Oolite Bulletins

In the Red Dwarf episode "White Hole" the crew use a thermonuclear device to cause a solar flare, knocking a planet off its orbit, sending it cannoning around a solar system, colliding with other planets, and eventually plugging up a white hole …

Arguably this is a blue, for planet and police box … in the Doctor Who story "Journey's End", the TARDIS tows the Earth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxILNKZCMzE&t=34s

I'm prepared to accept it: it's sufficiently large enough to form itself into a sphere. Which isn't involved in the (current) definition of a planet. No, but part of the definition of a planet is that it has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit; since "rogue planets" don't have orbi...

Another one - the "Great Evil," which appears to be a small planet- or planetoid-sized being that threatens earth every 5000 years and turns up in our solar system on a collision course with Earth in The Fifth Element (1997). While the Wiki and video linked below seems to think it's plane...

SPACE 1999 had Earth's Moon go Rogue. The Low Hanging Fruit Trend Continues. OK - more low-flying fruit if you'll accept weaponized planets - the dirigible planets used by E.E. "Doc" Smith's Galactic Patrol in their war against Boskone in Gray Lensman (1939) Both good examples, I think … ...

Danann (LE Modesitt - The Eternity Artifact) a sunless planet they name Danann, travelling the void just beyond the edge of the Galaxy… Yup - that's one! And for clarity (because many definitions of the term depend on bodies being in orbit around a star) I'll define "planet" here as any n...

Arrgh … OK. How about: five examples of scifi set on, or at least involving, "rogue" planets - i.e. planets which do not orbit a parent star. They might enter or pass through a pre-existing solar system, but they are not in any sort of conventional orbit - so this excludes planets on long-...

There's the Winslow, which is 66cm from nose to tail. The revelation that humans are its current custodians triggers all sorts of threats from a myriad of alien species who variously worship it or wish to attempt its destruction.

I'm going to dial it up a notch - mere nukes are now off the table. (Which also takes one of the minor characters in Banks' "Consider Phlebas" off the table). It's continent-buster and upwards now, which mean really big nukes (say, a gigatonne TNT equivalent and upwards ; I make that 4.20...

Spectacular SF suicide methods. MBPs for stars/ galaxies / universes/ multiverses going onto the funeral pyre. The Predator, in the original movie: after being defeated by Arnie it triggers something akin to a mini-nuke. However, rather than just pressing a self-destruct button, it activates a coun...

There's the film Small Soldiers, which I think would count as SF: it "depicts two factions of toys which turn sentient after mistakenly being installed with a military microprocessor":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Soldiers

The short story "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" by "Lewis Padgett" (a pen-name for the husband-and-wife team Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore) involves a far-future scientist sending batches of educational toys into the deep past (i.e. 19th and 20th centuries).

Well, to prevent things stalling again, let's go for fruit so low it's pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel. I refer, of course, to Schlock Mercenary That definitely qualifies! You have won the contract and can start shooting as soon as you like … Other mercenary possibilities could have i...

Commander_X wrote: ↑Mon Mar 04, 2024 3:02 pm

Zakalwe in Use Of Weapons by Iain M. Banks.

Zakalwe does qualify, I think. He has one particular employer, but it's not as if they issue him with orders, and he definitely has a freelance attitude …

That's four - one more to go!

Piers Anthony titled one volume of his "Bio of a Space Tyrant" series (hexology?) as "Mercenary", but I've never come across a copy in a library or 2nd-hand bookshop, and the volume(s) of the series I have read didn't enthuse me enough to look for it on eBay or whatever. But to ...