Oolite Bulletins

RockDoctor wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2024 11:03 pm

The film, certainly. I don't recall the book mentioning the nature of the adversary though. Not that I remember much of the book beyond the parody of every boot-camp movie ever.
On which subject, "Aliens" is on the gogglebox.

the cover has bugs all over it....

The historians can’t seem to settle whether to call this one “The Third Space War” (or the “Fourth”), or whether “The First Interstellar War” fits it
better. We just call it “The Bug War” if we call it anything, which we usually don’t, and in any case the historians date the beginning of “war” after the
time I joined my first outfit and ship. Everything up to then and still later were “incidents,” “patrols,” or “police actions.” However, you are just as dead
if you buy a farm in an “incident” as you are if you buy it in a declared war.

Dr. Prilicla from the Sector General series is an acceptable answer. That is the 5th answer so the Chalice is now yours ffutures.

It may need to be seriously decontaminated though. Several Pygmy Marmosets had to be brought in to eat all the locusts. Said mini monkeys did not take up residence in the Chalice as they were removed after ingesting the many fast breeding insects. Unfortunately this ingesting did leave them with a rather bad case of "upset stomach". It cost some extra credits to get Fedoox to take on the shipping assignment given the Chalice's rather odorous nature at the moment.

Nite Owl wrote: ↑Wed Jan 10, 2024 12:46 pm

It cost some extra credits to get Fedoox to take on the shipping assignment given the Chalice's rather odorous nature at the moment.

To misquote ... was it the tagline for Alien? - "In space, nobody can smell your farts!"

OK, in one of my previous questions I asked for shape-changing aliens. This time I'm looking for five examples of HUMANS imitating ALIENS on the alien's worlds, ships, space stations or whatever - by shape changing, makeup, plastic surgery, drugs or whatever else might be needed to convince the aliens that they are part of their own race.

No two from the same source (book series, TV show, whatever) or from the same author in the case of books. And just to state the obvious, I'm NOT looking for examples of humans trying to fool other humans, e.g. by pretending to be Martians or other aliens.

I'll grab it before anyone else comes up with a Star Trek answer: in the Star Trek: TNG episode "First Contact", Riker is surgically altered (i.e. given little forehead lumps) so he can observe the pre-warp civilisation on Malcor III.

In Excession (of the Culture series) by Iain M. Banks, Genar-Hofoen gets to become an Affronter.

Disembodied wrote: ↑Thu Jan 11, 2024 10:50 am

I'll grab it before anyone else comes up with a Star Trek answer: in the Star Trek: TNG episode "First Contact", Riker is surgically altered (i.e. given little forehead lumps) so he can observe the pre-warp civilisation on Malcor III.

That's definitely a good example. Four to go!

Commander_X wrote: ↑Thu Jan 11, 2024 5:11 pm

In Excession (of the Culture series) by Iain M. Banks, Genar-Hofoen gets to become an Affronter.

And that's another good one!

Three to go, and no more Star Trek or Ian M. Banks!

Harry Harrison, Stainless Steel Visions short story titled The Repairman.

took me a while to find this , i remember the story but not where i had read it...

Hyperspace Beacon stops working and our guy gets sent to fix it. Finds a reptilian race has built a pyramid around the beacon and worship it. Some priest broke the thing hence the beacon not working. Repairmans problem is this priest started a war when the holy water stopped flowing.

Repairman has to learn the language and disguise himself as a reptile to gain access to the pyramid, get inside and fix it...

spud42 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 12, 2024 2:01 pm

Harry Harrison, Stainless Steel Visions short story titled The Repairman.

took me a while to find this , i remember the story but not where i had read it...

Hyperspace Beacon stops working and our guy gets sent to fix it. Finds a reptilian race has built a pyramid around the beacon and worship it. Some priest broke the thing hence the beacon not working. Repairmans problem is this priest started a war when the holy water stopped flowing.

Repairman has to learn the language and disguise himself as a reptile to gain access to the pyramid, get inside and fix it...

Another good example, and have a meaningless bonus point for reminding me of a story that made me laugh.

Two to go!

I'm really surprised that nobody has mentioned some fairly obvious ones from books and TV - I can think of at least three others that haven't been mentioned yet.

In "Doctor Who and the Daleks", Ian Chesterton disguises himself as a Dalek. The Doctor and his companions manage to overpower one, open it up, and scoop out the creature inside; Chesterton is able to climb into the casing and, at least to a degree, drive it around.

Disembodied wrote: ↑Thu Jan 18, 2024 10:46 am

In "Doctor Who and the Daleks", Ian Chesterton disguises himself as a Dalek. The Doctor and his companions manage to overpower one, open it up, and scoop out the creature inside; Chesterton is able to climb into the casing and, at least to a degree, drive it around.

That was indeed one of the ones I was particularly thinking of - have an MBP!

One to go! And alas, no more Doctor Who or related fandoms.

Some suggestions

Late 1950s novel by a British author later described as a "Terrorist's Handbook".

Late 1940s to early 1990s novel and story series by an American author with relativistic interstellar travel.

Early 1970s novel with an alien's corpse under human control.

2010s TV series episode - humans impersonate aliens to study their religion.

And there's at least one literary example prior to WW1

A little more on the examples I mentioned:

Late 1950s novel by a British author later described as a "Terrorist's Handbook".
Described as such by Terry Pratchett

Late 1940s to early 1990s novel and story series by an American author with relativistic interstellar travel.
Planets are named after gods.

Early 1970s novel with an alien's corpse under human control.
A very large corpse

2010s TV series episode - humans impersonate aliens to study their religion.
NOT Star Trek or a derivative.

one literary example prior to WW1
Featuring a character who appeared in at least ten novels