The Post Early Modern Science Fiction Quiz: Answers

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How well did you know your early-modern science fiction?

The Post Early Modern Science Fiction Quiz: Answers

Check out the answers.

An illustration from the Arabian Nights.

1. Mad scientist number one: which Shakespeare character uses weather control to kidnap miscreants onto his fantasy island?

Prospero, of course, in The Tempest. Unfortunately, Ariel didn't shout 'The planes! The planes!'

2. In the same early-modern scifi drama, which character first utters the immortal words (no, NOT 'he's dead, Jim') 'brave new world', and why?

Prospero's daughter, Miranda. What Miranda's staring at is her first real, hunky young man. She's impressed. Obviously, hackneyed romance in science fiction started in the early modern era.

3. Mad scientist number two: what fictional German deal-with-the-devil story was based on the misadventures of a real chemist? For extra credit, how did the real mad scientist die?

Faust, natürlich. The historical Faust died because the devil came to get him, or because he blew himself up making gunpowder. Depends on whom you believe. You can check it out in the Guide.

4. Alternative worlds division: what English politician called his perfect world Utopia?

Sir Thomas More. 1516. The novel was called Utopia, and it wasn't why he lost his head. (The moral: stay out of politics, and write science fiction instead.)

5. What is it about English politicians and utopian thinking, anyway? (Quiet in the back.) Which one of them called his utopia The New Atlantis?

Sir Francis Bacon. Sir Francis, whose Bacon Number was 0, was a very erudite fellow. We don't think he was secretly Shakespeare. King James I said of another of Bacon's works that it was 'like the peace of God, it passeth understanding'. Bacon died under unfortunate circumstances, while trying to freeze a chicken. The moral of this appears to be: keep your science fiction on the page, and leave the experimenting to the experts.

6. What sexy fantasy story that featured supernatural beings and flying items of interior decoration first appeared in Europe in 1704?

The Thousand and One Arabian Nights. Read and wonder: there are even robot horses.

7. Scientists as science fiction writers – you think this is new? Think again. What major astronomer turned his dissertation into an account of an Icelander on the moon?

Johannes Kepler. Yep, in Somnium the great astronomer wrote about an Icelandic student of Tycho Brahe's. The student's mom happened to be a witch, you see, and she packed him off to the moon for some field research. In spite of the witch part, the story is said to be scientifically pretty advanced.

8. Francis Godwin was a bishop, for pity's sake. How did he get away with publishing The Man in the Moone?

Frontispiece for the works of Cyrano de Bergerac.

He used a pseudonym, and had the book published posthumously. The book by 'Domingo Gonsales' appeared in 1638, owes a lot to astronomers like Kepler, and is claimed by some to be the first true scifi novel in English. So when's the movie coming out?

9. More lunatics. What famous French swordsman, himself often a fictional hero, is credited with inventing the ramjet, at least in a science fiction story he wrote?

Hercule-Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac. You knew that, of course. Fun fact: Cyrano's nose wasn't really that big. He was better-known as a dramatist and swashbuckler. Arthur C Clarke claims Cyrano invented the ramjet when he sent his hero to the moon by 'firecracker'. C'est magnifique.

10. How about women writers? What female English scientist of the 17th Century came up with a heroine who, as empress of another world, defends her native England using submarines and aerial weapons?

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Her 1666 novel was called The Blazing World. Her husband was so impressed he wrote a sonnet about her novel. Cavendish was also an animal rights activist. Samuel Pepys didn't like her, but we don't care.

We hope you enjoyed this excursion on the Scifi time machine. Check out the books. Tell your friends.

An illustration of imaginary air travel from 1900.
Post Quiz and Oddities Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

30.04.12 Front Page

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