This is our closing post of the afternoon.
11) ANSWERS: TWO-FOUR SCI-FI TRIVIA QUIZ
Following are the answers to the trivia quiz we posted at 1:00PM. How many questions did you correctly answer? Compare your answers to these:
1) Fill in the blank! These SF/F titles are missing a single word: The ______ Tree; Haunted______; Dinosaur ______; and Without a ______. What is that missing word?
ANSWER: “Summer” is the missing word.
The Summer Tree (1984) is a novel by Canadian fantasy writer Guy Gavriel Kay, Book One of his Fionavar Tapestry.
Haunted Summer (1988) is a film dramatizing the famous summer of 1816 at Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva, Switzerland. Romantic poet Lord Byron had rented the house and invited a group of his aristocratic friends to join him there. During their stay, a horror-story writing contest was organized, spawning two classics of Gothic literature, John William Polidori’s “The Vampyre” and Mary Wollstonecroft Shelley’s (née Godwin) Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. Polidori’s story is cited as the originator of romantic vampire fiction, Shelley’s often as the first true science fiction story.
Dinosaur Summer (1998) is an alternate-history novel penned by Greg Bear. It’s 1947 in a world where the dinosaur-populated South American plateau of Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1912) is an actual place, and his Professor Challenger a real person! Among the central group of characters are versions of real-life fantasy filmmakers Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen, whose lives take a different turn in a reality where the existence of the real thing rendered unnecessary animated rubber models of dinosaurs.
Without a Summer (2013), a novel by Mary Robinette Kowal, is Book Three of her Glamourist Histories series, which injects an element of magic—here called “glamour”—into historical romantic fiction. The title refers to the so-called “Year Without a Summer,” 1816, the same period in which is set Haunted Summer. A volcanic eruption in the Pacific the previous year triggered a global climate anomaly and a decrease in normal temperatures, resulting in a chilly, rainy summer in Europe and food shortages across the Northern Hemisphere.
2) First seen in the opening minutes of Star Wars (1977), what is the name of this CR90 corvette, employed as an Alderaanian diplomatic cruiser and rebel blockade runner?
ANSWER: Tantive IV.
3) Which of these characters does not belong? A) Jaime Reyes, B) Samuel “Sam” Guthrie, C) Dan Garrett, D) Theodore “Ted” Kord
ANSWER: B) Samuel “Sam” Guthrie, alter ego of the Marvel superhero Cannonball, a founding member of the New Mutants.
The other three have this in common: each has donned the mantle of the superhero Blue Beetle. Garrett (spelled “Garret” initially) was the original Golden Age character (1939, Fox Comics; later Charlton Comics, where the character was refurbished for the Silver Age). Kord followed (Charlton Comics, and eventually DC Comics), and finally, Reyes (DC Comics). Reimagined and retconned over the decades, Blue Beetle has usually been depicted as deriving his superpowers from an ancient mystical Egyptian scarab, most recently interpreted as a technologically advanced device of alien origin.
A Warner Bros./DC film adaptation of the Reyes Blue Beetle is scheduled to premiere August 18 of this year.
4) Most Worldcons have been held in the U.S.; how many have been held outside of the United States?
ANSWER: There have been 80 Worldcons held to date. Excluding CoNZealand in 2020, which was moved online for reasons of pandemic-related safety, 21 have been held outside the U.S.
The U.K. has hosted seven, five in England, two in Scotland; Canada has hosted five, Australia four, and Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, Finland, and Ireland, one each.
The 81st Worldcon will take place in Chengdu, China later this year, and Glasgow, Scotland will again host in 2024, which will boost the number of non-U.S. Worldcons to 23.
5) Who played youngster David MacLean in the original Invaders From Mars (1953), in which the vanguard of a Martian invasion force lands in the boy’s hometown?
ANSWER: Jimmy Hunt. Decades later, an adult Hunt appeared as the town’s police chief in Tobe Hooper’s 1986 remake of Invaders From Mars.
6) The novels Omnivore (1968), Orn (1970), and OX (1976) constitute which SF trilogy?
ANSWER: Of Man and Manta.
All three novels were collected as Of Man and Manta (1986). Explorers from Earth investigate a world populated by fungi, including the intelligent mantas, which superficially resemble manta rays.
7) What is the title of the fifth Indiana Jones movie, scheduled to premiere later this month, on the 30th?
ANSWER: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023).
8) “They Were Looking For Chicks…To Go All The Way!”—the marketing campaign of which sci-fi movie employed that tag line? A) Teenagers from Outer Space (1959), B) Mars Needs Women (1968), C) Earth Girls Are Easy (1988), D) Invasion of the Saucer-Men (1957)
ANSWER: B) Mars Needs Women (1968), written, produced, and directed by self-proclaimed schlock artist Larry Buchanan. Disney mainstay Tommy Kirk starred, along with Yvonne “Batgirl” Craig.
9) How many Worldcons has Canada hosted?
ANSWER: Five; three in Toronto (1948, 1973, and 2003), one in Winnipeg (1994), and one in Montreal (2009).
10) The Humanx Commonwealth, an organization similar to Star Trek’s Federation of Planets, is featured in the science fiction stories of which writer?
ANSWER: Alan Dean Foster.
11) What two sentient species jointly administer the Humanx Commonwealth?
ANSWER: the mammalian Humans, of Earth, and the insectoid Thranx, of Hivehom are the Commonwealth’s two principal players. Alan Dean Foster’s Nor Crystal Tears (1982), a first-contact story, sees the beginnings of what would eventually become the Humanx Commonwealth, that tale detailed in the author’s Founding of the Commonwealth trilogy, comprising Phylogenesis (1999), Dirge (2000), and Diuturnity’s Dawn (2002).
12) Which of these men develops psychohistory, a fictional algorithmic science that allows general predictions to be made of the future in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series? A) Harrison Bergeron, B) Harry Harrison, C) Harry Mudd, D) Hari Seldon
ANSWER: D) Hari Seldon.
A mathematics professor at Streeling University on the planet Trantor, Seldon employs sociology, history, and the laws of statistics as applied to large populations in order to arrive at general forecasts of future events. He is thus able to predict the inevitable fall of the Galactic Empire, of which he is a citizen.
Harrison Bergeron is the titular character in a Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. short story, Harry Mudd is a Star Trek rapscallion, and Harry Harrison is a real-life science fiction writer known for his Stainless Steel Rat and Bill, the Galactic Hero series.
13) Who played Camie Loneozner in the original Star Wars (1977), only to see her scenes excised from the final cut?
ANSWER: British model/actress Koo Stark.
Born Kathleen Norris Stark and known for her roles in a couple of mid-1970s erotic films, she also appeared in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), the sci-fi/romantic comedy Electric Dreams (1984), and a 1989 episode of Red Dwarf.
She was Prince Andrew’s girlfriend for a time, something of a scandal in that she had starred in what the press categorized as soft-core porn films—yeah, she was the degenerate! Stark later became an accomplished photographer.
Her role in Star Wars was as one of Luke Skywalker’s group of friends on Tatooine. Those excised scenes have since become available for ardent fans.
14) Match the robots (left column) with the science fiction titles in which they appear (right column).
ANSWERS: A-7, Robby the Robot appeared in the classic Forbidden Planet; B-10, robot servant Jenkins attended generations of the Webster family in Clifford D. Simak’s City; C-8, Hector was the homicidal robot in Saturn 3; D-9, Huey, Dewey, and Louie were maintenance drones aboard the Valley Forge in Silent Running; E-3, Police robot Gort appeared in The Day the Earth Stood Still; F-2, Diktor the robot lover appeared in the Barbarella comic books;
G-11, Number 5, later renaming himself Johnny 5, was an experimental military robot that gained sentience after a lightning strike scrambled its programming in the sci-fi/comedy Short Circuit; H-1, Box was a shiny, chrome-plated robot designed to capture food—and runners!—outside the city in Logan’s Run;I-12, Ash was the duplicitous android in Alien; J-5, Gnut was the robot featured in the Harry Bates story that served as the basis for The Day the Earth Stood Still; K-4, Ro-Man was bent on the destruction of Earth in Robot Monster; and L-6, “The Robot” was principally the companion and protector of young Will Robinson in TV’s Lost in Space.
15) Who played astronomer Dr. Stuart Kelston in the original Invaders From Mars (1953)?
ANSWER: Arthur Franz.
16) The protagonists of the science fiction novel Icerigger (1974) crash-land on what frozen world?
ANSWER: Tran-ky-ky.
Alan Dean Foster’s Icerigger is the first book of a trilogy set on this frigid, windswept planet, inhabited by the cat-like, bipedal Tran, who sport batwing-like menbranes under their arms and specialized claws on their feet with which to windskate across the arctic landscape.
Mission to Moulokin (1979) and The Deluge Drivers (1987) are Icerigger’s two sequels.
17) “Derelict of Space” (1939), “Meteor” (1941), “Tyrant and Slave-Girl on Planet Venus” (1951), and “The Red Stuff” (1951)—who wrote these science fiction short stories?
ANSWER: They were all penned by English SF writer John Wyndham writing as John Beynon. The author of The Day of the Triffids (1951) and The Midwich Cuckoos (1957) derived several pseudonyms from his birth name, John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris; John Wyndham itself is one such alias!
18) Which of these science fiction characters does not belong with the others? A) Ethan Frome Fortune, B) Hellespont du Kane, C) Raymus Antilles, D) Skua September
ANSWER: C) Raymus Antilles. Played by Peter Geddis in the original Star Wars (1977), he was captain of the Tantive IV, and was choked to death by Darth Vader in a memorable early scene from the film.
The others are all characters in Alan Dean Foster’s novel Icerigger (1974).
19) Rudolph Martin, Gary Oldman, Frank Langella, and Nicolas Cage—other than their profession, what do these actors have in common?
ANSWER: They have all played the role of Dracula, Martin in the fifth season premiere of TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Oldman in the 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Langella in the 1979 film Dracula, and Cage in the 2023 film Renfield.
20) With regard to the horror genre, what do the towns of Rockbridge, Midwich, Haddonfield, and Antonio Bay have in common?
ANSWER: They all served as the setting of a John Carpenter film.
Rockbridge was the setting of Christine (1983), Midwich of Carpenter’s remake of Village of the Damned (1995), Haddonfield of Halloween (1978), and Antonio Bay of The Fog (1980).
21) André Morell, Andrew Keir, Brian Donlevy, and John Mills have all played which acclaimed scientist-hero?
ANSWER: Professor Bernard Quatermass, head of the British Experimental Rocket Group—later shortened to British Rocket Group.
Quatermass was the main protagonist in the influential BBC science fiction television serials created by Nigel Kneale, and subsequently adapted as a trio of movies by Hammer Film Productions. Morell and Keir both played the role in Quatermass and the Pit, Morell on television (1958-1959), Keir in the Hammer film version (1967). Donlevy played the scientist-hero in Hammer’s The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and Quatermass II (1957). And Mills played the character, now retired, in Quatermass (1979), a four-part ITV television series recut later that same year by Euston Films for theatrical release as The Quatermass Conclusion.
22) In which Canadian province is set American International Pictures’ 1976 B-movie The Food of the Gods?
ANSWER: British Columbia.
The film was written and directed by low-budget movie-maker and visual effects artist Bert I. Gordon.
A group of friends travel to a remote island in British Columbia on a hunting trip, where they encounter oversized wasps and rats made gigantic after having ingested a strange, porridge-like liquid—the Food of the Gods—bubbling up through the soil on a nearby farm.
The movie was not only set on a remote island in British Columbia, but filmed in B.C., specifically on Bowen Island, part of Metro Vancouver.
A local angle is that some of the special effects sequences were shot in Montreal.
23) The Lady of the Sorrows (2002) and The Battle of Evernight (2003) are the second and third books, respectively, of Australian fantasy writer Cecilia Dart-Thornton’s Bitterbynde trilogy. Name the first book in this series.
ANSWER: The Ill-Made Mute (2001).
24) Who played army commander Colonel Fielding in the original Invaders From Mars (1953)?
ANSWER: Seasoned character actor Morris Ankrum, who was a fixture of sci-fi movies in the 1950s.
12) THANK YOU!
We extend a special “Thank You” to our guest speaker, Olivia Atwater, for taking part this afternoon. We also thank Joe Aspler, Keith Braithwaite, and Cathy Palmer-Lister for their contributions today. And, we offer a nod of appreciation, as well, to all of our supporting contributors.
MonSFFA hopes you have enjoyed your time with us this afternoon, we thank you for dropping in, and we ask all of you to check in regularly here at www.MonSFFA.ca for additional content.
We look forward to again gathering, face to face, at our Barbecue in the Park in July, and at August’s get-together, the first in-person meeting we’ve been able to schedule in over three years!
Thank you for your interest and attention today, and don’t forget to comment on this afternoon’s e-meeting!
13) JULY CLUB EVENTS
Barbecue-in-the-Park
MonSFFen and their families, as well as friends of the club, are invited to gather at Parc Maisonneuve on Saturday, July 8, for the club’s 2023 Barabecue-in-the-Park! Parc Maisonneuve, easily accessible by Metro or bus, is located in the city’s East End, adjacent the Botanical Gardens and the Olympic Stadium. Parking is available on site, or on nearby streets.
Should the weather prove inclement on the 8th, the event will be shifted 24 hours forward to Sunday, July 9.
Relax-a-ZOOM Virtual Picnic
We will also host a “Relax-a-ZOOM” Virtual Picnic right here at www.MonSFFA.ca on Saturday, July 15, at 1:00PM—have your favourite summer snacks and libations on hand! No formal programming is planned, just a game of some kind, and an afternoon of casual conversation with friends on topics SF/F and fannish, including, given this opportunity, a little bit of club business for which the input of our membership is desired.
14) SIGN-OFF
And so, until we meet again, whether in person on a club outing, live in a physical meeting hall, or online again right here at www.MonSFFA.ca, keep well, everyone; soak in the summer sun and fun! And, remember: only you can prevent a forest fire!