The Gollancz SF Masterwork Quiz!
Last night, Gollancz was honoured to appear as a series of questions on University Challenge. Taking the covers (without title and author, of course) of four of our wonderful SF Masterworks series, and with a slight look of disdain on his face, Jeremy Paxman asked the teams to work out what book they were seeing. The first one was easy – The Invisible Man, but the three bonus questions were a little trickier. The poor students didn’t get any of the bonus questions right (and I think Dune in particular was fairly obvious, but them I’m a geek).
If you’re in the UK you can watch the episode here for the next few days. The Gollancz question comes around 20 minutes in. If anyone sees a youtube version, please let us know.
We thought we’d celebrate this appearance of one of the institutions of SF on one of the institutions of British Telly by providing a quick quiz. This is one of those quizs where you can Google the answers, but that wouldn’t be any fun. We’ll send the winner a bunch of Masterworks, and the runner-up a smaller pile. There’s also a tie-breaker – nearest answer wins. Please send your answers to competitions@orionbooks.co.uk with the header Masterworks by 11.59pm on the 22nd November 2012.
So phones off, Google deactivated – try the Gollancz SF Masterwork quiz! All of the answers will be based on a book which is or has been published in the SF Masterwork list.
Missing Words.
1) The Moon is a Harsh ________
2) More than ______
3) Earth _____ (this is two words, for clarification)
4) ______ World (this is two words, for clarification)
5) The _____ of the Gods
Missing Authors.
1) Eon, by ________
2) Cat’s Cradle, by _______
3) Arslan, by _______
4) The Stars My Destination, by _____
5) The Penultimate Truth, by ______
First Lines – name the book.
1) The man with the Binoculars squirmed forward on his stomach through the sun-warmed brown grass.
2) It was St Crispin’s Eve on Sad al Bari IV when Captain John Truck, impelled by something he was forced to describe to himself as ’sentiment’, decided to visit The Spacer’s Rave, on the corner of Proton Alley and Circuit (that chilly junction where the higher class of port lady goes to find her customers).
3) ‘Tonight we’re going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man’.
4) Marghe’s suit was still open at neck and wrist, and the helmet rested in the crook of her left arm.
5) Composite image, optically encoded by escort-craft of the trans-Channel airship Lord Brunel: aerial view of suburban Cherbourg, 14 October 1905.
Name the Director of the film version of these books:
1) Dune
2) The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
3) The Prestige
4) A Scanner Darkly
5) The Bodysnatchers (filmed as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1956 version)
These books were filmed under different titles – what was the film version called?
1) Roadside Picnic
2) The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe
3) I am Legend
4) Flowers for Algernon
5) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Award Winners – here’s the year and prize, which book won (all for best novel, where appropriate)? Please note one of these is a trick question.
1) The Nebula, in 1967
2) The John W. Campbell , in 1978
3) The Arthur C. Clarke, in 1989
4) The Hugo, in 1953
5) The World Fantasy Award, 1996
And the tie-breaker – how many authors have been published on the SF Masterwork list, in all of its incarnations. Nearest answer wins.