Science Fiction Trivia

[Disembodied]

It sounds like the plot of Farscape, but that's not a novel!

It does ... this novel predates Farscape by more than 20 years, though.

[Disembodied]

Clue time: the book is available as part of Gollancz's SF Masterworks series.

[Cody]

That must be The Centauri Device by M. John Harrison?

[Disembodied]

That must be The Centauri Device by M. John Harrison?

It must indeed! A fine – if weird and bleak and weirdly bleak – read. It's possibly the originator of the peculiar and inventive spaceship name, though, that later writers like Iain Banks and Alastair Reynolds took up: the Atalanta in Calydon, for example, or the Strange Great Sins.

Over to you!

[Selezen]

Hmm. The familiarity I felt was obviously misplaced then...

[Cody]

Okay, an easy one... just a normal day, it seemed... until all the Earth's radar systems went bananas!
Author and title of the novel, please.

[JazHaz]

Okay, an easy one... just a normal day, it seemed... until all the Earth's radar systems went bananas!
Author and title of the novel, please.

Is it Farewell to the Master, by Harry Bates?

[Cody]

Okay, an easy one... just a normal day, it seemed... until all the Earth's radar systems went bananas!
Author and title of the novel, please.

Is it Farewell to the Master, by Harry Bates?

Nope!

[Cody]

Clue the first: the cause of the global 'failure' of Earth's radar systems is the arrival in orbit of an alien ship.

[DaddyHoggy]

Clue the first: the cause of the global 'failure' of Earth's radar systems is the arrival in orbit of an alien ship.

Whatever it is - I wonder if the script writers for Independence Day read it...

[Cody]

Clue the first: the cause of the global 'failure' of Earth's radar systems is the arrival in orbit of an alien ship.

Whatever it is - I wonder if the script writers for Independence Day read it...

Ha... I have a vague inkling that Heinlein may have written something along those lines.
The alien ship in question though, is far more 'enigmatic'.

[DaddyHoggy]

You know, I'm going to have to go rummage on the shelves, because I'm sure I've read this...

(irrespective of its familiarity to Heinlein/Independence Day)

[Selezen]

Sounds a bit like Childhood's End by the mighty A.C. Clarke.

And Independence Day. And "V", actually...

[DaddyHoggy]

That's what I was going to say, but I thought Childhood's End was the answer to another clue only a week or so ago! (So I didn't offer it up!)

[Cody]

That's what I was going to say, but I thought Childhood's End was the answer to another clue only a week or so ago! (So I didn't offer it up!)

A little more than a week ago actually... but no, it's not the great Childhood's End.