- The title of George Lucas’ first movie is usually alluded to in all of his other films. What was its title?
- Where was the HAL 9000 computer developed, according to the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey?
A) University of Illinois-Urbana
B) Virginia Polytechnic Institute
C) University of California-Los Angeles
D) Massachusetts Institute of Technology
E) Steve Jobs’ garage - The laissez-faire capitalist bad guy in The Fifth Element, played by Gary Oldman, is Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Who?
- A For Andromeda was a collaboration between John Elliot and this controversial British astronomer.
- Who coined the term “robot,” based on the Czech word “robotnik,” slave?
- In one of his short stories Isaac Asimov described a world surrounded by 6 stars. With so many stars, one of them is almost always in the sky, and night comes but once in a thousand years. What would a people do, upon their first sighting of thousands of points of light in the sky? In which 1941 story did Asimov attempt to answer this question?
- Who was the pilot of Fireball XL5?
- The couplet “They ride the sky-train SHENSHI from Azul to Santa Beth. The driver’s name is Silver and the fireman’s name is Death” starts the first book of what unusual series?
- Brian Aldiss’ short story “Super Toys Last All Summer Long” was the inspiration for what Kubrick/Spielberg film?
- In Star Wars, which character was originally going to be a “huge green-skinned guy with no nose and large gills”?
(Answers below the fold)
- THX-1138
- A) University of Illinois-Urbana
- Zorg
- Fred Hoyle
- Karel Capek, in his 1921 play, “R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots)”
- “Nightfall”
- Colonel Steve Zodiac
- Michael G Coney’s “Song of Earth” series, consisting of The Celestial Steam Locomotive, The Gods of the Greataway, Fang the Gnome and King of the Scepter’d Isle.
- A.I.
- Han Solo