Science Fiction Trivia

[ffutures]

Starro the Conqueror and other members of its race - basically five-armed starfish with mind control powers from DC Comics

[RockDoctor]

This is a description of the aliens from the Ted Chiang short story "Story of Your Life", which the movie Arrival is based on:

It looked like a barrel suspended at the intersection of seven limbs. It was radially symmetric, and any of its limbs could serve as an arm or a leg. The one in front of me was walking around on four legs, three non-adjacent arms curled up at its sides. Gary called them 'heptapods.'

That seems to settle the steward's enquiry and a clear second place. So the poisoned chalice is out, stalking for a victim.
Interesting that the symmetry is very non-Platonic. Four "limbs" can form a cuboid against a "vertical" (gravitational/ bouyancy) vector, or if directed to the vertices of a tetrahedron, they could support a body in any direction - think of a caltrop. Six "limbs" would give the vertices of an octahedron - leaving one limb for communication, manipulation? That would work fairly well.

[RockDoctor]

Starro the Conqueror and other members of its race - basically five-armed starfish with mind control powers from DC Comics

And with the stewards enquiry settled, you have the poisoned chalice.

The example I was thinking of was, which would have got a MBP if anyone had come up with it, was five-limbed, with a post-like body. Piers Anthony's Quinquepedalian, which is discovered on a forest world by some explorers following it's round footprints, 10-odd metres across. They are seeking whatever animal species they deduce controls the distribution and spacing of the trees, and which clears out the undergrowth. They go to sleep under what they think is a large mangrove-like tree with five subsidiary trunks branching out from a single central master trunk. It isn't a tree.

[ffutures]

Oops... When will I learn not to give the last answer?

OK. One of my favourite add-ons for Oolite is Liners, because the big ships look extremely cool and can be a lot more interesting than asteroids.

So let's have five SF stories - films, books, short stories, comics, TV etc. - where a significant part of the plot takes place aboard a large space liner. To avoid arguments, I'm ruling that a liner is a non-military ship whose rationale is carrying at least fifty passengers in some degree of luxury - not a colony ship with passengers packed in like sardines, not a scientific research ship, etc. "Significant" means that a substantial part of the plot must be set aboard ship - a story in which the character boards a liner in one paragraph and gets off in the next would not be acceptable.

One special rule - nothing involving ships called the Titanic, or having the word Titanic or anything that's a lot like it (e.g. Titan) in their name.

No two stories from the same universe, author, etc. I am prepared to accept single episodes of TV series, single issues of comics, etc. that otherwise don't have much to do with space liners, provided a significant part of the episode or issue is set aboard a liner.

E.g. The Doctor Who episode Voyage of the Damned meets all criteria EXCEPT that the ship is called the Titanic.

[Nite Owl]

The Fifth Element.

[cbr]

Night on the Galactic Railroad...

[ffutures]

The Fifth Element.

That's a definite yes - in fact it was the first thing I thought of, so have a meaningless bonus point.

Night on the Galactic Railroad...

Umm... it's a train rather than a liner in the normal sense, but since it is a passenger vehicle etc. and presumably carries more than 50 people I'll accept it. But no more trains, buses, etc. - the remaining answers have to be proper liners!

Three to go!

[Cholmondely]

CJ Cherryh: Serpent's Reach: the relationship between Raen Meth-maren and her azi, Jim, develops on the liner Andra's Jewel. Book 3 and almost all of Book 4 take place there.

[Disembodied]

I've only seen a couple of trailers, but the TV series Avenue 5 "follows the captain and crew of a luxury space cruise ship as they navigate disgruntled passengers and unexpected events after experiencing technical difficulties onboard."

[spud42]

would the ship that the humans have been on for 700 years in Wall-E count???

[ffutures]

CJ Cherryh: Serpent's Reach: the relationship between Raen Meth-maren and her azi, Jim, develops on the liner Andra's Jewel. Book 3 and almost all of Book 4 take place there.

Yes, that certainly qualifies - 2 to go.

I've only seen a couple of trailers, but the TV series Avenue 5 "follows the captain and crew of a luxury space cruise ship as they navigate disgruntled passengers and unexpected events after experiencing technical difficulties onboard."

Another good one - and one I've never heard of, so have a meaningless bonus point. One to go.

would the ship that the humans have been on for 700 years in Wall-E count???

And that's another one that was in my mind when I set the question, so you also get a meaningless bonus point, PLUS the poisoned chalice! Over to Spud42!

[spud42]

ok, after recovering from poisioning i think i might have the next question....

lets see if we can come up with 5 instances of a law enforcement agent being sent back in time to aprehend a criminal or group of criminals that have escaped into the past.

usual rules and regulations...

[Disembodied]

There's the Batman/Judge Dredd crossover story "Judgement on Gotham".

[ffutures]

The Agent of T.E.R.R.A. series by Larry Maddock (1966-69) - a series of four books in which agents of the criminal Empire are deterred from changing Earth's past by agent Hannibal Fortune and other members of his organization.
https://spyguysandgals.com/sgShowChar.aspx?id=1412

[RockDoctor]

lets see if we can come up with 5 instances of a law enforcement agent being sent back in time to aprehend a criminal or group of criminals that have escaped into the past.

Slippery Jim diGriz travelled in time to defeat "Him" several times in "The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World".
Harry Harrison, as if it needed said.

Do the crew of the Enterprise count as LEAs for the purposes of ... I forget which of the movies it was, but it involved a Sun-dive to get a McGuffin.