Let Me Play Among the Stars Multiple Choice Quiz | Literature

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. We'll begin with Betelgeuse, one of the brightest stars in Earth's sky. Betelgeuse Seven is a particularly mysterious planet. After all, it was the site of the never satisfactorily explained Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster, which wiped out all the planet's men except for the future father of one Ford Prefect. Which of these writers shared this tragedy with the world, and incidentally taught readers to keep track of their towels?

Answer: Douglas Adams

This incident is chronicled in the 1979 novel "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," a sci-fi farce based on a BBC radio series Adams had also written. In this and the following four books, hapless human Arthur Dent wanders the galaxy after his Betelgeusian friend Ford Prefect rescues him from Earth, which is destroyed to make room for a bypass in Chapter 3 of the first book. Ford's own family past is deeply mysterious; as a sinister footnote states, "no one ever knew what a Hrung was nor why it had chosen to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven particularly." Perhaps we'll find some clues on our trip!

2. Welcome to Aurora, a planet of Tau Ceti and the first of the Spacer worlds. Just look at the mansions, the factories, the landscaping, and think -- all this is made possible by robots, who outnumber the human inhabitants by a factor of fifty. Which of these authors wrote about travel to Aurora, through the eyes of a detective from Earth?

Answer: Isaac Asimov

"The Robots of Dawn" (1983) is the third of Asimov's "Robot" novels, and brings detective Elijah Baley (and his robot partner R. Daneel Olivaw) to the premier Spacer world in order to solve a roboticide with ugly political implications. Naturally, he does so, learning a great deal about Auroran society on the way.

Aurora turns up again in 1988's "Prelude to Foundation," set more than ten thousand years later, when protagonist Hari Seldon meets the descendants of the Aurorans on the planet of Trantor. They have built up a religious fervor around the distant memory of their homeworld, all that now separates them from the rest of humanity.

3. As often as fantasy and science fiction are shelved together, you don't see many dragons on sci-fi worlds. But when you come with me to Pern, a planet orbiting Alpha Sagittarii (also called Rukbat), you'll see a rare exception. These are scientific dragons -- genetically modified to deal with the Thread -- but flying and fire-breathing, nonetheless. Who breathed life into these beasts?

Answer: Anne McCaffrey

Anne McCaffrey's DragonRiders series began with "Dragonflight", in 1968, composed in part of McCaffrey's first two Pern novellas, "Weyr Search" and "Dragonrider", originally published in 1967. The early books in the series were primarily fantasy works, but "Dragonsdawn" (1989) started to establish a scientific basis for the dragons, and is set at an earlier time than the first eight books.

In it, humans colonize the appealing third planet of the Rukbat system, only to discover the horrible threat in the skies: Thread, which kills organic matter on contact.

The colonists, trying everything to survive as a settlement, use their bioengineering skills to transform the local fire lizards into dragons and go after the Thread in the sky. The rest, as they say, is future history...

4. Humans know this star as 61 Ursae Majoris, and its system is one of the most fought-over in Known Space. After all, its third planet is home to the Kzinti, who in looks and temperament are like nothing so much as bipedal tigers. The tales of their interstellar wars with humans have earned the Earthlings grudging respect throughout the galaxy. Who introduced the Kzinti, tooth and claw, to modern Earth?

Answer: Larry Niven

The first Kzin appearance was in a 1966 short story called "The Warriors." It's the Golden Age of humanity, with violence almost completely eradicated. When a Kzin telepath reports to his superiors that the human vessel they've encountered carries no weapons, they smell easy meat -- but they don't realize how quickly (and resourcefully) their prey will regress to the bad old ways.

This brief skirmish ends up launching the Man-Kzin Wars -- and a deluge of short stories and novels about them, some written by Niven himself, but most by other authors.

5. In orbit around Tau Ceti is a planet whose people -- lizard-like bipeds -- have had their eye on Earth since Europe's Middle Ages. When they invaded in 1942 (bear with me, here), they expected horses and crossbows, but they got Spitfires and atom bombs. Now there's an uneasy peace, which works out well for us sightseers! Which of these authors rewrote history to put the Lizards in?

Answer: Harry Turtledove

Harry Turtledove specializes in alternate military histories -- for example, he wrote a series about what World War I might have looked like if the South had won the U.S. Civil War. But he also likes to spice up an alternate history every now and then by adding a sci-fi element -- for example, what if the South won the U.S Civil War because time-traveling white supremacists gave them AK-47s ("Guns of the South")? His "Worldwar" series, which begins in 1994's "Worldwar: In the Balance" with an alien invasion interrupting World War II, is an entertaining twist on the classic "humanity unites against alien invader" genre.

It's followed by the "Colonization" series, in which the newly arrived Lizard settler fleet is disappointed in its expectations of finding a fully pacified Earth, and "Homeward Bound," in which a mission of humans makes the opposite trip.

6. Welcome to Raylicon! The original people of this world were Mayans, brought here against their will by aliens unknown; as tourists, we should have a much better time. This was once the seat of the Ruby Empire, which spanned hundreds of stars before being succeeded by the Skolian Empire; now, the intrigues have moved elsewhere. Who raised these empires up from the Raylican dust?

Answer: Catherine Asaro

The first novel in Asaro's wide-ranging series on the Skolian Empire, 1995's "Primary Inversion," introduces the popular character of Sauscony "Soz" Valdoria. She's an Imperial heiress; she's an empath; she's a biomechanically enhanced fighting machine; and she's in love with somebody on the other side. Things quickly get even more interesting from there! Soz shows up in other books, but Asaro has other primary characters as well, writing prequels and sequels to flesh out the Empire's history. With a PhD in chemical physics, she weaves some fascinating scientific and mathematical concepts into her novels.

7. Try not to make any aggressive moves on our next stop. The people of the Star Kingdom of Manticore are friendly, but they've been in an ugly war with Haven for decades, so they're a bit jumpy. The three inhabited planets of the binary Home System are scenic and prosperous, thanks to an extensive wormhole junction, and you may even meet a treecat if you're lucky. Which writer can tell you more about Manticore?

Answer: David Weber

Weber's "Honor Harrington" series, which owes a great deal to C.S. Forrester's "Horatio Hornblower" books, tells the story of the titular character as she rises through the ranks of the Royal Manticoran Navy. Her incisive mind and tactical genius prove crucial in unraveling one intrigue after another, but her author hardly lets her rest: the problems faced by Honor and her beloved Star Kingdom have grown steadily more complex -- and destructive -- since she was first introduced to Earth in 1992's "On Basilisk Station."

8. We next come to a star with a single important world: the militaristic planet of Barrayar. Settled by Russian, French and Greek expeditions in the first waves of human exploration of the stars, it was cut off from the rest of humanity by a sudden wormhole collapse -- and when this Time of Isolation ended, it struggled to integrate the technological and cultural advances of the rest of the galaxy. Which of these writers is Barrayar's chronicler?

Answer: Lois McMaster Bujold

In 2004, Bujold tied Robert Heinlein for the most Hugo Awards for Best Novel ever earned by a single author, largely on the strength of her books on Barrayar. She tells the planet's story of political and cultural upheaval from the perspective of one of its aristocratic families, the Vorkosigans. Aral Vorkosigan, as seen by an explorer from another world, Cordelia Naismith, is the reader's first introduction to Barrayar in "Shards of Honor" (1986); his son, Miles, comes into his own as a viewpoint character two books later, in "The Warrior's Apprentice" (which also came out in 1986).

As a vivid cast of characters adventure in Barrayar and the galaxy, we get thrills, romance, intrigue, comedy, and some excellent hard science fiction.

9. As we head toward Alpha Centauri, take a pair of headphones and listen to the music that started it all. These achingly beautiful choral songs, broadcast into the ether, were our first hint of alien intelligence. Given what happened, maybe humanity should never have tried to visit the singers on their planet of Rakhat -- but how could we have known? Name the author who wrote this first-contact novel of faith and foibles.

Answer: Mary Doria Russell

"The Sparrow" (1996), Russell's first novel, told the story of a small expedition sent by the Jesuits to meet the music-making people of Rakhat. Unfortunately, mistaken assumptions and miscommunications set off a tragic chain of events that will forever change the face of the planet.

As Nancy Pearl wrote in a review for "Library Journal," this beautifully written book (and its sequel, 1998's "Children of God") explores "what happens when a man tries to do the right thing, for the right reasons and ends up causing incalculable harm."

10. This star has no name you would recognize, but humanity knows it as the scene of its worst crime: xenocide. The aliens who lived there -- the buggers -- had attacked us in our own solar system and nearly destroyed us. So we took the fight to them, and the little boy who controlled our fleet by ansible used a terrible weapon, ending the war forever by destroying their very planet. Who spoke for the dead, and for the living?

Answer: Orson Scott Card

The Bugger Wars ended, definitively, with "Ender's Game," which was published as a short story in 1977 and as a full-length novel in 1985. It tells of how children are taken from their parents and brought to the Battle School, where they are trained to remotely command the fleets that are even now approaching the alien world. Ender Wiggin, the most brilliant of them, is chosen to lead, and he destroys a sentient species thinking it's just a training simulation. Two series of sequels, one on Earth and one in the stars, deal with the aftermath -- for Ender, for his friends, for humanity, and for everyone else.

Source: Author CellarDoor

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor agony before going online.
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Let Me Play Among the Stars Trivia Quiz

There's no limit to how far science fiction can take you: other worlds, other galaxies, and even other universes! Come to the stars with me and let's see where we can go.

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