Trivia Thursday


  1. Which of the following have not been adapted from a Heinlein story:
    A) Destination Moon
    B) The Abyss
    C) The Brain Eaters
    D) Starship Troopers
  2. Firemen no longer put out fires; they start them, for the purpose of burning books. The title refers to the temperature at which paper will catch fire. Name this Ray Bradbury classic.
  3. What is the name of the villain in the silent movie classic Metropolis?
  4. In this 1950’s movie, the creature is trapped in a Coney Island amusement park near a roller coaster and shot with a radioactive isotope.
  5. What term, derived from an influential novel by Alvin Toffler, describes the psychological impact of technology on society?
  6. Guy Williams, who played Professor John Robinson on Lost In Space, also played what Disney hero?
  7. Name the main character in Greg Bear’s Moving Mars.
  8. On the 1978 sitcom Quark, what was Adam Quark’s profession?
  9. What is the southern counterpart to the Aurora Borealis?
  10. In Samuel R. Delany’s tale of the far future the nonhuman inhabitants of Earth mine the mythologies of the ancient past in search of meanings appropriate to their own existence; the hero must undertake an Orphean quest into the underworld of the collective unconscious, confronting its archetypes. Name it.

(Answers below the fold)

  1. B) The Abyss. If you picked C) The Brain Eaters, this 1950’s schlock movie was a direct rip-off of Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters. Heinlein sued and settled out of court for the removal of his name and certain identifiable material from the movie.
  2. Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
  3. Rotwang (in our opinion, one of the best-ever names for a villain).
  4. The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
  5. Future Shock
  6. Zorro
  7. Casseia Majumdar
  8. Garbage collector
  9. Aurora Australis
  10. The Einstein Intersection