I read two (maybe three) books about a protagonist who communicates with an alien who provides the instructions on how to create a device to teleport. The device is flawed in that it purposefully uses more energy (much more) by taking it from the rotation of the Earth. The main character and two others continue to fight, commit intrigue, etc. The alien then uses them to recruit other races to do the same thing. Answer Per gadams999's own answer, the books in question are the duology " Signal to Noise " and " A Signal Shattered " by Eric S. Nylund. Plot summary from the Wikipedia page for "Signal to Noise": The novel follows Jack Potter, a computer cryptographer tenured at the fictional Academe of Pure and Applied Sciences in Santa Sierra, California (a city assembled from the ruins of San Francisco.) The story details Jack's first encounter with an alien calling himself Wheeler who apparently wishes to trade information with humanity. Accompanie...

From S05E02 and A Storm of Swords : In this episode, a new Lord Commander of The Night's Watch is appointed after the death of Jeor Mormont. But to my surprise, the appointment takes place not from the direct orders of the King (Tommen or Stannis, your pick) but through a truly democratic process. Yes, elections, where anybody can stand for the post & only the members of the Night's Watch gets to vote. So, the question, why is the Night's Watch the only democracy in an otherwise feudal Westeros? Army is the last place you would expect to find a true democracy. Is it just a happenstance because Stannis Baratheon has claimed the Wall or is the practice followed through the ages?

As teenager Tom Riddle is speaking to Harry Potter in the Chamber of Secrets, both he and Harry are refering to the real Voldemort in the third person. If Tom Riddle had succeeded in sucking all the life energy out of Ginny and had come back alive, wouldn't that have meant there were two Voldemorts in the world? The wraith one which had lived in Quirrell, and the newly constituted one? This Tom Riddle clearly doesn't have the memories of the wraith version. As a bonus: If they both existed, would they have competed against each other? Answer I go back and forth on whether the purpose of the diary Horcrux was to reincarnate Tom Riddle (and note the difference between reincarnate -- to give another body to; to incarnate anew -- and to protect a person, Voldemort, from death). The purpose of a Horcrux is not to create a new individual, but to protect its creator from death. That said, the diary Horcrux is the only of Voldemort's Horcruxes to serve two purposes: "What in...

Star Trek: Enterprise is the last TV series, but I've watched it first because it shows initial story (2100s). I've just finished watching season 4 of Star Trek: Enterprise. For 2200s, I've watched all Kirk movies, but not the original series of 70s. As per Star Trek timeline, next comes Star Trek: The Next Generation. But, unfortunately, its not available to me at this time. Next one is Star Trek: Deep Space 9. Is it OK to watch Star Trek: Deep Space 9 after skipping Star Trek: The Next Generation? Answer Two things to consider: Seasons 6 and 7 of The Next Generation overlap with the first two seasons of Deep Space Nine The Next Generation was mostly an "Adventure of the Week" show, although with gradual character development. Deep Space Nine was very much on a mythic story arc, with a number of major arcs leading through - especially once you get past season 1. Apart from a couple of crossovers (a two-parter TNG episode is set on DS9 - and the Picard/Borg link...

Is there any detail in Tolkien's work indicating what the One Ring was made of? Mithril? Platinum? Gold? Some other magical material? Answer As far as I'm aware, Tolkien never mentioned what the One Ring's material was. We only know 2 things about it: It looks like it's made of gold (so platinum/mithril/silver are out). It's not destructible other than in the Orodruin volcano. But this is likely a magical property instead of physical/chemical one, so can't tell us what the material is. One further circumstantial confirmation that The One was made of gold: Seven Rings given to Dwarves were made of gold: It is said that the foundation of each of the Seven Hoards of the Dwarf-kings of old was a golden ring. (Source: The Silmarillion ) And all the rings made by Sauron (including the Seven Dwarven and The One) seemed to have been made using the same technology, as per the consensus of the answers to this SFF question (" Were there any differences between the ...

According to 'Tolkien Gateway', their average height is between 4-5' tall but there's no weight range guesstimates. I assume they're pretty well built and muscular, especially the 'warrior class', but I can find no weight charts. A solid healthy weight for a 5' tall human male is about 125 pounds. How stocky are these guys? Answer Using a very powerfully built 5' tall adult human male and the following description from the Silmarillion, we can arrive at a reasonable guestimate of the body weight of the average healthy adult Dwarf male. "Since they were to come in the days of the power of Melkor, Aulë made the dwarves strong to endure. Therefore they are stone-hard, stubborn, fast in friendship and in enmity, and they suffer toil and hunger and hurt of body more hardily than all other speaking peoples; and they live long, far beyond the span of Men, yet not forever." ― The Silmarillion, "Of Aulë and Yavanna" http://tolkiengateway...

I read these books when I was kid (early 1980's) and think they were published in late 60's, early 70's or possibly later. The premise was of a training group for teens to train them to be some kind of space warriors or peacekeepers. There were cool weapons, tactics, training, tech, etc. There's some kind of treachery and the whole school/academy is wiped out, except one pupil (possibly one or two others?) who escapes in a ship and spends the remainder of the book series fighting the forces that killed all the other students.

Master Yoda was supposed to be this badass Jedi yet he loses against Palpatine. Meanwhile Master Mace Windu almost beats Palpatine, and would have, had it not been for Anakin's intervention. So what gives? Why couldn't Yoda beat Palpatine? Answer As Null points out, your question is probably flawed, in that Windu didn't actually beat Palpatine, and it is likely that Palpatine allowed Windu to disarm him. However, I'm willing to answer the question as you asked it, and address the real version of events afterwards. To answer the question as it was asked: It isn't specifically stated, but we can speculate that it is the result of several factors. Lightsaber Abilities and Forms of Yoda and Windu: Mace Windu as a lightsaber combatant: Mace uses a lightsaber combat form called Vaapad, which he himself invented. It was frowned upon by the Jedi Council because it skirted the edge of the Dark Side of the Force and required that the practitioner bend, if not actually break...

At the end of Men in Black , the camera zooms out and we see that Earth , indeed our entire Galaxy and known Universe is, nothing more than the equivalent of an atom in a marble belonging to some aliens. I always liked that ending, however it was seemingly voided by the end of MIB2 . At the end of MIB2 , it is shown that, seemingly, at the least Earth is simply inside a locker or similar compartment belonging to a much larger species. Is there any way to reconcile the two endings?

The first half of season 4 of Once Upon a Time (OUaT) is making use of the characters and story from Frozen . Up until this week's episode, they'd been writing a story that takes place after the events of the film, essentially using the story without altering the original canon. However, this week's episode adds elements that predate the film, effectively altering the canon. Is Disney allowing OUaT to make contributions to the Frozen canon? That is, things that will affect future Frozen films/shows. Answer I'm going to go with no. Once Upon a Time is an alternate retelling of fairy tales, without altering their canon. The 'canon' Disney story of Snow White has not been changed by this series, nor has Mulan, Peter Pan, or any of the rest. This is an alternate take on every other fairy tale, I don't see why this should be an exception. As further evidence, in an interview with Variety magazine , the following exchange took place. Variety: Unlike most o...

What are the known Easter eggs in The Force Awakens? Note: Due to community input, Easter Eggs should be limited to references of the previous Star Wars films, and are meant/confirmed by the writers/directors/etc. to be Easter Eggs . Also, please be aware that this can lead to spoilers . Answer Here you go. Easter Eggs, Cameos, and References. [embedded content] This list has been expanded to include more than just the reference video. New Hope parallels Person stranded on a desert planet destined for more Opening scene with storm troopers killing rebels Mind tricks and hiding on a large base Stormtrooper dressed as a rebel vs rebel dressed as Stormtrooper Han Solo "I have a bad feeling about this" Trash compactor Anakin's lightsaber being stored in Obi-Wan's chest Feeling a death from across the galaxy (Leia and Obi-Wan) Trench run Millenium Falcon 12 parsecs Floor compartments Board game Jedi training device Other Film References Millennium Falcon has a new squar...

In The Force Awakens we see a powerful weapon capable of immense destruction. When it's activated, we see five or so planets and a sun that are enemies of the First Order destroyed. Is there a verified list of the target s by name ? I'm not asking for merely the most publicized target. Answer As of this moment, no. There is no official, published list. We won't know until more information is published from an official source. The official novelization mentions the Hosnian system ten times, but only ever refers to Hosnian Prime's neighbors as "the Hosnian System's other worlds" or "the Hosnian worlds". It does name Korr Sella as the Resistance officer staring at the bright light in the sky in Republic City on Hosnian Prime for a brief moment, before Hosnian Prime's destruction, but that's the only clue. Unfortunately the Visual Dictionary does not mention what the other worlds (and whether they are planets or just moons) of the Hosni...

Gollum managed to keep the One Ring safe in his possession for approximately 478 years . His cave is very well hidden, the goblins living nearby appear to be unaware of it and aside from Bilbo's visit there doesn't seem to have been any threat to him continuing to hold onto it indefinitely . Did Tolkien highlight what would have happened if Bilbo hadn't recovered the Ring (or if Gollum had somehow died in his cave)? Would the Master Ring have simply remained undetected for the foreseeable future? Answer The Ring was actively trying to get back to its true master, Sauron. It had abandoned Gollum in hope of being picked up by someone more likely to get it back to Sauron, probably a Goblin or Orc. LOTR, Book I, Ch. 2 The Shadow of the Past : ‘A Ring of Power looks after itself, Frodo.It may slip off treacherously, but its keeper never abandons it. At most he plays with the idea of handing it on to someone else’s care – and that only at an early stage, when it first begins to...

I was distracted by my kids at the time, so maybe I missed something.... Han Solo was about to be shot by his angry employers, when suddenly these gigantic slavering tentacled monsters appeared and started eating people. Where did THEY come from? Were they already on the ship?

I'm trying to remember the name of a short story I read about 25 years ago or so. I'd also like to know of any collections it appeared in. The details I recall involve a family who are embarking on a hyperspace journey. To undertake this journey you have to be put to sleep. One of the children pretends to be asleep, and when the jump is complete the child has gone insane. From the child's point of view the jump lasted for an eternity while in reality it was only a few seconds. Answer Sounds like Stephen King's The Jaunt. From Wikipedia : The father then reveals the nature of why any conscious being goes insane or dies after being Jaunted: while physically the process occurs nearly instantaneously (the condemned man traveled two miles between two portals in 0.000000000067 seconds), to a conscious mind it lasts an eternity and When the father wakes, he finds that his inquisitive son held his breath while being administered the general anesthesia in order to experience t...

Anybody who's worked in the US foreign service can tell you that people in charge of protocol are often very polite, very considerate, and very attentive to how their actions and words come across to others. It pays not to annoy diplomats and government officers if you have to work with them day after day, and ask them to do favors for you when interacting with their governments. And most importantly, a protocol officer knows what secrets not to say. I would never hire somebody like C3PO to be in charge of protocol or even translations. He annoys people. He makes rude comments to Chewbacca, R2D2, and other protocol droids. He whines and complains and blurts out inappropriate statements. He's the kind of blabbermouth who would tell all your family secrets to a Sith Lord or a Hutt gangster. And according to an answer for this question , he was built from scavenged parts on Tatooine. If all the other protocol droids in the galaxy are as rude as him, no wonder the galaxy is going t...

[T]he muggle cousin is an abandoned plot thread -- that cousin would have a witch daughter, who would live with the Weasleys and be an intellegent Slytherin, being a foil for Hermione; I believe the character was abandoned in favour for Rita Skeeter. Mac Cooper, in a comment on an answer to "Does Hogwarts teach non magical classes?" Is there any truth to and evidence for this claim? Answer Yes Accio Quote for the Weasleys says this: Mafalda: was a Weasley cousin whose character was edited out of the books in favor of Rita Skeeter. It links to a page on her website that no longer exists, but it can be found on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine .

Read a book a long time (at least 10-15 years) ago about a man (I'm pretty sure he was rich, or at least well off) in a future where teleportation was normal mode of transport. He's going to teleport when there's a power outage (due to storm?) and the teleportation fails. He soon finds out that it only partially failed and he did materialize on the receiving side, but did not dematerialize on the sending side. The receiving side is the legally viable version and the sending side version is basically a fugitive. Other points I'm not 100% sure of: I'm pretty sure this was by a fairly famous sci-fi author The fail-safe is to not destroy the sending copy until the receiving copy is complete and the power failure happens at the exact right moment It is mentioned that there is religious protest against teleportation as they consider this to basically be murdering the sending copy.

This image is a product of In Print , a Doctor Who webcomic covering matters from throughout the franchise and into its most obscure offshoots. Can you identify these characters? Answer In the absence of an annotated picture, I am going to proceed upwards, by rows, in a zig-zag fashion (for reasons that become obvious given the row #1 to row #2 transition) starting from the bottom-right-hand corner. And Hurt counts, damnit! ☺ I, Martha , added this annotated picture and tried to put in the correspondences (in parentheses). (13) Handles (cyberman head) (10) Frobisher (4) K9 (Mark 3?) (1) First Doctor (Hartnell) (2) Second Doctor (Troughton) (3) Third Doctor (Pertwee) (5) Fourth Doctor (Baker) (6) Fifth Doctor (Davison) (7) The Valeyard wearing a wig and pretending to be the Sixth Doctor (Baker) (8) Seventh Doctor (McCoy) (9) Eighth Doctor (McGann) (11) " the real, official " Ninth Doctor a.k.a. War Doctor (Hurt) (12) Tenth Doctor (Eccleston) (14) Eleventh...

Some things have confused me about the black hole in Interstellar . Namely: How did Cooper ever leave the black hole once he was inside it? How was Cooper able to suspend in the tesseract? Something allowed him to decelerate. How was the AI machine able to send Cooper messages considering messages are EM waves and a black hole's gravity is such that it will suck EM waves into the singularity?

Theoretically, could the basilisk 'turn off' its petrifying power? Or is it something the basilisk has no control over?

We see the use or mention of nuclear weapons in sci-fi world all the time. Examples can be Terminator, Star Trek, X-Men etc. There are two related questions here: Which Sci-Fi work first mentioned Nuclear Weapons? Which Sci-Fi work first showed the use of Nuclear Weapons? Meaning, Nuclear Weapons are actually used. Answer H. G. Wells predicted the atom bomb in his 1914 book, The World Set Free . His story not only mentioned nuclear weapons, but showed them in use with a fore-knowledge that seems scarily accurate. (Kind of like how he accurately predicted the Apollo missions to the moon.) He predicted bombs based on radioactive elements that were far more destructive than any conventional weapons. His knowledge of atomic physics came from reading William Ramsay, Ernest Rutherford, and Frederick Soddy; the last discovered the disintegration of uranium. Wells already knew that radioactive elements released far more energy than any bombs based on chemical reactions. Although scientists ...

In Star Trek Into Darkness , Uhura was sent alone to communicate with hostile looking Klingons on Qo'noS. Why couldn't the universal translator be used remotely or with security personnel? Note: the Universal Translator was invented before the new timeline diverged from the original one. Answer Several answers come to mind, some based in the show's mythology, others in terms of production and character development. Klingons are no fans of technology that isn't designed to kill, maim or destroy. Using a universal translator to speak to a Klingon might be seen, by the Klingon, as a sign of disrespect. "You come to my planet illegally, run around, claiming you are hunting terrorists and you can't even explain yourself in my language? Die, alien." Consider in the Prime Universe when Kirk and crew were being tried before being sent to Rura Penthe (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country) they were forced to listen to their trial through a translator because ...

Right now, I am in the beginning of the season 4. I haven't read the books themselves, but I understand that the series is pretty close to the original content. What makes me curious is the financial system of the Seven Kingdoms. Here and there some unclear bankers are mentioned, those who actually support with gold all the rulers of the Seven Kingdoms. Do the books ever explain any of this in detail? When did this bank system came to reality, who made it legal, and why do the kingdoms tend to loan money from them? It's actually not some natural institution. For example, in many real medieval kingdoms usury and interest were against the law. Was it true for the Seven Kingdoms in the past? If so, when did this change? It seems to me that the bankers actually are the main financiers of the war, since it brings them huge profits. But do bankers make any actual appearance in the books? Since I was asked to be more specific about my questions: Who produces the currency of the Seven ...

I see several listings of this movie on Amazon, and though it doesn't say so outright I suspect that these are all bootleg and of poor quality. The latter can't be stressed enough, apparently these are all copies of VHS tapes that were already worn out by the time the copies were made. Does this film have a peculiar copyright status, or are the ownership rights contested or ambiguous? Will it ever be released on DVD (I don't know that it's a candidate for Bluray, considering the low budget it may not even have been 35mm.) Answer As far as I can tell, the company that was involved in making the film (MOONTRAP LIMITED PARTNERSHIP) had a legal argument with the company funding the production; SGE ENTERTAINMENT in which they were accused of having improperly distributed to its principals, funds that were designated for the payment of production expenses. and that as a result of the judgement (which cancelled the distribution contract) [the] defendant will lose the benef...

I know that the poison at the Purple Wedding was provided by Littlefinger, in the necklace that Dontos gave to Sansa. And I know that Lady Olenna then procured the poison from the necklace while talking to Sansa at the wedding. However, I don't understand how the poison was then transferred into Joffrey's cup (presumably by Olenna)? Can someone help explain this part of the plot, and let me know if it differs in the book? Answer I answered this question over at Movies & TV.SE The question was How was the cake poisoned at the Purple Wedding? . Posting that answer as is: In the show, it is not explicitly explained how Joffrey was poisoned. Whether it was the wine or the cake. But in season 4 episode 6, Pycell presents Sansa's necklace as a proof in the trial against Tyrion. Since Sansa was wearing the necklace throughout the wedding & nobody but Olenna goes up near her for a small talk, there would be no time to mix the poison in the pigeon pie (cake). Hence, concl...

This short story (probably pre 1980) shows the puzzled authorities seeking to explain the behaviour consulting a series of so called experts such as military, engineering, psychologists, etc, culminating with a historian. The historian unsettles them by claiming to be the last representative of culture, even though they regard their society as the best, the very best. I forget the ultimate conclusion which is why I want to read it again. It seems very relevant to today. I think the country was fictitious, future society run as a technology dominated, authoritarian, possibly military dominated, with hardly any soft professions in humanities or arts. The behaviour of the young men, who generally showed no signs of rebellion, would suddenly change to lethally attacking people. Hence my use of the words lone wolf or berserker. I suspect the author was contrasting two mind sets in their approach to a human problem. In the extreme perhaps no nonsense industrial, military types vs fine arts. ...

This story was written long ago. It would be less than 250 pages. The story was about a cosmic entity not unlike a star, but these guys weren't stars or even black holes. They were conscious and mobile, and to be quite frank solar systems were just toys and playthings to be made, watched and then knocked apart when you got bored of them. The time frames in this story were on the order of 100's of millions of years per chapter in the life of this little fellow. As this one cosmic entity got bored or disenchanted with the status quo of all cosmic life, he decided to take a trip across the void and left the realm of stars and galaxies, and spend billions of years just pushing forward until eventually he started to see the light of another realm ahead. He plunged headlong into this universe, and explored until he discovered a girl cosmic entity. My synopsis of this story is absolutely horrid, but it's the best I can do from what I remember, and quite frankly the story was w...

I remember a few months ago looking at a story about humans arriving on a planet and finding a microscopic alien race. This microscopic alien race lived on a different time scale where they aged a lot faster than the humans. A short time passes for the humans and by then, the aliens are technologically advanced enough to make contact but then decide not to give any information about technologies the humans haven't discovered yet. Hopefully anybody has an idea as to who the author is and what the title is? Answer Possibly Dragon's Egg by Robert Forward. In the story, Dragon's Egg is a neutron star with a surface gravity 67 billion times that of Earth, and inhabited by cheela, intelligent creatures the size of a sesame seed who live, think and develop a million times faster than humans. Most of the novel, from May to June 2050, chronicles the cheela civilization beginning with its discovery of agriculture to advanced technology and its first face-to-face contact with human...

I can't find the story I read which is about a boy raised by two male dark wizards in a kingdom where dark wizards are hunted. He meets a princess that escaped and I think one of his foster parents die in the end. Answer This is The Dark Wizard Of Donkerk (written by Alexander Wales as part of NaNoWriMo ). Boy raised by two dark wizards It didn’t occur to him that perhaps he had been right in wanting to stay, even if is reasoning was clouded. And so it was that the orphan was raised by two dark wizards.

This story involved an artist creating a series of splodges that turned out to be incredibly addictive. The representation spread like wildfire, being reproduced on cushion covers, the floors of swimming pools etc. It was also represented as a drum pattern. The protagonists wanted to break free of it because it was affecting society too deeply and people were getting overly entranced. There may have been the idea of creating a counter-pattern to kind of break the spell. I read this story in the eighties, but have a feeling it was somewhat older than that. Answer "Rump-Titty-Titty-Tum-TAH-Tee" , a short story by Fritz Leiber ; first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , May 1958 , available at the Internet Archive . This story involved an artist creating a series of splodges Simon seized a brush and plunged it deep in the pot of black paint. Usually he used black for a final splatter if he used it at all, but this time he had the impulse to reverse himse...