Oolite Bulletins

Hum … is "JV" Jack Vance? I've been trying to think what TPOF is, but all I can think of is The Palace of Love, which would be TPOL. But there's another Demon Princes novel, The Face, where one character does use a lot of bombs to make a very, very, very large sculpture …

Disembodied wrote: ↑Wed Aug 25, 2021 5:23 pm

Hum … is "JV" Jack Vance? I've been trying to think what TPOF is, but all I can think of is The Palace of Love, which would be TPOL. But there's another Demon Princes novel, The Face, where one character does use a lot of bombs to make a very, very, very large sculpture …

And we have our fifth answer! The Face will do nicely - an excellent example of thinking BIG! when you want to annoy your neighbours. Have a MBP to thank you for finally ending this round! Over to you!

The two examples I gave:

TPOF by JV - The Potters of Firsk is indeed by Jack Vance. The hero, who is a colonist on a primitive planet, gives uranium from a nuclear weapon to the natives so that they can make a perfect yellow glaze for their pots. His boss is not amused...

MJ by FS - Mister Jester by Fred Saberhagen. A Berserker (genocidal alien robot starship) with damaged memories falls into the hands of an anarchic rebel, who convinces it to play an elaborate prank on his planet's government. Features a VERY large ballistic cream pie...

OK, then, in keeping with the last answer: let's have five notable sculptures from science fiction. These should be plot-relevant sculptures/statues (or at least things which people *think* are sculptures or statues); there should be something about them that is important to the story. The simple fact that there's a bust of so-and-so in someone's office would not count.

Usual rules: one per author/universe.

ffutures wrote: ↑Wed Aug 25, 2021 6:25 pm

Disembodied wrote: ↑Wed Aug 25, 2021 5:23 pm

Hum … is "JV" Jack Vance? I've been trying to think what TPOF is, but all I can think of is The Palace of Love, which would be TPOL. But there's another Demon Princes novel, The Face, where one character does use a lot of bombs to make a very, very, very large sculpture …

And we have our fifth answer! The Face will do nicely - an excellent example of thinking BIG! when you want to annoy your neighbours. Have a MBP to thank you for finally ending this round! Over to you!

The two examples I gave:

TPOF by JV - The Potters of Firsk is indeed by Jack Vance. The hero, who is a colonist on a primitive planet, gives uranium from a nuclear weapon to the natives so that they can make a perfect yellow glaze for their pots. His boss is not amused...

MJ by FS - Mister Jester by Fred Saberhagen. A Berserker (genocidal alien robot starship) with damaged memories falls into the hands of an anarchic rebel, who convinces it to play an elaborate prank on his planet's government. Features a VERY large ballistic cream pie...

i thought JV might have been Jules Verne. i found a novel of his "the purchase of the North" yes i mistook the clue as TPON..lol however it fitsa very large canon is built to remove the tilt of the earth.... but it seems im too late... shame that..lol now to rack my poor brain for sculptures in sci fi...

ffutures wrote: ↑Wed Aug 25, 2021 6:25 pm

TPOF by JV - The Potters of Firsk is indeed by Jack Vance. The hero, who is a colonist on a primitive planet, gives uranium from a nuclear weapon to the natives so that they can make a perfect yellow glaze for their pots. His boss is not amused...

I remember seeing uranium glass years ago which was a yellowish-green.

About sculptures, or thought to be sculptures -- the "conduit" in Mass Effect (Mass Effect 1): it was a mysterious entity searched by both the main character (Shepard) and his antagonist (Saren), which turned out to be a pair of "mini" mass effect relays, one of which resting as a "statue" in one of the main public areas of the Presidium on Citadel.
It is definitely important to the story, you can get to the final stages of the game only after using the conduit, i.e. entering the through the mini mass relay on planet Ilos, and exiting through the mini mass relay on the Citadel.

Commander_X wrote: ↑Thu Aug 26, 2021 7:23 pm

About sculptures, or thought to be sculptures -- the "conduit" in Mass Effect (Mass Effect 1): it was a mysterious entity searched by both the main character (Shepard) and his antagonist (Saren), which turned out to be a pair of "mini" mass effect relays, one of which resting as a "statue" in one of the main public areas of the Presidium on Citadel.
It is definitely important to the story, you can get to the final stages of the game only after using the conduit, i.e. entering the through the mini mass relay on planet Ilos, and exiting through the mini mass relay on the Citadel.

The "Relay Monument" from Mass Effect would count. That's one!

Going for the low-hanging fruit again - Weeping Angels from Doctor Who. They look like typical cemetery statues etc. even though they are something else entirely.

ffutures wrote: ↑Thu Aug 26, 2021 8:17 pm

Going for the low-hanging fruit again - Weeping Angels from Doctor Who. They look like typical cemetery statues etc. even though they are something else entirely.

The Weeping Angels definitely count. That makes two. It also rules out other possible Whovian answers, like the Melkur … or even possibly this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EPLY9XG5nU

Disembodied wrote: ↑Fri Aug 27, 2021 12:25 pm

ffutures wrote: ↑Thu Aug 26, 2021 8:17 pm

Going for the low-hanging fruit again - Weeping Angels from Doctor Who. They look like typical cemetery statues etc. even though they are something else entirely.

The Weeping Angels definitely count. That makes two. It also rules out other possible Whovian answers, like the Melkur … or even possibly this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EPLY9XG5nU

Thanks - one of my fanfic ideas I really must use one of these days is a Dr. Who / Harry Potter crossover in which the statue Harry is tied to during Voldemort's resurrection turns out to be a Weeping Angel, Harry ends up in early Edwardian England, and hilarity ensues.

Disembodied wrote: ↑Thu Aug 26, 2021 8:02 pm

The "Relay Monument" from Mass Effect would count. That's one!

There is also another BioWare franchise that exhibits something related with what you'd expect.

In Dragon Age II, in the final battle with the Knight-Commander Meredith at the Gallows, the Gallows statues (Gate Guardians and Slave Statues) are brought to life to fight alongside the Knight-Commander.

Commander_X wrote: ↑Fri Aug 27, 2021 11:23 pm

There is also another BioWare franchise that exhibits something related with what you'd expect.

In Dragon Age II, in the final battle with the Knight-Commander Meredith at the Gallows, the Gallows statues (Gate Guardians and Slave Statues) are brought to life to fight alongside the Knight-Commander.

I don't know Dragon Age, but I don't think I can accept this one - it seems more fantasy than SF. But please correct me if I'm wrong! "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", and so on.

would " the Repairman" by Harry Harrison count?
he is sent to repair a hyperspace beacon which is 2000 years old and finds a race of lizzards who worship it as a religeous monument . they seem to have built a pyramid around it and developed a priesthood. one of whoms actions had caused the beacon to fail.

spud42 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 28, 2021 11:59 am

would " the Repairman" by Harry Harrison count?
he is sent to repair a hyperspace beacon which is 2000 years old and finds a race of lizzards who worship it as a religeous monument . they seem to have built a pyramid around it and developed a priesthood. one of whoms actions had caused the beacon to fail.

Hmm … tricky. The story says the natives saw the beacon as "a shiny metal temple", as opposed to a sculpture or statue. But what the hey: it's Saturday. I'll allow it. That makes three. MBPs, though, will only be dispensed for answers which have some figurative component.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Thu Aug 26, 2021 4:10 pm

ffutures wrote: ↑Wed Aug 25, 2021 6:25 pm

TPOF by JV - The Potters of Firsk is indeed by Jack Vance. The hero, who is a colonist on a primitive planet, gives uranium from a nuclear weapon to the natives so that they can make a perfect yellow glaze for their pots. His boss is not amused...

I remember seeing uranium glass years ago which was a yellowish-green.

I like uranium glass. It suits my personality - somewhat transparent and slightly greenish. I've been trying to find a set of whisky tumblers in it which would give a good spike on the Geiger counter (you do have a Geiger counter in the cellar? Of course you do - no home is complete without one - the family that glows together keeps together. Or, is kept together. Something.) But it's great for offering people drinks in - as you go on about the delicate colour of the glass, it's glow-in-the-dark tendencies (you do have UV floodlights) and how safe it is, the likelihood of them taking any more of your 30 year old Talisker decreases rapidly.

Strangely, after you tell them about the path of the Chernobyl fallout cloud, and that the contents of the glass were probably more radioactive than the glass the had just put down, people tend to back away. I don't understand that. I mean, it's ME doing it - of course it's safe!
Well, reasonably safe.

Sculptures ? ... OK.
In "The Borderlands of Sol", a short-ish story by Larry Niven, later incorporated (from a different viewpoint) as a scene in one of his "Fleet of Worlds" novels (with Ed Lerner, IIRC), the protagonists meet "by accident" in an art gallery, at a "touch sculpture" by a blind alien with a sonar substitute for vision. The tactile sensations of the sculpture are ... disturbing for humans.
That appearence of the sculpture is quite fleeting, but the alien sculptor made it in {thanks / reverence} to one of these protagonists who rescues the alien after it had been ... is "alien-napped" a word? While another one of the protagonists had been the human who made First Contact with this alien's species. So in the wider story arc, the sculpture ties together several disparate elements of "Known Space". Unfortunately, I've forgotten the name of that story.

I think the sculpture was called "Heroes", referring to Beowulf - of the arm-dislocating variety, not the arm-ripping-off variety.