The book was likely aimed at middle-schoolers, and I read the first half of it in the early 90's. The boy was a successful thief, and I think he came from an abusive home. An old wizard/magician found the boy and convinced him to follow the magician on a quest. The magician started to train the b...

I read a book in 6th grade for school and I can't remember the title. It involved people living under domes on the moon. A couple of kids ended up stealing/taking a key that took them outside the dome to another dome by some sort of vehicle. I only remember them being in a weird but beautiful ali...

Harry and Ollivander have this conversation in Deathly Hallows after Malfoy Manor detainment. ‘Walnut and dragon heartstring,’ he said. ‘Twelve and three-quarter inches. Unyielding. This wand belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange.’ ‘And this one?’ Ollivander performed the same examination. ‘Hawthorn an...

Just re-read Audubon in Atlantis by Harry Turtledove in The Year’s Best Science Fiction (23rd) by G Dozois. Next day my wife finds 5 old Analogs/Asimovs etc. in the Neighbourhood book share hut and drops them on the couch. I open the first one at random and... Audubon in Atlantis by Harry Turtled...

In the 1992 film Lawnmower man we see: Angelo confronts Jobe, who captures him and declares his plan to reach the final stage of evolution by becoming "pure energy" in the VSI computer mainframe, and from there reach into all the systems of the world. He promises his "birth" will be signalled by...

According to the answers to the question here, The Ministry of Magic covers the cost of all magical education. In addition, Book 7 mentioned that Squibs were sent to muggle schools so that they could integrate with the people like "them". As Ron's great-aunt Auntie Muriel puts it: Squibs were us...

In the Star Trek: TNG episode, "Cause and Effect", Picard gives the order for all hands to abandon ship. It's the only instance I can remember but there may have been others. Now if we accept that he couldn't have known that Enterprise would explode so soon and so it would be reasonable to hope t...

The Kung Fu Panda universe contains both carnivores (tigers, leopards, wolves, crocodiles etc.) and animals commonly eaten, both by those and in Chinese cuisine (pigs, ducks/geese, cattle, sheep etc.). All of these are portrayed as sentient and one would assume that they are thus not part of the ...

I am currently re reading Harry Potter in English as my first language is French. It appears that Severus Snape is translate into Severus Rogue in French. With a little bit of research, I found out that even if his name is not translate in every translations of the books, it's still a pretty comm...

It would appear that at some point in time the Tour lost its example question: it somehow has become ineligible and so has defaulted to the default unicorn example. Now, whilst the default is actually somewhat on topic for us it isn't a good example of a question we want to show new users so we s...

Are Tolkien's elves vegetarian ? Do they only eat plant food? In Peter Jackson's The Hobbit movie, we see that the elven table is set with only plant food. This happens when Thorin & Co. are dining in Rivendell, where Dwalin famously asks : 'Where's the meat?' Apparently this implies that elve...

I can't remember the title of a manga I read. In the start, two old people considered the strongest in the world, are given a chance by a goddess to have a child by turning back their youth. Many years later, it shows the child has very hard training and the two old people are trying not to spoil...

During chapter 11 of Chamber of Secrets - The Dueling Club - we see Lockhart get obliterated by Snape in a display match at said club. After this chapter, is this club ever mentioned again at any point in the series? In later books, I'm often surprised by how little Harry appears to have learned ...

I am looking for the title and author of a short story I read in a Megapack. It's about a military general who is exiled on a planet, but he is so overbearing and cruel to the locals, they tie him up and leave him on an anthill. Can anyone help?

So I think by googling around I have almost certainly figured this out (see below), but posting anyway in case someone else is looking for the same book, and to remove any remaining uncertainty. I read this sci-fi story as a kid, must have been the late 80s, and this is all I can remember: The ...

It's pretty obvious that he used the elf equivalent of apparation, but are we ever actually told that? Ever since the scene in Goblet of Fire where Crouch's means of disappearance are discussed, I've been finding more and more loopholes in the excuses based around not being able to apparate in Ho...

I remember very little of this, I was quite young - It was on television in the mid 90's, but seemed older. My wife was telling me about the 21 grams experiment and the memory clicked into place. Setting Inside of a mad scientist sort of lab, with the plasma balls and everything else, a characte...

I read this book when I was between 12-14 I think so around the late 90s (97-99 maybe?). I remember the cover being of a woman holding her hand aloft with sun rays radiating from it. The basic story that I remember was that this princess was the grand-daughter of the ruler (king, emperor, not s...