Science Fiction Trivia

[ffutures]

Nobody else? Really surprised that nobody has mentioned the biggie, the 1950s SF novel on this premise (also filmed several times, and made into a ZX Spectrum computer game) which introduced a phrase used to describe "uncanny valley" human copies which later became common usage.

[RockDoctor]

Ok. Let's try another "Five things" question - I'm looking for five stories / films / TV series / whatever in which alien entities control or replace humans, for evil and/or wholly alien reasons.

Does David Icke's "lizard Queen Elizabeth" fantasy count? Or does it lack an essential element of "deliberate invention" for a work of fiction, as opposed to being the deranged maunderings of a ... wasn't he a sport commentator before he started seeing lizards everywhere.

I'm almost wondering what he's saying about the impending Lizard Coronation, but I'd have to check if he's dead.
I checked - no Lizard Funeral in the immediate offing. But he's getting along. I wonder if his will has provisions for public autopsy? Personally, I suspect he's a Lizard himself. A Lizard turncoat. Skin-shedder?
Now why am I thinking about John Cooper-Clark?

[ffutures]

Ok. Let's try another "Five things" question - I'm looking for five stories / films / TV series / whatever in which alien entities control or replace humans, for evil and/or wholly alien reasons.

Does David Icke's "lizard Queen Elizabeth" fantasy count? Or does it lack an essential element of "deliberate invention" for a work of fiction, as opposed to being the deranged maunderings of a ... wasn't he a sport commentator before he started seeing lizards everywhere.

I'm almost wondering what he's saying about the impending Lizard Coronation, but I'd have to check if he's dead.
I checked - no Lizard Funeral in the immediate offing. But he's getting along. I wonder if his will has provisions for public autopsy? Personally, I suspect he's a Lizard himself. A Lizard turncoat. Skin-shedder?
Now why am I thinking about John Cooper-Clark?

Strange but true - I'm one of a number of SF/fantasy authors who may have given Icke the idea for this particular theory.

Back in 1992-3 the Midnight Rose Collective (a group of authors led by Alex Stewart, Roz Kaveney, Neil Gaiman and Mary Gentle) put together some shared world anthologies including The Weerde books 1 and 2, which were about reptilian shape changers from prehistory doing the "pretend to be human" thing so as to avoid another extinction event - the dinosaur killer wasn't a natural event and they're afraid it'll come back if humans get too advanced. Seven years later Icke rolled out his first book with the reptilian thing. Some of the background of The Weerde ties in with bits of Icke's theory, and there were reports (which I'm not sure I believe) that a copy of the first book was visible in a photo that showed his office and book shelves. I've never seen it myself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Rose
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Icke

OK - since this is definitely an SF idea I'm prepared to accept it, which makes five answers. Have the poisoned chalice with my compliments, and a meaningless bonus point for choosing an example that I may have helped to inspire...

[ffutures]

Cover of the second Weerde book, which is the one I had a story in

[RockDoctor]

I'm going to regret this.

ffutures wrote: ↑2023-04-20T00:20:17+00:00
Ok. Let's try another "Five things" question - I'm looking for five stories / films / TV series / whatever in which alien entities control or replace humans, for evil and/or wholly alien reasons.

Surely the Good Doctor - Who, not Asimov - had to deal with changelings about twice per series. Not that I can put a name to any of the forgettable hoards ; I wasn't that much of a fan after Tom Baker laid down the Scarf.

[ffutures]

I'm going to regret this.

ffutures wrote: ↑2023-04-20T00:20:17+00:00
Ok. Let's try another "Five things" question - I'm looking for five stories / films / TV series / whatever in which alien entities control or replace humans, for evil and/or wholly alien reasons.

Surely the Good Doctor - Who, not Asimov - had to deal with changelings about twice per series. Not that I can put a name to any of the forgettable hoards ; I wasn't that much of a fan after Tom Baker laid down the Scarf.

Actually you already got the fifth answer with the Icke thing, but Doctor Who definitely counts - endless replacements and examples of mind control, usually featuring The Master. New Who had Micky replaced by an Auton in its first episode, and there have been load more since then.

OK - you have now won the poison chalice twice for this round, have another MBP (making two) for finally finishing this off!

[RockDoctor]

Oh, whoops, For some reason I'm not receiving emails from this site. Have to look into that.
Well, let's see ...
Our favourite game (no MBPs for that) limits the capabilities of it's FTL (Faster Than Light) drive explicitly with the 7ly limit, and the 1/r² distance/ flight time relationship. That limit makes for ... a bit more dramatic tension. However you want to describe it. By sticking with this constraint of the original game, our Mission sub-culture, the trading, the parcel and passenger deliveries all acquire urgencies and difficulties of coordination that make the game absorbing. If our Cobras could jump 200ly in 1s of (external, co-moving) time, it would be a very different universe.

So, digging through the annals of SF, explain the FTL limitations of different FIVE authors / universes.

For an example in the Niven/ Pournelle collaboration "Mote-verse" the Alderson drive is instantaneous, but the routes have very specific start and end points based on some combination of the origin and target stars' masses, nuclear activities and some other special sauce, which means that finding the routes is a combination of calculation and extended search in Einsteinian/ Newtonian space. "Finding the Crazy-Eddie point", in the words of one Motie. Which greatly restricts the capabilities of the drive and makes it not a get-out-of-jail free card for the authors.
That takes "Mote-verse" (and Pournelle's associated universe, which I've never found any books from - Co-Dominion, IIRC) off the table. But leaves Niven's other universe's on the table. And any other Pournelle universes.

[ffutures]

Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series has FTL travel via wormholes - the snag is that there isn't usually a wormhole directly to the system you want to visit, and that often means taking a less direct route, sometimes through several other solar systems. For example, the route from Earth to Alpha Centauri is very complicated. You don't know where a wormhole goes until someone risks exploring it, and every now and then a wormhole closes or a new one appears. Wormholes are rarely close together - you may have to travel millions of miles through normal space to reach the next one - and can be blockaded by hostile governments, pirates, etc. I'm not sure of the speed of ships in normal space, I think they accelerate at fairly high rates with some sort of compensation to avoid everyone getting squished, but transit time between wormholes is the main factor limiting factor.

[Disembodied]

In Ken MacLeod's (current, ongoing) Lightspeed trilogy - Beyond the Hallowed Sky and Beyond the Reach of Earth published to date - FTL travel can, occasionally, result in inadvertent time travel, or jumping into an alternate reality, or both … in fact, it might always result in one or other (or both) of the above, but so slight that nobody notices. Except when they do.

[ffutures]

In Ken MacLeod's (current, ongoing) Lightspeed trilogy - Beyond the Hallowed Sky and Beyond the Reach of Earth published to date - FTL travel can, occasionally, result in inadvertent time travel, or jumping into an alternate reality, or both … in fact, it might always result in one or other (or both) of the above, but so slight that nobody notices. Except when they do.

Sounds a bit like the version of time travel I wrote for one RPG setting in which it appeared that it was impossible to change the past - in fact there were endless alternate timelines spun off from every trip to the past, and it was impossible to go home, but until you actually started time travelling you were most likely to live in a timeline with no obvious evidence of this process.

[RockDoctor]

So, digging through the annals of SF, explain the FTL limitations of different FIVE authors / universes.

So far we have ffutures' Louis McMaster Bujold (I know the name, never read any) using wormholes. Which have the limitations of rarity, and a degree of unreliability. "Millions of miles apart" covers the Solar system : Earth - Pluto is 5870∓300 million km apart, and km are rather like miles. I'm going to hazard a guess that the first novel covers the discovery of the first "wormhole, just outside Neptune's orbit. Or Pluto's. Or Planet 9 of Batygin & Brown 2016. Somewhere not to far, but not round the corner either. I'll keep the name in mind when I take my overdue library books back.
And in the blue corner, from Disembodied,

Ken MacLeod's (current, ongoing) Lightspeed trilogy -... FTL travel can, occasionally, result in inadvertent time travel, or jumping into an alternate reality, or both …

How did you know that I'm binge-watching Torchwood? Dang that inadvertent time travel. Totally musses my hair on reciprocal Fridays. i ² MBPs for you!
Two down, 3 to go.
Since the Who-niverse (?) never struggles too hard with explaining how the TARDIS works - or even the Great Rift of Cardiff (to the tune of "There was a young lady from Splot / Whose limericks were exceedingly hot. ...") - I don't think it'll be too restrictive to take that sprawling array of continuity errors off the table.

[Cholmondely]

In Cherryh's novels
1) the travel is exhausting (you need fresh crew to take over after you emerge on the other side)
2) humans need drugs to reliably operate
3) the travel makes some species moult
4) exiting close to an unstable star can make it go nova

[ffutures]

So, digging through the annals of SF, explain the FTL limitations of different FIVE authors / universes.

So far we have ffutures' Louis McMaster Bujold (I know the name, never read any) using wormholes. Which have the limitations of rarity, and a degree of unreliability. "Millions of miles apart" covers the Solar system : Earth - Pluto is 5870∓300 million km apart, and km are rather like miles. I'm going to hazard a guess that the first novel covers the discovery of the first "wormhole, just outside Neptune's orbit. Or Pluto's. Or Planet 9 of Batygin & Brown 2016. Somewhere not to far, but not round the corner either. I'll keep the name in mind when I take my overdue library books back.

No, the series began as military SF set much further in the future, when there are already some power blocs etc. and the wormhle network already covers a couple of dozen explored and colonised systems. The viewpoint characters are mostly from Barrayar, a colony that was cut off by a wormhole collapse for a century or so then invaded soon after contact was re-established, successfully fought a guerilla war, and went on to carve out their own empire in the aftermath. It's now diversified into intelligence operations, a couple of fun romantic comedies, and other interesting directions.

[RockDoctor]

In Cherryh's novels

That universe - and those particular problems - were specifically in my mind.
As I recall ... but I can't bring the book's title to mind ... occasional small freighters can get by with one crew, and even string multiple jumps together without intervening rest breaks, but it turns the skipper into a drained out wreck at a young age.
Wasn't the Cherryhverse an influence on the design of the Ooniverse, or vice versa? ISTR some thread on the subject ... somewhere. Several of which involved you - unsurprisingly.

[RockDoctor]

The runners and riders.

• ffutures brought us Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan FTL travel via wormhole - with occasional people-squishing malfunctions.
• Disembodied brought us Ken MacLeod's (current, ongoing) Lightspeed trilogy (in two to five parts, per Adams (1982-7), with inadvertent time travel just when you've got a hairdresser's appointment.
• and Cholmondely channelling Cherryh and Chanur through the Alliance-Unionverse, with it's brain-fuddling and exhausting hyperspace.

Is nobody going to try describing the limits of FTL in the Star Trek Universe. Is it really as incoherent as I've thought. Well, not that I've really given it a lot of thought - just sort of let it wash over me. Like a Grog on a rock(MBP for the reference).