Science Fiction Trivia
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98 free Science Fiction trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
42 free Science fiction trivia questions with answers. Science fiction trivia usually stops at spaceships. This quiz covers the whole genre: the 1818 novel that started it, the Czech play that gave English the word robot, the Nebula and Hugo awards and what the trophy is actually shaped like, and the single novel that has won every major prize at once. Film and television get equal weight - the seven versions of Blade Runner, the short story behind 2001, the pitch that sold Star Trek as a Western, the studio boss who saved it, and the Hong Kong fight choreography that made The Matrix look the way it does. Difficulty runs from easy identification questions to expert-level publishing and production detail, and every answer carries the sourced sentence that establishes it. Built for a genre round at quiz night, a book club, or an argument about who really invented cyberspace.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1920 Czech play gave the world the word 'robot'?
R.U.R.
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.
Q 02Who wrote the 1920 play that introduced the word 'robot'?
Karel Capek
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'.
Q 03William Gibson's 1984 debut opens which sequence of novels?
The Sprawl trilogy
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.
Q 04Science fiction's most famous award is named after whom?
Hugo Gernsback
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.
Q 05Which magazine did the Hugo Awards' namesake found?
Amazing Stories
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.
Q 06In which year were the Hugo Awards first presented?
1953
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.
Q 07What shape is the Hugo Award trophy?
A finned rocket ship
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.
Q 08Which organisation gives out the Nebula Awards?
The SFWA
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.
Q 09In which year were the Nebula Awards first presented?
1966
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.
Q 10Which 1818 Gothic novel is widely treated as an ancestor of the genre?
Frankenstein
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.
Q 11What is the subtitle of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel?
The Modern Prometheus
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.
Q 12Who proposed the ghost-story contest at Villa Diodati in the summer of 1816?
Lord Byron
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.
Q 13In which 1942 short story did Isaac Asimov first list all three Laws of Robotics?
Runaround
Q 21Which Arthur C. Clarke short story mainly inspired 2001: A Space Odyssey?
The Sentinel
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.
Q 22What did Kubrick use in 2001 in place of Alex North's rejected original score?
Used existing classical works
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.
Q 23How did Gene Roddenberry pitch Star Trek in his first draft?
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.
Q 14Which 1950 Asimov collection first gathered his early robot stories in book form?
I, Robot
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.
Q 15Which novel won the very first Nebula Award for Best Novel?
Dune
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.
Q 16Where was Dune originally published?
As two serials in Analog
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.
Q 17What is the substance found only on Arrakis called?
Melange
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.
Q 18Blade Runner was adapted from which Philip K. Dick novel?
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
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.
Q 19How many different versions of Blade Runner exist?
Seven
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.
Q 20Who composed the Blade Runner score?
Vangelis
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.
Wagon Train to the stars
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.
Q 24Which production company backed the original Star Trek?
Desilu
Its head, Lucille Ball, was persuaded to keep both Star Trek and Mission: Impossible alive in 1966.
Q 25How many seasons did the original Star Trek run before NBC cancelled it?
Three
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.
Q 26Which studio head was persuaded to save both Star Trek and Mission: Impossible?
Lucille Ball
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.
Q 27Which H. G. Wells novel describes a Martian invasion of Earth?
The War of the Worlds
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.
Q 28In which English county does the narrator of Wells's Martian-invasion novel live?
Surrey
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.
Q 29Which 1927 German silent film is the genre's great early landmark?
Metropolis
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.
Q 30Who wrote the novel and screenplay behind Fritz Lang's 1927 city-of-the-future film?
Thea von Harbou
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.