Science Fiction Trivia

[Disembodied]

I'm not sure if it counts as a species, or a one-off, but the Great Intelligence from Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen (and others) might fit the bill.

[Malacandra]

The Grogs. In their adult or sessile stage they are blind, deaf and immobile - all they can do is open their mouth and mind-control something into walking in.

(Larry Niven, short story "The Handicapped", occasionally mentioned elsewhere.)

[ffutures]

And the Grogs make three - they were the ones I was particularly expecting.

Another one, from the James White Sector General book Ambulance Ship, is the Protectors, who are telepathic aliens that are only intelligent in the womb, have no control over their mothers, and become mindless killers at the moment of birth.

OK, that makes Malacandra the winner, so over to you.

[Malacandra]

Lordy. That's the trouble with coming up with smart answers - you have to come up with smart questions to follow up.

Okay, some Trek trivia then: at least three actors who have appeared anywhere in the franchise as characters of different humanoid races. (One quite well-known one played three different races - extra credit if you get him.)

[Malacandra]

Yeesh. Nobody likes this. OK, here's an alternative: give me two sapient alien races which have more than two sexes (and whose breeding cycle also involves more than two). Any science fiction you like, not restricted to Trek.

[ffutures]

Pierson's Puppeteers from Larry Niven's Known Space series sort of qualify - their reproductive system has two "males" impregnating a non-sentient "female" with (presumably) different types of sperm. The resulting embryo eats its way out.

[Malacandra]

Yes, they do. And another?

[Disembodied]

The Azadians, from Iain M. Banks's The Player of Games. They have three genders: male, female, and apex.

[Malacandra]

That'll do nicely. Another species could have been the Kurii, from the Gor series - stated in Beasts of Gor to comprise dominants, non-dominants, egg-carriers and blood-nursers. The dominants fertilise the egg-carriers, who then implant the blood-nursers, not unlike the Puppeteer breeding cycle - and to give John Norman his due, Beasts hit the shelves two or three years before Ringworld Engineers.

Over to you!

[Disembodied]

OK … with the latest Jurassic Park movie prompting the question, "How do they keep getting insurance?", name five SF novels - not films, not TV, not short stories, and not counting Jurassic Park - featuring dinosaurs in one form or another.

[Cody]

I wonder if Doyle's The Lost World counts as SF? The Professor Challenger tales do tend towards SF.

[Disembodied]

I'd count The Lost World as science fiction, yes. That's one!

[ffutures]

Speaking of Dinosaurs by Philip E. High - dinosaurs are fakes created by some sort of alien overlords (really forget the fine details) who are scamming humanity.

[Disembodied]

That's two …

[ffutures]

Anne McCaffrey's Dinosaur Planet and sequel. Another one I don't remember very well, except that the dinosaurs are somehow anomalous for the world where they're found.