Science Fiction Trivia

allikat · Post by **allikat** » Wed Feb 03, 2010 10:49 am

I'm thinking EE Doc Smith's Lensman? Or it could be the circus of the Galaxy one with the spies...

Website · Post by **DaddyHoggy** » Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:15 am

allikat wrote:
I'm thinking EE Doc Smith's Lensman? Or it could be the circus of the Galaxy one with the spies...

It's not the Lensmen series (he said with certainty!) - the other Series you're thinking of is the D'Alembert series (with the brother and sister spy double act) - but it's not them either - I own pretty much everything Doc Smith has every wrote and while the name of the ship is familiar it's nothing to do with Doc Smith.

Poro · Post by **Poro** » Wed Feb 03, 2010 4:27 pm

When it comes to sci-fi literature, I'm simply outclassed here.

Website · Post by **DaddyHoggy** » Wed Feb 03, 2010 4:32 pm

I feel like that too a lot of the time!

However, thinking about this ruddy ship name all afternoon - and allikat bringing up Doc Smith has triggered something to do with the Lensman series - one of the books was called Galactic Patrol and somehow I can't get past this name to think of the actual name of this series of books - which isn't (or it might be!) Galactic Patrol but like it - <loop> aaaarrggghhh!

allikat · Post by **allikat** » Wed Feb 03, 2010 5:08 pm

Galactic patrol was book 1 of the lensman series.
Edit: No- it's not, it's book 3....
The wiki at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lensman_series is pretty explanatory on the matter.

Website · Post by **DaddyHoggy** » Wed Feb 03, 2010 5:45 pm

allikat wrote:
Galactic patrol was book 1 of the lensman series.
Edit: No- it's not, it's book 3....
The wiki at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lensman_series is pretty explanatory on the matter.

Hmmm, I know Galactic Patrol is Book 3 of the Lensman series, but the book series that we're trying to identify that has the Venturer in it, is something like (but not) Galactic Patrol and now I have that name in my head it's displaced (what I think is) the actual answer...

allikat · Post by **allikat** » Wed Feb 03, 2010 5:57 pm

Spacehounds of IPC?

Selezen · Post by **Selezen** » Wed Feb 03, 2010 8:19 pm

None have got it so far.

Website · Post by **DaddyHoggy** » Wed Feb 03, 2010 8:59 pm

allikat wrote:
Spacehounds of IPC?

Aaaaarrrggghhh - no, the Venturer isn't a Doc Smith ship - it's not Lensman, D'Alembert, Skylark, Lord Tedric, Spacehounds, Subspace...

Oh hang on - Spacehounds... Galactic Patrol... Spacehounds... ...Patrol.

Space... ...Patrol

There was a series of books called "Space Patrol" wasn't there - I will resist Googling for a little while until I'm told I'm way off - but I just remember a book I read as a kid about a ship called Venturer being the start of a war but I can't remember how - now I'm thinking about "Space Above and Beyond" the TV series - am I getting mixed up? Colonists were somehow involved? Must resist Google... Must resist Google... (problem is that nearly all my Sci-Fi collection is 300 miles away as it still lives with my parents because there isn't room for it here (until the kids leave home I suspect...) so I can't just go and check)

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Fri Feb 05, 2010 9:33 am

Selezen wrote:
Oh poo, now I gotta think of another one?

Right. OK... Something suitably obscure, maybe...

Name the book series this comes from:

"When the giant Colonial VIII ship Venturer lifted off from Miami in May 2219 its occupants and Terra Control looked forward to an uneventful though long voyage..."

Okay, let's see (and indeed, obscure):

This seems to come from the "Terran Trade Authority Handbooks", also known as "Classic TTA" by the aficionados, written by Stewart Cowley. More precisely it seems to be from the second of four books, "Great Space Battles".

Selezen · Post by **Selezen** » Fri Feb 05, 2010 9:37 am

Right on Commander.

Did U Google?

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Fri Feb 05, 2010 10:08 am

Selezen wrote:
Did U Google?

Yes, and I came across the TTA Wiki at www.niflheim.net.

Website · Post by **DaddyHoggy** » Fri Feb 05, 2010 10:13 am

Commander McLane wrote:
Selezen wrote:
Oh poo, now I gotta think of another one?

Right. OK... Something suitably obscure, maybe...

Name the book series this comes from:

"When the giant Colonial VIII ship Venturer lifted off from Miami in May 2219 its occupants and Terra Control looked forward to an uneventful though long voyage..."
Okay, let's see (and indeed, obscure):

This seems to come from the "Terran Trade Authority Handbooks", also known as "Classic TTA" by the aficionados, written by Stewart Cowley. More precisely it seems to be from the second of four books, "Great Space Battles".

That's what I was thinking of!

And a quick wikipedia (not that this is a definite source of course) reveals I had the right author too - but his pseudonym Stephen Caldwell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terran_Trade_Authority

A line from that page is:

Space Patrol: The Official Guide to the Galactic Security Force

From a series of books called "Galactic Encounters" - which is why I was stuck and couldn't get past the EE Doc Smith decoys pumped out by allikat

as Doc Smith did indeed write a book called Galactic Patrol (Book 3 Lensmen series) and two "subspace" books - Subspace Encounters and Subspace Explorers - I just couldn't persuade my brain to leap frog the wrong but annoyingly close to being right answer - I would have gotten TTA if I'd remembered Stephen Cowley's name... oh well - Well done Disembodied - especially if he didn't Google)

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Fri Feb 05, 2010 10:20 am

Okay, something new and equally obscure (until now I had a German TV-series from the sixties and a Polish SF-author; both, it seems, sufficiently obscure for our mainly anglo-american audience)

.

This time I'm looking for a fairly well-known director. His very first movie features a device which is capable of making all our lives much easier: weather control. Unfortunately weather control can be used as a weapon as well, so—naturally—the military abuse the device for their ends, with catastrophic results. The film deals mainly with how the crew of the device struggle against its remote-controlled abuse.

So, who is the director, and what is the title of the movie?

Bonus points if you can tell me what the military wanted to do with the device, and by which RealLife™-events this idea was inspired.

Post by **Disembodied** » Fri Feb 05, 2010 1:01 pm

DaddyHoggy wrote:
Well done Disembodied - especially if he didn't Google

Why, thank you ... to be honest, I didn't google: but then again I didn't answer the question, either.

I do remember – now that it's too late – the TTA books, though: weren't they the big collections of Sci-Fi book cover art? Lots of pictures of spaceships that the author had just stitched together into his own future history?

No idea about Commander McLane's weather-control question, though ...