98 Fun Facts About Science Fiction

Which 1920 Czech play gave the world the word 'robot'?

R.U.R. stands for Rossum's Universal Robots; written in 1920, the play had its first performance in Hradec Králové in January 1921, weeks before the Prague National Theatre staging.

Who wrote the 1920 play that introduced the word 'robot'?

Karel Capek wrote the play in 1920; his brother Josef suggested the word roboti, from the Czech robota meaning forced labour, after Karel had first considered 'labori'.

William Gibson's 1984 debut opens which sequence of novels?

Gibson's debut opened the Sprawl trilogy, named for the Boston-Atlanta urban sprawl of its setting; Count Zero followed in 1986 and Mona Lisa Overdrive in 1988.

Science fiction's most famous award is named after whom?

Hugo Gernsback, a Luxembourg-born editor and publisher, launched the first magazine devoted entirely to science fiction in 1926, and the Hugo Awards were named in his honour.

Which magazine did the Hugo Awards' namesake found?

Amazing Stories, launched in April 1926, was the first magazine devoted entirely to science fiction; its founder's first name was later given to the genre's best-known awards.

In which year were the Hugo Awards first presented?

The Hugo Awards were first presented in 1953 at the 11th Worldcon in Philadelphia as a one-off; none were given in 1954 and they became annual from 1955.

What shape is the Hugo Award trophy?

The Hugo trophy is a finned rocket ship on a base; Jack McKnight machined the first one and Ben Jason's later redesign, modelled on 1950s car hood ornaments, became the standard.

Which organisation gives out the Nebula Awards?

The SFWA, founded by Damon Knight in 1965 as the Science Fiction Writers of America, chooses the Nebula Awards by a vote of its professional-writer members rather than by fans.

In which year were the Nebula Awards first presented?

The Nebula Awards were first presented in 1966, for works published in 1965; the trophy is a block of clear lucite with a spiral nebula and gemstones embedded inside it.

Which 1818 Gothic novel is widely treated as an ancestor of the genre?

Frankenstein was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when Mary Shelley was 20; she had begun writing it at 18 during the summer of 1816 in Switzerland.

What is the subtitle of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel?

The Modern Prometheus is the subtitle, likening Victor to the Titan who shaped humans from clay and stole fire; the revised 1831 edition appeared under Shelley's own name.

Who proposed the ghost-story contest at Villa Diodati in the summer of 1816?

Lord Byron, renting the Villa Diodati near Geneva in the rainy summer of 1816, challenged his guests to each write a ghost story; Mary Shelley's tale grew into her famous novel and Polidori's into The Vampyre.

In which 1942 short story did Isaac Asimov first list all three Laws of Robotics?

Runaround, published in Astounding Science Fiction in March 1942, is the story in which Asimov first spelled out the laws in full, as the robot Speedy circles a selenium pool on Mercury.

Which 1950 Asimov collection first gathered his early robot stories in book form?

I, Robot, published by Gnome Press in 1950, collected nine of Asimov's robot stories linked by a framing interview with robopsychologist Susan Calvin, with the laws printed at the front.

Which novel won the very first Nebula Award for Best Novel?

Dune, Frank Herbert's desert-planet epic, won the inaugural Nebula for Best Novel and also shared that year's Hugo with Roger Zelazny's This Immortal.

Where was Dune originally published?

Herbert's novel first ran as two serials in Analog between December 1963 and May 1965, before Chilton, a publisher better known for car-repair manuals, issued it as a book in 1965.

What is the substance found only on Arrakis called?

Melange, the spice, is produced by the sandworms of Arrakis; it extends life, gives Guild navigators their prescience, and turns the eyes of heavy users blue.

Blade Runner was adapted from which Philip K. Dick novel?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Dick's 1968 novel, is set in a post-war San Francisco; Ridley Scott's 1982 film moved the story to a rain-soaked Los Angeles of 2019.

How many different versions of Blade Runner exist?

Seven versions have been shown: the 1982 workprint, a sneak-preview cut, the US and international theatrical releases, a television edit, the 1992 Director's Cut and Scott's 2007 Final Cut.

Who composed the Blade Runner score?

Vangelis, fresh from his Oscar for Chariots of Fire, wrote the synthesiser score; it was nominated for a BAFTA and a Golden Globe although the film itself flopped in North America.

Which Arthur C. Clarke short story mainly inspired 2001: A Space Odyssey?

The Sentinel, Clarke's 1951 story about an alien artefact found on the Moon, was the seed; Kubrick and Clarke also drew on 'Encounter in the Dawn' for the Dawn of Man sequence.

What did Kubrick use in 2001 in place of Alex North's rejected original score?

Kubrick used existing classical works, including Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra, The Blue Danube and pieces by Ligeti, and dropped Alex North's commissioned score, which North only discovered at the premiere.

How did Gene Roddenberry pitch Star Trek in his first draft?

Roddenberry's 1964 pitch called the show 'Wagon Train to the stars', after the hit Western anthology; he had written for Have Gun – Will Travel and wanted self-contained weekly adventures.

Which production company backed the original Star Trek?

Its head, Lucille Ball, was persuaded to keep both Star Trek and Mission: Impossible alive in 1966.

How many seasons did the original Star Trek run before NBC cancelled it?

Star Trek ran for three seasons and 79 episodes before NBC dropped it in 1969; ratings were low throughout and it was the syndication reruns that built the franchise.

Which studio head was persuaded to save both Star Trek and Mission: Impossible?

Lucille Ball, who ran the studio alone after buying out Desi Arnaz, overruled her board to keep financing both series, which had pushed the company into deficit-financing two hour-long dramas.

Which H. G. Wells novel describes a Martian invasion of Earth?

The War of the Worlds, serialised in 1897 and published as a book in 1898, has Martians invade because their own older, cooling world has reached the last stage of exhaustion.

In which English county does the narrator of Wells's Martian-invasion novel live?

The narrator lives in Woking, Surrey, where the first cylinder lands on Horsell Common; his brother escapes via Tillingham in Essex as London is overrun.

Which 1927 German silent film is the genre's great early landmark?

Metropolis, Fritz Lang's 1927 epic of a towering future city split between rulers above and workers below, was the most expensive silent film of its day and introduced the robot Maria.

Who wrote the novel and screenplay behind Fritz Lang's 1927 city-of-the-future film?

Thea von Harbou, then married to Fritz Lang, wrote the 1925 novel and co-wrote the screenplay with him; she stayed in Germany and kept working under the Nazi regime after Lang left.

Which producer released a shortened, colour-tinted version of Lang's 1927 silent classic in 1984?

Giorgio Moroder's 1984 release tinted the film, cut it to about 80 minutes and added pop songs by Freddie Mercury, Bonnie Tyler, Loverboy and Adam Ant.

Which novel won the first Hugo Award for Best Novel?

The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester's novel about a murderer hunted by telepathic police, won the first Hugo for Best Novel at the Philadelphia Worldcon after being serialised in Galaxy.

What did The Matrix take at the box office, against a $63m budget?

The Matrix grossed over $460 million worldwide (about $463 million) on its original run, making it Warner Bros.' top earner of 1999 and the year's fourth-highest-grossing film.

Which national film tradition shaped The Matrix's fight scenes?

Hong Kong action cinema shaped the fights: Yuen Woo-ping, choreographer of Drunken Master, trained the cast for months and brought its wire work, alongside anime influences such as Ghost in the Shell.

How many Hugo Awards did Ursula K. Le Guin win?

Le Guin won eight Hugo Awards, including Best Novel for The Left Hand of Darkness (1970) and The Dispossessed (1975) and Best Short Story for 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas'.

In 2003 Le Guin became the second woman honoured as what?

Le Guin was named an SFWA Grand Master in 2003 for lifetime achievement; Andre Norton, honoured in 1984, was the only woman before her, and the award carries Damon Knight's name.

In UNESCO's Index Translationum, where does Jules Verne rank among most-translated authors?

Verne takes second place in UNESCO's Index Translationum, behind Agatha Christie and ahead of William Shakespeare; the index has logged his translations since 1979.

What was Jules Verne's sequence of adventure novels called?

Voyages extraordinaires was the umbrella title publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel gave Verne's novels from 1866, promising to sum up the geographical and scientific knowledge of the age in story form; it ran to more than 50 books.

Verne originally conceived Captain Nemo as a scientist of which nationality?

Verne first made Nemo a Polish nobleman avenging the Russian crushing of the 1863 uprising; publisher Hetzel, mindful of Russian readers and French diplomacy, had that backstory removed, and The Mysterious Island later made him Indian.

Which subgenre emphasises scientific accuracy above all?

Hard science fiction prizes scientific rigour and plausibility, as in the work of Arthur C. Clarke and Hal Clement; soft SF leans on the social sciences and space opera on adventure.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy began in 1978 as a sitcom on which network?

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy began on BBC Radio 4 on 8 March 1978, produced by Simon Brett and then Geoffrey Perkins; Adams later reworked it as novels, TV and film, contradicting his earlier versions.

Which fireman is the protagonist of Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451?

Guy Montag is the fireman who burns books and then begins hiding them; Bradbury wrote the novel in the McCarthy era, haunted by the Nazi book burnings of his boyhood.

The title of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World comes from which Shakespeare play?

The Tempest gives Huxley his title: Miranda's cry 'O brave new world, that has such people in't' on first seeing the shipwrecked courtiers, which John the Savage quotes with growing bitterness.

In Brave New World's dating system, what does the 'AF' of AF 632 stand for?

AF stands for After Ford: the World State counts years from the 1908 debut of the Model T, so AF 632 is AD 2540, and citizens say 'Our Ford' where we would say 'Our Lord'.

Which band recorded 'Journey of the Sorcerer', the Hitchhiker's Guide theme tune?

The Eagles recorded 'Journey of the Sorcerer', a Bernie Leadon banjo instrumental on their 1975 album One of These Nights; Adams chose it for the radio series and it was reused for TV, LP and film.

What special Hugo Award did Asimov's Foundation trilogy win in 1966?

The one-off Hugo for Best All-Time Series went to the Foundation trilogy, beating Burroughs's Barsoom books, Heinlein's Future History, Smith's Lensman novels and Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

Which Nobel-winning economist credits the Foundation series with turning his mind to economics?

Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel laureate, has said he went into economics because it was the closest thing available to Hari Seldon's psychohistory, the predictive science of the Foundation books.

Who narrated The Book in the original Hitchhiker's radio series?

Peter Jones voiced The Book from the first 1978 series until his death in 2000; William Franklyn took over the role for the 2004–05 radio series.

Which candy lures the alien home in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, after the makers of M&M's said no?

Reese's Pieces sales jumped after Elliott laid a trail of them for E.T. to follow. Mars had turned the film down, believing the alien would frighten children.

Which Star Wars planet did George Lucas name after a real town in southern Tunisia?

Tatooine comes from Tataouine, a town Lucas came across while scouting desert locations. The planet's name is never actually mentioned in the final screenplay of the 1977 film.

Which Star Trek actor based the Vulcan salute on a Jewish priestly blessing he saw as a child?

Leonard Nimoy peeked during a synagogue service his grandfather took him to. The split-fingered hand he saw there stands for the Hebrew letter shin.

Which Star Wars character did George Lucas base on Indiana, his Alaskan Malamute dog?

Chewbacca began with Indiana riding in the passenger seat of Lucas's car like a co-pilot. The Wookiee's name even echoes sobaka, the Russian word for dog.

Which NASA space shuttle got its name after Star Trek fans flooded the White House with letters?

Enterprise was due to be christened Constitution until the letters reached President Gerald Ford. Built without engines or a working heat shield, the test orbiter was never capable of spaceflight.

Which computer sings 'Daisy Bell' as it is shut down in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

HAL 9000 sings it as a nod to real history. In 1961 a Bell Labs computer performed 'Daisy Bell', the earliest known song sung by a synthesised computer voice.

Which half-buried landmark does Charlton Heston's astronaut find at the end of Planet of the Apes?

The Statue of Liberty tells him the 'alien' world was Earth all along, long after a nuclear war. The scene was shot in a secluded cove at Malibu.

In Ray Bradbury's time-travel story 'A Sound of Thunder', which crushed creature changes the future?

A butterfly dies under the boot of Eckels, a hunter on a Tyrannosaurus safari, and he returns to a changed present. The 1952 story is often linked to the 'butterfly effect', though that term came later, from chaos theory.

In Daniel Keyes's novel Flowers for Algernon, what kind of creature is Algernon?

A laboratory mouse, Algernon has the intelligence-raising surgery before Charlie Gordon does. When the animal's gains fade and he dies, Charlie sees what is coming for him.

In Doctor Who, the Doctor's TARDIS is stuck in the shape of which piece of British street furniture?

A police box was a common sight in 1960s Britain, so the time machine blended in when its chameleon circuit broke.

Which car replaced a refrigerator as the time machine in early scripts for Back to the Future?

The DeLorean jumps through time when it reaches 88 miles per hour. The device was first conceived as a stationary machine, and at one point it was a refrigerator.

In Jurassic Park, dinosaur DNA is recovered from mosquitoes that were preserved in which substance?

Amber is fossilised tree resin, which can trap insects whole. One minor character oversees a mine of it in the Dominican Republic for the park's founder, John Hammond.

Which actor was first suggested for the human hero of The Terminator before playing the killer cyborg instead?

Arnold Schwarzenegger won the villain's part at a meeting where James Cameron had planned to pick a fight and rule him out. The director ended up sketching his face on a notepad instead.

Which Alien heroine, played by Sigourney Weaver, was originally written as a man?

Ellen Ripley was conceived as male until director Ridley Scott chose, early in production, to make the character a woman. She ends the 1979 film as the last of the Nostromo's crew.

Which Doctor Who villains, known for screeching 'Exterminate!', did writer Terry Nation base on the Nazis?

The Daleks glide because Terry Nation, inspired by a dance troupe in long skirts, wanted aliens that did not look like a man in a suit.

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which number is Deep Thought's answer to life, the universe and everything?

42 arrives after 7.5 million years of computing, and nobody is pleased. Deep Thought points out that its makers never knew what the question actually was.

Which rock formation, the first US national monument, is the alien landing site in Close Encounters of the Third Kind?

Devils Tower saw a large rise in visitors and climbers after the 1977 film. Theodore Roosevelt had protected the Wyoming butte back in 1906.

Which Star Trek language, created by linguist Marc Okrand, has its own published translation of Hamlet?

Klingon was deliberately designed to sound alien, with features rare in human languages. In 2010 the Washington Shakespeare Company performed scenes from Hamlet in it.

Which giant monster, awakened by hydrogen bomb testing, first attacked Tokyo in a 1954 Japanese film?

Godzilla reached cinemas months after a real Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon No. 5, was showered with fallout from an American hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll.

Which crop does stranded astronaut Mark Watney grow to stay alive on Mars in The Martian?

Potatoes kept the film crew busy too, since real ones were grown on a sound stage next to the set. In the story, Watney fertilises his with the crew's own waste.

Which dystopian novel, drafted on the Scottish island of Jura, gave English the phrases Big Brother and Room 101?

Nineteen Eighty-Four took the name of Room 101 from a conference room at BBC Broadcasting House. George Orwell finished the book in November 1948 while ill with tuberculosis.

Which Jurassic Park author, a Harvard-trained doctor, also created the medical drama ER?

Michael Crichton earned his medical degree in 1969 but never practised, choosing to write instead. He published his first novels under pen-names while still a student.

Which lush moon, mined by humans for unobtanium, is home to the Na'vi in James Cameron's Avatar?

Pandora sits in the Alpha Centauri star system. Work on the constructed language of its Na'vi people began in 2005, before the screenplay itself was developed.

Which Star Trek character did Martin Luther King Jr. persuade actress Nichelle Nichols not to give up?

Nyota Uhura signified a future of greater racial harmony, King told Nichols, who had planned to return to musical theatre. He was introduced to her as her biggest fan.

Which actor voiced Darth Vader in Star Wars while bodybuilder David Prowse wore the suit?

James Earl Jones felt the part was too small to warrant recognition and chose to go uncredited in the first two films. George Lucas thought Prowse's West Country accent wrong for the villain.

Which Star Wars ship is said to have been shaped after a hamburger with an olive on the side?

The Millennium Falcon was redesigned because its first, longer shape looked too much like the Eagle Transporters of TV's Space: 1999. The olive became the off-centre cockpit.

Which household item do fans of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy carry every 25 May?

A towel is indispensable for galactic travellers in Douglas Adams's books, partly for its immense psychological value. Towel Day was first held two weeks after his death in 2001.

What are the bioengineered humanoids hunted by Rick Deckard in Blade Runner called?

Replicants got their name from a screenwriter's daughter, who worked in biochemistry and suggested 'replicating', the way a cell copies itself. The first models seen live only four years.

Where is the remote American research station that a shape-shifting alien infiltrates in John Carpenter's The Thing?

Antarctica is where a Norwegian helicopter chases a sled dog into the Americans' camp in the opening scene. The story comes from the novella Who Goes There?

Which US president's missile defence plan did Senator Ted Kennedy mock as 'reckless Star Wars schemes'?

Ronald Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative in March 1983. The film nickname stuck after the Washington Post quoted Kennedy's speech the very next day.

Which famous Star Trek catchphrase was never actually spoken in any episode or film?

'Beam me up, Scotty' is a misquotation, yet James Doohan, who played the ship's engineer, chose it as the title of his 1996 autobiography.

Which X-Files agent, played by Gillian Anderson, is credited with inspiring women to pursue science careers?

Dana Scully is a medical doctor as well as an FBI special agent, and 'the Scully Effect' is the name given to her pull on young women choosing science, medicine and law enforcement.

Which animated sitcom by Simpsons creator Matt Groening follows a man frozen for 1,000 years and revived in 2999?

Futurama puts its thawed hero, Fry, to work at Planet Express, an interplanetary delivery company, alongside the one-eyed Leela and the robot Bender.

Which Margaret Atwood novel is set in Gilead, a dictatorship that has replaced the United States?

The Handmaid's Tale was begun in West Berlin in spring 1984 and finished in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where Atwood was teaching at the state university.

Which small object does Dom Cobb use to check whether he is still dreaming in Christopher Nolan's Inception?

A spinning top that never falls tells Cobb he is in a dream. He walks away to join his children before seeing whether it drops, and the script ends with it 'STILL SPINNING'.

Which breakfast food is the obsession of the psychic girl Eleven in Stranger Things?

Eggo waffles became an icon of the Netflix series, which carried the brand's name to countries where the product is not even sold.

Which crime-ridden American city is the setting of RoboCop, a movie that was mostly shot in Dallas?

Detroit was dismissed as a filming location because it had too many low, old-fashioned buildings. Director Paul Verhoeven wanted a location that suggested the near future.

Which Disney film, set inside a mainframe computer, was among the first to use extensive computer-generated imagery?

Tron was not even nominated for the visual effects prize at the Academy Awards, groundbreaking as it was. Its two nods came for costume design and sound.

In the film Soylent Green, what is the wafer sold as a plankton product secretly made from?

Human bodies are the main ingredient, a secret that unravels once oceanographic reports show the dying seas can no longer supply any plankton.

Which animated robot, left behind to compact Earth's rubbish, learns about love from a tape of Hello, Dolly!?

WALL-E stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth-class. His beeps are the work of sound designer Ben Burtt, hired because the director kept using R2-D2 as his benchmark.

Which writer created and hosted The Twilight Zone, writing or co-writing 92 of its 156 episodes?

Rod Serling was known as the 'angry young man' of Hollywood for his clashes with television executives and sponsors over censorship, racism and war.

Which physicist advised on Interstellar's black hole and later shared a Nobel Prize for gravitational waves?

Kip Thorne learned something from the film too. Its visual effects gave him new insight into how black holes bend light, which led to published scientific papers.

Which French stage magician directed A Trip to the Moon, the 1902 film where a capsule hits the Moon's eye?

Georges Méliès also played the lead, Professor Barbenfouillis. He ended up selling toys and sweets from a stand in a Paris railway station before film lovers rediscovered him.

Which 1968 Jane Fonda space adventure features a villain whose name was borrowed by the band Duran Duran?

Barbarella sends its heroine to find the scientist Durand Durand. The Birmingham band took his name the day after the BBC broadcast the film in October 1978.

Which artist designed the creature in Alien, basing it on his own painting Necronom IV?

H. R. Giger, a Swiss painter of 'biomechanical' images that blend human bodies with machines, shared the film's Academy Award for visual effects.

In which 1951 film must the words 'Klaatu barada nikto' be spoken to stop the robot Gort?

The Day the Earth Stood Still has its alien visitor teach the phrase to a woman named Helen Benson in case he comes to harm. Screenwriter Edmund H. North invented the language himself.

Which 1997 film starring Ethan Hawke takes its title from the letters of the four DNA bases?

Gattaca is spelled only with G, A, T and C, for guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine. It was shot as The Eighth Day, until a Belgian film reached America with that title first.

In which Kurt Vonnegut novel does Billy Pilgrim come 'unstuck in time' and visit the planet Tralfamadore?

Slaughterhouse-Five grew out of the Allied firebombing of Dresden, which Vonnegut himself survived as an American prisoner of war.

Which company buried unsold cartridges of its E.T. video game in a New Mexico landfill in 1983?

Atari crushed and buried truckloads of stock near Alamogordo. A 2014 dig proved the legend true, though officials put the total at about 700,000 cartridges of various games.

In which puzzle video game does the AI GLaDOS promise cake to anyone who finishes her test chambers?

Portal hides graffiti backstage warning that 'the cake is a lie'. After the final chamber, GLaDOS tries to steer the player into an incinerator instead.