Oolite Bulletins

Disembodied wrote:

Electromagnetic golf is another favourite sport in this fictional world. Generally speaking, activities are valued for the amount of resources they consume: the more, the better …

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, I think.

Smivs wrote:

I really enjoyed these books.
If I remember correctly they were bred from some sort of lizard which was native to Pern. They could puff fire which they used as a defence against an airbourne threat - some sort of fungus or something.
It's been years since I read these - perhaps I should go fact-check, but somebody else will have answered by then if I did!

The CiSmoFiCo now has anew commander, there is still some evil juice left in the fridge.

I havent read Anne McCaffery for years but i believe they were engineered from what the locals called Fire lizzards. They had the ability to fly and latent telepathy which was enhanced to become the bond of the dragon rider... i believe it was in one of the last books when they found the laboratory under the mountain from the original settlers thousands of years prior. i loved it when i realized that Agenothree was HNO3 or Nitric acid!!!! lol was doing grade 11 chemistry at the time...

Take her away commander

Mmmmm, Evil Juice

OK, which 'classic' sci-fi film ends with these cautionary words?...

the Narrator wrote:

Perhaps on your way home someone will pass you in the dark, and you will never know it, for they will be from outer space. Many scientists believe that another world is watching us at this moment. We once laughed at the horseless carriage, the aeroplane, the telephone, the electric light, vitamins, radio, and even television. And now some of us laugh at outer space. God help us in the future.

Pretty sure that's Plan 9 From Outer Space

OK, let's try one. Which relatively recent British SF novel has a scene in which a gold coin floats on mercury in defiance of physics and chemistry as we know them? (and yes, I'm talking about the element, not the planet)

ffutures wrote:

Pretty sure that's Plan 9 From Outer Space

Might be

<Smivs hastily finishes the Evil Juice, wonders where the fishy-fag coconut thing has gone...>

ffutures wrote:

Pretty sure that's Plan 9 From Outer Space

OK, let's try one. Which relatively recent British SF novel has a scene in which a gold coin floats on mercury in defiance of physics and chemistry as we know them? (and yes, I'm talking about the element, not the planet)

Let's get a little more specific - date of publication is 2010, it's part of a very popular series.

ffutures wrote:

ffutures wrote:

Pretty sure that's Plan 9 From Outer Space

OK, let's try one. Which relatively recent British SF novel has a scene in which a gold coin floats on mercury in defiance of physics and chemistry as we know them? (and yes, I'm talking about the element, not the planet)

Let's get a little more specific - date of publication is 2010, it's part of a very popular series.

And a Scottish author.

would that be Mr Hamilton? no im wrong hes not Scottish...

I keep thinking Surface Detail, but I don't recall a gold coin floating on mercury.


Which reminds me: I recently bought new reading glasses, and I've yet to read The Hydrogen Sonata.

Cody wrote:

I keep thinking Surface Detail, but I don't recall a gold coin floating on mercury.

Surface Detail it is - it's a scene where one of the characters is walking by a mercury stream and tosses in a gold coin, which bobs back to the surface unharmed. Two problems with that - gold reacts with mercury and the surface of the coild would instantly be covered with silver-grey amalgam (like the stuff dentists used to use for fillings), except that you'd never see it because gold is denser than mercury and would sink. And this is set in the real world in the story, not a virtual world - I initially thought it was a subtle clue the whole thing was yet another virtual world, but Banks admitted it was an error.

<steals keys to Cismofico>

The aliens in Life of Brian share a distinctive physical feature with aliens from several 60's sci-fi novels (by the same author) - name their home planet?

Cody wrote:

The aliens in Life of Brian share a distinctive physical feature with aliens from several 60's sci-fi novels (by the same author) - name their home planet?

Trafalmadore?

Tralfamadore, it is - unmistakably Vonnegut. The Cismofico is all yours!

OK … which recent series of SF novels mentions (briefly) an alien race called the Rrrrrr?

Cody wrote:

Which reminds me: I recently bought new reading glasses, and I've yet to read The Hydrogen Sonata.

Curiously enough, I was just looking at The Hydrogen Sonata on my bookcase, and thinking I should read it again...