SF Quiz Answers
And now the squabbling begins :¬)

Well, if anyone still remembers or cares, anyway. I blame ill health for the delay.

The SFnal gimmick quiz - answers

All comments to original quiz now unscreened, BTW.


Plot Devices

1. A weapon which works by causing fatal accidents to coincidentally happen to the target.
The Lazy Gun, Iain M Banks in Against a Dark Background
2. A green alga-like organism which can regrow missing body parts.
Googoo, Terry Pratchett in The Dark Side of the Sun
3. A simultaneous translator which can speak in rhyming couplets or the accent of your choice.
Kim Stanley Robinson, Green and Blue Mars
4. A wormhole gate which can transmit sound and vision – but not matter – from any known location, including in the past – in other words, a time camera.
Steven Baxter & Arthur C Clarke, The Light of Other Days
5.An instantaneous communicator that includes every message ever sent through it in every single transmission.
James Blish, "Beep" or The Quincunx of Time

Weird mutants

6. The telepath who becomes immortal by successively taking over others' bodies.
Doro, in Octavia Butler's Wildseed and Mind of my Mind
7. An individual whose children become extra bodies for the single, original mind.
Brian Aldiss, "Let's Be Frank", later collected in An ABC of Science Fiction – or online here. Go read it, it's great fun.
8. A mind who, without volition, wakes up in a different body every single day.
Greg Egan, "The Safe-Deposit Box" in Axiomatic
9.The small child who makes bad things happen to anyone who annoys him in any way - including the entire town in which he lives.
 Jerome Bixby, "It's a Good Life". Read it here. EDIT: corrected title
10. A small sentient creature like a cross between a mouse and a beaver, which is a powerful teleporter, telepath and telekinetic. Pucky, by Clark Darlton, in Perry Rhodan #18: The Rebels of Tuglan

Implausible explanations

11. Crop circles are caused by the ground-level re-emergence from hyperspace jumps of spacecraft piloted by hairy spider-like aliens.
Ken McCleod, Engine City
12. A starship, with really big shock absorbers, is propelled by repeatedly exploding hydrogen bombs behind it.
Trick question!
Not science fiction but a serious proposal, the Daedalus Project, from the British Interplanetary Society, based on the USAF's atomic-bomb version, Project Orion.
Why did you have to read it very carefully? Almost no-one did so carefully enough! (Well done steer and drplokta - eventually!) Project Orion was atomic - U-bombs, an unmanned probe; Daedalus was the nuclear version, with H-bombs, intended for manned flight. I did say H-bombs! You all know perfectly well they're not the same. :¬)
And yeah, I'll give points for initiative for Niven & Pournelle's Footfall, but you should have spotted the origin when you read that. I believe they specifically credit it.
13. Travelling faster than light by repeatedly sending a starship through a matter transmitter to its own far end.
Bob Shaw, Who Goes Here?
14. God was brought into existence by linking together all the computers in the universe.
Fredric Brown, "The Answer"
15. God was brought into existence by the merging of humanity and computer intelligences at the heat-death of the previous universe.
Isaac Asimov, "The Last Question"

Odd aliens

16. Toroidal (donut-shaped) organisms which only become intelligent when collected into conical stacks.
The Jophur, David Brin in Brightness Reef/Infinity's Shore/Heaven's Reach
I'd also accept the placid version without "master rings" grafted on, the Traeki. EDIT: corrected; switched them around
17. Mammalian creatures in which groups of four or more share a group mind, transmitted by human-inaudible sub-sound.
The Tines, Vernor Vinge in A Fire Upon the Deep
18. Intelligent human white blood cells.
Greg Bear, Blood Music
19. The distant evolutionary descendant of an electronic pyramid-marketing scheme.
Charles Stross (AKA autopope), Accelerando
20. Large, flying insectile organisms from a low-gravity world with an extreme empathic sense.
Cinrussians, notably Dr Prilicla, from James White's Hospital Station, the first "Sector General" book


Nobody got #3 or #6 right! I am honestly amazed. I didn't think they were that hard.

Some people asked for a recommended reading list. Well, frankly, I enjoyed all of these, that's why they stuck in my mind. I think the only one I couldn't honestly recommend with a straight face today is Perry Rhodan - but I bought the first 50-odd and loved them... when I was about 12. Rollicking good fun.