I have a vague memory of this scene that is possibly from a short film. It's possible it was done as a flashback of some kind, or that it was part of some horror anthology. I saw it at some point in the last ten years, and if memory serves the production values seemed sufficient that it must hav...

I believe this was a short story and I think I read it in a collection of other short stories. It focuses on the consequences for a number of characters after someone doses a cities water supply with a non-lethal amnesiac drug that leaves everyone unable to remember their names or who they are (b...

I recently watched Denis Villeneuve version of Dune. It is mentioned that the sandworms are always attracted to the artificial vibrations. I remember the books also mentioning multiple times that shields are useless and that any sound/vibration that is unnatural to the desert will immediately att...

I'm looking for a definitive answer on how to pronounce Fritz Leiber's last name. I guess audio of him or a close family member would be ideal, or maybe he addressed it somewhere in writing. I and people I know have always pronounced it LEE-ber (IPA /'libər/), but tonight I heard a podcast episod...

I'm trying to track down a live action retelling of A Christmas Carol I would have seen on TV sometime around the early to mid 2000's in the United States. It was a standalone movie with frequent commercial breaks. It felt like it was made-for-TV but I can't say for sure. The main deviation I rem...

I've read parts of the book and seen both David Lynch's and Denis Villeneuve's films, but I've not seen a concrete description of how exactly mélange enables space travel. The David Lynch film mentions that spice enables Spacing Guild navigators to "fold space", while the first few pages of the D...

Search engine results for occult libraries tend to have mostly commercial interests at play (vendors of trinkets and spell books and the like). Another issue I've run into is the genre tends to get treated like tabloids and scholarly resources are a bit muddled. I suppose it would be career suici...

In his 2007 interview for Dragon Magazine Issue 352, China Miéville stated that after the critical/public response to Iron Council he felt it was important to take a break from stories set in Bas-Lag but he'd be back there sooner rather than later nonetheless. That was now over a decade ago and I...

I'm looking for an old anime I used to watch as a kid, for which I have only some glimpses of the story. It was probably made during the '80s, and I remember a black-haired, black-dressed boy as a protagonist, who somehow time travels back to the prehistoric era. While exploring, he constantly en...

The question Why do vampires hiss? asks: Is there any thought process for [hissing], or any evidence for the choice, or did Bram Stoker just decide that? It's tagged as history-of and trope, and although it gives some ideas, it looks like the asker wants a canonical first use (along with an exp...

At the end of the first Dune book, the Paul Atreides and the Fremen attack Arrakeen. They bring down part of the Shield Wall using Atomics in order to be able to ride worms to the city. I tried to find the exact location of the breach but did not find an exact location. I think there are four lo...

In Half Blood Prince, Before they meet Severus, Bellatrix speaks to Narcissa: BELLATRIX: Cissy! You can't do this! He can't be trusted! NARCISSA: The Dark Lord trusts him. BELLATRIX: The Dark Lord's mistaken. What does "him" refer to?

I'm trying to find the title of a book a read when I was young. I read it in the early 2000s, but it was definitely not a new book at that point. The plot focused on two kids (boys I think) who somehow travelled back in time to see important places/events/people in history. The only part I can re...

In the final scene of the Alfred Hitchcock thriller, Psycho, just before the final cut to “The End,” the camera focuses on Norman Bates’ face. For a split second, a ghoulish visage of a skeletal form manifests as part of Norman’s form — this appears to be either that we’re able to see Norman’s ow...

I know I've found this in the past, but I seem to have lost my references. I think I originally read this in early 2000, in English, online. At some point, that website went down, I found some cached copies online, and eventually found the original author (I think through associating his name wit...

Back in the 80's I remember reading a science fiction short story in an issue of Playboy. I'd like to re-read it, if possible: author was a regular in Playboy during that time period the world was of the future people were charged for the air they breathed there was a count-down time display vis...

Can anyone show/share what transmutation circle did Shou Tucker use in his chimera daughter? It was partially shown in the anime but I couldn't make out the entire circle. Here's a short video on it: The one written in chalk on the floor around 3:52 into the video...

I've found that some Stack Exchange sites quickly recommend moving a comment stream to chat after only 5 or 6 comments. But on SFF I've never actually seen this, even when comment streams have a dozen or more comments. What is the setting used by SFF?

In Battlestar Galactica the enemy was a race of machines called Cylons who manage to wipe out almost all of humanity but the survivors are able to escape in a fleet and run from them. If the Cylons are machines why didn't they just manufacture bases on every star system and deny the humans a plac...

Hogwarts has a ton of electives offered after third year, but I have a few questions concerning them. -Do other Wizarding Schools offer different electives? -What's the full list of electives that Hogwarts has to offer after third year? -Are there different electives offered at Hogwarts at the NE...