New Technologies: Life Imitating Art Quiz

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. In the 21st century we hear of many things that can be made by 3D printing: anything from human organs to houses. If I can boldly ask, which television sci-fi show demonstrated the technology in the late 1980s?

Answer: Star Trek: The Next Generation

"Star Trek: The Next Generation" aired between 1987 and 1994. This was the third of the fifteen steps you need to follow to become a complete Trekkie. (That path includes the animated series and movies.)

In "TNG", as Trekkies like to call it, the USS Enterprise had new captain, Jean-Luc Picard, who was played by Patrick Stewart. In all, 178 episodes were broadcast, but it was cancelled because the special effects were getting too expensive and the franchise owners wanted to concentrate on the move soon-offs.

Now Trekkers, and Trekkies, will argue until the cow jumps over the moon about who was the best captain. Jean-Luc Picard gets the nod in several "best captain" lists.

What is the difference between a Trekker and a Trekkie did I hear you ask? No?, well I'll quote one of my favourite definitions anyway: "A Trekkie is the fan that has lost touch with reality. A Trekker enjoys being a fan, but still has both feet on the ground here in the real world."

2. "Okay car, start up and take me to the airport and I'll just sit here and wait while you do all the hard work." Which silver screen movie majored on the idea of "driverless cars"?

Answer: Minority Report

This is another concept that has been around for a while, ever since scientists at Carnegie Mellon University conceived the idea of autonomous motoring in the 1980s.

The 2002 movie "Minority Report" showed how that might look in practice. Released in 2002 and directed by Steven Spielberg, it was based on a 1956 short story "The Minority Report" by Philip K. Dick, one of the best - but perhaps under appreciated - sci-fi writers of his generation. Although Dick never earned a great deal of money from his writing, 10 of his stories received big screen or television adaptations after his death.

Although autonomous cars had been in development for some twenty years, they had not advanced in real terms to match the abilities displayed in the movie. Lexus built a car specially for Spielberg and the movie.

The wrong answers were all British TV shows.

3. "10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1..." The countdown is familiar to those of us who watch the launch of space rockets, or even the seconds remaining to midnight on New Year's Eve. The idea was first used, though, in a 1929 European movie. Which of these was it?

Answer: Woman in the Moon

It came from the fertile kind of Austrian filmmaker Fritz Lang. For a movie called "Woman in the Moon" he included the 10-1 countdown scene that showed the final ten seconds before a rocket launch.

Wernher von Braun, real life rocket scientist, was a fan of the movie, and brought the countdown idea with him when he moved from Europe to the USA.

"Woman in the Moon" ("Frau im Mond") was a German science fiction silent film first shown in Berlin in 1929.

4. Dive, dived dive...Real life brought us the first open water submarine in 1898. The idea came from someone who was inspired by reading a novel. Which of these books was it?

Answer: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea

To get a pedantic point out of the way, there were submarines as early as 1620, but the "Argonaut" built by American inventor Simon Lake was the first successful open water craft. He built it after reading of the exploits of the "Nautilus" in the adventure by Jules Verne.

Lake built Argonaut No 1 in 1897. The following year it became the first submarine to operate successfully in the open sea on a route from from Norfolk, Virginia, to Sandy Hook, New Jersey.

"Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea" by Jules Verne was first published in English in 1872.

5. Law enforcement agencies the world over have long sought methods of non-lethal methods to control violent individuals. To this end, a scientist developed a means of delivering an electrical shock from a distance that would incapacitate individuals with relative safety to officers. He gave it an acronym after a character who had invented such a weapon in fiction. Who was the character?

Answer: Tom A. Swift

Taser (or even TASER) is an acronym for 'Tom A Swift's Electric Rifle' and was given that name in honour of the novel "Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle". Tom Swift was a prolific fictional inventor who appeared in more that 100 novels.

In real life, NASA researcher Jack Cover invented a real 'electric rifle' and created the name. The first working taser appeared in 1974.

A taser is (usually) a hand-held device used as a less-lethal means of incapacitating violent individuals. It shoots darts attached to electrical cables and once embedded in persons clothing delivers an electric shock.
Tasers have become controversial in some usages, with some deaths attributed to their use.

6. Which far-sighted English author first wrote about the potential benefits and dangers of nuclear power long before real life scientists learned to split the atom?

Answer: H. G. Wells

In 1914, Wells wrote "The World Set Free" in which he saw a power that might have benefits but also dangers that might totally destroy our world. On the other hand, he thought those very dangers would become so apparent that the world would be motivated to turn away from the science and became devoted to peace instead.

It has been claimed that scientist Leo Szilard was inspired by the book to look at ways of developing nuclear power. Szilard conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, a reaction that was to lead to the development of the first nuclear weapons. While he worked on the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bombs, he was later to speak out against their use.

The wrong answers were all American authors.

7. The face of modern warfare may have been changed forever by conflicts in Ukraine and Syria where unmanned aerial craft - drones - proved themselves capable of wiping out armoured vehicles. Which science fiction book and its author predicted hunter drones forty years before military organisations cottoned on?

Answer: "Dune", by Frank Herbert

First of all a personal confession: this quiz author has long been a lover of fantasy and science fiction novels, but found "Dune" totally impenetrable. 'USA Today', meanwhile, opined it had "a reputation, even among serious readers, for being dense and difficult to follow."

In 1965, Frank Herbert published the first of several novels set on planetary world far from our own planet, Terra. The planet Arrakis is most desert and human life is difficult. It has one crucial resource, spice, an addictive drug. The story tells of feuds between differing family 'houses' that spread into interstellar strife. These batting houses used 'hunter seeker' assassin drone.

In 2006 the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration issued its first commercial drone permit in 2006 and sixteen more followed over the next eight years. In 2018 it issued 100,000 remote pilot certificates to fly a drone.

The Dune books spawned several movie adaptations which met with mixed success. In 2021, a movie directed by Denis Villeneuve won six Academy Awards. (Which may tell you all you need to know about this quiz author's critical abilities.)

8. Humankind has always dreamt of exploring 'outer space' but it was not until 1961 that the first person travelled in space. Ten years before that a short story by an English author had predicted that humans would one day live and work in space bases beyond the reach of earth's gravity. What was that story - later made into a movie - called?

Answer: 2001: A Space Odyssey

"2001: A Space Odyssey" was a short story written by Arthur C. Clarke and published in 1951. In 1968 Stanley Kubrick directed a movie of the same name. (Clarke then turned the movie into a novel.)

Three years after that, the Soviet Union launched and crewed the first space station, Salyut 1. Several more space stations followed, including the International Space Station that has been crewed by various nationalities since the 1980s. Handheld computer tablets were also suggested by the movie.

The wrong answers all came from the fertile mind of US author Alan Dean Foster.

9. At the beginning of the 21st century, the music industry began to find a use for holograms - computer projections of actual people. Which movie featured holograms forty years before real life scientists made one work?

Answer: Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope

What became known as "Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope" was in fact the first in that particular series. The 1977 prediction showed Obi-Wan Kenobi receiving a holographic message.

It was not until 2018 that researchers at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, produced a real hologram.

10. "To infinity and beyond!" It has long been the dream of humankind: to break free from the shackles of this earth and explore the planets and stars. Which writer first predicted space travel?

Answer: Lucian of Samosata

Lucian of Samosata lived from (approx) 130-200 AD and was a second century writer who has been described as "the supreme Ancient Greek satirist". Many of his works are described as "tongue-in-cheek" and he wrote about the follies of gods and men.

In "A True Story", he wrote about journeying to the moon and to Venus.

Source: Author darksplash

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor kyleisalive before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

Many of the technologies we now embrace in our daily lives were once just the stuff of fiction. Find these ten that appeared in a practical form in literature, television and the movies long before they appeared in real life.

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