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12:50 AM
1
Q: Movie about a man eventually being electromagnetically attached to a woman?

יהודהPeace and blessings. I have been looking for this film for years but I cannot exactly remember the plot (or name). It was a movie that came out around the 80s or 90s where at the end of the film a man/teenager became magnetically attached to a woman/teenager (who as very dorky/geeky looking). T...

 
1:38 AM
0
Q: Movie about a man who cheats on significant other, able to go back in time but ends up getting cheated on?

יהודהThere was a movie (not too sure if it came out in the 90s or early 2000s. It was on HBO though) about a man who is able to either go back in time or relive the moment. He was cheating on his significant other but then regretted it when he saw the pain it caused her after she finds out. So he ei...

 
 
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2:50 AM
0
Q: Isekai manga where mc is born the youngest prince but becomes the king cause his elder brothers are pretty much useless

ToughI remember it started of by him running away from becoming king but an elf girl was chasing him and telling him to come back. The two are still really young. The elf girl catches up to him and brings him back. When the prince was still a child he and his father went out to the country and while s...

 
 
1 hour later…
4:02 AM
2
Q: A man who sometimes works for the UN accidentally sells the Earth to an alien

TedSci fi story from the 1950s: In New York, a man in a trenchcoat approaches and offers to buy planets. The man selling eventually "sells the earth". The buyer says write me a bill of sale and put "in my official capacity" on it. After signing, the seller remembers that he sometimes sells surpl...

 
 
4 hours later…
8:28 AM
0
Q: How was Ash Tyler able to bring the help from Klingons

HBhatiaAsh Tyler was supposed to be In season 2 finale, Ash was on the same Klingon battleship with L'Rell when he brought them to help Discovery This would reveal L'Rell's lies and compromise L'Rell's position as and How was Ash able to do this so easily?

0
Q: Did the Mesan Alignment plot ever get a conclusion?

JontiaThe final two books in the separated threads of the Honorverse "main" timeline were Uncompromising Honor (2018) and Shadow of Victory (2016) Given the Mesan alignement have been revealed over the last 6-10 books or so as the driving engine of most of the interstellar conflicts, I was surprised t...

 
9:17 AM
0
Q: Looking for a book title about a stolen battleship

GrizzlyI read a book a number of years ago but can't find it or remember the title. Criminals have stolen a WW2 battleship (I want to say that it was based on the Yamato) and are causing havoc on the waves. Nothing modern can touch it so they dust off the Missouri and Idaho battleships to sink her. I th...

 
9:46 AM
0
Q: May 2021 Topic Challenge: Margaret St. Clair

Rand al'ThorThis post is for the fifth of SFF.SE's new series of topic challenges, encouraging the site's community to take part together in asking and answering questions on a particular topic each month. According to community votes on the topic challenge proposals thread, the May 2021 topic challenge is g...

 
@Randal'Thor how many books in the WoT series should I try before shelving them?
 
@SQB time is removed from all creationdate values in the votes table to guarantee anonymity of the voters, see meta.stackexchange.com/questions/933/…
 
10:13 AM
@AncientSwordRage Definitely more than a few chapters, as the opening chapters in book 1 are a real drag. Overall in book 1, I think I enjoyed it but didn't feel it was something that special yet. In Book 2 the story starts getting a lot deeper and broader, you start to understand the true scope of the worldbuilding. [cont]
I'd say it was book 4 where I really began to see how incredible a story it is: main characters more split up than before, deep insight into a very different in-universe culture, some unexpected shit hitting fans, and you start to realise how far you've come as a reader in your knowledge of that world. By the end of book 4 you can definitely look back at scenes in books 1-2 and think "wow, did I really know that little of this world/people/organisation back then?"
2
@Slartibartfast I've taken @TheLethalCarrot's suggestion of openly announcing that I'll be awarding bounties, although without specifying criteria.
 
@Randal'Thor interesting
 
@AncientSwordRage How far have you got?
 
@Randal'Thor I've seen a spoiler free review on youtube :D
Apr 7 at 21:17, by AncientSwordRage
I haven't finished a book in years
I'd like to add them to my reading list though
 
Oh :-D
From your initial message I thought you'd started them and weren't liking them.
 
@Randal'Thor no not yet :p
 
10:19 AM
Reading WoT is a massive undertaking: 14 books and around 4 million words. If you start it, be aware what you're taking on :-P
@AncientSwordRage How do you feel about audiobooks? It's a way to "read" a book without having to sit down and devote exclusive time to it.
 
@Randal'Thor there's a non-zero chance I'll listen on audio book
@Randal'Thor very happy with them
 
I read WoT as paper books, so can't recommend any particular audiobook version (if there's even multiple readers, dunno).
I did once listen to a Youtube reading of the Battle of Dumai's Wells, for some reason. (Massive event at the end of book 6.)
 
@Randal'Thor I can have a look
there's some more books higher on the list, so I'm not rushing
but I sort of dismissed it as old-fantasy for old-fantasy-fans?
I like LotR, but I could never finish book three (admittedly I read them around 12-15) but I've definitely read a number of large book, so I thought it wasn't that
 
Not sure what you mean by old-fantasy?
 
more traditional magic systems (I realise now that might not be the case for WoT), and more european settings
like Dragonlance for instance
 
10:30 AM
WoT is sort of in the spirit of LotR, and at least in the first part of the first book it'll feel very reminiscent (sinister Black Riders, big friendly fellow with an affinity to trees), but that was a deliberate choice Jordan made to ease his readers in with a familiar setting, before it gets much broader.
In terms of magic systems, WoT and LotR are nothing alike. The magic system of WoT is developed very slowly: it's one of those things you know nothing about for the first few books and then learn so much about later on together with the characters. But whereas the magic of LotR is mostly the mysterious Gandalf, in WoT many of the viewpoint characters end up using magic, in one way or another, and how it works gets pretty clearly pinned down in the end (albeit not Sanderson-level pinned down).
European settings, again nope. One of the things I love about WoT is how many truly different cultures are created and explored in-depth within a single fictional world. I don't know what they're all based on, but there's influence from Japanese culture and Zulu culture to name but a couple.
> Death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain.
^ traditional saying of the Borderlands in-universe, turns out to originate from the Japanese armed forces IRL (for example)
 
that's all good to know
I think I misjudged the books then!
@Randal'Thor I didn't think the magic was similar to LotR, but more like like Vancian magic
 
As in Jack Vance?
I read his Lyonesse trilogy many years ago.
 
@Randal'Thor yes, but more the concept as I've not read his books
 
10:46 AM
From what I remember, the WoT magic system is more well-defined than the Lyonesse one, but not as well-defined as say Mistborn.
 
but is a case of wizards casting spells or magic users using magic?
 
Mmmmm ... sort of, but it's never really put in those terms.
Words like "magic", "spell", "wizard" are never used in WoT.
 
that is cool
 
But there are some powers that particular people have, which is basically "magic" to a fantasy aficionado even if they never use the term in-universe.
 
 
2 hours later…
12:30 PM
0
Q: Sci-fi movie about robots killing sad people

Leif KnudsenAstronauts come (back?) to a city ruled by robots. Most people are dead. When people get sad the robots detect it and kill. The robots shows a happy or sad smiley corresponding to their analysis of the person being checked. I think the dead people were used as fertilizer for the food production. ...

 
12:45 PM
posted on April 26, 2021 by tech

Click here to go see the bonus panel!Hovertext: One guy just fell from the top, screaming and shaking his fists, and that's where Russians come from. Today's News:

 
12:55 PM
0
Q: Book with robotic zombies

CamdenRead a book in the past that started off with a kid going to the bottom of his school to see a robotic zombie coming out the water. Kid ends up going to another world where heros live.

0
Q: Manga where the protagonist saw both his dad and mother died along with the people in the building

findingnemoI've been looking this old manga where the protagonist (when he was a kid) went to some event together with his parents that held in a building. But then there was fire that they tried to save their lives by going to the other building to be just end up dying by the gas. The kid somehow saw both ...

 
1:44 PM
1
Q: Book involving superheroes and a rust-like disease. The main character discovers the main villain is his future self

JimmyI read this book at the beginning of high school and want to reread it. This would have been around 2012. It's a YA superhero book involving a group of teen superheroes where the main character has the ability to control machines. Their society has some sort of "rust" disease that kills everyone ...

 
2:31 PM
1
Q: Can you hear using a palantír or just see?

honeste_vivereMy kids asked a question I could not find the answer to, so I will ask it here. Can the user of a palantír hear things on the "other side" or just see things? That is, are palantírs just two-way soundless security cameras (loose analogy) or are they more like FaceTime/Zoom/etc.? I am not asking ...

 
3:20 PM
-1
Q: Can you Accio a person?

user140205What are the boundaries of the Accio spell/Summoning Charm? Can you Accio people? Random items? Other people's wands?

 
4:04 PM
@Marvin No
 
4:57 PM
0
Q: Crashed alien ship AI upgrades a human to become the ship captain it needs for full function

ScreendoorRecent Kindle novel--Its alien Captain left the crashed ship to explore millennia ago and never returned, concealed alien ship AI cannot initiate any action without a biological Captain so, ship AI attracts and upgrades a passing high potential human to become the ship captain it needs for full f...

 
5:21 PM
1
Q: Are these the original wings?

Sophie the Jedi Knightspoilers for the TFATWS finale In the finale for TFATWS, we see Sam in his full Captain America ensemble, complete with his wings. The whole outfit is obviously changed, but are these wings his original ones? I thought, after John damaged Sam's original wings and Sam left them with Torres, that...

 
6:17 PM
@Donald.McLean short answer
 
@AncientSwordRage Just right.
 
could be
short, but not too short
 
6:33 PM
3
Q: SF short story involving a community of organisms living within a larger organism

AllieI'm trying to identify a story I likely heard on the podcast Escape Pod or something similar quite a few years ago. In the story, smaller bug-like organisms live within the body of a larger bug-like organism. The smaller organisms all have very specific roles that they typically never deviate fro...

 
 
2 hours later…
8:08 PM
2
Q: Serial 80s back-page comic "The Tree That Bends"

Orval WintermuteWondering if you can help me find a comic serial that may have ran in the back of a young adult or sci-fi magazine in the late 80s/early 90s: I can't remember the name, but it was similar in tone to the "Pool of Fire" Tripod stuff Boys' Life published around that time, but I remember it being bla...

 
 
1 hour later…
9:19 PM
0
Q: Which book is it with a planet having animals which taste/ sense with their feet?

Chaitanya BhatI need help identifying a book that I had read years ago. It's probably a children's book, which might be a part of a series. The plot is set on a distant planet, with two species of animals if I remember correctly. One of those has the ability to taste with their feet, and they use this as their...

 
9:59 PM
0
Q: What happens to fudge after he resigns?

Literature TodayCornelius Fudge was last seen after resigning at Albus Dumbledore's funeral. What happens to him after that?

 
10:33 PM
0
Q: Alien movie with lifeforms that inefcts people

SkullDinerI have this scene from a movie stuck in my head where a man has a alien lifeform infecting his hand. On top off that I have a vague memory of this been in the end of the movie and the "infecction" having kind of a "mini monster head". I already mistaked this movie for The Abyss (1989) and Event H...

 
11:05 PM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected, toxic answer detected (158): Why did Anakin seem to only follow the Jedi Way when it was enjoyable/easy for him? by Boo on scifi.SE
 

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