The most awesome thing on the internet is when people post a vague, rambling description of a science fiction story they read, or saw - and most of the time, amazingly, someone identifies it.

Here's one that popped up just the other day, from someone who watched part of a scene from a movie:

An attractive dark haired girl in a futuristic figure hugging suit walks in to a large all white room, which is empty apart from some strange looking men in white suits with white gas masks standing around the perimeter and a kind of chair in the centre of the room. She looks apprehensive and sits in the chair. Shackles fly out of the armrests and lock her in. She is injected with a fluid or has blood extracted and is poked with probes. She ends up out of the chair and then there is a long fight scene in which she fights hordes of men in futuristic looking bio-suits or similar.

Someone miraculously identifed it as Ultraviolet with Milla Jovovich, and added the wise advice: "Avoid with all your might."

And then there's this intriguing description, from TV.com forums:

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Basically, story goes, a bug or roach like alien escapes from a space prison ship and goes to earth. There is a blonde woman cop like character that goes after it also falls for guy on her visit to earth. Within the story the creature or alien can embody people. The eyes turn solid black and then turn into an alien as well. I remember one vivid scene where I think it was a teacher in a school turns into one. Also when an alien is around it the sound effects has some kind of howling like a siren that comes from the alien. This is all I can think of it for right now.

The answer? Something Is Out There, starring Maryam D'Abo, which sounds like a found footage waiting to happen.

A trickier one is a movie that some guy saw on the Sci Fi Channel between 2000 and 2004. The clues:

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  • Takes place completely on a spaceship/station
  • Crew members become paranoid and start killing eachother, commiting suicide, etc...
  • There's a scene with a dead crew member floating outside the ship with something around his neck
  • The cause of all the insanity is some alien entity aboard the ship
  • I vaguely remember the main character(s) sealing an airlock door and I believe the movie ends in a cargo bay
  • Even more "craptacular" than Supernova
  • The ship the movie takes place on is dead in space and boarded by a crew that found it
  • The dead ship, when it is found by the new crew, has one live crew member that is infected by the foreign alien/object/thingy
  • And the movie's ending is probably open-ended, along the lines of The Thing. Or maybe not.

The annoying thing? The original questioner finally found out what movie it was, after searching a list of non-Sci Fi original movies that aired on the channel, but didn't disclose that information. Except it's not Sphere. Or Planet Of The Vampires.

Sadly, the questioner over at Answerbag.com got less help with this question:

What is the name of a movie where two boys find a monster in their school toilet and it kills their teacher? this is one story out of 3 in the video, american movie, 80s or early 90s. something like tales from the crypt...

Someone calling himself R.U. Sirius (not the famous one, I think) suggests that this is the plot of the first episode of Welcome Back, Kotter. I want whatever drugs this version of R.U. is taking.

Here's someone who had better luck, on Yahoo Answers:

I can NOT remember the title of this movie. I remember watching it when I was little and that was it. I do think it was a 1970s or 1980s movie. Possibly early 1990s, but the special effects were that of 70's and 80's.

Basically I remember that it was about this kid that was taken by a flying saucer(or UFO). The UFO has an AI robot eye thing that talks to him and whatnot and there were a few weird but cute creatures in cages.

Then he is returned home but it is something like 10 years in the future or something. He is taken to a place where he gets his brainwaves scanned and the scans come out as the shape of the UFO.

In the mean time, the government(or NASA) found the UFO and takes it to a base.

The UFO is big and Chrome. And if my memory serves me, its sort of Walnut Shaped.

A dozen people hastened to tell him this was Flight Of The Navigator.

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An Amazon user read a book once, and this is all he/she remembers:

Very vague memory is that a starship lands where another ship crashed a long time ago. A couple of the protagonists find a city, on a mountain in the snow, where the inhabitants have ESP and float 6" off the ground instead of walking. These superhumans, I believe, were descendants of the first starship crew.

More elucidation reveals that it's not Bradbury, and there's something called "Koenig Drive" in it, which narrows it down to an author named Alan E. Nourse.

This description sounds super intriguing:

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A few years ago I read a book that I'm trying to find again. I think it involved the Eschaton, group mind at the end of this Universe. The main character's wife dies and he's obsessed with meeting her at the end of time. He's enlisted by the government to find what is destroying planets, his consciousness downloaded into a 'droid'. After hundreds of 1000s of years the droid has multiplied and his numerous consciousness's now account for over 50% of the intelligence in the Universe. Any idea of the book or author?

Apparently it's Tomorrow And Tomorrow, the novel-length expanded version of the story "At The Eschaton," by Charles Sheffield.

I really, really, want to see this movie:

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It's me again, Whitelighter21. I am still looking for the title of that movie I posted about 2 weeks ago. I will give you a little bit of a better discription if I can. The show was made and takes place in the 80's. It is about a genuis computer tech, and his quest to save his girlfriend. The story goes, the devil is intreguied by this new age of techonology, and wants to play a computer game, but he decides to make it intresting. He the computer tech, gives him a mini computer to place on his arm, which has wepons and a few other tricks built into it. The devil send deamons and other hellish creatures up against the guy, and of course he beats them all. He ends up getting his girlfriend back, and defeating the devil. Some of the thing I remember from the show are: at the begining of the movie, the tech guy is jogging, and switches a traffic light using his glasses. If anyone can help please post a reply or send it to my e-mail.

But nobody had the answer. Or if they did, they just emailed it privately.

I would never in a million years been able to help this person:

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I have been asked to find out what movie a friend is thinking of. He doesn't have any details other than at some point in the movie a boy drains a lake and finds some sort of mechanical lochness monster. I know it's a long shot, but you never know. He thinks if was from the mid-80s and would have been shown on cable, maybe Showtime.

But apparently it's a movie called Frog Dreaming, aka The Quest.

I lost all my faith in drive-in movie expert Joe Bob Briggs when I found out he couldn't help this person:

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Dear Joe Bob, Finally dawned on me that you would be on the web someplace-after my pinko newspaper dropped your column. The movie I am trying to find had a scene where this monster that looked sort of like the creature from the Black Lagoon was doing her monster thing and a sheriff asked his deputy, "What is that thing?" and his deputy answered "I don't know but it has tits and a ray gun." Any idea? Thanks!

There's also no helping this poor person:

Hi! I am a grad student looking for a science fiction story to illuminate my English 20 class this fall. The story takes place in a future world in which no one lives to be much over either 30 or 40. Once someone turns that age, their hand is stamped with "expired" or something like that. People can gain extra time by turning in cut-off hands that are expired. One young man discovers an elderly man living in an out-of-the-way place and makes plans to take his hand. However, he hears the man playing the piano and cannot kill him. Can you help me track this down? It must have been written prior to the nineties...maybe in an anthology...

Nor is this person getting much help:

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Can you identify this science fiction story? It involves a race of telepathic/psychic humanoids and ape-like creatures that co-exist. The humanoids have a shared consciousness and shared experiences - but they're not aware of things they haven't already experienced...and this gives the ape-like beings the means to defeat them; the apes do things like take a segment out of a bridge - because the humanoids weren't expecting it, they can't see the hole, and at least one falls through to his/her/it's death.

Someone else has read the same story, but can't remember who wrote it either:

The story is a sequel to an initial story about humans, bred for physic ability, who revolted and fled earth to form their own colony. Because the humans were physically linked, they developed a "blind spot" to changes in their environment. Each person's mental map reinforced everyone else, overwriting their ability to perceive changes. The creatures were native to the planet, and were slowly working to drive the humans out by destroying infrastructure, taking sniper-shots as the settlers, etc. The settlers were able to overcome the attack because a boy born in the colony did not have physic ability, and could see the attackers. The humans took turns going in and out of the boy's head, using his perception to see the true state of their environment and where the attackers were. In the end, the attack was repelled. The humans started working to breed non-physic children to help keep the same thing from happening again. I have no idea who the author was or what the story title is.

I love that they, between them, recall so much detail about the story, but not who wrote it or the title.

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But this is my absolute favorite:

A book I've read but cannot remember which! Set on another world, finsihes with beautiful description of sea creatures which rise from the sea to find their long lost mates (only happens once in a thousand? years when planets/moons in conjunction?). Very much in the style of Clarke or Baxter but can't find it in their works. Driving me mad trying to find it again! One other possible clue is that there were some cute/furry/friendly native animals living around living around the settlements but one day someone was unexpectedly bitten by one. Over the next few weeks they become more and more aggressive. They are part of a cycle that only happens very rarely and they metamorphose into something else. BUT I am not certain this is from the same book!!

That's the problem with reading a lot of stuff. The sea creatures and the furry creatures start to get mashed up after a while.
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