I'm trying to remember the title of a book I read perhaps in 2010 or 2011. The book was a used paperback at the time, and might have been published in the naughts or the nineties. The cover of the copy I had showed some sort of slug creature that was very reminiscent of the Ohm from Nausicaä and ...

In "Old Man Logan", the Hulk is a villain and has an entire clan of children & grand-children. During the fight with Logan near the end, Bruce Banner says the following: Bruce: A lot of folks say that I went mad. That the radiation sickness did something to my brain. But who else was I gonna ...

At the height of its power, the Galactic Empire operated over 25,000 Imperial class Star Destroyers. Only 27 of them participated in the Battle of Endor. Why were so few at the battle? Were the other 24,973 of them deployed around the galaxy? In maintenance shops getting new parts? Was the Emp...

One symbol that is repeatedly associated with Desire is a crystal heart. This appears in several Sandman stories, including in each Endless member's gallery. (Each Endless has a gallery, containing the sigils of the other Endless.) I don't have copies of the books on hand to show pictures, but I ...

There's a fan theory that Petyr Baelish is the secret father of Robert Arryn, the son of Lysa Tully and presumably Jon Arryn. He warmly greets Robyn each time he sees him, and this is something he does not do for others. He's not affectionate with anyone else, but he hugs this young boy. He onc...

I'm working on a science fiction story which includes the following premise: Tony Stark invents an unobtainium reactionless engine, and the protagonists want to build a spaceship around it, big enough to carry a nontrivial amount of cargo. They have a company similar to SpaceX, enough money, poli...

I'm asking this more due to the animated shows and movies as I haven't seen the recent 2017 Wonder Woman movie. She often says "Hera give me strength." Does she get a power boost, so to speak, or is it more an expression? One example from the show Justice League Unlimited: ...

XKCD 369, "Dangers", mentions two results for 'died in a blogging accident': But XKCD has messed up the Internet. Now there are a lot more results for 'died in a blogging accident' - 250k of them. I tried a search using Googles fancy tools, to exclude results that contained 'xkcd' and searchi...

Duke Leto was very well aware of how the attack against his house would take place. He even predicted the Sardaukar troups disguised as Harkonnen and that he would die. My question: Could the Atreides have won if Yueh hadn't sabotaged the house shields? ("Won" in the sense of "ward off the attac...

Probably another plothole? They were pretty close, given that they could hear voldemort and snape talk. Nagini sensed Harry (and maybe the Slytherin locket) when they were in godric's Hollow from a range of... well a whole town. Even if she was strolling around the town disguised as Bathilda Bags...

We all know he is stronger and more durable when in his organic metal form. My question is does he have additional powers? Specifically energy based ones. I only ask this because on the marvel wiki it shows him having an energy level of 5. The energy level of 5 seems to indicate long ranged proj...

I read it as a young teen (so early 80s). It was (I think) a four book series. It starts with an attack on the home-world of the 'Interplanetary Police' - there was a name for them, but if I could remember it I'd probably have the title :) - with a radiation/poison that ate into the bones. All w...

Phased Plasma Guns (PPGs) are used on ships because they won't penetrate ship hulls. Based on what I've seen there don't seem to be much use of body armour, (metal or otherwise). In a setting where PPGs are so common, why is noone wearing protection against them?

The same is argued for superman's heat vision. One argument that has been introduced is that he converges the beams such that they destructively interfere at the intended point of contact. But what about Vision, how he controls the distance the beam from soul stone travels. Is it in his control?

In the Chamber of Secrets Fawkes appears in the chamber while Harry is fighting the Basilisk through apparition We also know he can side-along apparate others with him, and at least with wizard apparation, multi-person side along apparations are possible Why then did Fawkes decide to fly n...

In the "Silver Surfer: Judgment Day" graphic novel, on page 58, Mephisto is battling with Galactus and says the following thing: I am Mephisto! Only ONE has the power to defy me, and next to him you are less than a smoldering cinder in the furnace of the damned! See: To whom is Mephisto ...

In "Captain America 3: Civil War," the Winter Soldier (Steve Rogers's childhood friend Bucky Barnes) is sought for his role in an assassination and located in Bucharest, Romania. We know it is Bucharest because they tell us he is in Bucharest, print the word "Bucharest" on the screen in big lette...

My kids are that age, 12 years old, when I remember reading what seemed the best science fiction book ever. It was about 1968 but I think the book was a few years old. It had gorgeous colour templates of strange worlds in it. One scene had small cigar shaped spaceships that dropped little cott...

A piece of Star Trek lore that appears commonly in fan-fiction is that of t'hy'la, which is a friend, brother, and/or lover. From what I've read, this was introduced by Gene Roddenberry in a footnote in the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. After that novelization came out, was this...

I'm interested to know which individual, living or dead, Jedi or Sith, had the highest midi-chlorian count prior to Anakin's birth. Anakin was known to have been the "highest" when he was discovered and tested by Qui-Gon at more than 20,000 midi-chlorians. QUI-GON : Make an analysis of this b...

In the Shannara series The Defenders of Shannara, we learned that Paxon Leah is a descendant of the Ohmsfords. While he didn't have the magic of the Wishsong, his sister did. Now, Tarsha has the Wishsong, and we can surmise that the series takes place at least 200 years after Defenders (there's...

In the film "Star Trek: Beyond" we see the Yorktown Starbase. We are only told that it is buildt in interstellar space, to not prefer some race, and also that the base is near the Necro Cloud Nebula. Are there sources that state where the base is located? I don't know which maps you can find onl...

One of the most recognisable characteristics of a Zeon mobile suit is its monoeye. Typically illuminated magenta, this large circular camera swivels around from side to side, perhaps also up and down, giving the impression that the lumbering brute is looking around. However, the pilot's vi...

Magneto has control over magnetic fields, very high strength ones, but can he apply fast moving alternating fields? If so he should be able to perform induction heating, in fact, with his power he should be able to melt virtually any metal object, including non-magnetic (ferrous) ones. In fact he...

When I was a teenager (which would have been the mid 80s), I read a series that I really enjoyed, but I can't recall the name of or any of the major details of. It seems like it was set in Louisiana or a bayou of some sort. It had some romance in it, but that was not the main focus. Several of th...

Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning. And note, Tonal languages are extremely common in Africa, East Asia, and Mexico, but rare elsewhere in Asia and in Europe; as many as seventy percent of world languages may be tonal.1 Now, the languages w...

From the answer to another question I learned the following bit from A Song of Ice and Fire: It was from the first book of A Song Of Ice And Fire and it was Varys asking Tyrion a riddle: A King, a priest, a rich man and a sellsword are in a room. Those three man tell the sellsword t...

There's a bug when editing a post where the "How to Edit" and "How to Format" windows get mixed in with the map links at the bottom of the page. I'm using Chrome V58.0.3029.110.

Trying to remember this 1970s novel. I am pretty strongly sure it was published in the 1970s or late 1960s from the style. I read it before 1982, in a paperback edition. The protagonist lives on his small yacht. He meets up with a scientist who is studying the viscosity of the seawater near th...

In the Original Trilogy, Allanon always says that he is the last Druid. In the end, before he dies, he seals Paranor to block entry to the evil creatures seeking to use artifacts contained there to do more harm. But before dying, Allanon transfers some of his powers to and Why did he not...

Virtual and Augmented Reality are topic of many cyberpunk or similar books, yet I cannot recollect of those authors who approach to describe a VR/AR immersed workplace in a more or less "hard scifi" style i.e. going to more detail and following laws of physics etc. My favourite example is Victor...

If the Flash had a Sabre Sword and ran at the speed of light could he defeat most heros/villains in the DC or Marvel universe? It seems like this would be an unstoppable weapon combination.

It starts off with an alien abduction, not sure but might be the parents of the protagonist. I remember the main character beeing maybe 16 years old as he is riding a motor cycle and playing Football (american). There are other protagonist that each fly in a seperate spaceship that can asseble to...

Looking for virtual-world based book. Key scenes: Gorilla-like creature at war with an Amazon-like woman. He finally breaks in and slowly breaks her neck. He searches his memory if he had promised to something more to her after she was dead, decides not. He creates virtual worlds for people, m...

During the Saiyan saga, once Goku had finished his training with King Kai, he realized that he had not taken the time to cross Snake way into consideration, making him late to the battle. This miscalculation resulted in the deaths of 4 of his companions. At the end on the Cell saga, King Kai re...

From Pottermore: Witches and wizards are not averse to laborious calculations, which they can, after all, do magically, so they do not find it inconvenient to weigh in ounces, pounds and stones; measure in inches, feet and miles; or pay for goods in Knuts, Sickles, and Galleons. (Pottermore...

Not sure when exactly I read this, may have been in the 90s or early 00s. The novel is set in north America I think. Some kind of energy beams or rays from space rain down on Earth. Where they happen to hit a human, that person gains some kind of power. From what I remember the powers were not ...

In Babylon 5 S3E10: Severed Dreams, the station along with the EAS Alexander and EAS Churchill are attacked by the EAS Agrippa and EAS Roanoke, plus supporting ships. After some initial fighter engagement, Sheridan orders the station's defence grid to target all its weapons against the Roanoake (...