Science Fiction Trivia

[DredgerMan]

having never read the book i only had vulpinoid to go on. so lets drop this i assumed vulpine meant wolf like...

Vulpines are foxes, lupines are wolves and dogs.

dredgerman seems to think you have come up with 3 but who gets the credit? not me as i didnt get any..lol

As I saw this as a combined effort, the last one in gets the cookie.
(or the snake leather boots, which smell a bit fishy)

[Cody]

(or the snake leather boots, which smell a bit fishy)

Cue inevitable Zappa song!

[Disembodied]

We had the Remoolians, the Wereloks and finally Cody with the Vargr, so I would say yes, we have three.

OK: over to Cody, then!

[Cody]

Okay... I'm looking for the title and author of a novel by a well known British writer: a time-traveller returns to the far future in an attempt to save a friend. He finds that the Sun has been blacked-out, and the timeline he seeks is no longer open to him.

[Malacandra]

*wanders in*

*looks frustrated*

Nope. Clearly I'm not well up on my British time-travel stories.

[Cody]

Clues: the Sun has been blacked-out by a Dyson sphere, and the timeline he seeks is closed to him due to his own actions in the past/future.

[spud42]

this sounds so familiar but i just get a blank.....
thanks for pointing out the fox/wolf cockup i did.... it was late i was tired...etc..etc..etc...

[Disembodied]

Clues: the Sun has been blacked-out by a Dyson sphere, and the timeline he seeks is closed to him due to his own actions in the past/future.

That sounds like The Time Ships, Stephen Baxter's sequel to H. G. Wells's The Time Machine. He's got a sequel to The War of the Worlds out, too, called The Massacre of Mankind.

thanks for pointing out the fox/wolf cockup

Not so much of a cockup, really - foxes are canids too! So I suppose we could have included the hero of the Star Fox game, assuming he's a member of a species and not a one-off …

[Cody]

It is indeed Baxter's The Time Ships, and a very good sequel it is too - paradox abounds!


<lobs snakeskin boots at Big D>

[Disembodied]

OK: identify the novels from their opening sentences:

1. "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral Arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun."

2. "This is how Yuli, son of Alehaw, came to a place called Oldorando, where his descendants flourished in the better days that were to come."

3. "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13."

4. "They set a Slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the colour of his hair."

5. "No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water."

[Cody]

Phew! I was expecting something more like: name three armadillo-like alien species.

[Disembodied]

Phew! I was expecting something more like: name three armadillo-like alien species.

<makes note for later>

[spud42]

1 and 5 too easy.
1. Hitchikers guide to the galaxy Douglas Adams
2.
3. 1984 George Orwell
4.
5. War of the Worlds H.G.Wells

[Cody]

<grins> They're all too easy if you've read them. Of the five, I've only read four - and 1984 was a long time ago.

2. Helliconia Spring

[Disembodied]

I could have gone with a much easier number 4, from the same author, from the first book in this trilogy. The other book in this series has a pretty kickass first line, too: "The ghost was her father’s parting gift, presented by a black-clad secretary in a departure lounge at Narita."