Science Fiction Trivia

[RockDoctor]

name 5 "named" computers. by this i mean are known by this name and not a brand name HAL from 2001 was known by that name and responded to the name even though it was a HAL9000 computer...

Well, since I was rattling around on Pern recently, the name of AIVACS surfaces through the volcanic ashes. (Which was also an acronym - I think for Artificial Intelligence Voice Activated C(ommand ||ontrol) System ; but it was known by the names no less than HAL was)

I'm going to regret this, I think.

[RockDoctor]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000zlqc

Be careful setting up your automatic downloaders - there are 244 of the series ready to come down the pipe at you.

[spud42]

Multivac from Isaac Asimov is acceptable as it evolved over a thosuand years and i believe from memory there was only 1..

Caravaggio in the Starhunter TV series , MBPs for this one as i have never heard of it and had to google it.. not a lot of direct info in the short time i could be bothered to look. but it is described as AI. lets assume that the AI is bound to the hardware its running on so i give it a yes.

that makes 3 and 4....

ok, Pern. now i loved Pern and the Dragon riders. I think a few of these books i actually had to wait to be written and paid for the paperback ( rare for me as i usually got books from the library or second hand book stores) , but i dont remember reading about this computer. i remember them finding the original burried spaceship that the planet was colonised with . By named i was meaning had a personality could be conversed with I.E. like "Close the bomb bay doors HAL." my other concern is that i always thought of the series as fantasy not sci-fi till they jumped to the station and found the ship...lol
after a bit of a search..https://pern.fandom.com/wiki/AIVAS
i concede you the Last point RockDoctor. I have seen the error of my ways and will now have to reread the entire series again.. not a chore really looking forward to it.. i must say that 14 YO me upon reading "Agenothree" immediatly said Nitric Acid!!!

To Rock Doctor goes the 5th and final point as well as the rights to set the next question.

[spud42]

RockDoctor??? hello is anyone here??

[RockDoctor]

RockDoctor??? hello is anyone here??

Sorry, been busy.
Will think of something.
Oh, hang on, I already thought of something, and put some notes for it in my PM-drafts. Back in a minute!

[RockDoctor]

RockDoctor??? hello is anyone here??

OK, I'k not sure if we've used this one already, but I've marked it in my notes this time, so as to not use it again.

Oolite's manual asserts that "You can trust your compass."
But generally you can't - at least not without checking your local geology, or which planet you're on. Or ... well you get the point - compasses are not actually terribly reliable orientation indicators. The legends of OS maps and generations of Geography teachers are a bit optimistic.
It's probably asking a bit much of SF authors to understand well. Arthur C Clarke (with his history of working on direction finding for aircraft) should know, but Iain M.Banks probably not.
Can I have Five SF examples of either a working magnetic compasses as a significant plot point, or of a non-magnetic technology compass-a-like (as a significant plot point).

I mentioned Iain M.Banks, and I'll take the whole of the Culture off the table, because I don't think he ever mentions just how his various protagonists actually know where they are in the galaxy, or which direction they're heading in. And I can't think of any mention of direction-finding when moving around on an Orbital, or even a planet. I think he dodges the whole question.

I do have one example in mind, and there is a TRIPLY Meaningless Bonus Point for finding it. Let's see if you can find more.

For reference, GPS (GLONASS, etc) does not provide direction indicating. Your device has to have a memory, and then compares the position now with that 1 sec/min/hour ago, to get a direction of travel. If your are stationary, that calculation rapidly gives NotANumber results and unrealistic speeds. Some tablets/ mobile phones additionally have a magnetic field sensor which they display as a compass. With all it's inherent issues.

[ffutures]

Not compasses exactly, but the first monolith in 2001 is TMA1 aka Tycho Magnetic Anomoly 1, found by a magnetic field survey of the Moon.

[RockDoctor]

Not compasses exactly, but the first monolith in 2001 is TMA1 aka Tycho Magnetic Anomoly 1, found by a magnetic field survey of the Moon.

Hmmm. Interesting. I hadn't thought of that one.
I was quite particularly thinking about direction-finding technologies (I had had an In Real Life conversation with a friend who still can't use map and compass, and thinks that their phone would be an adequate substitute - for going into an area with neither phone coverage, or anywhere to recharge a phone after the first day's walk?) ... but you know - shouting FIND ME!! does actually fulfil the meaning of a direction-finding technology. So I think I have to accept this one, and a MBP for taking the question in a direction I hadn't thought of.

• 5. ffutures and TMA-1
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[RockDoctor]

Not compasses exactly, but the first monolith in 2001 is TMA1 aka Tycho Magnetic Anomoly 1, found by a magnetic field survey of the Moon.

I'm trying to remember if Discovery (?) also detected a magnetic anomaly on Iapetus, despite relocating it in by a planet. In the book obviously - you wouldn't expect detail like that in the film.

[ffutures]

OK, another one - E.E. Doc Smith's Skylark of Space series had a gadget called an 'Object Compass' - once it is aimed at an object it will always point towards it, regardless of distance. The snag is that measuring the exact direction the thing points in gets really hard over interstellar distances, so in this book and its sequels they experiment with larger and larger versions of the compass, putting the mechanism into vacuum, etc. etc. I think in the last book it's hundreds of kilometres wide.

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

[RockDoctor]

OK, another one - E.E. Doc Smith's Skylark of Space series had a gadget called an 'Object Compass' - once it is aimed at an object it will always point towards it, regardless of distance. The snag is that measuring the exact direction the thing points in gets really hard over interstellar distances, so in this book and its sequels they experiment with larger and larger versions of the compass, putting the mechanism into vacuum, etc. etc. I think in the last book it's hundreds of kilometres wide.

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

Hmmm,Was it a magnetic compass ? Or ..what? I'm trying to find something out of this world, but some sort of vaguely "not here" sense to it. I realise from my faint memories of EE Doc Smith and the like that space operas tend towards hamdwavium-plated unobtanium . . . . but I was looking for some cloaking of real-worldium under the handwavium. If I don't see something better, I 'll have to take this, but with palpable reluctance. Are the unlimited universes of the the imagination so .. well, Maxwellian? I know that's reality but I'm looking for fiction!

[ffutures]

It's definitely handwavium, think of it as high-tech divining if you like.

[RockDoctor]

It's definitely handwavium, think of it as high-tech divining if you like.

If only low-tech divining worked ...

[Cholmondely]

It's definitely handwavium, think of it as high-tech divining if you like.

If only low-tech divining worked ...

Of course it does - all these people bouncing around the country with their divining rods, finding stashes of treasure...

[RockDoctor]

This one seems to have stalled so I'll lay the example I had in mind on the table and see if that shakes up people's mental crockery.

Can I have Five SF examples of either a working magnetic compasses as a significant plot point, or of a non-magnetic technology compass-a-like (as a significant plot point).
...
I do have one example in mind, and there is a TRIPLY Meaningless Bonus Point for finding it. Let's see if you can find more.

In several of the Ringworld books, Niven posits that the structure of the Ringworld includes a "superconducting grid" which controls the Ringworld's "meteor defence" by making the star produce a flare, then lasing that in the X-ray spectrum. That doesn't violate any laws of physics, as far as I know. But a subsidiary use of the grid as postulated by the on-Ring characters was that it would provide a direction-finding field for the Ringworld natives. Which is great, fine and marvellous ... and has a precision of a million square km (a thousand km on a square's side), which would need some sort of additional direction finding for that last Mm to get to your target. I also wonder how a user would identify one "cell" of the grid as distinct from another. But it's a handwavium substitute for a planet's internally generated magnetic field.

There's a hidden assumption in the communal "mind SF-entific" that planets have simple magnetic fields. Which is essentially untrue for Mercury, Venus and Mars, but true for Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus (somewhat messed up by being at 90 degrees to the Solar system's field) and Neptune (present, but not aligned with the planet's rotation axis). (Several smaller bodies have sub-surface conductivity which interact with external fields.) Looking further out, the Galaxy has a magnetic field, but it is far from "simple".