Friday Quiz Roundup
Friday, July 15, 2005
I often take a break from blogging on Fridays. Today, a very slow day, saw me goofing off with a few quizzes some fellow bloggers brought to my attention.
Percentagewise, I edged out Martin Lindeskog in the "How American are you?" quiz, 80-74. My fondness for blue cheese and my preference for real beer kept the game close.
Robert A. Heinlein and Issac Asimov pointed me to "Which science-fiction author are you?" Apparently, I, E. E. "Doc" Smith, have misnamed my blog. From the same site, I've learned that I'm 76% Republican, whatever that means.
The General and I fall within seven I.Q. points of one another according to this test, but I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a "Visionary Philosopher." I scored 142 on this one but, unlike the last I.Q. test I took, I am not certain of what I missed.
If wisdom comes with age, then modesty forbids me to say how much wiser than Sara Beth, in seconds, I learned that I am from this birthday calculator.
-- CAV
4 comments:
Interesting. The SF author quiz was tricky since I had more than one answer to several of the questions. First time I was Hal Clement--curious, because he used to be one of my favorite writers, but he's much less so now. He could write excellent aliens, but his human characters are lousy and his dialogue almost painfully wooden. Then it was a toss-up between Isaac Asimov (an atrocious stylist whose stories I have trouble rereading) and Olaf Stapledon (which is kinda cool). I expected Roger Zelazny or Jack Vance to pop out of the mix, but they didn't. Which makes me wonder if the creator of the quiz sees the same thing in all these authors as I do.
Adrian,
My SF reading is much more limited than yours, but I also had more than one answer for several questions. But then I nearly always do for these things and have all but given up looking at the various permutations. I thought I might end up as Heinlein, but obviously did not.
My initial reaction to my result: "Who's that?" I might hunt for one of his books the next time I find myself at Half-Price Books.
General,
You're going to provoke me into changing my gravatar to a picture of General Tom Thumb just to make a point!
Gus
Well, you definitely should look for E.E. Smith because he's great fun. He's the prototypical space opera writer, which was actually a bit of a shame for him because after the first three Lensman novels (if I remember correctly) he wanted to branch out into more limited types of science fiction stories, but his editor refused to buy any stories he wrote like that because his vast-scale space operas were so popular. And then when John Campbell became editor at Astounding, "Doc" Smith was one of the writers he shut out, precisely because he wanted to get SF away from space opera and into literary explorations of science, technology, and humans in a wide range of environments. The one thing that gets me when I read Smith nowadays is how dated the science is. (Though the funniest example of that I can think of is the many stories by George O. Smith, in which vacuum tubes are still the height of electronics, even in an interplanetary age.)
The two questions that required checking all that applied were the first two, of course: Which grand theme is grandest and what kind of science and technology most interests you? For the first, either "adventure and discovery" or "individuality vs. tyranny," and for the latter either fundamental physics or sociology and anthropology.
"Well, you definitely should look for E.E. Smith because he's great fun."
I had to get a haircut today, so I moseyed over to HPB. NOTHIN' by Doc Smith. (Come to think of it: Was the Lost in Space villain/resident incompetent, Dr. Smith, somehow named in mocking/comedic tribute to him?
Anyway, the link to Smith I provided piquesd my interest, so I'm on the lookout.
But J. K. Rowling will be getting my attention for the immediate future.
Gus
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