Science Fiction Trivia

[DredgerMan]

Thanks, Cody.

Another In Loving Memory.

He wrote about a turtle, a 'pancake' and elephants, which have little to do with SF, but he also wrote about a planetary engineer, Kin A..

Who was he?

[DredgerMan]

I will allow questions to be asked, AS LONG as they can be answered with a simple yes or no.

[Disembodied]

Is it Terry Pratchett? I have read his SF novel Strata, but it was a very long time ago and I can't remember any names or really anything about the plot …

[DredgerMan]

Of course, Big D! The 'pancake', turtle and elephants are what makes Discworld unique and Kin indeed appeared in Strata.

So, over to you!

[Disembodied]

OK … There are a lot of feline aliens in SF, for whatever reason: quite possibly it's because of the habitat they share with so many writers, i.e. the keyboard. Anyway, what I'm looking for here are the names of three dog-alien races. These should be intelligent, and probably bipedal, canines or canine-analogues. I've been trying to think of as many as I can and I'm finding it quite tricky, so any and all sources of science fiction are acceptable. Fantasy and horror fiction examples are not permitted: no werewolves!

[Cody]

Ooh, tough one!

[Smivs]

Yeah, can't think of any right now.

[DredgerMan]

Hmm, time to pull resources? The only one I can think of is a Remoolian from MiB (all movies), whose true form resembles a pug, albeit with a dark green color, antennas, and a 3-pointed tail, according to Men in Black: The Series. I hope that the resemblance of form may be enough to be allowed by Big D.

[spud42]

i gather that an "uplifted" dog doesnt count. it has to be a canine based race?

[Disembodied]

DredgerMan's Remoolian is fine, I think. A single uplifted dog would not qualify (so, no Sirius, from the Olaf Stapleton novel), but a race of uplifted canids would be OK.

[Smivs]

I can add two more (having spent hours on Google!)...


Un-named species from Star Trek.

and

the Akk Dog from Star Wars.

[Disembodied]

Sorry, Smivs – those are alien dogoids, not intelligent canine aliens (at least, not as far as we know). I'm looking for something tool-using that you could hold a conversation with …

[Smivs]

Ha, OK

They were both a bit orange anyway - some things look great in orange but not doggie things!

[Cody]

Jeez, there's some dross out there on the subject of dogs-in-space/alien canids. Trying to find a coffee bean in all that dung is painful - thanks, Big D.
Another thing is the cover art - if you're gonna put sunglasses on an animal, don't put them on an alsatian, put them on a pig!

[Disembodied]

There are at least two SF role-playing games with intelligent canine races … one is pretty obscure, but the other is just about as mainstream as these things get (especially from an Elite perspective).