattan that was totally uninhabited by humans.</p> <p>And I think there was a battle scene involving some (soldiers?) taking over a freight train in a (Communist?) version of the US? I'm not too sure about this one. IDK.</p> <p>Do you guys know what it is?</p> <p>Thanks!</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/223764 11 Alfred https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/115682 2025-08-06T07:53:19Z 2025-08-06T07:00:22Z

<p>For a change, this is a rather recent story. I have read it about 10 years ago. I think it might have been a bit older than that, but did not have this “taste” of being from the 80’s or earlier.</p> <p>There are several point-of-view characters, and one of them is a woman. I don’t remember much, except that one of the characters (probably one of the point-of-view characters, but I am not 100% sure) was a spy. In fact, he did his spying on an civilisation of mostly underwater vaguely humanoid creatures, who could survive at least a bit out of water. The spy had some device that could make him amphibious (whether it make him look identical to the creatures he was spying on, or more human-like than them, but still amphibious, I forgot). How he first got hold of this device I also forgot, but when the creatures get on the ship and catch him, one of them tells the woman that the device itself was not so very important. What they really were after were all the maps he drew (or at least the things he remembered) about their resources, the strengths and weaknesses of their defences, and so on, to prepare for a invasion by his employers.</p> <p>This spy story was only one of the threads of this complicated novel. I forgot most of it. The only thing I remember clearly is that when the water creatures boarded the ship to catch the spy, the woman tried to appease one of them by telling him (her? it?) about the spy's device. But though the creature tells her the device is not so important he/she/it adds that it still is &quot;puissant&quot;, though the book was in english. The use of this french word (which means &quot;powerful&quot;) in order to describe a device that still was considered as not so important is the clearest memory I have of the whole book.</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/298182 12 Alex https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/237164 2025-08-06T03:01:42Z 2025-08-06T11:59:15Z

<p>It's almost a Shaver story, but it's much newer than those stories. I think stairwells in some buildings continue &quot;below the foundation&quot; into an underground labyrinth? The residents may not be human? There's a river - like the Styx, or Lethe - marking a border with the surface?</p> <p>It's been 50 years. My recollection is spotty.</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/85261 8 FuzzyBoots https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/23243 2025-08-06T01:15:35Z 2025-08-06T17:09:02Z

<p>I read it as a paperback book somewhere in the mid-90s, I think. The protagonist lived in an apartment building. He's out on the balcony when a birdlike (but humanoid) alien swooped down and attacked him. The presence of the aliens was commonly known and was a known danger. He kills it with his watering can and is rewarded by either the aliens or the humans for it with money. Other than that, all I remember was that the chapters were started with an internet-like news report which I think chronicled things getting worse and more violent. One of the updates involved the bombing of a bridge with the casualties raised by having two slow-moving trucks moving side by side obstructing traffic and ensuring a full bridge.</p> <p>The internet system was pretty ubiquitous as I recall. I think that he looked up his watering can shortly after the incident with the aliens, but decided to keep this one, even if it leaks a bit. I want to say that it was by Piers Anthony, but none of the book titles look familiar. I think the cover I had showed the man being attacked by the bird-man, which looked kind of like the illustrations on the cover of <em>The Stand</em>.</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/293939 6 Missy Evans https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/206049 2025-08-06T14:11:40Z 2025-08-06T23:41:30Z

<p>Searching for the title of a fantasy book about a poor girl and her older sister going to a temple to present an offering to a god.</p> <p>The older sister was praying and begging the gods but the younger sister presented the god with something small like a pebble or something.</p> <p>The god was drawn to the younger girl and was considering choosing her to go with him/her.</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/297577 18 Dan Efran https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/234526 2025-08-06T17:01:57Z 2025-08-06T14:06:06Z

<p>I haven’t been able to work out search engine terms to find this book, but if you’ve read it, it should be easy to recognize.</p> <p>This was a moderately long novel, maybe 250 to 350 pages. I read it in the early to mid 1980s and at that time I had the impression that it was pretty new. The author was not a familiar name — not one of the usual suspects.</p> <p>The opening premise was compelling: populated planets are being sterilized by a mysterious giant sphere that buries the planet’s surface in a thick layer of ball bearings. A space captain goes on a quest to stop the thing, or at least to comprehend it. It is tentatively theorized that it may be a kind of God’s White Blood Cell, cleansing the galaxy of (moral?) impurities (sinful planets).</p> <p>Then there is a long middle section of the novel where the main plot is sidelined for some kind of interpersonal and/or political subplot. I forget the details; I think there was a princess?</p> <p>During this middle section, there is some discussion about fairy tales and legends. I believe the Arabian Nights and Scheherazade are mentioned explicitly, but if not, the allusion is strongly implied.</p> <p>If I recall correctly, some people are sent into hiding inside a paperweight (kind of like hiding Gallifrey in a painting, or the Bottle City of Kandor). This seemed a bit bizarre in the otherwise fairly “realistic” space opera setting (generally reminiscent of the Dune universe in scale and tone).</p> <p>At the end, the captain finally encounters the mysterious sphere, and as he prepares to take his ship inside the thing to try to destroy it from within, the book concludes with a poignant and relevant quote from one of the fairy tales mentioned earlier: “He shouted.”</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/287871 18 Alfred https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/115682 2025-08-06T02:29:55Z 2025-08-06T23:34:48Z

<p>I read this SF novel about 10-15 years ago. I think I read it shortly after it was first published.</p> <p>In this novel there are monks (though the word used is <strong>not</strong> &quot;monks&quot; but I don't remember exactly what) which are submitted to very strict rules including lots of rituals involving time. There are things to do at special times of the day, of the week (or decade ?), of the month (or sequence of 100 days ?), of the year.</p> <p>I don't remember much about the book except that the monks can only communicate with the external world once a year, during some Festival. But there are &quot;higher monks&quot; who can only interact with the external world and &quot;lower monks&quot; every ten years. And still higher ones who can only interact with the external world and &quot;lower monks&quot; every hundred years (I suppose &quot;ten year monks&quot; can become &quot;hundred year monks&quot; at least every ten years, otherwise how could &quot;hundred years monasteries&quot; survive ?) and maybe even &quot;thousand year monks&quot; but certainly &quot;thousand years monasteries&quot; must accept new monks more often than every hundred years from &quot;ten years monasteries&quot; and &quot;hundred years monasteries&quot;.</p> <p>I don't remember anything else. Just that IIRC it was written by a rather famous SF author, but I don't remember who.</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/297786 19 Jantique Fielding https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/235809 2025-08-06T06:38:31Z 2025-08-06T19:22:43Z

<p>I'm trying to identify a sci-fi story or novel where the first line is (possibly a phrase first, and therefore) &quot;Ship says I'm to be racked again.&quot; Ship is a character. I have a strong feeling that it's pretty well-known, but I honestly can't remember a thing other than that. It's in English. I believe it was written in the 20th c., after the Golden Age but before the turn of the century.</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/297808 14 Masud https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/235979 2025-08-06T18:55:45Z 2025-08-06T19:01:18Z

<p>The hero is a young cadet in the final year at the military academy, who is asked to join in the Secret Service. But to join the Service, he will be cashiered from the Academy to build his legend. His father is a senior member of the Service and his mother is dead.</p> <p>The hero has the ability to take over minds of others, especially animals and can read human minds also. Using his abilities, he successfully penetrates a criminal organization run by the Prime Minister (an Alien) of a major world. The Alien is trying to take over the galaxy by building a navy in secret, and then plans to go back to conquer his own world.</p> <p>In the finale, the hero sends out his brain to take over the mind of the Queen wasp and her drones sting the criminals to death. Hero escapes by contacting the nearest military based using the code Andra7.</p> <p>It has been a long time (20 years), so I have the story but forgotten the name.</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/297440 7 Parrotmaster https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/25033 2025-08-06T12:47:41Z 2025-08-06T12:26:39Z

<p>I read it well over 15 years ago, around when I was 10, but don't know how old the book was back then.</p> <p>There are 2 moments in the book that I remember:</p> <ul> <li><p>The grandmother (or an elderly woman that the protagonist lived with) was sleep walking with her hands crossed over her chest, palms pointed outwards.</p> </li> <li><p>The protagonist has what they think is a dream and opens the curtains in his/her bedroom, revealing that something (a vampire presumably) was looking at them.</p> </li> </ul> <p>I think the grandmother in the above described pose was also on the cover.</p> <p>Edit: I originally read the book in Dutch, and it is entirely possible that this was the original language.</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/290798 8 Stop Being Evil https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/184450 2025-08-06T07:04:56Z 2025-08-06T05:26:32Z

<p>Posting for a friend.</p> <p>The novel (possibly YA fiction) involved a boy finding a new world, possibly underground. The boy (who's an ordinary human) finds a werewolf who knew his dad, and the boy has a silver bullet keepsake that dad had pulled out of the werewolf's chest, saving his life and so he owes the boy a debt. There were also other monsters trying to steal the boy.</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/297795 16 Alfred https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/115682 2025-08-06T21:19:56Z 2025-08-06T23:06:30Z

<p>I remember just one scene in a long and intricate Fantasy novel which I read at least 30 years ago.</p> <p>One of the main characters (maybe <strong>the</strong> main character) is fleeing some enemy, probably a sorcerer. He is in a body of water (river ? lake ?), at night, on a small boat or maybe just swimming. And he sees lots of lights coming towards him. When they get closer he sees that each light is a candle lit on an eggshell ridden by an homunculus, converging towards him. He manages to escape, I forgot exactly how. And this makes him remember an old custom of some people who make a point of crushing the shells of the eggs they have eaten, lest witches and sorcerers use them for their spells.</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/234623 11 John O https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/7603 2025-08-06T19:49:41Z 2025-08-06T06:35:56Z

<p>This was a novel I read over 20 years ago. Unsure of the publication date, I think it was then current (late 1990s). The protagonist is a young man, a boring one with a boring office job... girlfriend leaves him because of him being boring. He comes to realize that no one notices him when he sees an older man like him waltz out of a convenience store with a case of beer unnoticed. He starts experimenting, discovering that he can get away with nearly any crime.</p> <p>Eventually he reunites with his girlfriend, who has the same superpower. Things quickly get really weird (as if they weren't already) when him and just a couple of others are actually exceptionally boring and become invisible even to the others like themselves. Something about the Great God Pan at the end (an Arthur Machen thing, if I'm not mistake).</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/297717 15 helmingstay https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/235444 2025-08-06T04:02:07Z 2025-08-06T16:10:07Z

<p>I read this as a hardback in approx 1991-1993. This is a self-discovery &quot;hero's quest&quot; set in a gritty dystopian world where the protagonist slowly discovers he (?) has psionic powers. I <em>thought</em> the title contained the word &quot;Cat&quot; and, to the best of my recollection, the cover had a single large green eye.</p> <p>I recall this being one of the first books that made me question consensus reality, and whether I was living in the world I thought I lived in (a central theme in the book). It had a big impact on me at the time, and I'm super-curious if it's as interesting as I recall (and whether the author has anything else).</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/297714 22 Alfred https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/115682 2025-08-06T20:45:06Z 2025-08-06T21:02:27Z

<p>I read this novel more than 20 years ago, probably in a paperback. But it might be much older.</p> <p>I'm not sure whether it is urban Fantasy or SF.</p> <p>The novel takes place essentially in our world, but where the main characters are <strong>very</strong> small humanoid beings, hiding (usually very efficiently) in the &quot;wainscottings&quot; of human society. I'm pretty sure it says in the book that the legends of imps or pixies (or maybe leprechauns, in Ireland) were started by the few humans who happened to get a glimpse of them. But I also vaguely seem to remember they might in fact be aliens, kind of ETs, but much, much smaller than the ET of the movie, about 5-10 cms or so. So SF and not urban Fantasy.</p> <p>I have forgotten almost everything. I remember precisely just one scene. A party of them managed to board a plane. One stewardess happens to see one of them, and he makes a face at her, so she runs away in terror. She tells some other person that not only did she <strong>see</strong> an imp, but, she said, &quot;He blew me a raspberry&quot;. At this point that &quot;imp&quot; is again hidden, in company of others, and they overhear her. So another &quot;imp&quot; asks the first one &quot;Did you really give her a raspberry?&quot; Indignantly he replies: &quot;Certainly not ! I am not a fool ! If I had found a raspberry, I would have eaten it !&quot;</p>

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/297698 13 Geysers https://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/235313 2025-08-06T22:29:11Z 2025-08-06T03:02:24Z

<p>I read this online at some point after 2018. It's entirely possible that it was published sometime before that, however. I'm pretty sure that it was originally published online, but not 100%. I'm thinking of either a short story or a segment, possibly chapter-length or longer of some larger novel. Unfortunately, I don't remember which.</p> <p><strong>What I'm confident of:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Members of a non-human species boarded an abandoned space station and found it to be inhabited by a lone human woman who slaughtered all of them using some sort of superpowers, despite attempts to kill her.</li> <li>She had been imprisoned on the station at some point in the past.</li> </ul> <p><strong>What I'm less confident of:</strong></p> <ul> <li><p>The superpowers may have involved a Groundhog Day-esque time-looping ability.</p> </li> <li><p>The woman may have been described as not wearing any clothes, possibly being of a stocky build.</p> </li> <li><p>The boarders may have been soldiers of a state that was warring against another.</p> </li> <li><p>She may have used the boarders' ship to escape the station.</p> </li> <li><p>Her original imprisonment may have been imposed in order to confine her abilities, suggesting that they were gained <em>prior</em> to imprisonment rather than after.</p> </li> <li><p>The boarders may have had at least four legs.</p> </li> <li><p>The boarders may not have been particularly intelligent.</p> </li> <li><p>The boarders' species had a long, consonant-heavy name with only one or two unique vowels - think &quot;bolchbonon&quot; or &quot;prikkiki-ti&quot; (definitely not either of those).</p> </li> </ul>

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