Science Fiction Trivia

[ffutures]

Rule 34 (2011) by Charles Stross; a near-future police procedural involving AI, organized international crime, and porn, set in Edinburgh after Scottish independence. A sequel to the earlier Halting State (2007), which is also set in post-independence Edinburgh but has slightly fewer SF tropes. A third book in the series wasn't published because real technology etc. kept catching up with his attempts to write it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_34_(novel)

[Disembodied]

'Prometheus' and the discovery of the star map (scene).

Yup - the scene is set around the Old Man of Storr on Skye, in 2089. That's one!

Rule 34 (2011) by Charles Stross

That's two! And it rules out anything more from Stross, e.g. the Edinburgh scenes in Accelerando.

[spud42]

ok, i cant believe i am doing this.... but

Battelfield Earth. the book not that abomination of a movie even though the book isnt much better...

Terl and Jonnie travel to Scotland where Jonnie recruits eighty-three Scottish people led by Robert the Fox to help with the mining. Using Terl's inability to understand English as a weapon, Jonnie plots with the Scotsmen to take back the Earth.

from memory , i read this a good 30+ years ago, they hide out under Edinbrugh Castle .

[Disembodied]

ok, i cant believe i am doing this.... but

Battelfield Earth

That's number 3. Here's an MBP for your trouble and we shall never speak of this again …

[RockDoctor]

Rule 34 (2011) by Charles Stross; ]

Damn - the exact one I was thinking of.

[RockDoctor]

'Prometheus' and the discovery of the star map (scene).

Yup - the scene is set around the Old Man of Storr on Skye, in 2089. That's one!

The scene setting might be around the Old Man of Storr and the Quiraing ... but Skye's complement of caves (apart from sea caves) are away down near Broadford and Torrin, including Uamh an Ard Achadh ("High Pasture Cave") whose entrance is surrounded by an Early Bronze Age/ Late Neolithic collection of drystone banking, cairns (vaguely "Clava" type) and really intriguingly, the ground under the cairns seems to have been "prepared" for the sacralisation of the cairn construction by being ploughed, but just the once. Even odder - some of the stones that were used in the kerbing of the cairns have their nearest outcrop around Tarsikavaig, all the way over on Sleat. Big stones - 25kg +.
Weird people, our ancestors.
"Uamh an Ard Achadh" is the cave's fancy name, since the archaeologists found out about it. In the Scottish Caving fraternity (yes, there is one!) it has long been known - in deference to it's previous job as waste disposal for the farm - as "Tin Can Alley". It's one of the few places in the world where you can do proper "stream passage" caving while crawling over granite bedrock.

I seem to remember muttering to the wife at the start of the film, "Isn't that filmed in the Smoo Cave up at Durness?", but she wasn't sure. And I've never watched the film a second time. Good effects ; repetitive story.

Where are my photos of the sea eagles, taken from atop the spoil pile one lunch break?

[RockDoctor]

Are there enough SF elements - if at the very camp end of the multi-dimensional spectra - in the Bond films (Q, incredibly strong magnetic fields and implausibly low toxicity knock-out smoke) to make the filming of ... was it "Skyfall" around the Glen Etive end of Rannoch Moor, with the Buachaille (Mor and Beag) almost hidden in very realistic rain and dreich?

Oh, hang on - got a FAR better one.

Under The Skin - a 2013 really weird and unsettling film starring an alien Scarlett Johannssen prowling around Glasgow in a van doing unspeakably horrible things to men she entices into her Transit van.
Now that was one well weird film - definitely a "record and watch several times" one to even try to work out what the fsck was going on. And I didn't record it when I stumbled across it at god-awful o'clock one morning. The Wiki page rings so few bells that it was probably on the tube after chucking-out time

[Disembodied]

Under The Skin - a 2013 really weird and unsettling film starring an alien Scarlett Johannssen prowling around Glasgow in a van doing unspeakably horrible things to men she entices into her Transit van.

That's definitely number 4 … it is a deeply odd film. Large parts of it were apparently filmed in secret, so loads of the extras didn't know they were extras. I'd read the book before I saw the film, so I sort of knew what was going on (although the book and film are very different). Recommending the book to people was very tricky: they'd say "What's it about?" and I'd have to say "I can't tell you."

(I've never watched Prometheus; I gave up half way through - specifically the point where they all say "Let's take our helmets off on this alien world we have literally just arrived on, I'm sure nothing bad will happen; oopsie, our spacesuits look pretty but are so badly designed the visors actually completely detach. Let's leave them in a big pile over here and explore these alien ruins!")

The next piece of tartan scifi wins the quaich …

[Redspear]

I've never watched Prometheus; I gave up half way through - specifically the point where they all say "Let's take our helmets off on this alien world we have literally just arrived on, I'm sure nothing bad will happen; oopsie, our spacesuits look pretty but are so badly designed the visors actually completely detach. Let's leave them in a big pile over here and explore these alien ruins!"

Oh absolutely there was some questionable protocol going on there... I've got mixed feelings about that film. Perhaps ironically, the story route it took became rather less 'alien' altogether. The exploration of the android continued to be interesting though (IMHO at least).

Just remembered something from the first film (Alien)...

Apparently Ridley Scott wanted some effects for outside the Nostromo. One of the crew countered, "but there's no wind in space". Scott's supposed riposte: "There is now mate!"

[RockDoctor]

Just remembered something from the first film (Alien)...

Apparently Ridley Scott wanted some effects for outside the Nostromo. One of the crew countered, "but there's no wind in space". Scott's supposed riposte: "There is now mate!"

.... hair blowing in the wind in almost exactly the way comets tails don't ... errr, do.

Though the radiation dose rate you'd get from a Solar wind strong enough to blow-dry your hair ... hmmm, might not be good.

[RockDoctor]

Oh, hang on - got a FAR better one.

Under The Skin - a 2013 really weird and unsettling film starring an alien Scarlett Johannssen prowling around Glasgow in a van doing unspeakably horrible things to men she entices into her Transit van.

And starting on Film 4 in about 20 minutes. I'd probably seen it in the listings and it took a few minutes to penetrate to the surface.

(Is the Film 4 schedule the same in all regions? )

[Disembodied]

No takers? There's at least one (relatively) recent blockbuster with a Scottish scene … and of course there's a long-running TV series that has had several Scottish leads, not to mention several episodes set in Scotland.

[spud42]

ultra low fruit...
DR WHO... drs 10 and 12

at least 4 set in scotland or a quick visit to scotland

Also in an episode of Matt no11... the sontaran Strax has a holiday in a glasgow pub, in his own inimitable style...lol

https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-cultu ... nd-4420888

[Disembodied]

ultra low fruit...
DR WHO... drs 10 and 12

at least 4 set in scotland or a quick visit to scotland

Also in an episode of Matt no11... the sontaran Strax has a holiday in a glasgow pub, in his own inimitable style...lol

https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-cultu ... nd-4420888

And that finishes it off! Staying with Doctor Who there's also the Tom Baker story "Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster", as well as the novel (also featuring the fourth Doctor) The Drosten's Curse, which is written by the otherwise quite highbrow literary novelist A. L. Kennedy and is set in Arbroath. The blockbuster movie is Avengers: Infinity War, which kicks off in Edinburgh. Other possible answers could include several novels by Ken MacLeod, as well as a section of M. John Harrison's anti-space opera The Centauri Device.

spud42 takes possession of the Shortbread Tin of Doom …

[ffutures]

Damn - I just realised that I've actually WRITTEN something that would probably qualify - a Forgotten Futures role playing adventure called Free Nessie which is set in and around Loch Ness in the Professor Challenger (Lost World etc.) universe. Oh well, too late now!

https://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff3/

https://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/f ... 3.htm#ad40