Ha, I thought I'd worked it out!
To the left is Krakatau Kecil, and to the right is Krakatoa itself. Late afternoon as stars are just visible, so near sunset, and the shadows are pointing more or less East.
Commander Smivs, the friendliest Gourd this side of Riedquat.
There's the Plough visible above the volcano, upside down - but the two stars which point to the North Star should still work, and they're pointing straight at the volcano … so north?
Okay, who whispered "With such a weapon I could boil the Earth to vapour", and who (having understood the rather bestial language he was whispering in) curtly told him to "Shut up"?
(This book was the first sequel to one of the all-time classics of space fiction, and dates from the early 1980s.)
"Sidewinder Precision Pro" and other Oolite fiction is now available for Amazon Kindle at a bargain price.
Without checking, Ringworld Engineers? Speaker to Animals talking to Louis Wu?
Close enough. You would get killed for calling him Speaker-to-Animals by then -- he had a name. The phrase above was, as you'll remember, Chmee's reaction to seeing the solar-flare-laser firing. A nice underpowered weapon if ever there was one.
"Sidewinder Precision Pro" and other Oolite fiction is now available for Amazon Kindle at a bargain price.
Without checking, Ringworld Engineers? Speaker to Animals talking to Louis Wu?
Close enough. You would get killed for calling him Speaker-to-Animals by then -- he had a name. The phrase above was, as you'll remember, Chmee's reaction to seeing the solar-flare-laser firing. A nice underpowered weapon if ever there was one.
Oh, I always had a soft spot for the Lensman version, the Sunbeam, which basically used a few thousand robotic space stations to turn the entire solar system into a vacuum tube and focus most of the output of the sun onto one target. Planets melted pretty quickly...
OK, if it's my turn again, let's go for something easy... According to H.G. Wells, how many Martian tripods did the Thunder Child destroy before it was sunk?
Arthur: OK. Leave this to me. I'm British. I know how to queue.
OR i could go with
Arthur Dent: I always said there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe.
or simply
42
Two. One with gunfire and one by ramming. The ramming part was aided by the Thunder Child blowing up at the same time.
This brought humanity's total to three since one had earlier been destroyed by artillery in a land engagement, after which the Martians never got within line of sight of a cannon again.
(A steamship called Thunder Child also makes an appearance in Claymore Mine, for a variety of excellent reasons.)
"Sidewinder Precision Pro" and other Oolite fiction is now available for Amazon Kindle at a bargain price.