Elims of the quiz conducted on 26/9/2021 as part of the BCQC September Opens covering science and speculative fiction.

1. Sci-Qi
A science and speculative fiction quiz
Mohit Karve

2. Elimination round
• 20 one-point questions
• 5 two-point questions at the end (will remind about this after Q20)
• Sudden death from question #1 to pick finalists in case of ties

3. 1
• The character _______ _______ first made an appearance in a
concept album about an alien rock star who is sent to Earth to save it
from an apocalypse. He is assisted by the Spiders from Mars on his
mission. He is hailed as a saviour and amasses a huge fan following.
• Overcome by the luxuries that he receives, he loses sight of his
mission and ends up being torn apart and killed during a stage
performance.
• What character am I talking about?

4. • Ziggy Stardust, David
Bowie's alter ego in the
early 1970s.
• No points for David Bowie

5. 2
• Some "facts" about this device:
• Unpatented
• Hidden in a photo frame
• Wrist mounted
• Susceptible to low-wavelength visible range EM radiation
• What device?

6. • Invisibility device from Mr.
India

7. 3
• The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, or linguistic relativity, posits that the
language one speaks constrains one's perception and thoughts. This
is a key idea in the Ted Chiang short story "The Story of Your Life",
where humanity makes contact with a race of aliens whose language
allows them to perceive time non-linearly.
• What was the name of the Amy Adams starring movie adaptation
of this story?

8. • Arrival

9. 4
• The series revolves around the adventures of a super-soldier,
considered to be an orphan. As he travels through space and time
hunting down twelve fugitives, he learns that he is the son of a human
scientist and an alien from the seventh dimension. The leader of the
aliens (Black Shadow) sent his daughter to seduce the scientist, but
she fell for him instead.
• Perhaps due to the interspecies pairing, the child's appearance was
very similar to the father. In the present, the super-soldier must find a
way to travel to the seventh dimension and defeat Black Shadow.
• What series?

10. • Captain Vyom
• The character of his
father Om is also
played by Milind
Soman.

11. 5
• While he had dabbled in writing books and comics, he first got
significant attention for "The Egg," a story about a man who dies and
learns that he will be reincarnated as every living thing in the universe.
• He serialised his next story ___ _______ online, and then sold it as an
ebook for just 99 cents. It became a bit of a sensation, turning into a
properly published book and eventually a movie.
• What is this book/movie?

12. • The Martian, by AndyWeir

13. 6
• Exploring themes of eugenics and genetic discrimination, _________
was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction and a
Golden Globe for Best Original Score.
• In the story, ________ is the name of an aerospace conglomerate
where the protagonist wants to fulfil his dream of going to space.
• _________ is actually a reference to the four nucleobases of DNA
(guanine, adenine, thymine, and cytosine).
• What movie (same blank everywhere)

14. • Gattaca

15. 7
• Master Control Program (MCP) was intended as an operating system
of sorts, to oversee all of the other programs in the mainframe. MCP
went rogue and started assimilating other programs to expand its
power over the mainframe. A group of engineers decided that a
security program, _____, was the best chance to rein in MCP and
regain control of the system. They entered the mainframe and freed
______ from MCP's restrictions. ______ was then able to limit MCP's
powers and get the system back to normal operation.
• What is the blank?

16. • Tron

17. 8
• Earth is at risk of creating a doomsday weapon that could destroy the
known universe. When attempts to have a dialogue with the
governments of Earth fail, aliens decide to resurrect Earth's dead as
ghouls. The hope is that the crisis will force Earth to listen to the aliens
and stop development of the weapon.
• This is the plot of what cult classic sci-fi movie?

18. • Plan 9 from Outer Space

19. 9
• Arthur C Clarke's first novel:
• 1948: Published as a novella, "Against the Fall of Night“
• 1953: Expanded and republished as a novel under the same name
• 1956: Expanded, rewritten and published as a novel, __________
• Clarke chose to rewrite his first book to showcase the experience and
skills he had acquired since the original print in 1948.
• The republished book quickly became a definitive must-read in the
field.
• What was this book? (Blank has multiple words)

20. • The City and the Stars

21. 10
• Set in apartheid-era South Africa, "Alive in Joburg" is a 5-minute
mockumentary about alien refugees who reach earth in 1990 and their
interactions with the white and black population of South Africa.
• A lot of the 'interviews' in the mockumentary were actually previously
filmed (real life) clips of South Africans talking about Nigerian and
Zimbabwean refugees.
• The concept of the mockumentary was later expanded into a full-
length movie that was well received.
• What movie?

22. • District 9

23. 11
• The concept itself has existed at least since 1904, in a short story
written by a British soldier.
• While the most well-known use of the concept was not in a sci-fi
context, there have been several memorable sci-fi movies/TV shows
that have used the idea well. Examples include Source Code, Edge of
Tomorrow and Palm Springs.
• What concept is this?

24. • Characters being stuck in a
time loop
• Most famous example is
Groundhog Day

25. 12
• Connect (non-exhaustive) :
• A dead lover's personality aggregated from social media and downloaded
into a new body
• Continuously tracked social scores that are updated after every human
interaction
• A pick-up artist/digital torturer and a husband who disagrees with his wife's
desired abortion discuss men's rights over Christmas
• A post-apocalyptic survivor on the run from an unassuming but deadly
automated drone
• An interactive 'choose-your-own-adventure' story about a guy designing a
'choose-your-own-adventure' story
• A focus-group driven popstar slowly breaks down after a robot version of her
goes to market

26. • Black Mirror

27. 13
• Part sci-fi comedy, part advertisement for Head & Shoulders,
___________ was a humorous adaptation of a sci-fi horror story
written by Don Jakoby.
• A nitrogen based life form lands on earth via a meteorite, rapidly
becoming a major threat to humanity. The aliens are finally defeated
using the shampoo.
• It contains selenium, which is (correctly) hypothesised to be fatal to the
aliens because arsenic is poisonous to carbon based life-forms.
• Nitrogen and selenium have the same relative positioning in the
periodic table as carbon and arsenic.
• What movie?

28. • Evolution

29. 14
• An example of a self-fulfilling prophecy in science fiction, _______
_____ tells the story of a time traveller who sees the apocalypse in the
future.
• The return to the present changes him irrevocably, to the point where
his warnings about the impending doom are ignored and he is
insulted.
• He exacts his revenge by wreaking havoc on the world, creating the
future he saw while time travelling.
• The idea for this came from the feelings inspired by an iconic guitar
riff.
• What are the blanks?

30. • Iron Man (by Black Sabbath)
• Ozzy Osbourne remarked that
the opening riff of the song
sounded like “a big iron bloke
walking about”.The lyrics
were written to fit that.

31. 15
• Adjacent to the Euphrates and Tigris sectors in space, this entity had a
lot of difficulty getting up and running.
• The first three attempts were destroyed in construction, and the fourth
disappeared mysteriously.
• What am I talking about?

32. • Babylon 5
• The city of Babylon was
between the Euphrates
and Tigris rivers in West
Asia.

33. 16
• The franchise has been rebooted a few times.
• Initially, it would have been classified more as a horror story than
science fiction, but the latest versions lean more heavily on the sci-fi
angle, describing ______ as an alternate dimension of reality.
• The plan is to siphon off energy from this alternate dimension to solve
an energy crisis on Earth.
• Things go awry, and the protagonist from the prior editions is revived
to fight back and save the planet.
• What franchise?

34. • Doom,
blank is
hell

35. 17
• Whether X should be classified as science fiction or not depends on
who you ask. Most critics would classify it as such, but the author has
resisted this, insisting that X is 'speculative fiction' instead. X contains
a lot of dystopian sci-fi tropes – over-pollution, radiation fallout, a
globally dwindling population, etc. It even won the very first Arthur C
Clarke award. In that context, the author's rejection of the science
fiction label can be seen as petty and contemptuous.
• A sequel to this book was published in 2019 and won the Booker Prize
for that year.
• What is X and who is the reluctant author? (No part points)

36. • Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret
Atwood

37. 18
• In an attempt to fix the future, groups of five people (tactician, medic,
historian, engineer and leader) would 'time travel' into the past by
overwriting the consciousness of people who were about to die.
• As the story progressed, the consciousness transfer technology was
used by a rival faction to overwrite people who weren't supposed to
die too.
• What show am I talking about?

38. • Travelers

39. 19
• An unabashed love-letter to the Star Trek series, this series has gone
to great lengths to include actors from various Star Trek shows in
major or minor roles.
• Some examples include Marina Sirtis (TNG), Penny Johnson (DS9),
Robert Picardo (Voyager), Tim Russ (Voyager), Brian George (DS9)
and Jason Alexander (Voyager). Jonathan Frakes of TNG fame has
directed some episodes as well.
• What is the name of this Seth McFarlane created show?

40. • The Orville

41. 20
• The principal events in X were initially supposed to have been
triggered by a graduate student as a part of his thesis in genetics.
• As he worked through the plot, the author concluded that this kind of
research is expensive, and "there is no pressing need to create a
_________".
• Therefore, the only way to make the plot work was to use the
__________ as a way to make profits in the entertainment industry.
• What is X?

42. • Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

43. Two-part questions
• Following questions have two parts, each part is worth one point

44. 21
• Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck are the authors of a series of 9 novels
and numerous spin-off novels/novellas, with the ninth and final novel
set for a 2021 release.
• The series was adapted for television in 2015, but not renewed after
the third season.
• Amazon then took over the rights and released a fourth season in
2019, with another following in December 2020.
• A: What series? and
• B: How do we better know the authors?
• (One point for series, one point for the name)

45. • A:The Expanse, by
B: James SA Corey

46. 22
•A: What collection do these books comprise?
•B: And who is the author?
• Rocannon's World
• Planet of Exile
• City of Illusions
• The Left Hand of Darkness
• The Word for World is Forest
• The Dispossessed
• Four Ways to Forgiveness
• The Telling

47. • A: Hainish Cycle
• B: By Ursula K Le Guin
• The word ‘Hain’ or ‘Hainish’ in
answer will suffice for ‘collection of
books’ part of the question

48. 23
• The theory that A is inspired by B comes from the Russian Dmitri
Gusev, who mentioned that the book B was translated under the title A
in some parts of the world.
• There are certainly parallels in the ideas behind A and B - an empire in
turmoil, a leader who interacts with followers via pre-recorded
messages, and a vision of effecting long term changes on the world.
• While there is no evidence suggesting that A’s founder read B, it's a
fascinating theory nonetheless.
• What are A and B? (one point for each)

49. • A: Al-qaeda
• B: Foundation

50. 24
• The Polish Parliament declared 2021 ‘The year of ________ ___,’
commemorating his 100th birth anniversary.
• A recurring theme of his work is the impossibility of communicating
with profoundly alien beings. While this form of first contact is covered
in Fiasco, Eden and The Invincible, the best example is __________.
• Three attempts were made to translate the book to the big screen.
While they met with varying degrees of commercial success, he was
unsatisfied with all of them, as none of them truly captured the
complete strangeness of the setting.
• A: What book
• B: And what author?
• (One point for each)

51. • A: Author is Stanislaw Lem
• B: Solaris, where humans try
to interact with a sentient
ocean

52. 25
• Written in the 1930s, there have been repeated attempts to ban A
around the world due to insensitivity, offensive language, nudity,
racism, challenges to religion and being sexually explicit.
• It was banned for a time in India in 1967, and banned from school
libraries in several parts of the United States.
• Nonetheless, A is considered one of the most influential novels in
history. It shares these characteristics with another novel B.
• Like in this question, both novels are usually mentioned together,
having been prescient in different ways.
• What are A and B? (one point for each)

53. • A: Brave New World
• B: 1984