Science Fiction Trivia

[Commander McLane]

Okay. Got it (I think):

It’s actually a seventy-year long window during which the power of magic multiplies monstrously, and alien horrors from the dark ages before the big bang become accessible to any crack-brained preacher with a yen to talk to the devil.

What I had already found out before is the CCTV cameras in Britain are supposed to be used to fight against it, by emitting a sort of death ray which will petrify everybody the camera is focused on.

Fear, Britons! (I wanted to link that to an old thread about CCTV cameras in Britain here in Outworld, but it seems whatever-secret-organisation has deleted it.)

[Disembodied]

Yes, that's it! It's when the Stars Are Right, when the Great Old Ones have their best chance of returning to eat our brains, and it's all happening just ... about ... now ...

For more information on our CCTV defences, read the (Hugo-award-winning) short story "The Concrete Jungle". And there's another Laundry story, "Down on the Farm", on the Tor site.

[Commander McLane]

Okay, my turn. And apologies if it's too easy.

"What may sound like a fairy tale today may be tomorrow's reality. This is a fairy tale from the day after tomorrow."

Where from?

[Disembodied]

Fear, Britons! (I wanted to link that to an old thread about CCTV cameras in Britain here in Outworld, but it seems whatever-secret-organisation has deleted it.)

Was it one containing this comforting image?



Could be a good cover design for "The Concrete Jungle". If it wasn't REAL!

[Poro]

Ah HA! See how they have styled top eyebrow vaguely in an Egyptian style, as in the all-seeing eye? Clearly the Illuminati/NWO/secret societies are encroaching on our public lives.

[dons his tin-foil hat] Remember, shiny side out!

Wibble.

[Commander McLane]

Was it one containing this comforting image?

Yes, I think it was.

And the thread fell victim to the boards, when Outworld threads were still deleted after a very short time, until Ahruman changed that. But what was gone, was gone.

*****

What about the trivia question? Not quite as trivial as I thought?

[Zieman]

What about the trivia question? Not quite as trivial as I thought?

It is familiar, but where from?

[allikat]

I liked the image so much, I modded it for Oolite...

[Selezen]

It's...Raumpatrouille Orion!!

(or Space Patrol - the fantastic adventures of the spaceship Orion!)

What may sound like a fairy tale today may be tomorrow’s reality. This is a fairy tale from the day after tomorrow: There are no more countries. There is only mankind and its colonies in space. People have settled on faraway stars. The ocean floor has been made habitable. With velocities still unimaginable today, spaceships are rushing through our Milky Way. One of these spaceships is the ORION, a minuscule part of a gigantic security system protecting the Earth from threats from outer space. We shall now accompany the ORION and her crew on their patrol at the edge of infinity...

Yes. I googled. Sorry. It just sounded too interesting not to Google...

Apparently a very good German sci-fi made at about the same time as good old Trek.

On the assumption that Google is right, here's a quote. Author and book please. More Futuristic Fantasy than Sci-Fi, I think...

"There was no sign of Jerusalem, no dark road glittering with diamonds. But then, Jerusalem was always ahead, beckoning in the dreams of night, taunting him to find it on the black umbilical road."

[Commander McLane]

Google is right, and I thought it could be a little too obvious, considering my Avatar.

So, everybody go ahead with Sel's new riddle. I've got the author, but not the book yet.

EDIT: Okay, I give it a try: David Gemmell, Wolf in Shadow.

[Poro]

Dammit! The one time when my Gemmell knowledge might come into play, McLane gets there before me

[Commander McLane]

Assuming I was right, here is one for a long weekend. And it is probably not googable, so you have to know it, or at least know where to look.

I am looking for a book-in-a-book. During a journey to a distant star one of the protagonists reads a couple of pages from a (ficticious, I think) old SF-novel, and we get to read it with him. The novel tells the tale of an explorer who enters the vast kingdom of the termites somewhere in central Africa. It is a huge area behind the rainforest, covered by thousands and thousands of termite mounds. Nothing except billions over billions of termites can live there. After days of struggle and fight with the aggrevated termites, killing millions of them, he finally reaches the centre of their kingdom, one oddly shaped and coloured mound. He manages to blast through the strange material and finds what the termites are protecting so fiercly.

Three questions:

1) What does he find?
2) His find has a strange power, as he painfully finds out when he takes it with him to Europe. Which?
3) What has happened to his find when we leave the story and return to its reader in the starship?

One hint: the common theme of the space-faring novel and the book-in-the-book is the impossibility to understand a completely alien intelligence, be it one in outer space or the kingdom of the termites.

[Commander McLane]

Wow! Nobody here this weekend? Or is the challenge way too difficult?

Shall I give more hints?

[DaddyHoggy]

Wow! Nobody here this weekend? Or is the challenge way too difficult?

Shall I give more hints?

I've been stewing on this all weekend! It's familar but possbily because I read a lot of Heinlein and Frank Herbert when I was younger and both often wrote these great alternative species society stories, so I'm probably decoying myself...

[Cody]

I can't answer the questions but I think that the author of the book-within-a-book may be
Stanislaw Lem... it's certainly his sort of theme. Similar theme in Solaris.