This was a case of me finding this in the process of doing research for my question, but I figured I'd post it. Somehow, the subject of  came up in a conversation at work, and I mentioned that, as a teenager, I associated that name with robots because of something I'd read where robotic cats were named that, and it got me to wondering what piece of fiction it was.  The main character had one, and it was a bit of a security blanket for her, originally given as a therapy pet, but which she continued to cling to as she became an adult. There's a scene that sticks out in my memory where she felt abandoned (I can't remember if she actually was), and it had her tightly hugging the "pooka", crying into its fur as it purred to try to console her. I think there was mention of having to replace its synthetic fur frequently because her constant handling of it was leaving it threadbare.
122802
I remember the cover of the first book in the 3 or 4 book series has a picture of a beautiful white/silver haired young girl in a blue dress.  The story is about children who are identified as gifted teleporters being trained to "shift" loads of whatever between planets....could be food and provisions, or personnel carriers etc.  They have to have someone to "throw" and someone to "catch" and set down at the other end.  Would love to read it again.
50970
I read this book between 1980-82 but it could have been written earlier.  It's about a girl who is dissatisfied with her life, as her parents have her on a diet and she wants to be able to eat what she wants. Someone offers her a solution: to come live in this large building where she can eat all the chocolate eclairs and other junkfood she wants, while a robot doppelganger android version of herself will take her place at home and at school.  The girl agrees, but finds that after week of eating mainly eclairs, she is sick and wants to eat a decent meal. But she is not allowed to eat anything else and has found herself to be a prisoner, so she sets out to get rid of the android and get her life back.   I don't recall the ending but it seemed the 'people' behind it all might have been aliens and the building might have been a kind of ship that then disappears.
114909
I first read this around 2011 or so. It was published online and followed the main character as he resurrected his dad, two hundred years after he died in his sleep. We eventually find out that the father is the first person to be involuntarily brought back to life (since he died before anyone thought of asking about that), and the world is watching to see how he reacts.  Other tidbits:   There's a fourth-wall-breaking character in the play, possibly a robot or computer of some kind, that defines a few terms when they are first used. People can choose to exist in a digital form where time passes more quickly. The protagonist mentions that he's experienced thousands of years of subjective time even though only two hundred years have passed. There's a group of people who have declined for (I believe) religious reasons to have themselves brought back to life after death. (This is only mentioned in passing.) The most touching moment (for me, anyway) was when the protagonist says "I've waited 200 years for this" and gives his father a big bear hug. (I teared up a bit just writing that sentence.) The dad's resurrection is exactly 200 years to the day after his original death, at least in part for sentimental reasons. He is initially placed into a simulation of his old house. He notices that the water heater suddenly works (it had been broken two hundred years earlier), and the narrator gives an aside to the audience acknowledging that he made a mistake by not including that in the simulation. The father asks to see their old house. He can see an image of the house in real-time but the windows are darkened for privacy (someone else lives there now). Presentation-wise, the story was told as a dialog; the character's name was in a colored rectangle (different colors for different characters) and the text was set next to it. This was most likely a big HTML table.
77853
I'm trying to help my mother find a short story that she remembers reading some, oh, 30 or more years ago.   I don't have a lot to go on, but apparently the main concept of the story was that the food that everyone was eating was said to come from “The Giant Chicken” or “The Great Chicken” kept somewhere (she read it in a Hebrew translation), but when the protagonists delve into the matter, they discover that this “chicken” (as it was translated) is actually a giant cancerous tumor, kept alive and growing for food.  I've established, probably, that this is not Harry Harrison's Make Room! Make Room! or Roommates, the basis for Soylent Green. That was my first thought. I also couldn't find a lead in the  section on wikipedia.  I don't know any more - not what the main characters were, what book it was published in or the actual decade it was written, unfortunately. It would have been read in the early 80's at the very latest.
22645
Some time around 1998 I read a book (which is surely older) suggested by one of my friends. Since this is the first time posting for me I'll do my best to give all the details I can recall.  The main protagonist is a white male (who I believe has cancer and/or is very old) on a boat that gets hit by a comet or meteor or some kind of astronomical event. He wakes up in the body of a young dying male in a desert and meets a telepathic cat that was bonded with the dying male.   The beginning of the book is about the protagonist learning to navigate his body, the bonds with the people his body knew and the telepathic cat. The two have to learn to trust one another. The "bond" is a two-way lifelink, if one dies so does the other.  We learn later that others on that boat suffered much the same fate shifting into new bodies in this parallel dimension including a female he had fancied or met back on the boat. Her body is also bonded to a telepathic "riding" cat. While I can't remember if anyone else on the boat also switched over, I feel like at least one other person did who was an antagonist but I can't verify it in my brain.  The protagonist is trying to find "something", but I can't remember what. I seem to recall jewels or gems and an important sword. Like, a hilt that's important and has an invisible blade? I remember certain scenes but without enough information for them to feel useful.  Such scenes as:   They end up in a huge palace with a verdant garden that they later escape from, for some reason. The protagonist gets super injured at one point and the cat struggles with him so they both survive. He keeps having flash backs to the incident on the boat. For a long while the cat hates this guy who basically has supplanted his master/friend, but it's okay since that guy dying would have killed the cat.   The only thing I can recall about the title is "The [blank] cycle(s)" and all my searching has come to naught. It was a series of books, I know that.  The cover showed the main protagonist, the female "love interest" and their cats in the sun bleached desert. I recall that the female has very short cut dark hair. The protagonist is wearing a white "turban" of some sort.
82588
During the 90's I saw parts of a science-fiction cartoon on TV. I don't remember for sure, but the graphics resembled , and I think it was American, but again, I'm not sure.  What I do remember is that the main character had a robot arm that looked just like a regular one. I think the humans were at war with robots controlled by an evil overlord, and someone believed the main character was also a robot because of his arm.  Another relevant memory was related to the bad guy (or one of the bad guys): in the end, it turns out it was a bratty teen who thought it was a game or who didn't realize exactly what he did.    [edit] Based on the feedback received so far, I need to add that:   this was a cartoon, not anime / japanese animation.  It was a movie, not a cartoon series. The robots were more like androids / humanoid robots, not mecha.   I also remembered a female protagonist. She's the one who notices the main character had a robotic arm after he has some sort of accident and robotic parts become visible beneath his arm skin.   Do these details sound familiar to anyone?
70701
Humans in a spaceship orbiting an alien planet have a machine that they can hook their heads up to that lets them take telepathic control (and receive the senses of) of massive (I think at least something like Rhinoceros-size) six-legged leonine creatures on the planet below. Not direct muscle control -- the creature just feels an intense desire to go in the direction the orbiting human in the headset wants it to go. The main human character, stays in daily contact with one creature over a few weeks. The main character gradually realizes through the link that the creature being coerced to travel to a coast (far outside of its usual hunting range) is actually intelligent.  The feline-like aliens don't see with eyes, instead having IR-sensing plates, I think perhaps due to a perpetually darkly overcast atmosphere.  At the end the main chracter actually meets the creature in person, I think (a shuttle touches down on the coast). I don't remember why the humans were there -- research? Maybe prospecting for resources? The planet was not remotely hospitable to humans -- I think it was either too dense, too hot, wrong gas mix, or some combination.  I had a copy of the paperback book that someone gave me, that was missing the front cover (maybe they got it from a book store's discards that are supposed to be pulped), but on the back was a picture of the snarling or roaring face of one of the creatures, black-furred like a panther. I think it was a gray- or silver-background cover.  This book would probably have been from the 1990s or 1980s.
81984
I am looking for the title of a short story where a space craft is made up of various creatures from around the universe.  If I remember correctly the skin of the craft is made of creatures. the computer is just a giant brain. The engine creature suffers some form of malfunction and a nearby suitable replacement is located which happens to be a human. Although not as good as the original the human will suffice. At first he is reluctant but then discovers he loves it. I think they call propelling the craft as "pushing".   I hope somebody can help. I had this book many years ago and I don't know what I have done with it.
37142
The story is about 2 war robots who have survived a war that wiped out humanity world-wide.  There may be more of the robots functional elsewhere, but since the long-distance communication robots broke down they have no contact with anyone else.  I don't recall if there was an accompanying illustration or just a description, but I have a mental image of a roughly spherical body with 3 short legs underneath and 2 long arms, terminating in long claws, at opposite points on the midline.  The limbs were segmented, like flexible tubing.  One of the robots is more thoughtful than the other and realises that if they can't find a way to repair themselves they will eventually run down.  It tries to construct a smaller robot with hand-like manipulators instead of the claws they were built with for killing.  Making the critical linkage, its claw accidentally causes a short circuit, slagging the brain and destroying the robot.  In anger and frustration, it shreds the construct and gives up.  In the final scene, the 2 robots are trudging through snow, one of them trailing its no-longer-functional arms.  Its arms snag on an unseen rock and it falls.  It doesn't get up, and the other walks on.  I would have read this story almost 40 years ago, in an anthology from the (then local) library.
18532
I'm trying to identify a science fiction series on UK TV during the 70s, but I can only recall the following:   A party of adults and children. There was a woman with a telepathic bond to her cat: she could look into its eyes to see what it had seen. Time travel was involved. I think it may have been inadvertent or uncontrolled time travel. On one occasion the party encountered an Elizabethan seaman who demanded to know if Elizabeth was still queen. They party replied "err... yes" because they didn't want to have to explain time travel.
30598
I was petting my cat when I started musing, how does Mrs. Norris communicate/talk with Mr. Filch, the Caretaker at Hogwarts? Throughout the books it is mentioned that Mrs. Norris helps Filch to patrol the corridors. She acts as a lookout/spy/assistant to Filch, whereby she is often walking the corridors at night looking for law-breakers, and runs off to Mr. Filch to complain whenever she notices anything. She also polices the owls as well, apparently.  Well, is Mrs. Norris a magical cat? Mr. Filch is a Squib, so he does not have particular magical powers, but he still can see ghosts, dementors and thestrals, so does he have some special provisions to understand 'cat talk' or has an ability to talk with cats? 'Catsletoungue'? Would love to know!   Thanks.  Add: Ok even if Mrs. Norris could somehow meow to Mr. Filch to follow him to a particular place, which is understandable, how does Mr. Filch instruct Mrs. Norris where to go on, which corridor to patrol, which door to watch, etc., every single night?  For example.  "Sniff around, my sweet, they may be lurking in a corner."  Filch speaking to Mrs. Norris. (Sorcerer's Stone - Page 157)
48511
I'm looking for a story I read in the late 1960s or early 70s about a future in which so much stuff is produced (by machines?) that people are obligated to work very hard to wear it all out.   The main character attends a group therapy session which consists of half a dozen analysts and himself. I think he eventually figures out that he can get robots to do his job of using up stuff.
40130
In an episode of Star Trek TOS, Spock mentioned a childhood pet.  I think it was Dr. McCoy who teased him about his having a kitty-cat.  The animal Spock described was definitely not a kitty-cat -- it was bigger, with proportionally bigger fangs and claws and had a irritable temperament.    Is anything more known about this pet?  Is there a picture of it?  Was this the only pet species available on Vulcan, or was a ferocious animal selected on purpose to quash any human feelings of sentimentality the half-human Spock might feel for a kitten- or puppy-like creature?
31954
There's a book that I read several years ago that I'd like to find.  However, I cannot remember enough about it to find it myself.  Neither the title nor author remain in my mind, nor any keyword or phrase that's unique enough for the Grand Google to nail for me.  Hence my desperate plea here.  In the book, there is an interstellar civilization composed of several power blocks.  The entire civilization did not fill the galaxy, but it did span several stellar systems.  Maybe 10s or 100s.  I seem to remember that one of the civilizations was a decentralized group referred to as the Brotherhood and they seemed to have been keen on preserving old learning and political ideals.  A derelict alien spacecraft from outside all of this had been discovered and at least two of the power blocks sent ships to recover it.  I don't recall if they knew at the time about the power the alien ship had, but they must have had some clue since there was some urgency in capturing this ship.  One of the ships sent to capture the Alien craft was commanded by somebody who was rather shaken up, to say the least.  He had had some big trauma in his past (like... the last ship he captained was annihilated with all hands.) so he was kinda bummed out about things and wasn't really putting his heart into getting this done.  He was assisted by the ship's AI who had a lot of soul-to-soul chats with the captain, and at one point almost relieved him of command because he was just not getting the job done.  I think the ship's name was Boaz.  These were the "good guys".  There was at least one other ship sent from the "bad guys."  The alien craft had some remarkable powers.  The interior volume was apparently infinite and the operators could see and manipulate anything in the universe.  There might have been some example given where all the rats somewhere were found and disposed of.  Whoever had control was tempted by the ole absolute power corrupts absolutely problem, but nobody but nobody could stop them because of their power.  They could eat and multiply within the ship and become real bad-asses.  But alas... (or hurray, depending upon which side you're one) everything fails eventually, and whoever controlled the ship would eventually succumb to some horrible end.  Whereupon the ship became derelict again until some other lucky race found it and repeated the cycle.  The ship had an AI that was real interested in taking the power for itself, but there was some mechanical, spring-loaded, mechanism outside of its control that needed to be worked in order to execute power.  The AI apparently never figured out how to "work the spring" and this made him crazy angry.  The ending is equally foggy for me.  I'm pretty sure the good guys got the ship.  They agonized over what to do with it.  Apparently it was indestructable and nobody wanted to taste the temptation of all that power.  In the end they dumped it on the surface of a neutron star.  There it sat forever more, probably with the crazy AI really pissed off about being there.  If you've read this book, you'll recognize it immediately from these clues.  I'm looking forward to finding out the name of this book.  Thanks!
86957
I was looking at  and I think I may have read the same story, but I'm not sure because a few of the details don't quite line up.  The story I read was about a man who had built a machine that could work out when a person would die.  The way it worked was described as sending a small electric charge along the four-dimensional "sausage" which was a person's extent in spacetime - the story definitely used the word "sausage".  The person who had built the machine had made several predictions which he put in sealed envelopes, including that of his own death.  The story ended with him being visited by a pregnant woman who wanted to know how long her child would live.  The builder saw that she would die very soon, and tried to keep her in his office as long as possible to avoid her fate by giving her tea and cakes, but she insisted on leaving and got hit by a car as she crossed the road to leave his office.  This caused him to kill himself, and the date in his envelope was correct.  I read this in 1999 at the earliest and 2001 at the latest.  Around the same time - possibly but not definitely in the same book - I read a story about a murder mystery in which the murder weapon turned out to be a time-accelerated flashlight.  I tried googling with these details, but kept running into the  which made it very difficult to find earlier stories on that theme.
113732
I think I read this online in the last ten years, so after 2005 or so. In the story, everyone is online, I think 24/7. People are jaded and always looking for new experiences. The protagonist (or at least narrator) is a woman, I want to say in her 30s (or at least appears as that age), who is considered to be an expert in the area of torture ceremonies. I want to say that her appearance is of her being scarred and twisted by her experiences, although I don't know if that had to do with her meatspace body, or was simply how she portrayed herself.  The only other bit of plot that sticks out in my head was that early in the story, someone (it was a male, and she was thinking of him as being incredibly young) challenges her with a scenario to prove himself, and she was idly commenting how he went for horrific disfiguring torture too early, and tried to compensate by going directly to rape, but that she found his efforts banal.
13081
The story was set in a mid-future Earth (at least 20 years from now, but probably less than 100) with AI and nanotechnology.  The most striking element (and the one I thought I could find with Google search) is a massive black octahedral building that houses a major AI.  I believe it is described as standing "arrogantly" on one vertex.  (It is not held up by antigravity or any advanced technology; the AI is powerful enough, and fast enough, to simply maintain its balance despite winds, etc.)  The narrator of the story has a friend who is obsessively tuning the programming of a suite of nanobots, effectively a nanovirus, that he manages to get injected into one of the feed-lines of the aforementioned AI.  There is a brief data-blip, and narrator relates that this is the first time in a long time that anyone has managed to cause even the most minor of observable effects on the AI.  He may even have seen the octahedron rock ever so slightly (he's not sure).  The narrator is initially fearful for his friend, but comes to the realization that the AI (collectively; this one and others like it) permit, and may even subtly encourage, such people as a way of constantly testing and improving their defences.  I likely read this between 1995 and 2005.  It feels like something by Greg Bear, but I couldn't come up with a match.