Science Fiction Trivia

Off topic discussion zone.

Moderators: winston, another_commander, Cody

User avatar
Cholmondely
Archivist
Archivist
Posts: 5785
Joined: Tue Jul 07, 2020 11:00 am
Location: The Delightful Domains of His Most Britannic Majesty (industrial? agricultural? mainly anything?)
Contact:

Re: Science Fiction Trivia

Post by Cholmondely »

Clym is perfectly British!
Comments wanted:
Missing OXPs? What do you think is missing?
Lore: The economics of ship building How many built for Aronar?
Lore: The Space Traders Flight Training Manual: Cowell & MgRath Do you agree with Redspear?
User avatar
Wildeblood
---- E L I T E ----
---- E L I T E ----
Posts: 2648
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2011 6:07 am
Location: Nova Hollandia
Contact:

Re: Science Fiction Trivia

Post by Wildeblood »

spud42 wrote: Fri Mar 28, 2025 2:07 pm
The stargate one seems a bit tenuous.
Cholmondely hit the nail on the head. So that makes 3.
Cholmzberger gave the first answer, too. That makes 4, not 3.
"There are large, white swans, and there are small, black swans," he explained, "But there are no medium-sized swans, and there are no grey swans. The non-existence of grey swans mitigates against belief in Mr Darwin's theory."
User avatar
spud42
---- E L I T E ----
---- E L I T E ----
Posts: 1599
Joined: Wed Mar 26, 2014 10:11 am
Location: Brisbane,Australia

Re: Science Fiction Trivia

Post by spud42 »

i sit corrected... 4 down the nest sucker gets the chalice... poison optional.
Arthur: OK. Leave this to me. I'm British. I know how to queue.
OR i could go with
Arthur Dent: I always said there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe.
or simply
42
User avatar
spud42
---- E L I T E ----
---- E L I T E ----
Posts: 1599
Joined: Wed Mar 26, 2014 10:11 am
Location: Brisbane,Australia

Re: Science Fiction Trivia

Post by spud42 »

lets speed this up a bit..
a couple of clues and there are many clues available
British author PFH
STNG enemy "species
Arthur: OK. Leave this to me. I'm British. I know how to queue.
OR i could go with
Arthur Dent: I always said there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe.
or simply
42
User avatar
ffutures
---- E L I T E ----
---- E L I T E ----
Posts: 2219
Joined: Wed Dec 04, 2013 12:34 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: Science Fiction Trivia

Post by ffutures »

My guess would be Peter F Hamilton - the trouble is that I more or less gave up on him when his books began to be longer than Tom Clancy's. At a guess, Misspent Youth, which is a stand-alone novel about a rejuvenation process. Or it might be something in one of his space opera series, but I have no idea which one.
User avatar
RockDoctor
---- E L I T E ----
---- E L I T E ----
Posts: 844
Joined: Sat May 01, 2010 9:05 pm
Location: Scotland

Re: Science Fiction Trivia

Post by RockDoctor »

spud42 wrote: Thu Mar 06, 2025 12:23 pm
not my first rodeo... i survived cyclonr tracey darwin christmas 1974.... we just had the 50 year anniversary and lets just say the cyclone monument? memorial? display? whatever it is was an insult. looked like it had nothing to do with darwin or the cyclone... it looks like a tree fro "The Lorax"

ok give me a bit and i will dredge up a question....
I'm trying to remember if Darwin experienced a cyclone? (Darwin as in "Beagle", not Darwin as in "people complain about the mayor.") IIRC, they got through the Magellan Straits (var : "Beagle Channel") without undue horrors. Not that you'd try going through in a sail boat if the weather looked dodgy. Awfy hard rocks for wooden hulls. And I can't remember reports of any other significant weather. Not that Darwin would have kept contact with his lunch on a summer afternoon mill pond - notoriously not endowed with sea legs.
--
Shooting aliens for fun and ... well, more fun.
"Speaking as an outsider, what do you think of the human race?" (John Cooper Clark - "I married a Space Alien")
User avatar
RockDoctor
---- E L I T E ----
---- E L I T E ----
Posts: 844
Joined: Sat May 01, 2010 9:05 pm
Location: Scotland

Re: Science Fiction Trivia

Post by RockDoctor »

spud42 wrote: Mon Apr 14, 2025 11:58 am
lets speed this up a bit..
a couple of clues and there are many clues available
British author PFH
STNG enemy "species
Taking "PFH" as an understandable misspelling for Iain M Banks, in Excession the ImprobablyNamed GSV, after hearing about the eponymous Excession, dumps most of it's passengers and sets about haring across the galaxy while rebuilding itself using nanobots into a TOTAL SPOILER of a SPOILED SPOILER.
The Culture in general makes a fair amount of use of nanobots, but there's also a lot of "genofixing" for hero-self-repair. Which is really, nanotech downgraded to actual molecules.

When (not if) diabetic glucose monitoring implants are re-engineered to release a psychotropic drug on demand, how will the police detect people carrying drug paraphernalia? Yeah - I know : you have to prove yourself innocent, not "they" have to prove you guilty. As expected.



I note the originator is in Northern Territories, and remember a neighbouring (U.Queensland) researcher who coined "nanobes" for a peculiar lifeform she discovered in oilwell samples, instead of the alternative "nanites" (I think in use at the time) and "nannobacteria" (who allowed that mis-spelling through peer review?) If you follow up on it, you'll see why I remember her as a student.
I've no idea what, if anything, happened to the "nanobes." From the silence, I guess they turned out to be a known - if obscure - fungal life form. Though how they got DNA/ RNA along such fine filaments remains a question.


STNG : aren't the Borg stuffed to the gills (or gill arches - cheekbones, jaws, larynx, etc) with nannites ? (To add to the aplhabet soup of alternatives.)
--
Shooting aliens for fun and ... well, more fun.
"Speaking as an outsider, what do you think of the human race?" (John Cooper Clark - "I married a Space Alien")
User avatar
spud42
---- E L I T E ----
---- E L I T E ----
Posts: 1599
Joined: Wed Mar 26, 2014 10:11 am
Location: Brisbane,Australia

Re: Science Fiction Trivia

Post by spud42 »

i think i will giv it to ffutures.
that was not the book i was thinking off but a 15 minute googling does shoe its the start of the commonwealth books.
PFH doesnt say the rejuvination tech is nano but its hard to see it as not being nano.
I was thinking more of the void trilogy where humans not only have rejuvination but also defensive and offensive capabilities.. ie Aaron and The Courier.. and to the extreme Gore . so ffutures gets the chalice of malice..

not sure about rockdocs IMB references but too late anyway..lol
but yes the other clue was The Borg. they assimilate by injecting the victim with nanites...
Arthur: OK. Leave this to me. I'm British. I know how to queue.
OR i could go with
Arthur Dent: I always said there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe.
or simply
42
Post Reply