I realized that last week's scavenger hunt posts neglected half of my favorite genre fiction, so here's a post to make up for that:
What items should appear on a Science Fiction Novel Scavenger Hunt?
Some suggestions to get things started:
- One Big Dumb Object
- One improbably brilliant genius scientist who is able to both invent a new Theory of Everything and use it to build a time machine/ star drive/ whatever in his basement lab
- One book offering a "scientific" explanation for some "paranormal" phenomenon
- One alien planet consisting of a single ecosystem
- One reference to special relativity
- One reference to quantum mechanics
- One alien race with godlike powers
What else?
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One exotic (zero-g, interplanetary, whatever) sex scene.
One rigidly traditional pseudo-mediaeval alien society that is completely implausible at their level of technology
One interstellar Empire. Bonus points if Roman titles are used.
"One Big Dumb Object"
Aren't these more frequently found at the conventions than in the book?
One scifi novel that starts out looking like a fantasy novel.
One book that has ray guns as their primary weapon.
One reference to robots.
One reference to nanotechnology.
One alien species that has an interstellar empire with a monolithic culture and a monolithic religion.
One reference to Gödel's theorem
One book that has a robot that isn't revealed to be a robot until the end of the book.
Two books about the Singularity that aren't written by Charlie Stross.
Three books with British Naval language (bonus if they aren't Honor whatsername books).
One book from the 40s or 50s that isn't painfully wrong about space travel.
One made-up cuss word formed from an acronym.
One made-up cuss word not formed from an acronym.
One dilating door.
One book where "quantum mechanics" becomes the equivalent of "magic pixie dust". The use of nanotechnology in the same role is only worth one-tenth.
One book where the robots and/or computers are better developed characters than the people.
One book where the death of 90% of the human species makes for a better world, triple word score if the population of earth is decadent and lazy while the survivors are hard working individuals in space.
One daughter of a mad scientist.
One generation ship where the inhabitants have not suffered any technological or sociological regression.