Science Fiction Trivia

[spud42]

ok probably an easy one but..
1 character Falk
2 concepts... Tabula Rasa and Ex Nihilo

name the book and author.

[spud42]

clue #1 author is Female

[Disembodied]

Is it City of Illusions, by Ursula K. Le Guin?

[spud42]

home run big D.. all yours..

[Disembodied]

Thanks! Another list of five, then: five acronyms, from five different SF universes.

These should be at least three letters long (longer is fine). They should be unique to the SF source (book, TV series, film, etc.) they come from, and stand for something fictional - the BBC or the USAF might be mentioned in a science-fiction context, but they wouldn't count here. Similarly, FTL might be fictional (or at least theoretical), but it's not unique to any one SF universe.

Finally, to score, you have to say what the acronyms stand for.

[ffutures]

Too easy!

TANSTAAFL - There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch - Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
RUR - Rossum's Universal Robots - from the story of the same name by Karel Capek
SHIELD - Currently given as Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. - Marvel universe
SHADO - Supreme Headquarters, Alien Defence Organisation - Gerry Anderson's UFO
FROOMB! - Fluid Running Out of my Brakes! - from the SF novel FROOMB! by John Lymington, about which I remember nothing except the acronym and what it stands for - general collapse and anarchy, I think.

[Cody]

Acronyms - what's with the lower-casing fashion?


Tanstagi

[Disembodied]

ffutures takes it! Maybe it was too easy - there's not a single crossover in those answers with any I'd come up with myself:

TARDIS - Time And Relative Dimensions In Space (Doctor Who)
AADA - American Autoduel Association (Car Wars)
ABC - Aerial Board of Control (stories by Rudyard Kipling)
TIE fighter - Twin Ion Engine (Star Wars)
ZPM - Zero Point Module (Stargate)
PADD - Personal Access Display Device (Star Trek: TNG)
CHOAM - Combine Honette Ober Advancer Mercantiles (Dune)
GSbAG - Geschichtkreis Sternschiffbau AG (Traveller)
Tanj - "There Ain't No Justice" (Larry Niven's "Known Space" stories)

As to lower-casing … from a typographical point of view, too many blocks of capitals make a page look ugly. There are variations in house style, but it's not unknown for typographers to use small caps, or even just a slightly smaller size of font, when setting any all-caps acronym within a body of text to make the page more visually pleasing (although this is increasingly rare, as the gulf grows between "people who know how to typeset" and "people who know how to use typesetting software"). Also I suppose that - for acronyms that make pronounceable words, at least - it would look increasingly weird to write about LASERs or RADAR.

[Cody]

<nods> And once a pronounceable acronym has been lower-cased, it's ripe for verbing.

[ffutures]

Sorry for the delay replying - life has been its usual unhelpful self...

Talking of which, let's have five SF novels or stories by five different authors with the word Life in the title. Name the authors too, of course.

[spud42]

first that comes to mind is
Life the Universe and Everything Douglas Adams



got a general question for the forum. Is fantasy also included in these trivia questions ? like Eddings, Fiest Jordan Tolkien etc

[Disembodied]

A couple of short stories:

"Slow Life", by Michael Swanwick
"A Day in the Life of Justin Argento Morrel", by Gregory Frost

got a general question for the forum. Is fantasy also included in these trivia questions ? like Eddings, Fiest Jordan Tolkien etc

It's not up to me, but speaking personally, I'd say not. It's always difficult to say where one genre ends and another begins, but - again, personally - I'd say that SF has to have some underlying logic somewhere, no matter how unscientific that might be. Gandalf, for example, just does magic: there's no explanation, no clue as to what might be going on. He's a wizard, he does magic. It gets trickier when considering e.g. Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" books, which hint at some sort of lost science behind the magic … and in Rhialto the Marvellous he has a bunch of wizards taking a trip through space in a palace powered by (amongst other things) burning incense.

If we do want to stretch boundaries, though, we could slip in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, which contains elements of magic realism …

[Cody]

Pollute these hallowed pages with the likes of Eddings and Feist? The horror!


What Big D said, basically.

[Smivs]

This is Outworld, so why not start a Fantasy Trivia Quiz thread

[Disembodied]

This is Outworld, so why not start a Fantasy Trivia Quiz thread

Excellent suggestion!