The SFnal gimmick quiz
Nov. 3rd, 2004 03:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lprovenTiring of my ceaseless failure to do anything but abjectly badly in lyrics quizzes, I present a contrast. Here's one for readers of speculative fiction.
Who invented these ideas, gadgets or entities - and where?
Plot Devices
1. A weapon which works by causing fatal accidents to "coincidentally" happen to the target.
2. A green alga-like organism which can regrow people's missing body parts.
3. A simultaneous translator which can speak in rhyming couplets or the regional accent of its user's choice.
4. A wormhole gate which can transmit sound and vision – but not matter – from any known location, including in the past.
5. An instantaneous communicator that includes every message ever sent through it in every single transmission.
Weird mutants
6. The telepath who becomes immortal by successively taking over others' bodies, which they must do every day or so. Further clarification: this one's been around since Egyptian times and despite (or because of) having no genes of their own - their body is long, long gone - they are running a selective breeding programme on humans, cultivating psi.
7. An individual whose children become extra bodies for the single, original mind. One remote descendant becomes a second group mind. Between them, they take over all human life.
8. A mind who, without volition, wakes up in a different body every single day and eventually keeps a diary to assert their individuality.
9. The small child who makes bad things happen to anyone who annoys him in any way (for example, by playing music) - including the entire town in which he lives.
10. A small sentient creature like a cross between a mouse and a beaver, which is a powerful teleporter, telepath and telekinetic.
Implausible explanations
11. Crop circles are caused by the ground-level re-emergence from hyperspace jumps of spacecraft piloted by hairy spider-like aliens.
12. A starship, with really big shock absorbers, is propelled by repeatedly exploding nuclear bombs behind it.
13. Faster-than-light travel can be achieved by repeatedly sending a starship through a matter transmitter to its own far end, many times a second, thus giving all its passengers a constant headache.
14. God was brought into existence by linking together all the computers in the universe. Its first action is to seal the switch shut with a bolt of lightning.
15. God was brought into existence by the merging of humanity and computer intelligences at the heat-death of the previous universe.
Odd aliens
16. Toroidal (donut-shaped) organisms which only become intelligent when collected into conical stacks; their memories are stored externally in waxy secretions.
17. Mammalian creatures in which groups of four or more share a group mind, transmitted by human-inaudible sub-sound.
18. Intelligent human white blood cells.
19. The distant evolutionary descendant of an electronic pyramid-marketing scheme.
20. Large, flying insectile organisms from a low-gravity world with an extreme empathic sense.
I'm looking for pieces of written science fiction, either novels or short stories, including both author and title.
Comments screened until I feel like revealing the answers, in a day or so. Just post a comment, it's easier than a poll this way.
EDIT: a couple of questions clarified slightly to reduce confusion. If it's been done repeatedly, to the best of my knowledge, I'm referring to the first work to use the idea.
Who invented these ideas, gadgets or entities - and where?
Plot Devices
1. A weapon which works by causing fatal accidents to "coincidentally" happen to the target.
2. A green alga-like organism which can regrow people's missing body parts.
3. A simultaneous translator which can speak in rhyming couplets or the regional accent of its user's choice.
4. A wormhole gate which can transmit sound and vision – but not matter – from any known location, including in the past.
5. An instantaneous communicator that includes every message ever sent through it in every single transmission.
Weird mutants
6. The telepath who becomes immortal by successively taking over others' bodies, which they must do every day or so. Further clarification: this one's been around since Egyptian times and despite (or because of) having no genes of their own - their body is long, long gone - they are running a selective breeding programme on humans, cultivating psi.
7. An individual whose children become extra bodies for the single, original mind. One remote descendant becomes a second group mind. Between them, they take over all human life.
8. A mind who, without volition, wakes up in a different body every single day and eventually keeps a diary to assert their individuality.
9. The small child who makes bad things happen to anyone who annoys him in any way (for example, by playing music) - including the entire town in which he lives.
10. A small sentient creature like a cross between a mouse and a beaver, which is a powerful teleporter, telepath and telekinetic.
Implausible explanations
11. Crop circles are caused by the ground-level re-emergence from hyperspace jumps of spacecraft piloted by hairy spider-like aliens.
12. A starship, with really big shock absorbers, is propelled by repeatedly exploding nuclear bombs behind it.
13. Faster-than-light travel can be achieved by repeatedly sending a starship through a matter transmitter to its own far end, many times a second, thus giving all its passengers a constant headache.
14. God was brought into existence by linking together all the computers in the universe. Its first action is to seal the switch shut with a bolt of lightning.
15. God was brought into existence by the merging of humanity and computer intelligences at the heat-death of the previous universe.
Odd aliens
16. Toroidal (donut-shaped) organisms which only become intelligent when collected into conical stacks; their memories are stored externally in waxy secretions.
17. Mammalian creatures in which groups of four or more share a group mind, transmitted by human-inaudible sub-sound.
18. Intelligent human white blood cells.
19. The distant evolutionary descendant of an electronic pyramid-marketing scheme.
20. Large, flying insectile organisms from a low-gravity world with an extreme empathic sense.
I'm looking for pieces of written science fiction, either novels or short stories, including both author and title.
Comments screened until I feel like revealing the answers, in a day or so. Just post a comment, it's easier than a poll this way.
EDIT: a couple of questions clarified slightly to reduce confusion. If it's been done repeatedly, to the best of my knowledge, I'm referring to the first work to use the idea.
