Science Fiction Trivia

[MrFlibble]

Well, before reading the rest of the replies (I see another page worth), two come to mind. But I'll check for poisoned chalice-traps before posting.

Right!

• TV Series (episode accepted as first answer): Commander_X : Stargate SG1, season 6 episode 5, Nightwalkers.
• Film : ffutures : Slither (2006)
• Radio Series : Disembodied : Welcome to Our Village, Please Invade Carefully
• Book : ffutures : Lagoon (2014) by Nnedi Okorafor (allowing the stretch to an entire country)

That's four.

I did originally say that due to not having an answer for stage myself, and discounting Rocky Horror as an isolated property rather than a community...

So I am compelled to provisionally accept two from any ONE other category, but any such second answer will be knocked-out if a suitable answer for stage is presented before we reach the five.

So now, I seek one in stage, OR one in any of those categories.

I'll read on...

Film : "Cowboys and Aliens", starring Indiana Jones, Han Solo and Jimmy Bond, with some of the crew from Carry On Cowboy (maybe only in the scriptwriter's department).

Yep. That'll do!

Oh wait.. there's more.

Book and film : "The Midwich Cuckoos" by John Wyndham. Not sure if this ever made it to the radio, but given that several of his other books were done by Auntie, I wouldn't be surprised.

Loved a bit of Wyndham when I was a kid. Still remember the great (IMHO) BBC TV series of Day of the Triffids involving guns with projectiles that would have given Pythagoras a fuzzy moment.

According to  The_Midwich_Cuckoos, this fails under my guidelines for Book and Radio as it is available in other forms. It might fail as film too since it had a different title: "Village of the Damned", very arguable!. BUT It does qualify as a TV series.

Could you consider "ET" as an "invasion movie"? Never seen it myself (why would I?), but from the unavoidable clips, the X-files contingent were trying to keep the incursion localised and under wraps. And if you'll swallow that, then probably the whole of the X-files falls in that category too. (Ditto : never seen more than clips.)

Consideration lead me to this:- It is a very localised invasion, but I'd probably land on the side of no to it impacting a community per-se. I''d argue that a single alien causing inconvenience to, for the most part, one household, would not qualify for the same reason I'd ruled out Rocky Horror.

Now, checking the other replies ...
Ohhh, sound-effect : JAWS theme. The chalice awaits.

The chalice is yours. Handle with care.

These are some from my list:

• Radio : Welcome to Our Village, Please Invade Carefully (Props to Disembodied for calling this too).
• Book : All Flesh is Grass (Clifford D. Simak)
• TV : Under the Dome
• Film : The Andromeda Strain

I haven't seen "Under the Dome", possibly for the best.
I nearly included "Batteries not Included", "Third Rock", and "Coneheads" but they would have failed the Dr. Frank N. Furter razor of "not quite a community".

Your chalice:-

[RockDoctor]

Eeek ! a chalice! What're you trying to do? Kill me?

From my folder of ideas, I don't think we've used this one before :

[*] From the SpamAssassin award of an (armour-plated?) cummerbund ... Assassination techniques used in SF.

I'll rule out the vulgarly inefficient (destroying a planet to get the guy who took your place in the "Tax Payment" queue) because that would rapidly escalate into territory recently explored (spectacular suicides). And "posting an inhumation contract on the non-GalCop bulletin board" is also too indirect and self-referential.

Examples where the assassination technique is appropriate to the victim are to be encouraged, but it's not essential. So "Rev.Green battered to death with a Bible in the library" would be preferred over "Rev.Green, with a uranium fuel element, in the engine room".

Suitably elaborated, the "Cluedo" prial of "who, with what implement, where" would be the minimal elements necessary. Having just typo-ed "eelements" for "elements", there are MBPs available for people who can work out an assassination method involving eels as an essential component.
Not knowing the DC universe, I wonder if anyone has ever tried to kill Poison Ivy with, uh, poison ivy. If that's even possible.

[spud42]

How does andromeda strain count as an alien invasion?
It was a virus/ biological disease we brought back to earth on a scoop mission.
It was also a better book first, although it was the best adaption to film of ANY of his books...

[MrFlibble]

How does andromeda strain count as an alien invasion?
It was a virus/ biological disease we brought back to earth on a scoop mission.
It was also a better book first, although it was the best adaption to film of ANY of his books...

Apologies for my fuzzy memory of a film I'd seen once over 20 years ago. I should have checked.

Of course you're right. The alien threat was "brought in", so not an invasion.

Fortunately, all five podia had feet upon them, so I can hide under a table now.

[ffutures]

Larry Niven, The Hole Man (1974) -Captain Childray, killed by Andrew Lear with a micro black hole, in an alien base on Mars. Collateral damage, eventually the whole of Mars, probably in 40 or so years.

A scientific team finds an alien base on Mars. Scientist Andrew Lear believes that a machine in the base is a communication system, using gravity waves, and guesses that there is a micro black hole somewhere in the machine. Childray, captain of the expedition, really doesn't like him and says he's wrong. Their emnity escalates after Lear's carelessness nearly causes his own death, so that Childray no longer trusts him. Eventually Lear "accidentally" releases the micro black hole after Childray taunts him and demands that he shows it. The hole goes straight through Childray leaving a lethal trail of tidal damage, and down into the core of Mars. Lear claims it was an accident, the only witness believes he knew exactly what he was doing.

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

[RockDoctor]

Larry Niven, The Hole Man (1974) -Captain Childray, killed by Andrew Lear with a micro black hole, in an alien base on Mars. Collateral damage, eventually the whole of Mars, probably in 40 or so years.

A scientific team finds an alien base on Mars. Scientist Andrew Lear believes that a machine in the base is a communication system, using gravity waves, and guesses that there is a micro black hole somewhere in the machine. Childray, captain of the expedition, really doesn't like him and says he's wrong. Their emnity escalates after Lear's carelessness nearly causes his own death, so that Childray no longer trusts him. Eventually Lear "accidentally" releases the micro black hole after Childray taunts him and demands that he shows it. The hole goes straight through Childray leaving a lethal trail of tidal damage, and down into the core of Mars. Lear claims it was an accident, the only witness believes he knew exactly what he was doing.

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

An excellent example.
I recently encountered a paper - probably in my daily "new papers" email from the Arχiv - on the consequences of a microscopic (asteroidal mass) black hole impacting the Sun. It would seem that the ideas Niven was pursuing on Mars in that story are still subjects of genuine debate. Niven, in the closing paragraphs of that story debated the time-scale of the inevitable swallowing of Mars by the black hole. Turns out the time scale was probably a bit longer than Niven envisaged (but his bet has more hedges than Hampton court).
The "recently" was January this year. They looked at an asteroid mass BH hitting the Sun, and the effects on the Sun's inner and external states. (Niven's BH was housed in a structure with impressively chunky build, so it massed hundreds of thousands of tonnes, for a very small asteroid (say a few km diameter) ; comparable. How they presented their findings were some interesting time-evolution diagrams. Kippenhahn diagrams, with different structures radially on the vertical axis, and time on the horizontal axis.

In simple terms, the black hole accretes very slowly while it is (literally) atomic scale. But it's accretion disc converts mass-absorbed into energy fairly efficiently (a few %). So although fusion stops relatively early in the core (order of current Sun age), energy production continues comparably, to support the weight of the star against gravity. That energy flows out, and by the time it gets to the surface we'd probably not be able to tell, today, if the early Sun had swallowed a "primordial" black hole. (The modern universe has no regions where such a small black hole could be formed, so they are presumed to pre-date the cosmic microwave background, a.k.a. "primordial".) The black hole accretion energy replaces the fusion energy as the core is eaten. (I hypothesise that you might be able to tell there's something awry by some detailed astroseismology, but that's my inner geologist grasping a familiar tool.)
Since Mars has a lot less mass than the Sun (order of 10-million-fold, but I should check that), the density in it's core will be lower (only about 7-8 times that of our normal pressure water, versus several hundred times that of water) and the accretion rate of the (primordial) asteroid-mass black hole correspondingly slower. It's a toss up if we'd be able to detect a BH that was eating the Sun from inside, today ; Mars would last until well after the Sun goes red giant before succumbing to it's inner "hole".
And His Larryness didn't know that when he wrote the story, pushing 60 years ago.
Somehow, I don't think that he'll be rushing to the revision typewriter.
To be fair, we don't know that either - this is a model of the behaviour of a hypothetical object that would be hard to differentiate from a normal star. Until it switched off.
I'm going on, but I like the idea of eating a planet from the inside. I always have, and I see that other people share that fascination.
Next spectacular assassination method, please. And many MBPs to ffutures for an idea I love.

(Small revision : I ran the numbers for the paper's black holes past my inner digit-counter. I think they're talking about an asteroid-Belt mass BH, a Ceres-mass BH, and a (searches memory for appropriate asteroid) Pallas-mass BH. From them having classical names, you can tell these are pretty big asteroids - a lot larger than Niven's example. The consequences on his ease of sleep remain unlikely to change.

[RockDoctor]

Nobody else coming back on SF assassination techniques.
I mention, to take the off the table, almost anything proposed by the CIA against Castro - somehow, I don't think the CIA were seriously trying with the exploding cigars and the neurotoxin-sweating inner thigh of a dusky maiden.
But surely someone can find something from the Star Trek Universe, directed to, from, or adjacent to Cap'n Kirk?
Likewise, all those Marvellous DC Superheroes must have spawned a few good assassination attempts. Black Widows in Peter Parker's lunch box. Octopodial assassin in his calamari?

[ffutures]

Deadpool with a katana, wiping out everyone in the Marvel Universe and other universes and probably eventually the "real world" since he actually knows he's a fictional character and can easily step into our world.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadpool# ... l_Universe

In the storyline Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe, the X-Men send Deadpool to a mental hospital for therapy. The doctor treating him is actually Psycho-Man in disguise, who attempts to torture and brainwash Deadpool into becoming his personal minion. The procedure fails but leaves Deadpool even more mentally unhinged, erasing the "serious" and "Screwball" voices in his head and replacing them with a voice that only wants destruction. Under "Evil Voice's" influence, Deadpool develops a more nihilistic world view and as a result, after killing Psycho-Man by repeatedly smashing him against a desk, (and after he burns the hospital by using gasoline) he begins assassinating every superhero and supervillain on Earth, starting with the Fantastic Four and even killing the Watcher, in an apparent attempt to rebel against his comic book creators. The book ends with him breaking into the "real" world and confronting the Marvel writers and artists who are writing the book. He says to the reader that once he is done with this universe, "I'll find you soon enough."

Published in 2012

[hiran]

How about the sticky black hole in Roger Rabbit?


It's similar to this one:
https://youtu.be/P5_Msrdg3Hk?feature=shared

edit: there you go
https://youtu.be/4J_eB_ocTCs?feature=shared

[RockDoctor]

Deadpool with a katana, wiping out everyone in the Marvel Universe and other universes and probably eventually the "real world" since he actually knows he's a fictional character and can easily step into our world.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadpool# ... l_Universe

Well that sounds like fun!
And this

the X-Men send Deadpool to a mental hospital for therapy.

Sounds like some serious pot-calling-the-kettle-blackery. It's almost enough to make you want to start reading comics again, after a 40 year lay-off.

Published in 2012

And not filmed yet? This could ... is "resurrect" the right word? ... the whole Marvel Universe. For me.

First and second podia are occupied by ffutures, killing off an annoying martinet, and a bunch of self-obsessed narcissists with a black hole and a katana respectively.

[RockDoctor]

How about the sticky black hole in Roger Rabbit?


https://youtu.be/4J_eB_ocTCs?feature=shared

Oh, that's sweet.
It has been so long since I saw Bob Hoskins playing it straight - instead of his normal (?) comedian gangster, I'd forgotten the gory details.

But, for clarity, are we talking about the pocketable black hole (which the policeman gets his hand back out of - not particularly threatening), whoever the deceased under the Acme Safe was, or the shoe (gum shoe?) who got picked up by the Big Black Glove of Doom, and Dipped into the Dip?

Those black rubber gloves have a special place in my memory. Not a nice place. They'd start off the shift fitting with a satisfying "snap", but after 8 hours of going in and out of witch's brews like this turpentine/ acetone / benzene "Dip" (or my personal inflammatory dermatitis trigger, hexadec-1-ene, a.k.a. "Ultidrill") they'd ... "distend" (a good, definitely icky, word ; you'd want to "double-glove") into bovine gynaecology gloves fitting loosely at the armpit.

Memo to self - next time Roger Rabbit is on telly, record it. File under "Horror, Cartoon, Sex".

And Mr Green ascends to take the third podium, with whichever one of the Toon devices he fits into the frame with all the justice of Sam Spade being Judge, Jury, Executioner and (inevitably, to avoid witnesses and questions) grave digger.

Obligatory "Rainy_San_Francisco_Night.MOV ; FADE TO BLACK ; run credits"

[ffutures]

OK, low hanging fruit. I'll go for a Time Travelling Terminator with a shotgun / machine gun / etc. but NOT a phase plasma rifle in Los Angeles in the Terminator franchise. Numerous attempts to kill John Connor, Sarah Connor, etc. which failed, but an impressive amount of collateral damage including numerous deaths.

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

https://youtu.be/tYc2jQaM8gM?si=tR8fJLV-MEKrJ7A2

I'll be back...

[RockDoctor]

And that's ffutures on first, second and fourth podia, with Mr_Green on third.
Is everybody else on holiday?

[Cholmondely]

Not at all.

We're just terrified of the consequences if we happen to win....

[RockDoctor]

We're just terrified of the consequences if we happen to win....

Well, I suppose I could offer a peek at my collection of a half-dozen ideas for SFT challenges. But then I'd have to think up some more.

Check your PM box.