Use for identifying a work of SF or Fantasy, including novels, movies, comic books, fanfic, TV series, video games, etc. Use with other tags to specify the type of media, eg. [short-stories]. Use [episode-identification] for identifying a single episode of a known series, whether TV, book, or comic. Use [actor-identification], [character-identification], [music-identification], or [object-identification] for those specific ID requests instead.
When to use this tag
- Use this tag if you are trying to identify a work of Science Fiction or Fantasy when you cannot remember its name.
- Use this tag if you know or think you know the title of a work, but are trying to identify the name of the author or creator. Also use in conjunction with authors.
- The story must be science fiction or fantasy, or else it is off-topic.
- If you are trying to identify an episode of a TV show, or a particular film, book or comic that is a part of a series, use the episode-identification tag instead.
- For other types of identification questions, see character-identification, object-identification, actor-identification, or music-identification.
This tag is not appropriate for asking for recommendations. There should be exactly one correct answer. When someone does suggest the correct answer, please accept it, so that everyone else knows that there is no point making any other suggestions.
Also, this tag should not be used for "first example of" questions. history-of is a better match for that.
How to ask good story-identification questions
FAQ post: Tips for asking Story Identification questions
Questions must have as much detail as possible, including:
- Media (short story collection, magazine, novel, TV, film, website)
- Original year of publication/airing, or at least when you have read/seen this work of fiction. "Read when I was a child" is not as useful as "Read when I was a child (early 1980s)"
- How old the work seemed when you read/saw it (for example, was it a new hardcover book or an old paperback from thirty years before?)
- Major themes
- Plot (as much as you can remember)
- Setting
- Characters (names, descriptions)
- The language you read or heard the story in
- Details about the cover, if applicable
- Target audience/age group
- Color or black & white, if applicable
- Ideas that you have already ruled out (for example, if you know the story was not written by Asimov, then tell us so that we can save time)
If the question is too vague (and so could match dozens or hundreds of stories), then it will probably be closed. If this happens to your question, please add more detail. Add the details relevant to the question by editing your question, rather than by commenting.
How to write a good story-identification answer
See the meta posts How to write a good Story-ID answer? and How to find a story-ID answer? for help with this.
