Questions tagged [planets]
Planets are large celestial bodies in orbit around a star. Sometimes, large moons are also called planets - especially if they are able to support some kind of life. A typically habitable planet is about 6,000 kilometres in diameter, while large gas giants can be much bigger. Planets can be host to millions of sentient inhabitants, or barren wastelands, or anywhere in between.
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Trilogy set on a very unusual human colony. According to the law, only a certain quota of scientists (perhaps 50) are allowed to live on the planet
The planet is a legally protected nature reserve. There are only a certain number of adults allowed to live there. Perhaps 50. Children are given a number depending on thair family relationships. For ...
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90s or earlier sci-fi book about a "Planet X" and its deadly spores
I'm trying to identify a sci-fi book from the 90s or earlier about a "Planet X." Here are the details I remember:
I'm pretty sure the cover had a young man screaming.
In the beginning, the ...
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Post-2005 third-person "walking simulator" video game about exploring an abandoned space colony
I'm trying to identify a video game released before 2019 and after 2005.
It was a third-person 3D game in which you played as an astronaut who had a robotic arm on their backpack. You visited an ...
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Sci-Fi novel where explorers from Earth visited 3 planets
What is the title of a Sci-Fi novel where explorers from Earth visited 3 planets? I remember that these planets were occupied by certain groups of people and evolved over the years. The first planet ...
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Planet where most children are clones of their mother. Non clones are called Vars and discriminated against [duplicate]
The planet has mostly medieval technology. I think a train might have been mentioned at one point. I do not remember whether they know they are descended from humans from Earth.
They were genetically ...
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Humans are kept as livestock by aliens. They all know an old song. The song teaches them how to fly their long abandoned spaceship [duplicate]
I read this short story about 2015. I think it was old at the time.
The planet was settled by humans long ago. The indigenous aliens later beat them in a war. Humans are kept as livestock on farms, ...
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Long isolated human colony. People live in trees and have changed a lot. A 'pursemaker' is in danger, he is on trial for heresy
The 'purses' the accused man makes are large sealable tents for safely spending the night in. The pursemakers wonders how many of the people who do not speak a word in his defence had spent the night ...
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Two men are guests on a planet terraformed some generations ago. All earth livestock died. Local animals cannot be eaten. Served meat in a meal
After having being treated to a huge banquet by their hosts, the two visitors remember being told that all the animals they brought with them, in the ship that founded the settlement, died.
None of ...
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YA book. Planet in our solar system. Two teenagers sealed in a plant with flashlight. Oxygen from photosynthesis saves their lives [duplicate]
The two teenagers are walking across the planet to warn their parents of an evil plan by a major company.
They are wearing pressure suits. They are running out of oxygen. The boys spend the night ...
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Planet with no star. Human society descended from two people trapped there. A female cop and the criminal she was chasing
I read it in about 2015. It seemed to have been written fairly recently.
The story starts some generations after the initial two people were trapped on the planet. About a hundred people are descended ...
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Novel or short story. A planet is settled by Irish Catholics. Snakes are important part of ecosystem here. Change StPatrick and snakes story
The story is set sometime after the planet has been settled. The settlers found snakes to be important to the ecosystem. Also directly important for the well-being of humans on the planet as they eat ...
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Novel. I think by James P Hogan. Has humans studying flying alien wildlife. These animals are passing on learned behaviour in their genes
I read this book about 20-25 years ago. It was a long story with lots of other things I have forgotten.
The part that really stuck in my mind involved human scientists studying flying wildlife on an ...
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Short Story or Novella. Two human boys amongst the first born on the planet in our solar system. Drive a heavy vehicle across planet in an emergeny
I listened to this audiobook story about 2019 as part of an anthology.
It may have been Mars where they lived or possibly the moon.
The two boys were about twelve. One was the son of the heavy vehicle ...
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Classic SF short story. Men transmit consciousness into bodies that can live in Jupiter [duplicate]
The protagonist is the leader of the team of scientists exploring inside the gas of Jupiter.
The scientists sent to explore have their consciousness transmitted into bodies that can survive there. I ...
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Short story. If I were a M........... The word begining M is an alien race on a planet where a few humans are living too
The title might have started "If you were a M*"
I read this story about 2015 but it seemed to be written some decades earlier.
A small number of human men are living on a planet inhabited by ...
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Tourist on alien planet. Has human guide. Worries intelligent aliens will eat him..Shocked guide explains they would never eat a human during the day
I am not 100% sure it is a short story. It might be part of a novel.
The man being given the tour explains to his human guide that he is worried the aliens might eat them.
The guide is shocked at the ...
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Short science fiction story. Human worker in peril on a planet. Surface is covered in shallow water. If he becomes exhausted and lies down, will drown
Science fiction short story by Heinlein.
Many humans are working on the surface of an alien planet (possibly Venus.) They are dropped off individually to work. They insist on proof they will be picked ...
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Where does the "Starname Prime" naming scheme for planets originate?
I mean the name of a star followed by the word Prime, used to denote the system's most important/primary inhabited world. For example, Earth would be called Sol Prime using this naming scheme. I've ...
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Were they ever worried about running dry on resources in the Star Wars galaxy?
On Earth, we are constantly worried about running out of resources like metals and oil and natural gas. The Star Wars galaxy uses fusion and hypermatter for energy BUT they mine tons of metal to build ...
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What planet was the Doctor really from?
Which planet is the Doctor from Doctor Who really from? In "The Timeless Child" it was revealed that he's not from Gallifrey (which had been given as his origin for decades of episodes). Is ...
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What were the 27 planets taken by the Daleks?
In "The Stolen Earth", 27 planets are stolen by Davros and the Daleks to create a doomsday machine. As we can see in the following scene, they include:
Earth (obvs)
Callufrax Minor
Jahoo
...
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Old short SF story in which people are sent to live in secret within societies on other planets, in order to maintain good interplanetary relations [duplicate]
At least 30 years ago, I read a short SF story about friendship between different planets.
In order to maintain good relationships between planets, it was the rule that one person from a planet would ...
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1980s serialized novel in Analog about an alien planet named something like Midanoa
This question made me think of a novel from Analog that I read part of in the 1980s. There's an alien planet being colonized by humans; the inhabitants are humanoid but fur-covered. The aliens call ...
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Is most of the Star Wars galaxy colonized?
I watch all Star Wars TV shows and read all Star Wars literature. In these stories, characters go to tons and tons of new (relative to the audience) planets and it seems a majority of them have been ...
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Will the Star Wars galaxy run out of space for planets? [closed]
I know that the average galaxy has over 400 billion stars and most stars have planets around it so it seems foolish to think the writers would ever run out of planets. It’s just for the suspension of ...
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Cartoon show about a man who went to a restaurant/restroom not knowing it was a government testing facility
I am looking a cartoon I found in YouTube. It is sort of like an animation mix video about a modern normal Earth guy who went to a restaurant or restroom without realising it is a government testing ...
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Is there a (romantic?) story with a purple beach with silver sky and three blue moons?
Is there a (romantic?) story with being referenced by 2004's The Fairy Godmother, given its habit of referencing various stories, although usually fairy tales, but is this romantic / erotic dream's ...
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1960's-1970's (possibly older) sci-fi story about a man stuck on an inhabited planet with a twist
The story was about a man who crashed on an uninhabited planet and was wandering around for a few years looking for another crashed spaceship to use its parts to repair his spaceship. He had a small ...
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Black & white sixties episode where a spacecraft is unable to depart the planet
I believe it's a sixties T.V. item, possibly from The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits. It is not "Death Ship."
This crew land and can not secure takeoff again no matter what they try. The ...
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Know a short story (Heinlein?) about a man constantly fighting alien life forms, realizing at the end that they're projections of his own feelings? [duplicate]
I just saw an old interview of Roger Waters where he describes a sci-fi short story, probably by Robert Heinlein, that he read in his youth, so dating back to the 1960s at least, and I'd really like ...
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book cover: a planet which has a creepy smiling face of a girl
I only remember the cover. I am pretty sure it was a sequel in some series. Definitely young adult. It was a girl's face on the surface of a planet just smiling creepily. I think it must be some ...
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Old sci fi story about a ship that arrives on an alien planet and watches evolution from bacteria to whatever comes after man
I've been trying to remember a short story which I read in the 1980s in a sci-fi anthology.
I recall a ship arriving an alien planet and watching as evolution from bacteria to fish, reptile, mammal, ...
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Sol Ⅲ = Earth: What is the origin of this planetary naming scheme?
It appears to be a fairly common planetary naming scheme in science fiction: Take the common name (or its bayer designation) of star and append the planetary ordinal in the form of a Roman or Arabic ...
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80's 90'sTV series/movie identification, live-action: bad guy turns to be the good one [duplicate]
I remember a sci-fi show/movie as a child where a kid/teen and a generic hero traveled to other planets. One was a mushroom people one, another was a giant people one, can't remember more. They were ...
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What was the first instance of a "planet eater" in sci-fi?
In Sci-Fi, there are quite a few 'planet eaters'; giant beings that consume/live off planets or similarly large celestial bodies. The ones I know of are:
Unicron from Transformers 1986
Galactus from ...
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SciFi book with man and woman traveling across planets in a three seater cycle, with their pet dog
I remember reading a SciFi book as a child! It involved a man and a woman, possibly sibilings traveling across different planets in a three seater cycle along with their pet dog! The book must be from ...
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Does the Disney canon of Star Wars include any multiple-biome planets?
Star Wars is quite famous for fitting the Single Biome Planet trope to a T (warning: TVTropes link). You have the desert worlds of Tatooine and Jakku, the Forest Moon of Endor, the woodland planet of ...
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First named, colonized planet in a science fiction story
What is the first non-Sol system planet that's colonized by humans in a work of fiction?
To be specific, I'm not looking for "Proxima Centauri B" or that sort of scientific nomenclature, and no ...
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Man on another world, kicked out of colony, tries to survive in jungle
Paperback book, probably from the 1950s or 60s.
Premise, a colony has been established on a mountain plateau of a jungle planet. (pop maybe 200-500 people) There are ape like creatures living in ...
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Trying to find 1960s comic about another planet
I remember reading a comic book in the 1960s about people (maybe a family?) visiting another planet, whose original inhabitants had used up the planet's oceans by using the hydrogen for propulsion to ...
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Name of a book where humans land on a planet getting trapped and have to reinvent rocketry
A few days ago my friends told me about a sci-fi book where a group of future humans drop their ship out of FTL above a planet and descend to the surface in a small lander, shortly before having the ...
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First story to describe humans colonizing another planet?
Elon Musk has plans to colonize Mars within the next decade. This made me think: What was the first SF story to describe humans colonizing another planet?
I don't want stories where humans establish a ...
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Short story about humans landing on a planet met with human-like aliens
I'm looking for the title/author of a short story in which humans are living on a ship on another planet and they let in a human-looking male alien. The alien is (possibly) red-headed and very good-...
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Is there blood on the planet Crait?
One of the most visually impressive things of the new Star Wars movie The Last Jedi is the depiction of the planet Crait.
At a first sight, its likeness is of an ice crust covering a bloody soil. At ...
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Book title: Only plot point remembered is bugs that eat through rock and create jewels/gems
I'm fairly certain this is a sci-fi book, not a movie. On an alien planet, a person discovers that these "bugs" (if memory serves that are the size of say turtles...) burrow and dig through rock, ...
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Novel About Shape-Shifting Aliens
Trying to find a novel about a group of humans stranded on a planet with shapeshifting aliens. There was another human stranded on the planet before this group arrived. This person taught the aliens ...
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Why did Yoda tell the Rebels to go to Malachor?
When the Rebels decided to fight back against the Inquisitors and sought Yoda's advice for help, Yoda told them to go to Malachor.
Why there of all places? Surely not so they could employ the Sith ...
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Would the planet Coruscant fall into a black hole? [closed]
The Planet Coruscant in the Star Wars Galaxy is close to the deep core of the galaxy. So how likely would the planet fall into the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy?
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Why do planets in Star Wars only have one environment? [duplicate]
This thought came to me concerning the Star Wars universe.
On our planet (Earth) we have many different habitats (snowy wastelands, forests, cities); but in the Star Wars universe there only appears ...
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Trying to find a book about an extraordinary elevator [duplicate]
I don't know when I read this, probably a long time since I can't remember most of the plot scenes.
Plot details I can remember:
There's an engineer who, I think, wants to create an elevator. I
don't ...
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