Something Doesn't Add Up Trivia Quiz

Answer: We Can Remember It for You Wholesale

In "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (1966), office worker Douglas Quail buys a Rekal Incorporated memory implant session, so he will believe he has experienced his lifelong dream of going to Mars as a spy. After the implant, to everyone's shock, Quail claims he actually IS a spy who has been to Mars, though his memories of it were wiped. When the implant is removed Quail is uncertain which of his life experiences are real and which are false memory.

Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the hero, renamed Quaid, in a 1990 film adaptation. Schwarzenegger penned his autobiography, "Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story" in 2012. The film "Total Recall" was remade in 2012 starring Colin Farrell, though Dick is not credited. "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" is also a 1990 collection of Philip K. Dick science fiction stories.

Answer: The Martian

Andy Weir wrote this great 2011 science fiction story about an astronaut botanist and engineer trapped alone on Mars. Mark Watney is abandoned on the planet when his colleagues emergency evacuate because of a storm. Knowing he is believed dead, and unable to communicate with Earth, Watney improvises ingenious survival tactics. Eventually satellites pick up signs of his activities but NASA keeps this secret. His crew hatch a dangerous and unlikely plan to go back and rescue him.

Andy Weir is trained in computer science, and his father is a physicist and engineer. Having earlier books rejected by publishers, Weir decided to self-publish, initially for free on his website. By 2014 this story was a "New York Times" best seller. In 2015 Ridley Scott directed a film adaptation starring Matt Damon, which was Oscar-nominated in seven categories.

Answer: Amatka

Vanja is an information assistant assigned to the colony of Amatka to gather marketing information. Soon she has an eerie sense a chilling secret and political oppression rules here, never mind that solid objects dissolve, while lakes freeze and thaw unaccountably. Language, she discovers, is a tool used to control truth and reality.

Karin Tidbec was born in 1977 Sweden, an author of "weird fiction"--a longstanding science fiction category with disputed and changing definition, popular with Lovecraft fans, and in Nordic literature. "Amatka" is her second novel, available in English in 2017.

Answer: HAL

British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke wrote a number of early short stories (such as 1948's "The Sentinel") about the themes used in the book and film, "2001: A Space Odyssey". In 1968 Clarke and director Stanley Kubrick co-developed a novel and a film version together, though at times taking different routes.

In Clarke's story humans go on an extended space mission to investigate a strange black slab, with the guidance of the ship's computer, HAL 9000. Inexplicably HAL begins to lie, refuse orders ("I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that") and murder his human charges. All because he can't compute a secret directive.

Answer: Frankenstein

At just eighteen Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) created "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus" (1818) about scientist Victor Frankenstein who insists he can bring dead matter back to life. Using stolen body parts, he succeeds, but then is horrified at the repulsive monster he's created. As disturbing is the unexpected torment felt by the monster itself.

This novel was an immediate bestseller, and an early model for science fiction, though Johannes Kepler wrote "Somnium" in 1608, and "Theologus Autodidactus" by Ibn al-Nafis (around 1268) is most likely the first science fiction book. When Mary Shelley conceived this story she was a guest of Lord Byron. She had read about Galvani's experiments on dead frogs--that electrical spark caused their legs to twitch--and she had a nightmare, the seed of her book.

Answer: A yellow star

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle co-wrote "The Mote in God's Eye" in 1974. In this novel it is AD 3017. Human space ships can travel instantaneously to various star systems. Human researchers are sent to a yellow star called the Mote, to make first contact with aliens. Presenting as peaceful, the aliens harbor strange and dangerous secrets. Only a "Crazy Eddie" can imagine a way out.

This book was nominated for Nebula, Hugo and Locus Awards. A sequel, "The Gripping Hand" (1993), describes events 25 years after the Mote was discovered. In 2010 Pournelle's daughter Jennifer Pournelle, an accomplished archaeologist, wrote and published another sequel, "Outies".

Answer: The world is imaginary and magic.

George R.R. Martin (born 1948) created an elaborate world in "A Song of Ice and Fire" (1996-2018), which he calls "epic Fantasy". Fantasy far precedes science fiction, but the two can walk a thin line. According to the great Isaac Asimov, science fiction is based on science, or a possible scientific reality, such as robots, travel in space, utopian or dystopian societies and aliens, perhaps in the far future.

Fantasy is for the most part imagined and magic or supernatural. For instance talking animals, dragons, an evil ring, magic trees, and wizards and witches. Or, a living King made of ice, and a woman who emerges unscathed from a roaring fire.

Answer: The Giver

"The Giver" (1993), winner of the 1994 Newbery Medal, is a dystopian novel by Lois Lowry, known for her controversial topics. Jonas is a boy of twelve who like all other kids his age receives his life assignment from the Chief Elder. He is selected as the Receiver of Memory, only to discover his whole society had been carefully engineered, void of true memory and feeling.

This book is mandatory in some classrooms in the USA; prohibited in others. In 2014 Phillip Noyce released the movie, starring Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep, with Brenton Thwaites of Australia as Jonas.

Answer: The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood penned the 1985 story of a horrific, rapid transition of an area of the USA into a fanatically religious totalitarian America, where fertile women are made to act as "handmaids" who bear children for barren rulers. Offred, formerly a happily married woman named June, has been captured and detained in that world, her own child ripped from her arms and even her name taken away. This novel won no less than four major literature awards. Atwood has said it is a warning of real possibilities.

Utopia is a 1516 Thomas More term, describing a near-perfect island and society. In a dystopia everyone is kept in a miserable or deluded state, or there's been a disaster, epidemic or collapse of civilization. Often people believe they are in a utopia, but a terrible realization of the opposite comes to light.

Answer: Robert A. Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) wrote "Stranger in a Strange Land", which won the 1962 Hugo Award for Best Novel, even adding a new word to the Oxford English Dictionary, "grok". In this tale, human Valentine Michael Smith grew up on Mars, reared by Martians. Having his own very foreign culture, things get super strange when he tries to integrate into human society. Heinlein is among the first known for "hard science fiction", where the science in the story is carefully accurate.

David Gerrold wrote the award-winning, "The Man Who Fooled Himself" about time travel and alternate realities. Doris Lessing penned "Children of Violence" and Carol Emshwiller created "The Mount" about humans accepting of their role as riding mounts for an alien race. It won the 2002 Philip K. Dick Award.