Science Fiction Trivia

[Disembodied]

Is it maybe Dome World, by Dean McLaughlin?

[ffutures]

Is it maybe Dome World, by Dean McLaughlin?

Congrats! Never heard of the book but looking on line I think it's plausible. Hope you have successfully put this one out of its misery...

[spud42]

Hear,Hear... i had no idea about this one.

[Nite Owl]

Is it maybe Dome World, by Dean McLaughlin?

You Are Correct. The Chalice is yours. It might be a bit soggy and suffering from compression after spending all of that time at so obscure a depth.

[Disembodied]

OK … keeping with the sub-aquatic theme: five instances of cetaceans (dolphins, orcas, whales) as characters/important plot points in SF - books, TV, film, gaming, etc.. Usual rules: one example per universe, MBPs available for anyone who mentions a named cetacean character.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBL9dTwVi4I

[ffutures]

OK … keeping with the sub-aquatic theme: five instances of cetaceans (dolphins, orcas, whales) as characters/important plot points in SF - books, TV, film, gaming, etc.. Usual rules: one example per universe, MBPs available for anyone who mentions a named cetacean character.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBL9dTwVi4I

Low hanging fruit time - Arthur C. Clarke's Dolphin Island (1963) is a juvenile novel entirely about a future project to study cetaceans, and numerous dolphins, a killer whale and (I think) a sperm whale make appearances in it. The dolphins especially are very important to the plot, eventually helping the hero to save most of the characters' lives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_Island_(novel)

[Disembodied]

Arthur C. Clarke's Dolphin Island

That's one, definitely.

[Nite Owl]

THE DAY OF THE DOLPHIN

"Fa Loves Pa" - to be read aloud in a high pitched Dolphin voice.

[Disembodied]

THE DAY OF THE DOLPHIN

"Fa Loves Pa" - to be read aloud in a high pitched Dolphin voice.

That makes two …

[spud42]

this fruit is so low its on the ground....

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

[Disembodied]

this fruit is so low its on the ground....

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

That makes a big fat three …

[ffutures]

For a fourth have Startide Rising (1983) by David Brin, in which an exploratory ship largely crewed by uplifted dolphins is inadvertently caught up in a multi-species interstellar war.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startide_Rising

[Disembodied]

For a fourth have Startide Rising (1983) by David Brin, in which an exploratory ship largely crewed by uplifted dolphins is inadvertently caught up in a multi-species interstellar war.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startide_Rising

Definitely. That makes four - one more takes the fishy prize …

[ffutures]

Bunch of wimps...



Penelope (1963) by William C. Anderson
Another one I read in the sixties or early seventies - Penelope is a dolphin trained to speak English as part of a USAF research program. For reasons that now escape me the project is cancelled, and the scientist and an air force friend take her to Florida in a hearse equipped to accommodate her tank. I think it's borderline SF anyway.

A couple of reviews:

This was a madcap riot of a story about a young female dolphin named Penelope. Her owner is an Air Force scientist named Greg, who is so focused on his research projects that he doesn't notice anything else (notably the women falling in love with him). He has lost funding on his number one project involving communicating with other species, namely Penelope. He is also being thrown out of his apartment along with his perpetually-soused roommate Callaghan, possibly because he was trying to hide Penelope in his bathtub. What follows is a funny, crazy, romantic story (can you imagine a dolphin playing matchmaker?), that takes a few potshots at everything.

A book about Penelope, a terribly horny dolphin, cooped up in a Navy pool for far too long. When the handsome captain or the busty nurse hop in the pool, Penelope swoops in, and off come the bathing suits; Penelope bends both ways, doesn't mind a threesome, and species doesn't matter either. Disguised (in deep drag) as a frothy, bawdy sexual farce in the I Dream Of Jeanie mold (Penelope, you see, will talk dirty, if you can just get her to speak more SLOWLY, so there's some fantasy involved), and while it manages to be normative, reductive and solipsistic all at once, this text (for text it is) is the first wild scream of autodidactic anti-humanist thought of the early 1960s, an absurdly perverse and transgressive bit of "fun" that one suspects has a message at its heart that the author (a staid military man, he would like us to think) would never have admitted, even to himself. At the end of the day, will the captain choose the saucy, sexy dolphin with a southern accent and mind of her own or the submissive nurse with the joyful breasts, what, precisely, is the reason for his decision, and why, precisely (the author seems to ask) does it matter? Many readers will find this tremendously but teasingly taboo-crushing book disgusting, and not exactly notice why.

Must admit that I'd forgotten most of this until I read the above reviews.

More here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2597502-penelope

There was also a sequel - Penelope, the Damp Detective (1974) which I have never read

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/176 ... -detective

[Disembodied]

Bunch of wimps...



Penelope (1963) by William C. Anderson
Another one I read in the sixties or early seventies - Penelope is a dolphin trained to speak English as part of a USAF research program. For reasons that now escape me the project is cancelled, and the scientist and an air force friend take her to Florida in a hearse equipped to accommodate her tank. I think it's borderline SF anyway.

Oh-kay, I think that'll do it! TBH I was expecting something rather more low-hanging, like So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, but this fits the bill. And have an MBP for coming up with a cetacean character with a name.

Over to you!