Science Fiction Trivia

[Cholmondely]

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".

No idea about answers for the quiz question, but an interesting snippet. Thank you for explaining...

[RockDoctor]

Cursed reality is so boring compared to the worlds of the imagination. The problem - for the direction-finding problem, is that there aren't a lot of choices for long-range communication. EM (light, magnetic fields) will give you a direction or an orientation, but things like gravity will only (if I understand the physics correctly) will give you a distance - unless you can measure the arrival time at two or more places. The weak and strong forces are inherently short range. And then ... you're down to reaching in to the magic hat and pulling out a "grid under the universe" (since I've just finished a Culture book). Sad

If the communal thinking hat can't come up with any answers over the weekend, I'll administer the captive bolt of Vogonity - in triplicate. Soft peat is ready for the interment and we should get the formalities over with in a mere few decades.

Oh, there's a new idea!

[ffutures]

Does this qualify? In Flatland all Flatlanders experience a slight pull to the south. It's almost as though their world was drawn on a vertical blackboard with gravity pulling them down in that direction. So you can use that to find other directions for navigation.

I wrote a Flatland RPG a few years ago, but unfortunately the part about this isn't in the free version
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/11 ... ened-Remix

The "science" part is in the full version, sold in aid of Doctors Without Borders
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/59 ... aying-Game

[RockDoctor]

Does this qualify? In Flatland all Flatlanders experience a slight pull to the south. It's almost as though their world was drawn on a vertical blackboard with gravity pulling them down in that direction. So you can use that to find other directions for navigation.

Is that Abbott's (?) Flatland? With the teleporting circles as spheres invade Flatland?
Yes, I think that unknown force producing a directionality to the Flatlander's universe would fit. Second place on the leader board for you. Also, I can put away the defibrillation Taser.

Those of us who follow things like New Scientist may remember several efforts over the years to look for a directionality to the distribution of galaxy motions, hot-cold dipoles in the cosmic microwave background, etc, which were hoping to find evidence for a 5-d "brane" universe on top our 4-d space-time.

• 5. ffutures and TMA-1
• 4. ffutures and Flatlander pseudo-gravity
• 3.
• 2.
• 1.

Hang on - are you going for a "World Domination, FAST!" schtick?

[ffutures]

Yes, it was Abbot's Flatland I was referring to.

I'm not trying for world domination, I'm just a very naughty boy

Having said that, does Elite / Oolite's Advanced Space Compass count? Superficially a nice simple bit of kit, but lots of tricks to using it effectively, and real problems if it gets damaged or destroyed, since pilots tend to get really dependent on things like going directly to the station rather than the planet then station.

[Nite Owl]

How about Star Trek's Tricorder?

Spock: Captain, I am detecting <Episode's MacGuffin> approximately 150 meters in that direction.
Kirk: Let's move out. You, unnamed Guy in a Red Shirt, lead the way.

While not a compass in the truest sense of the word it does provide a direction of travel to a specific point.

[RockDoctor]

You know, I rather think ffuture's attempt for World Domination FAST! is going quite well. While the ASC doesn't actually say how it works (and how could it work ? Unless the witchpoint buoy transmits the orbital details of every object of significance and provides one reference point on the plane-of-the-sky, with the star providing the other. In which case ... shouldn't there be a delay on witching-in before the ASC becomes operational ?) So I think we have to accept that one.

Nite Owl however breaks ffutures' run with the tricorder. It's not wlildly hot on directionality - but it's close enough to send a Redshirt in that direction and attract fire for a better direction indicator. So in memory of the Nameless Red Ones, I'll give him the number 2 slot as we creep to the finish line.

• 5. ffutures and TMA-1
• 4. ffutures and Flatlander pseudo-gravity
• 3. ffutures and the ASC
• 2. Nite Owl and the Tricorder/ Redshirt combination.
• 1.

[ffutures]

Talking of world domination... would Magneto's magnetic senses count?

Electromagnetic Sight: By concentrating, Magneto can perceive the world around himself as patterns of magnetic and electrical energy. He can perceive the natural magnetic auras surrounding living beings and percieve their current physical and mental condition.

https://x-men.fandom.com/wiki/Magneto_(Max_Eisenhardt)

[RockDoctor]

Talking of world domination... would Magneto's magnetic senses count?

Electromagnetic Sight: By concentrating, Magneto can perceive the world around himself as patterns of magnetic and electrical energy. He can perceive the natural magnetic auras surrounding living beings and percieve their current physical and mental condition.

https://x-men.fandom.com/wiki/Magneto_(Max_Eisenhardt)

Well done, even if you failed in your WORD DOMINATION FAST mission. I had been thinking of space ships and (galactic) navigation solutions, but Magneto's science-sounding mechanism, that it has both direction and (more noisily) distance. It's good.

What prompted me was somebody having mentioned a story where a crashed spaceship had to decide on a best-outcome probability solution to their "we've crashed" problem, on a tidally locked planet orbiting a white dwarf ... which situation would have been evident within a few minutes of examining the environment. But how did the AI crew know that there were no outposts of their civilisation in the galaxy they had crashed in?

Well, here's your chalice ; here's your poison. Pour away and bring us your Socratic question.

[ffutures]

OK, we've had space travel and time travel, let's try some dimensional travel.

To make this more interesting, I'm looking for SF in which dimensional travel is public knowledge in at least one of the worlds affected, bonus points if multiple worlds have public awareness of it, and it's routine and part of their economies etc., or for finding a loophole I've missed.

For example, the Stargate SG-1 universe has dimensional travel via quantum mirrors, but in all of the universes shown it's a military secret, so it would not be eligible. The Star Trek universe has a "mirror universe" where Spock has a beard and everything is horrible, but again not many people know about it, since it's one of the byproducts of the "temporal cold war"; again, it would not be eligible. And since I'm only accepting one answer per fictional universe (counting all of the parallels of any given universe as part of the universe for this purpose) Stargate and Star Trek are no longer eligible.

[Disembodied]

OK, we've had space travel and time travel, let's try some dimensional travel.

To make this more interesting, I'm looking for SF in which dimensional travel is public knowledge in at least one of the worlds affected, bonus points if multiple worlds have public awareness of it, and it's routine and part of their economies etc., or for finding a loophole I've missed.

Charles Stross's Merchant Princes series would fit the bill, I think.

[ffutures]

OK, we've had space travel and time travel, let's try some dimensional travel.

To make this more interesting, I'm looking for SF in which dimensional travel is public knowledge in at least one of the worlds affected, bonus points if multiple worlds have public awareness of it, and it's routine and part of their economies etc., or for finding a loophole I've missed.

Charles Stross's Merchant Princes series would fit the bill, I think.

Yes, that works, and there's knowledge about it in at least two of the worlds so have a meaningless Bonus Point for that, and another for the very lucrative drug smuggling business that funds things.

Four to go!

[RockDoctor]

Charles Stross's Merchant Princes series would fit the bill, I think.

Actually, that's exactly the one that came to my mind - and which I dismissed when I re-read the "public knowledge" stipulation. Unless you and I have very different meanings of "public".
In the "Earth-Zero" universe (where the protagonist woman - a journalist IIRC - found the "jump symbol" in Mr McGuffin's notes), the knowledge was highly restricted. IIRC (I've read, and then given away, the books) in later books, "jumping" became a weapon of war between "Earth-Zero" and "Earth-One", but I very much got the idea that the "what" and "how" remained very restricted knowledge on Earth-Zero.
At an intermediate point in the saga, IIRC, the protagonists were trying to escape Earth-One for Earth-Zero, but couldn't find the right "jump-symbols" while travelling through peasant-farmed New England - suggesting at least that the peasantry really didn't know how their literal Lords and Masters got at least some of their money. The peasants knew fine-well where some of the goodies came from - out of their cellars, at sword-point.

Neither of those sounds to me much like "public knowledge" to me. Certainly, since the "materials" needed were just geometric patterns, the knowledge of "what" and "how" was much more restricted than (say) the modern knowledge of how to build a thermonuclear weapon is distributed in our society. We don't do "security through obscurity" on nukes on Earth(-Zero), we do it primarily by control of access to materials. Hello, Iran and DPRK ; Pakistan and India have escaped the straight jacket.

I'm not trying to shoot Disembodied in the back. It's a straight-in-the-eye shot at the meaning of "public" knowledge in this question.

I'll place my marker with Dr Who's interdimensional travel in his Time And Relative Dimensions In Space craft (my emphasis), particularly during the early1970s, when every pop-up of the Doctor, Silurians, Daleks and whatever else was publicised by U.N.I.T's crack team of camouflage-clad publicists bringing it to the attention to the Great Unwashed. They even set up YouTube to publicise the demolition of the Post Orifice Tour by the Master in his Kitten Kong persona ... oh, maybe my memory is getting a bit clouded.

Did the Doctor ever take on the Great Unwashed? I don't remember it so, but it may never have got beyond some of Douglas Adams' more beer-soaked coasters.

Another Charlie Stross-ism involving multiple dimensions, and a severe restriction of "public" knowledge would be the Laundryverse - where the main purpose of the Laundry is to stop the public from knowing about the rest of the universe, and most specifically CASE NIGHTMARE RAINBOW.

[ffutures]

My feeling on this one is that a few books into the Merchant Princes series the USA has become a police state because of the dimensional travellers, so knowledge is fairly general in that world. In the Merchant world information was more restricted, but dimensional travel was the foundation of their power base and finances until getting away from the nuclear war on terrorism became more important, and once that starts there's nobody left in that world who isn't aware that something pretty terrifying is going on - they may not understand it since the tech level is medieval outside the families, but any survivors sure as hell know that something has gone pear-shaped. So we definitely have public knowledge in the USA, and some idea that something like an alien invasion is taking place in the original worlds the Merchants came from, so I think it does qualify.

If we hadn't already had the Merchant Princes I would have accepted the Laundryverse, again a few books down the series when things have gone irretrievably pear-shaped, there's been an abortive and very public interdimensional invasion, and the New Management has taken over.

Doctor Who is a bit iffy because there seems to be a general erasure of public knowledge of time travel etc. in effect - we see it again and again with nobody thinking clearly about numerous alien invasions etc. Having said that, there does appear to be some permanent public awareness in the universe that the New Who Cybermen originally came from, with an ongoing resistance movement that didn't just quietly vanish once the threat was gone and eventually sends Rose and others to handle a later interdimensional threat. There seem to be other patches of awareness, especially in the vicinity of the Cardiff Rift. So I think I can accept it, with the proviso that knowledge is readily available if you look for it but not something that gets talked about much in that universe.

That's two answers, and have a Meaningless Bonus Point for a good argument.

[Disembodied]

Depending on your definition of "dimensional" … if it includes alternate timelines, then William Gibson's novels The Peripheral and Agency might count. In the post-jackpot* future (from our perspective), "continua enthusiasts" can interact with computer systems in their past, creating alternate timeline "stubs". It's a rich man's hobby.


*The Peripheral, William Gibson, 2014:

No comets crashing, nothing you could really call a nuclear war. Just everything else, tangled in the changing climate: droughts, water shortages, crop failures, honeybees gone like they almost were now, collapse of other keystone species, every last alpha predator gone, antibiotics doing even less than they already did, diseases that were never quite the one big pandemic but big enough to be historic events in themselves. And all of it around people: how people were, how many of them there were, how they’d changed things just by being there.