48 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.