Science Fiction Trivia

[ffutures]

Second Foundation by Asimov ??

Tricky. I was inclined to say no, but you're the only entry with the number BEFORE the other word, and I think that it does represent a number. So yes, you have the fifth answer (and a virtual cookie for putting the cart before the horse), and it's your turn to be questionmaster. Take it away, Spud42

[ffutures]

(Quickly, before spud42 realises):

Space: 1999

Sorry - Spud did beat you to it, and after careful consideration I've decided it's a more or less valid answer. Have a MBP anyway (I found another box of them in the cupboard under the sink), but Spud is in the hot seat.

[RockDoctor]

But what are we supposed to do with these MBP's? ... can I give mine to Commander_X?

You glue them together into a working model of a Witchspace drive. Didn't you get the memo?

[spud42]

dang, i was hoping you would reject it..lol

and here i was thinking MBP was must buy petrol... go figure.

Oh well here we go again. Give me 5 examples of fuel for personal transport. Your answer must have source, Author , type of fuel and how it was used.
we are talking car type vehicles or equivalent . sci fi not fantasy. so horses and hay as well as normal cars and petrol are off the table .

[Old Murgh]

so.. Back to the Future, R. Zemeckis -–trash - nuclear flux capacitor deLorean - time travel driving..
is this an acceptable sort of answer?

[Nite Owl]

Star Trek - Gene Roddenberry - Matter/Anti-Matter Reactors using Dilithium Crystals as a control device.

[RockDoctor]

Give me 5 examples of fuel for personal transport. Your answer must have source, Author , type of fuel and how it was used.
we are talking car type vehicles or equivalent . sci fi not fantasy. so horses and hay as well as normal cars and petrol are off the table .

OK, I'll try to take a couple of universes off the table (I should be a String theorist.)
Several universes like to have "flying cars", powered by some small, user-changeable device (which gets recycled/ re-charged off-stage). These devices contain a lot of stored energy, and as we all know, stored energy is dangerous.
Two examples that spring to mind are -

• McCaffrey's Pern-i-verse (where the flying cars are used as flying flame (HNO3) -thrower platforms, and occasionally crash with the "power cube" producing a big crater and lots of fireworks), and
• (next post)

[RockDoctor]

• (next post)

1. Niven's Known Space-i-verse, where, for example, in the Wunderland resistance to the Kzin invasion there were several times that the "molecular distortion cells" did their own undirected landscape gardening after a "ground effect car" got shot up. (At least some of the weapons in story also used similar battery packs, and they would also go VeryBang! if hit hard enough.)

Strictly, that's the Niven-derived Man-Kzin Wars universe, but I think the same were in Niven's original universe.

[ffutures]

In Futurama the best fuel is Dark Matter, derived from the faeces of Nibblonians such as Nibbler, Leela's pet (actually a very intelligent and powerful alien pretending to be a pet). It's used for spaceships including the Planet Express ship.

[spud42]

Old Murgh gets the first point. 4 to go.
Nite Owl... matter/antimatter reactors are too big for PERSONAL transport.
RockDoctor you should know the rules by now 1 answer to give others a go. i consider Pern to be fantasy even though eventually she tied in a spaceship to explain how they got there. also i dont remeber any cars ?
seeing as i arbitrarily rejected Pern i will accept your Niven example. so thats 2 down 3 to go.
ffutures if you can provide example of personal transport with this power source i will accept.

personal : belonging to or affecting a particular person rather than anyone else
Personnel : many people ie bus, passenger ship both water and space.

I did specify "car type vehicle or equivalent " so not needing tyres...

as it stands we have 2 answers 3 to go.

[ffutures]

ffutures if you can provide example of personal transport with this power source i will accept.

personal : belonging to or affecting a particular person rather than anyone else
Personnel : many people ie bus, passenger ship both water and space.

I did specify "car type vehicle or equivalent " so not needing tyres...

as it stands we have 2 answers 3 to go.

OK, I can't actually think of any examples apart from spaceships, so scrub that one.

Let's go with the Mr. Fusion power supply from Back to The Future instead - it's in a car!

Photos I took at the Worldcon in 2019...



Later - And I somehow missed that someone had already used it!

OK, one more try. The one-man beer-propelled "spaceship" in Poul Anderson's short story "A Bicycle Built For Brew" - pedalling drives a dynamo and the electricity is used to heat kegs of beer with live yeast. The beer ferments and produces CO2, which is let out through nozzles and used to propel the "ship" fairly slowly, but fast enough to get from one asteroid to another that's nearby.

[spud42]

" OK, one more try. The one-man beer-propelled "spaceship" in Poul Anderson's short story "A Bicycle Built For Brew" - pedalling drives a dynamo and the electricity is used to heat kegs of beer with live yeast. The beer ferments and produces CO2, which is let out through nozzles and used to propel the "ship" fairly slowly, but fast enough to get from one asteroid to another that's nearby."

bonus meaningles points for one i hadnt heard of! off to find for my kindle.....

3 down 2 to go.

[ffutures]

A Bicycle Built For Brew is in at least two of Anderson's anthologies, Tales of the Flying Mountains and A Bicycle Built For Brew - The Collected Short Stories of Poul Anderson, and has been anthologised in multi-author collections, so it shouldn't be hard to find. It was also expanded as the short novel The Makeshift Rocket in 1962, I think as half of an Ace Double. Not sure if it exists as an e-book.

Later - sorry, I was wrong, it's NOT in Tales From The Flying Mountains, it's in Kinship With The Stars. Original publication was in 1958, I think in Astounding Science Fiction

[Old Murgh]

With my admittedly limited sci-repertoire I can’t think of any more clever fuels for personal travel. I’m left with: Stanislaw Lem’s Ijon Tichy of the Star Diaries that uses «rocket fuel» for his rocket, but he uses his rocket on quite trivial small errands..

Watney in Andy Weir’s the Martian uses a solar energy powered electric buggy..

[Disembodied]

I'm not sure if it really counts as science fiction, but in an episode of The Simpsons the actor and environmental activist Ed Begley Jnr. drives "a go cart, powered by my own sense of self-satisfaction".