About 1963, I read a book that could have been one of Heinlein or Asimov’s Juvies. It had a reference to the Co-op Engineering program at what had been New Mexico A & M (Now New Mexico State), with the protagonist doing some work at White Sands. It pretty much set me on the career path that I hav...

Its been years since Ive seen this movie, but it came up in discussion but I couldn't remember the name. It takes place in a world where what you do in life is determined by birth, and most people are conceived in a lab and "created" for a specific purpose of the parents choosing. The main charac...

Probably from 60's or 70's, only remember a scene. A sphere on the moon or planet, that opened up and you looked into darkness, it tried to or did pull you in and then closed. Finds a woman in space suit like his under the dirt digs her out and they get into space ship to leave.

Some science fiction and fantasy stories describe religious subjects in a fictionalized setting. Probably the most obvious example of this is the His Dark Materials trilogy. I imagine that some of the material in that trilogy might offend some Christians, but not being Christian myself, I lack ...

We know that Jadis used this word to cast a spell over Charn and this brought about the destruction of everybody there except for her. However, who taught Jadis the Deplorable Word and what was the 'terrible price' she had to pay to learn it? I don't want to know how she was taught the pronunci...

It was a movie I watched about a year and a half ago. It couldn't have been too old, maybe the past 5 years or so. It was a lower budget film about a compound in the desert (i think nevada) where this community of humans lived ruled by a big cgi purple tentacled alien. The alien would have a c...

Related: Who was the first publicly recognized Super Hero before the advent of comic books? (but, it doesn't deal with costumes and dual identities) Batman is grey area. This question hasn't been answered properly: Why are heroes without supernatural powers considered “super” heroes? So, I am ki...

Introduction I remember experiencing (reading, I think) a science fiction, or space opera, story in which the main characters are on a ship, perhaps fleeing from someone, and the use a Hyperspace jump to get to the other side of a nearby planet. Character 1 thinks they jumped through the planet...

In one of the "I, Robot" stories, the robotic intelligence in the first FTL spacecraft prototype undergoes certain problems relative to the First Law and reacts to them by displaying eccentric behavior. For example, it only supplies its passengers with canned beans and milk. A diet like that shou...

It was a story I read around 10ish years ago though I think the book may have been older than that. It was about a boy who ends up on a ship and is somehow cursed to live forever. He then washes up onshore with his dog and goes around helping people with guidance from an Angel telling him where t...

A long time ago I read about a novel, short story or possibly a movie (I can't remember what it was exactly, most likely a novel though) telling the story of a man who writes a book only to later discover that someone else has already written the exact book, word-by-word, possibly years before. ...

Khazad-dûm is said the be the largest of the Dwarf kingdoms. In terms of scale how large was it? 40 miles end to end but how many levels? Is there a way to compare it to a modern day city in terms of total size and population at its peak?

If you consider "defeating" him to be disarming the guy, capturing him, and getting him thrown in prison, why isn't Newt Scamander famous for defeating Gellert Grindelwald the way that Dumbledore is?

The Big Mistake of the Hyperion books says: The "Big Mistake" was a cataclysmic event thought to have destroyed Old Earth, having been brought about when a team of physicists in Kiev created an artificial black hole in a laboratory, which then plunged to the center of the planet and began con...

Sauron, of course, wasn't Sauron's real name. He was called Mairon the Admirable. Mairon was only given the name Sauron upon his defection to evil. The name Sauron was given in mockery of his previous name. saura (Þ) adj. foul, evil-smelling, putrid Sauro (Þ) masc. name Sauron (Þ), ...

I'm trying to find out the name of a cyborg movie from the 1980s or 1990s. In the movie, a guy either works in a lab or he's a cop; I can't remember which. I'm pretty sure he works in a lab, though. Anyway, I remember that he's turned into a cyborg and he looks scary. Half of his face is still hu...

I have years ago read a book about some fantasy world where 2 huge factions are fighting in a medieval setting but with dragons as an airforce. The main character joins a group of dragon riders travelling as a kind of circus before later joining a military unit of dragon riders and going to war. ...

Can you tell me the title of a movie made in the late 1980's or early 1990's where the hero is imprisoned for getting his wife pregnant on an overpopulated Earth? Unauthorized breeding is a crime. Most of the story occurs in an underground prison that has cyborgs for guards. The guards force the...

There's a scene in Guardians of the Galaxy where Kraglin, Yondu's ravager friend played by Sean Gunn, is seen But that doesn't make any sense to me, because So where did he get it?

Why would Admiral Piett allow a shuttle stolen by the Rebel Alliance to pass? In Return of the Jedi, the Rebel Alliance use a stolen Lambda-Class Shuttle (Tydirium) to infiltrate the Imperial held moon Endor. "We have stolen a small Imperial shuttle. Disguised as a cargo ship, and using a s...

By the time of the War of the Ring, Sauron had retrieved and now held in his possession the Nine Rings of Men and (at least some of) the Seven Dwarven Rings. Since the Ringwraiths no longer possessed their rings yet still maintained great power, could he have re-gifted these 10-16 rings to more m...

Once the Rebel fleet showed at Endor there was no need for stealth operations. Soon after arriving, the Rebels discover the stealth mission was not successful and begin a battle over the moon of Endor. Why did the Rebels not use their ships to attack the shield generator? Looking a the hologra...

This came up in the comments to another question. According to the Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, Sauron ... still through their nine rings (which he held) had primary control of their wills. (The quote was copied from another question.) So Sauron controlled the ringwraiths by having physic...

For the purpose of writing an English paper, I need to find examples of Harry Potter apologizing and making amends for a problem that he truly was the cause of, but can't find any.

In Harry Potter, the fact that "The wand chooses the wizard" becomes a main plot point. Wands will not work for you properly if they either didn't choose you, or if you didn't win them in battle. But in The Deathly Hallows, after escaping from Malfoy Manor, Ollivander crafts and sends Luna a new ...

From the script (emphasis added): Nervously, he looks around at the foreboding jungle. LUKE: Still...there's something familiar about this place. I feel like...I don't know... STRANGE VOICE: Feel like what? Luke jumps out of his skin. Artoo screeches in terror. The young wa...

In Supernatural, Castiel is tricked into giving up his Grace, the source of his Angelic powers,including his wings, and falls from heaven. In the process he loses those wings. The same thing (or a very similar thing) happened to the Angel Anna earlier in the series, and though she goes for a wh...