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Questions tagged [sentience]

To be used when referring to the sentience of a being or normally non-sentient object e.g. Herbie ('The Love Bug') is a sentient car.

18 votes
1 answer
3k views

Scientist who talks to ants and is killed by wasps (or hornets)

I read this short fiction (novelette or novella) about 10-15 years ago, but it could be much older. I believe I read it in French, but I am not sure. Also not sure whether in a collection or in a ...
Alfred's user avatar
  • 19.5k
11 votes
0 answers
83 views

A sentient war machine damaged to the point it can't tell friend from foe [duplicate]

This is a short fiction, probably a novelette. I read it not so many years ago (but still BC, I mean, before Covid) in a collection. But I think it was a very old collection. The main character is a ...
Alfred's user avatar
  • 19.5k
3 votes
1 answer
81 views

Short fiction about virtual pets [duplicate]

This story was a longish novelette, or a shortish novella. I read it about 5 years ago, maybe a bit more. Since I almost never read magazines, it was probably in some collection, but I don't remember ...
Alfred's user avatar
  • 19.5k
20 votes
1 answer
3k views

Are humpback whales granted civil rights?

The events of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home establish that humpback whales are sentient beings with their own language, and that this language is at least in theory learnable by non-whales (e.g. the ...
Robert Columbia's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
156 views

In Mimic (about giant insects that evolved to resemble men) -- the story and/or the movie, any indications that the insects are intelligent?

I read the story long ago and my sense was, the insects had to be fairly intelligent to blend in and come to think of it, seemed to be able to, for example, implicitly open doors and other human ...
releseabe's user avatar
  • 16k
2 votes
1 answer
715 views

Are Androids sentient in the "Alien" franchise?

Of the known androids in the Alien franchise, Ash, Bishop, Call, David, Walter, do any of them show the basics of being or becoming sentient? Sentient comes from the Latin sentient-, “feeling,” and it ...
jim's user avatar
  • 2,474
25 votes
1 answer
3k views

Man and artificially sapient dog alone on Mars. Dog starts behaving erratically

I'm trying to recall a story I read about a man alone on a Mars outpost except for the companionship of a dog that had already either been modified post-birth or natally bioengineered to have human-...
Jacob C.'s user avatar
  • 4,436
13 votes
4 answers
1k views

Novel: Sentient lifeform enslaves all life on planet — colonises other planets by making copies of itself?

I'm trying to find the name of this book I read in the past couple of years. The book was about a sentient lifeform (I can't recall what kind, something that normally isn't sentient — the planet ...
GombleGomble's user avatar
5 votes
0 answers
95 views

Looking for series about young man escaping earth authorities only to find intelligent alien ship on a crater of the moon

I am looking for a book series I read about a young man finishing up high school. He had abilities to know when he was being observed by people or electronics and that got him in trouble. He escapes ...
Makram Alexander's user avatar
25 votes
1 answer
3k views

70s or older story about a sentient forest who discovers the A-bomb

In this story I read long ago, the trees of each forest are all connected (through their roots ? by some psychic power ? I forgot). Each tree is thus just a "body part" of the forest he belongs to, ...
Alfred's user avatar
  • 19.5k
24 votes
6 answers
2k views

Who first used spacefaring sapient felines in science fiction?

I've been getting into Wing Commander again lately and reading Niven's Known Universe, and Andre Norton is a life long favourite. All of these have something in common, they all have an intelligent, ...
Ash's user avatar
  • 6,536
12 votes
1 answer
655 views

Short story about shark-like alien species that eats other sentient aliens

I'd read a short story online a few years ago where an astronaut is woken from cryogenic sleep when her ship encounters an alien vessel. It is implied that the aliens look like sharks, and they eat ...
Sameer's user avatar
  • 121
14 votes
1 answer
345 views

Short story: Modem improves user's BBS or Usenet posts, ultimately kills him

Short story plot: Narrator notices that the quality of a friend's BBS or Usenet posts has improved -- just expanded diction and perfect spelling, at first, I think. He finds out his friend has been ...
Jacob C.'s user avatar
  • 4,436
5 votes
2 answers
328 views

Short story where a sentient bear and a few other sentient animals band together to save the planet using AM waves

This is a short story of about 30 pages or more in a pre-1990 sci-fi anthology. I only remember a few details, eg a sentient bear and a few other sentient animals that band together to save the planet....
peter's user avatar
  • 51
5 votes
1 answer
407 views

SF novel with sentient planet that consumes the bad guys

The book involved a group that had crashed onto a planet that augmented their natural abilities. A group of characters (the bad guys) became talented liars and politicians. A geologist (the good guy) ...
jpl's user avatar
  • 51

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