Science Fiction Trivia

[Disembodied]

OK, thanks … I think …

Match the fictional game to the fiction it comes from (nb: most of the works listed are there as decoys):

A) Fizzbin
B) Stricken
C) Tadek
D) Tall Card
E) Triad

Choose from: Battlestar Galactica, Bladerunner, Farscape, Firefly, Futurama, The Glass Bead Game, The Player of Games, Quintet, Ringworld, RoboCop, Stargate: SG1, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Wars, The Uplift War series

[cbr]

a] fizzbin star trek tos
b]
c] tadek farscape
d] tall card serenity
e] triad battlestar galactica

Winner takes stricken

[Disembodied]

cbr has got four out of five (OK, to be incredibly pedantic, Tall Card is from Firefly the TV series, not the movie Serenity, but it's the right fictional universe). As for Stricken … the answer might not be what you expect.

[Smivs]

...might not be what you expect.

Obligatory

[Cody]

The inclusion of The Glass Bead Game in that list is curious (though it is set in the future - I think).
But I don't recall any Stricken in it, nor in the other novels, so I haven't a clue.

[Disembodied]

The Glass Bead Game is a bit of a standout in there, I admit … but it is a novel set in an imagined future society, and the playing of a furiously complex game does form an important part of the setting. But you can rule it out. Das Glasperlenspiel/the Glass Bead Game is the only fictional game mentioned in The Glass Bead Game.

However: although all the games listed come from different SF settings, some of those settings may mention more than one fictional game!

[Smivs]

I was worried my Google-foo was failing for a while there! But no
Stricken is a game featured in 'The Player of Games', one of Iain M Banks' Culture series.

[Disembodied]

It is! The outcome of a particular game of Stricken is what propels Jernau Gurgeh into travelling to the Empire of Azad on behalf of Special Circumstances, "the Culture's tellingly unique euphemism". Over to you, Smivs …

[Cody]

Magister Ludi as sci-fi, eh? That'd make two* Nobel literature laureates who've written sci-fi, and it probably won the prize for Hesse.



*That I'm aware of.

[Disembodied]

I suppose it depends on your definition of "sci-fi" … Doris Lessing's Canopus in Argos is pretty obviously SF; George Bernard Shaw's Back to Methuselah is solidly SF too; William Golding's The Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors are perhaps less so, but are both listed in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

What tends to happen (less so now, admittedly) is that the literary establishment looks down on genre novels, and tends to ignore them. So when someone writes a literary genre novel, the response is to say "Oh, that's not science fiction (or fantasy, or crime, etc.) – that's e.g. a political satire". Orwell's 1984, for example, is about a future society where science and technology is used to control and rewrite recorded histories and even to manipulate, via language, the thoughts people can think. But it's not classed as SF, because SF is pulpy and bad and full of rockets and rayguns …

[Cody]

... because SF is pulpy and bad and full of rockets and rayguns …

<chortles> Naughty, nasty, SF - warps the minds of the young!

[Smivs]

I feel a bit guilty about this as cbr actually did most of the hard work, but here goes anyway.
What was wrong about the cargo liner being built at the Cenerentola Spaceyards on the planet Cittanuvo?

[DredgerMan]

There is REALLY nothing wrong with it. Ok, it may have a bit more armour than you would expect and it would have armament where you expect none, but hey, with the name: Warlord, what'd you expect.

[Smivs]

That's right, it was a crafty ruse to build an Imperial Class Battle Cruiser on the quiet - start with plans for an innocent-looking freighter and during construction make a few subtle changes such as improving the asteroid defences....
That Angelina is such a sweet girl
Spot on, and over to you.

[DredgerMan]

Hmmm, okay. I have learned that the more you say, the easier it gets so here is my starter for ten:

Where can you buy an elementary cheescake ingredient?