Science Fiction Trivia

[cbr]

Pandorum movie, freight = ~60k humans

[ffutures]

Pandorum movie, freight = ~60k humans

OK, I didn't explicitly rule out human freight (which I should have done, since that's a liner / colonisation ship rather than a freighter) so I'll accept that. Have a meaningless bonus point for an answer I hadn't anticipated.

Four to go, but no more human cargoes - in fact I'm not going to accept any two sources where the ships have the same cargo (if it's relevant to the plot)!

[Disembodied]

Alien, set aboard the M-Class Lockmart CM 88B Bison starfreighter USCSS Nostromo. There are acres of fascinating facts about the Nostromo in this article from the website Typeset in the Future, not least that the Captain's jacket has the ship's name written across the back in Pump Demi, ‘recently voted “Most 70s Font Of All Time” by the International Font Council.’

[RockDoctor]

SF works where substantial parts of the plot are set aboard space FREIGHTERS. For the purposes of this question a freighter is a ship designed primarily to transport cargo, not passengers, from one place to another and it must be actually doing this for a substantial part of the work - I'm prepared to be flexible within reason about how substantial that is.

OK, I'm going to go to the (I think un-named) General Products #4 ship where significant action in the Niven/ Lerner "Fleet of Worlds" takes place. In the book, the ramjet-propelled human colony ship ("Long Pass" - a nod to Pern?) is taken by the Puppeteers, gutted of embryo banks then stored inside a GP#4 freighter (colloquially known to the "Colonists" reared from the embryo banks as a "grain ship" - it's design task) which is placed in orbit around a "Nature Preserve" world. It isn't clear, but the colony ramship was seized when it encountered the "Nature Preserve" world being freighted to the Fleet of Worlds, and this GP#4 ship may have been carrying parts/ supplies for the planet-moving task force, and was then co-opted for storing/ experimenting on the captured colonists. But this cargo was then transported, firstly to the Fleet of Worlds, then within the fleet to a location where the "Colonists" were unlikely to find it.
If the GP#4 ship had a name, it wasn't a big point because the "Colonists" got access to it by accidentally finding the SDTP (Stepping Disc Transfer Protocol) address for it.
Convenient things, stepping discs - odd that they emerged into Known Space not long after Star Trek's transporters started malfunctioning with monotonous regularity. Reminds me of how lifts (elevators) were a technology in waiting until Elisha Otis developed a brake system that turned a snapped hoist rope into an abrupt halt without a preceding 32ft/s/s plummet. Nice case of nominative determinism too.

[ffutures]

Alien, set aboard the M-Class Lockmart CM 88B Bison starfreighter USCSS Nostromo. There are acres of fascinating facts about the Nostromo in this article from the website Typeset in the Future, not least that the Captain's jacket has the ship's name written across the back in Pump Demi, ‘recently voted “Most 70s Font Of All Time” by the International Font Council.’

OK, that's a good one - and it's the first one I thought of when I set the question, so have a Meaningless Bonus Point for that! As I recall it they're towing an asteroid and factory, so no more mining freighters from now on.

SF works where substantial parts of the plot are set aboard space FREIGHTERS. For the purposes of this question a freighter is a ship designed primarily to transport cargo, not passengers, from one place to another and it must be actually doing this for a substantial part of the work - I'm prepared to be flexible within reason about how substantial that is.

OK, I'm going to go to the (I think un-named) General Products #4 ship where significant action in the Niven/ Lerner "Fleet of Worlds" takes place. In the book, the ramjet-propelled human colony ship ("Long Pass" - a nod to Pern?) is taken by the Puppeteers, gutted of embryo banks then stored inside a GP#4 freighter (colloquially known to the "Colonists" reared from the embryo banks as a "grain ship" - it's design task) which is placed in orbit around a "Nature Preserve" world. It isn't clear, but the colony ramship was seized when it encountered the "Nature Preserve" world being freighted to the Fleet of Worlds, and this GP#4 ship may have been carrying parts/ supplies for the planet-moving task force, and was then co-opted for storing/ experimenting on the captured colonists. But this cargo was then transported, firstly to the Fleet of Worlds, then within the fleet to a location where the "Colonists" were unlikely to find it.
If the GP#4 ship had a name, it wasn't a big point because the "Colonists" got access to it by accidentally finding the SDTP (Stepping Disc Transfer Protocol) address for it.
Convenient things, stepping discs - odd that they emerged into Known Space not long after Star Trek's transporters started malfunctioning with monotonous regularity. Reminds me of how lifts (elevators) were a technology in waiting until Elisha Otis developed a brake system that turned a snapped hoist rope into an abrupt halt without a preceding 32ft/s/s plummet. Nice case of nominative determinism too.

This one feels a little more iffy, especially since I haven't read it. You've said it started out as a freighter and its cargo was moved from one world to another, but it's a bit marginal since that's not what's happening by the time the story begins, unless I've missed something from your description. For the moment I'm NOT accepting it, but if you can clarify things I might change my mind.

Three to go (at least for now).

[RockDoctor]

The ship's design is as a freighter, for certain - they get mentioned at several points in Known Space stories. This one's individual history isn't discussed much - up until it's destruction. Which, for a supposedly indestructible hull, is a significant point.
Niven must have regretted inventing indestructible hulls, because pretty much the moment the first royalty cheque for Neutron Star cleared, he started inventing ways to destroy them. Even some of his characters have noticed.
This freighter is a storage cupboard at the time of this story, but having worked shipping which has alternated minute by minute between riding at anchor as a "floating deck extension" and travelling as a link to shore (with occasional service as an emergency heliport), I don't see a lot of distinction between the classes. Put a pilot and service crew aboard (to check out or reinstall the heavy duty stepping discs) and it could be back into being a freighter as soon as it gets to an appropriate port.

[ffutures]

The ship's design is as a freighter, for certain - they get mentioned at several points in Known Space stories. This one's individual history isn't discussed much - up until it's destruction. Which, for a supposedly indestructible hull, is a significant point.
Niven must have regretted inventing indestructible hulls, because pretty much the moment the first royalty cheque for Neutron Star cleared, he started inventing ways to destroy them. Even some of his characters have noticed.
This freighter is a storage cupboard at the time of this story, but having worked shipping which has alternated minute by minute between riding at anchor as a "floating deck extension" and travelling as a link to shore (with occasional service as an emergency heliport), I don't see a lot of distinction between the classes. Put a pilot and service crew aboard (to check out or reinstall the heavy duty stepping discs) and it could be back into being a freighter as soon as it gets to an appropriate port.

OK, this is very marginal, but since it's basically still carrying cargo I'll reluctantly accept it. But no MBP!

Three to go.

[cbr]

Space Truckers, movie...

[ffutures]

Space Truckers definitely qualifies, and was another one I thought of when I set the question, so have a MBP. The cargo in that case was killer robots, so no more of those please.

Two to go!

[cbr]

Mainly Cargo Freighter I believe, Serenity from Serenity...

[ffutures]

Mainly Cargo Freighter I believe, Serenity from Serenity...

Another good one, Serenity from the TV series Firefly and the film Serenity. For some reason that wasn't on my list of fictional freighters and it really should have been, so have an MBP for spotting something I missed. They carried lots of different cargoes, so I won't eliminate anything.

One to go!

[ffutures]

OK, a few clues.

These are the initials of the story in which a ship appeared, not necessarily that of the ship itself
ATC - (comics)
CotG - (Novel)

And these are the initials of the ship where the name of the story is too much of a giveaway
ET - (TV)
MF - (film)

Plenty more out there!

Later - forgot to say that at least two of these have ship models in Oolite!

[Disembodied]

I mentioned this for the "ships named after real people" question, but I forgot that, in Colin Greenland's novel Take Back Plenty, the Alice Liddell is a cargo ship - a Bergen Kobold space barge. Much of the action of the novel is set on the ship, including sections where her captain, Tabitha Jute, tells stories to the ship's computer.

[RockDoctor]

OK, a few clues.

hAVE WE HAD a Caps Lock Malfunction?

Have we had the unavoidable Red Dwarf yet? OK, it's also occasionally a carrier (at least two StarBugs) but it's also got about 47 decks of cargo space, each large enough to lose a tyrannosaur or some other monstrosity in (unlike the so-called freighter, "Serenity" which has one cargo deck of about 2000 cu.m and several times that volume in cabins, bridge, engineering spaces etc, which strikes me as a bit unproductive. The last freighter I worked on had a cargo::services ratio of about 8:1.)

I've forgotten most of the plot of the Andromeda in Andromeda, but didn't it do fairly regular runs of "desperately needed supplies" from point A to point B so it's not a pure battle wagon? My last terrestrial boat had a weapons locker (bloody Nigerian pirates!) but it was far from a sleek viper of the skies. Uh, "seas".

[ffutures]

OK, we have two more answers. The Alice Liddell is indeed a freighter, that's a good one so have a MBP, Disembodied,

Red Dwarf... Nice try, Rockdoctor, but unfortunately it doesn't qualify because we've already had a mining ship, the Nostromo, and Disembodied answered first anyway. Have a MBP for trying.

The clues I gave (and you'll kick yourselves for not thinking of a couple of them):

Source was the clue
ATC - (comics) - The comic is the Ace Trucking Co strip in 2000AD, the ship is the Speedo Ghost
CotG - (Novel) - Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein, the ship is the Sisu (that one is maybe a little obscure)
Ship initials was the clue
ET - (TV) - Well, the show is Space 1999, and the ships are Eagle Transporters - there's an add-on for them!
MF - (film) - Really? This is possibly the most famous freighter in all SF film - the Stock Freighter Millennium Falcon! From Star Wars, of course, another ship in the Oolite add-ons.

Disembodied is the next bearer of the curse!