Science Fiction Trivia

allikat · Post by **allikat** » Mon Apr 12, 2010 3:14 pm

Is it "The Moon is a harsh mistress" By Roberta Heinlein?

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Mon Apr 12, 2010 3:24 pm

No, it's not (and it's not "Roberta" as well

). I said: quite early. Definitely it's earlier than the sixties. (The author was long dead when the first Hugo was awarded, so he never got one. But he published an essay once in a magazine edited by Hugo Gernsback, although it wasn't Amazing Stories, and it wasn't a story.)

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Wed Apr 14, 2010 11:37 am

Commander McLane wrote:
Will a superweapon, controlled by three philanthropic individuals, be able to force the UK and the US to abstain from a bloody war against each other?

Author and title of this quite early SF-novel, please.

Seems it's time for another clue. Have I finally found something sufficiently obscure?

Okay, we already had this one:

The author was long dead when the first Hugo was awarded, so he never got one. But he published an essay once in a magazine edited by Hugo Gernsback, although it wasn't Amazing Stories, and it wasn't a story.

The author was originally an electrical engineer, working for an important company at his time. Because not only his engineering, but also his literary skills became obvious, he was placed in their literary office. Later he was working as a journalist specializing in writing popular articles about science. But only with his first SF-novel about 20 years later he fully became a free lance writer.

Diziet Sma · Post by **Diziet Sma** » Wed Apr 14, 2010 11:44 am

Commander McLane wrote:
(and it's not "Roberta" as well ).

I suspect allikat meant to type "Robert A Heinlein"..

Post by **Disembodied** » Wed Apr 14, 2010 11:59 am

Hmm ... I do know that Robert W Chambers wrote a few stories around the idea of a possible 20th-century conflict between the UK and the USA, but it's obviously not him! It must have been something of a trope at the time, though. Could it be Frank R Stockton's The Great War Syndicate?

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Wed Apr 14, 2010 12:56 pm

Disembodied wrote:
Could it be Frank R Stockton's The Great War Syndicate?

No, and it is not quite that early. The author is one generation after Stockton. The first entry in his bibliography is from 1902 (and it's non-fiction).

Selezen · Post by **Selezen** » Thu Apr 15, 2010 7:37 am

Is it "The Iron Heel" by Jack London?

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Thu Apr 15, 2010 8:05 am

Nope. Jack London would have been an interesting choice for an SF-author as well, though.

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Fri Apr 16, 2010 11:16 am

Time for another clue?

Commander McLane wrote:
Will a superweapon, controlled by three philanthropic individuals, be able to force the UK and the US to abstain from a bloody war against each other?

Author and title of this quite early SF-novel, please.

Commander McLane wrote:
The author was long dead when the first Hugo was awarded, so he never got one. But he published an essay once in a magazine edited by Hugo Gernsback, although it wasn't Amazing Stories, and it wasn't a story.

Commander McLane wrote:
The author was originally an electrical engineer, working for an important company at his time. Because not only his engineering, but also his literary skills became obvious, he was placed in their literary office. Later he was working as a journalist specializing in writing popular articles about science. But only with his first SF-novel about 20 years later he fully became a free lance writer.

The novel I am looking for is a stand-alone, but also has a sequel, which however can also be read as a stand-alone. The sequel deals with another worldwide crisis, in fact with climate change in the northern hemisphere, which was caused by one of the major powers diverting the gulf stream in a rather spectacular way.

Zieman · Post by **Zieman** » Fri Apr 16, 2010 12:21 pm

A stab in the dark:
A Brand New World by Ray Cummings?

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Fri Apr 16, 2010 1:29 pm

No, isn't it either.

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 8:02 am

Commander McLane wrote:
Will a superweapon, controlled by three philanthropic individuals, be able to force the UK and the US to abstain from a bloody war against each other?

Author and title of this quite early SF-novel, please.

Commander McLane wrote:
The author was long dead when the first Hugo was awarded, so he never got one. But he published an essay once in a magazine edited by Hugo Gernsback, although it wasn't Amazing Stories, and it wasn't a story.

Commander McLane wrote:
The author was originally an electrical engineer, working for an important company at his time. Because not only his engineering, but also his literary skills became obvious, he was placed in their literary office. Later he was working as a journalist specializing in writing popular articles about science. But only with his first SF-novel about 20 years later he fully became a free lance writer.

Commander McLane wrote:
The novel I am looking for is a stand-alone, but also has a sequel, which however can also be read as a stand-alone. The sequel deals with another worldwide crisis, in fact with climate change in the northern hemisphere, which was caused by one of the major powers diverting the gulf stream in a rather spectacular way.

Oh boy, this time I seem to have pulled it off. German SF, sufficiently obscure to the rest of the world that even the nerds don't know it!

I am wondering about the German board members, however. The writer I am looking for is (or at least was) absolutely famous in Germany, being the pioneer of SF-literature in the country. Somewhere I've read that his combined oevre sold in the region of above 2 million (!) copies. And it is still ubiquitous in the Youth and SF sections of German public libraries. The English Wikipedia-entry on him, however, is a stub with just two lines, and I don't think that any of his books was ever published outside Germany or translated into any other language. Especially US-publishers seem to be not at all interested in foreign literature apart from a few best-sellers, which is why (among other things) German SF (or Stanislaw Lem, for that matter) is so obscure for anglophone people.

Selezen · Post by **Selezen** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 8:21 am

Endless Googling posits Kurd Lasswitz as a possibility for the author. Can't make head nor tale of what the novel could be though...

Darn this is a tricky one. You and your obscure German stuff! <shakes fist>

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 9:30 am

Selezen wrote:
Endless Googling posits Kurd Lasswitz as a possibility for the author.

You're on to something here. The author I am looking for was a pupil at the Gymnasium in Gotha where Laßwitz was teaching mathematics and physics, and was very much influenced by him.

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Mon Apr 19, 2010 9:30 am

Commander McLane wrote:
Oh boy, this time I seem to have pulled it off. German SF, sufficiently obscure to the rest of the world that even the nerds don't know it!

I am wondering about the German board members, however. The writer I am looking for is (or at least was) absolutely famous in Germany ...

Well, german at least is my mother tongue, and I might have to consider myself a scifi nerd, nevertheless ... even after using Google and Wikipedia and wrecking my brain after everything I've ever read or heard in that direction, I give up. This is significantly more obscure than the north pole scientist story ...

Although the three scientists do somehow ring a bell. You cannot mean "Die Physiker" from Friedrich Dürrenmatt, no?