Trivia Thursday


  1. The title of George Lucas’ first movie is usually alluded to in all of his other films. What was its title?
  2. 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
  3. The laissez-faire capitalist bad guy in The Fifth Element, played by Gary Oldman, is Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Who?
  4. A For Andromeda was a collaboration between John Elliot and this controversial British astronomer.
  5. Who coined the term “robot,” based on the Czech word “robotnik,” slave?
  6. 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?
  7. Who was the pilot of Fireball XL5?
  8. 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?
  9. Brian Aldiss’ short story “Super Toys Last All Summer Long” was the inspiration for what Kubrick/Spielberg film?
  10. 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)

  1. THX-1138
  2. A) University of Illinois-Urbana
  3. Zorg
  4. Fred Hoyle
  5. Karel Capek, in his 1921 play, “R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots)”
  6. “Nightfall”
  7. Colonel Steve Zodiac
  8. 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.
  9. A.I.
  10. Han Solo