1. Chronosynclastic Infundibulum A quiz on Speculative Fiction

2. 1. In PKD’s Solar Lottery , what is the title of the most powerful person in the world?

3. 2. This is the author Damon Knight who founded the SFWA (Science-fiction and Fantasy Writers Association). What in the world of SFF is now named after him? Robert Heinlein was the first recipient and Damon Knight himself received it in 1995.

4. 3. More bearded goodness. This author’s first novel takes its name from a Dylan Thomas poem – Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the ____ of the ___. Identify the author and the novel.

5. *4. This is the flag/symbol of what common concept in SFF works? What is being represented on it?

6. 5. Book and author

7. 6. In the Iain M Banks novel Excession , there is a warship named X Y. The name is a pun on how 99% of any war is X Y , while the rest is X Y. Some of you may think this entire quiz is just X Y  X Y?

8. 7. Name the Plagiarist, and his works.

9. *8. Who wrote this horror classic? When Joe Dante adapted this into a movie of the same name, many characters in the film were named after what? Examples – R William Neill, Terence Fisher, Freddie Francis, Jacinto Molina, etc.

10. 9. This SFF legend was also a talented musician. He has penned songs and performed live with the bands Hawkwind and Blue Oyster Cult (both of these bands have songs based on his most famous series). In 1975, he formed his own band called The Deep Fix and released a critically acclaimed rock album New World’s Fair . Who?

11. 10. Last week, author X announced that he was writing a sequel to one of his most famous novels, Y. The sequel would center on Danny T, the young boy from the original story with the gift of being able to communicate clairvoyantly with ghosts, and who is now an appropriately aged 40-year-old. All these years after being tormented by ghosts and his father’s alcoholism and homicidal rage, Danny is now working at a hospice using his supernatural powers for palliative purposes. X even offered a tentative title: Doctor Sleep X and Y?

14. 11. The punch-line is inspired by which famous quote?

16. 13. The Machine Stops is a 1909 novella where almost everybody lives underground as the surface of the Earth is no longer habitable. All needs are met by a Machine, and the people underground are completely dependant on it. Then one day, the Machine stops and the rest of the novel is about how the underground civilisation completely collapses and that it will fall to the surface-dwellers who still exist to rebuild the human race and to prevent the mistake of the Machine from being repeated. Who wrote this seminal story?

18. 14. Identify the book by its covers.

19. 15. The blurb of which 1961 book? "Now that society is all ferrocrete and X Y there are fewer gaps in the joints. It takes a very smart Z indeed to find these openings. Only a X Y Z can be at home in this environment..."

20. 16. An excerpt of an interview of Isaac Asimov by Terry Gross is given below. What is it they are talking about? Gross: "What did you have in mind when you coined the term and the concept?" Asimov: "Well, I wanted to write a short story about the fall of the Galactic Empire. I had just finished reading the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [for] the second time, and I thought I might as well adapt it on a much larger scale to the Galactic Empire and get a story out of it. And my editor John Campbell was much taken with the idea, and said he didn't want it wasted on a short story. He wanted an open-ended series so it lasts forever, perhaps. And so I started doing that. In order to keep the story going from story to story, I was essentially writing future history, and I had to make it sufficiently different from modern history to give it that science fictional touch. And so I assumed that the time would come when there would be a science in which things could be predicted on a probabilistic or statistical basis."

21. 17. The Church of All Worlds (CAW) is a neopagan religious group whose stated mission is to evolve a network of information, mythology, and experience that provides a context and stimulus for reawakening Gaia and reuniting her children through tribal community dedicated to responsible stewardship and evolving consciousness. The key founder of CAW is Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, who serves the Church as "Primate", later along with his wife, Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart, designated High Priestess. Where did they flick the idea from?

22. 18. Palador Pictures is an Indian company dealing mainly with the acquisition and distribution of foreign language films (World Cinema) in the Indian subcontinent through DVD, television and theatre. Their name is derived from the utopian fictional island of Pala . In which Aldous Huxley novel would you come across this island?

23. 19. Identify the man on the cover.

24. 20. Complete this list – Death, War, Famine, Pestilence, ____

25. 21. Author?

26. 22. This movie is based on which Hugo and Nebula award winning work?

27. 23. William Mandella is the main character in Joe Haldeman’s Forever War series. He is in love with and later marries Marygay Potter. His surname and his lover’s name are hints to tell the reader something. What?

28. 24. Micromegas is a short story about a colossal space traveler from somewhere near Sirius who visits Earth and encounters a bunch of human philosophers. The short story is a thinly disguised rant against human egoism – best exemplified by one of the philosophers, standing in Micromegas’ massive palm has the gall to insist that the alien, his home star, and all in the universe was created for humanity's benefit. Who wrote this short story?

29. 25. What is the yoga-like muscular control technique in the world of Frank Herbert’s Dune, whose name roughly translates to ‘Point of Life’ in Sanskrit?

30. 26. Marion Zimmer Bradley’s 1982 novel The Mists of Avalon is one of the most acclaimed retellings of the Arthurian legend. From whose perspective is this book written?

31. 27. The title of each novel in this five-book fantasy series combines a chess term with a fantasy term. This is because the concept of a Game of Destiny is a significant motif in the story. Identify the series, and the author.

32. *28. In 1970, the MVP, a body that promotes science among the masses in Maharashtra, started a science fiction writing competition, which was kept open to participants of all ages. In 1974, MVP received an entry by Narayan Vinayak Jagtap, who won the competition that year. It later was revealed that Jagtap was actually a well known scientist who was encouraged by his doctoral advisor (who also wrote sci-fi) to try his hand at writing science fiction. Identify both Jagtap, and his doctoral advisor.

33. 29. What is the name of Robert Silverberg’s ‘quasi-official’ web site? No, it is has nothing to do with nondescript village of the same name in Bihar. Or the one in Pakistan.

34. 30. By what collective name are the two hills between which there exists a pass to cross the forbearing mountain chain found in the world of Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines ?

35. 31. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is a theory in linguistics which essentially states that if words for a particular concept does not exist, then the human mind is unable to grasp that concept. This theory was developed in the 1930s and became an instant hit with many sci-fi authors. The best example is probably NewSpeak from 1984 where there are no words that mean ‘revolution’. But even before that, in 1923, this author wrote a short story called ‘The Unnameable’ which explores the idea of whether or not someone can conceptualize something which cannot be described by any name – basically the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Which author?

36. 32. Alan Moore has been roped in to write the words for an upcoming opera by DA and JH, whose previous operatic work was Monkey – about the spiritual journey of a magical monkey. How do we better know this duo?

37. 33. This was supposed to be the book the author was working on when he died. The story is supposedly about deaf aliens who abduct a B-movie composer, but the author never outlined the plot, so it is hard to say. His wife published her interpretation a few months ago (book cover seen in pic) Which author?

38. 34. Which SF author/blogger’s name has been blanked out in this xkcd strip?

39. *35. This question is about two musicians X and Y. X founded and was the frontman of the proto-punk band The Deviants in 1967. The band released three critically acclaimed albums and folded up in 1969. X worked as a journalist for a few years and the mid-70s onwards made fame as a Sci-fi author, writing over twenty novels including the DNA Cowboys trilogy and the Victor Renquist quartet. He continued to be associated with music too, for example co-writing Motorhead ’s 1979 hit Damage Case . Y was also part of The Deviants but he is probably best known for founding Tyrannosaurus Rex along with Marc Bolan. Y was born as Stephen Ross Porter but he took the name he is known by from a character in Lord of the Rings .

40. 36. Cover art by?

41. 37. In Richard Morgan’s Market Forces , the protagonist Chris Faulkner is offered some books to read while temporarily incarcerated. One of the books is "...a luridly violent far-future crime novel about a detective who could seemingly exchange bodies at will." Name the fictional detective.

42. 38. An artist’s impression of how this author wrote his Hugo Award-winning novel. Author and book, please.

43. 39. X: The Un-Dead is the official sequel to Y’s famous book X. It is written by Y’s great grandnephew along with Ian Holt, a X historian. The book is set in 1912, twenty five years after the ‘death’ of X in the original book. The book focuses on Dr. Jack Seward, a minor character in the original book, who is now a disgraced morphine addict obsessed with stamping out evil across Europe. X and Y?

44. 40. Identify both the books

45. 41.(In)Famous moment from the 2006 Hugo Awards ceremony. Identify the two people involved.

46. 42. What is he complaining about? I need the name of an author, and a book.

47. 43. The ‘vorpal sword’ or ‘vorpal blade’ is an artifact often encountered in works of fantasy. Most of them are based on Dungeons and Dragons ’ concept of the vorpal sword. But where was it that the phrases ‘vorpal sword’ and ‘vorpal blade’ were first used?

48. 44. The world as per which 1992 novel? An expanded view of Germany (shown in red in the map above) is shown in the next slide.

50. 45. A two-word phrase that connects…

51. 46. This word denoting a particular form of planetary engineering is used in both science and science-fiction. The word was coined by Jack Williamson in the short story Collision Orbit published in 1942. The first use in real science came about in a 1961 Carl Sagan paper published in the journal Science titled The Planet Venus . Sagan talks about seeding the atmosphere of Venus with algae, which would convert water, nitrogen and carbon dioxide into organic compounds. As this process removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect would be reduced until surface temperatures dropped to "comfortable" levels. In 1979, NASA engineer James Oberg organised the ‘First ______ Colloquium’, held at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. Oberg popularized the terraforming concepts discussed at the colloquium to the general public in his 1981 book, New Earths . What word?

52. 47. The scientist shown in the first pic, inspired by Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker introduced a concept (depicted in the rightmost pic) in a famous 1959 paper Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infra-Red Radiation . This in turn has inspired many science-fiction authors and books, the most famous example being Larry Niven’s Ringworld . Either name the scientist, or the concept (named after him)

54. 49. In which movie would you get to see this fine example of bad acting? Who wrote the short story on which the movie is based?

55. 50. According to Kurt Vonnegut, what are “those places ... where all the different kinds of truths fit together.”?

56. Here be Answers! Beware!!

57. 1. In PKD’s Solar Lottery , what is the title of the most powerful person in the world?

58. The Quizmaster

59. 2. This is the author Damon Knight who founded the SFWA (Science-fiction and Fantasy Writers Association). What in the world of SFF is now named after him? Robert Heinlein was the first recipient and Damon Knight himself received it in 1995.

60. The Grand Master Award

61. 3. More bearded goodness. This author’s first novel takes its name from a Dylan Thomas poem – Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the ____ of the ___. Identify the author and the novel.

62. George R R Martin Dying of the Light

63. *4. This is the flag/symbol of what common concept in SFF works? What is being represented on it?

64. Constructed Languages Tower of Babel

65. 5. Book and author

66. Anathem Neal Stephenson

67. 6. In the Iain M Banks novel Excession , there is a warship named X Y. The name is a pun on how 99% of any war is X Y , while the rest is X Y. Some of you may think this entire quiz is just X Y  X Y?

68. Killing Time

69. 7. Name the Plagiarist, and his works.

70. James Cameron Avatar, Terminator

71. *8. Who wrote this horror classic? When Joe Dante adapted this into a movie of the same name, many characters in the film were named after what? Examples – R William Neill, Terence Fisher, Freddie Francis, Jacinto Molina, etc.

72. Gary Brandner All directors of classic werewolf movies

73. 9. This SFF legend was also a talented musician. He has penned songs and performed live with the bands Hawkwind and Blue Oyster Cult (both of these bands have songs based on his most famous series). In 1975, he formed his own band called The Deep Fix and released a critically acclaimed rock album New World’s Fair . Who?

74. Michael Moorcock

75. 10. Last week, author X announced that he was writing a sequel to one of his most famous novels, Y. The sequel would center on Danny T, the young boy from the original story with the gift of being able to communicate clairvoyantly with ghosts, and who is now an appropriately aged 40-year-old. All these years after being tormented by ghosts and his father’s alcoholism and homicidal rage, Danny is now working at a hospice using his supernatural powers for palliative purposes. X even offered a tentative title: Doctor Sleep X and Y?

76. Stephen King The Shining

79. 11. The punch-line is inspired by which famous quote?

80. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

82. Bas-lag China Mieville

83. 13. The Machine Stops is a 1909 novella where almost everybody lives underground as the surface of the Earth is no longer habitable. All needs are met by a Machine, and the people underground are completely dependant on it. Then one day, the Machine stops and the rest of the novel is about how the underground civilisation completely collapses and that it will fall to the surface-dwellers who still exist to rebuild the human race and to prevent the mistake of the Machine from being repeated. Who wrote this seminal story?

84. E M Forster

86. 14. Identify the book by its covers.

87. The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood

88. 15. The blurb of which 1961 book? "Now that society is all ferrocrete and X Y there are fewer gaps in the joints. It takes a very smart Z indeed to find these openings. Only a X Y Z can be at home in this environment..."

89. The Stainless Steel Rat Harry Harrison

90. 16. An excerpt of an interview of Isaac Asimov by Terry Gross is given below. What is it they are talking about? Gross: "What did you have in mind when you coined the term and the concept?" Asimov: "Well, I wanted to write a short story about the fall of the Galactic Empire. I had just finished reading the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [for] the second time, and I thought I might as well adapt it on a much larger scale to the Galactic Empire and get a story out of it. And my editor John Campbell was much taken with the idea, and said he didn't want it wasted on a short story. He wanted an open-ended series so it lasts forever, perhaps. And so I started doing that. In order to keep the story going from story to story, I was essentially writing future history, and I had to make it sufficiently different from modern history to give it that science fictional touch. And so I assumed that the time would come when there would be a science in which things could be predicted on a probabilistic or statistical basis."

91. Psychohistory

92. 17. The Church of All Worlds (CAW) is a neopagan religious group whose stated mission is to evolve a network of information, mythology, and experience that provides a context and stimulus for reawakening Gaia and reuniting her children through tribal community dedicated to responsible stewardship and evolving consciousness. The key founder of CAW is Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, who serves the Church as "Primate", later along with his wife, Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart, designated High Priestess. Where did they flick the idea from?

93. Stranger in a Strange Land Robert Heinlein

94. 18. Palador Pictures is an Indian company dealing mainly with the acquisition and distribution of foreign language films (World Cinema) in the Indian subcontinent through DVD, television and theatre. Their name is derived from the utopian fictional island of Pala . In which Aldous Huxley novel would you come across this island?

95. The Island

96. 19. Identify the man on the cover.

97. Robert E Lee

98. 20. Complete this list – Death, War, Famine, Pestilence, ____

99. Kaos The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse

100. 21. Author?

101. Max Brooks

102. 22. This movie is based on which Hugo and Nebula award winning work?

103. Flowers for Algernon Daniel Keyes

104. 23. William Mandella is the main character in Joe Haldeman’s Forever War series. He is in love with and later marries Marygay Potter. His surname and his lover’s name are hints to tell the reader something. What?

105. That the book is almost autobiographical Mandella is almost an acronym of Haldeman. Potter is his real-life wife

106. 24. Micromegas is a short story about a colossal space traveler from somewhere near Sirius who visits Earth and encounters a bunch of human philosophers. The short story is a thinly disguised rant against human egoism – best exemplified by one of the philosophers, standing in Micromegas’ massive palm has the gall to insist that the alien, his home star, and all in the universe was created for humanity's benefit. Who wrote this short story?

107. Voltaire

108. 25. What is the yoga-like muscular control technique in the world of Frank Herbert’s Dune, whose name roughly translates to ‘Point of Life’ in Sanskrit?

109. Prana-Bindu

110. 26. Marion Zimmer Bradley’s 1982 novel The Mists of Avalon is one of the most acclaimed retellings of the Arthurian legend. From whose perspective is this book written?

111. Morgaine

112. 27. The title of each novel in this five-book fantasy series combines a chess term with a fantasy term. This is because the concept of a Game of Destiny is a significant motif in the story. Identify the series, and the author.

113. The Belgeriad David Eddings

114. *28. In 1970, the MVP, a body that promotes science among the masses in Maharashtra, started a science fiction writing competition, which was kept open to participants of all ages. In 1974, MVP received an entry by Narayan Vinayak Jagtap, who won the competition that year. It later was revealed that Jagtap was actually a well known scientist who was encouraged by his doctoral advisor (who also wrote sci-fi) to try his hand at writing science fiction. Identify both Jagtap, and his doctoral advisor.

115. Jayant Narlikar Fred Hoyle

116. 29. What is the name of Robert Silverberg’s ‘quasi-official’ web site? No, it is has nothing to do with nondescript village of the same name in Bihar. Or the one in Pakistan.

117. Majipoor

118. 30. By what collective name are the two hills between which there exists a pass to cross the forbearing mountain chain found in the world of Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines ?

119. Sheba’s Breasts

120. 31. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is a theory in linguistics which essentially states that if words for a particular concept does not exist, then the human mind is unable to grasp that concept. This theory was developed in the 1930s and became an instant hit with many sci-fi authors. The best example is probably NewSpeak from 1984 where there are no words that mean ‘revolution’. But even before that, in 1923, this author wrote a short story called ‘The Unnameable’ which explores the idea of whether or not someone can conceptualize something which cannot be described by any name – basically the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Which author?

121. H P Lovecraft

122. 32. Alan Moore has been roped in to write the words for an upcoming opera by DA and JH, whose previous operatic work was Monkey – about the spiritual journey of a magical monkey. How do we better know this duo?

123. Gorillaz

124. 33. This was supposed to be the book the author was working on when he died. The story is supposedly about deaf aliens who abduct a B-movie composer, but the author never outlined the plot, so it is hard to say. His wife published her interpretation a few months ago (book cover seen in pic) Which author?

125. Philip K Dick

126. 34. Which SF author/blogger’s name has been blanked out in this xkcd strip?

127. Cory Doctorow

128. *35. This question is about two musicians X and Y. X founded and was the frontman of the proto-punk band The Deviants in 1967. The band released three critically acclaimed albums and folded up in 1969. X worked as a journalist for a few years and the mid-70s onwards made fame as a Sci-fi author, writing over twenty novels including the DNA Cowboys trilogy and the Victor Renquist quartet. He continued to be associated with music too, for example co-writing Motorhead ’s 1979 hit Damage Case . Y was also part of The Deviants but he is probably best known for founding Tyrannosaurus Rex along with Marc Bolan. Y was born as Stephen Ross Porter but he took the name he is known by from a character in Lord of the Rings .

129. Mick Farren Steve Peregrin Took

130. 36. Cover art by?

131. Boris Vallejo

132. 37. In Richard Morgan’s Market Forces , the protagonist Chris Faulkner is offered some books to read while temporarily incarcerated. One of the books is "...a luridly violent far-future crime novel about a detective who could seemingly exchange bodies at will." Name the fictional detective.

133. Takeshi Kovacs

134. 38. An artist’s impression of how this author wrote his Hugo Award-winning novel. Author and book, please.

135. Neil Gaiman The Graveyard Book

136. 39. X: The Un-Dead is the official sequel to Y’s famous book X. It is written by Y’s great grandnephew along with Ian Holt, a X historian. The book is set in 1912, twenty five years after the ‘death’ of X in the original book. The book focuses on Dr. Jack Seward, a minor character in the original book, who is now a disgraced morphine addict obsessed with stamping out evil across Europe. X and Y?

137. Dracula Bram Stoker

138. 40. Identify both the books

140. 41.(In)Famous moment from the 2006 Hugo Awards ceremony. Identify the two people involved.

141. Harlan Ellison Connie Willis

142. 42. What is he complaining about? I need the name of an author, and a book.

143. And Another Thing … Eoin Colfer

144. 43. The ‘vorpal sword’ or ‘vorpal blade’ is an artifact often encountered in works of fantasy. Most of them are based on Dungeons and Dragons ’ concept of the vorpal sword. But where was it that the phrases ‘vorpal sword’ and ‘vorpal blade’ were first used?

145. Jabberwocky Lewis Carroll

146. 44. The world as per which 1992 novel? An expanded view of Germany (shown in red in the map above) is shown in the next slide.

148. Fatherland Robert Harris

149. 45. A two-word phrase that connects…

150. Curious Yellow

151. 46. This word denoting a particular form of planetary engineering is used in both science and science-fiction. The word was coined by Jack Williamson in the short story Collision Orbit published in 1942. The first use in real science came about in a 1961 Carl Sagan paper published in the journal Science titled The Planet Venus . Sagan talks about seeding the atmosphere of Venus with algae, which would convert water, nitrogen and carbon dioxide into organic compounds. As this process removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect would be reduced until surface temperatures dropped to "comfortable" levels. In 1979, NASA engineer James Oberg organised the ‘First ______ Colloquium’, held at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. Oberg popularized the terraforming concepts discussed at the colloquium to the general public in his 1981 book, New Earths . What word?

152. Terraforming

153. 47. The scientist shown in the first pic, inspired by Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker introduced a concept (depicted in the rightmost pic) in a famous 1959 paper Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infra-Red Radiation . This in turn has inspired many science-fiction authors and books, the most famous example being Larry Niven’s Ringworld . Either name the scientist, or the concept (named after him)

154. Freeman Dyson Dyson Spheres

156. Novels that have won both the Hugo and the Nebula

157. 49. In which movie would you get to see this fine example of bad acting? Who wrote the short story on which the movie is based?

158. Johnny Mnemonic William Gibson

159. 50. According to Kurt Vonnegut, what are “those places ... where all the different kinds of truths fit together.”?

160. Chronosynclastic Infundibulum A quiz on Speculative Fiction