My kind of quiz

[andrewducker]

The SF Opening lines quiz.  Frankly I'm surprised I got so many right.  It's amazing, however, how much comes back to you instantly and how recognisable a line like:

" 'This is a slightly unusual request,' said Dr. Wagner, with what he hoped was commendable restraint. 'As far as I know, it's the first time anyone's been asked to supply a Tibetan monastery with an Automatic Sequence Computer.' "

or

"The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards."

or

"I always get the shakes before a drop. I've had the injections, of course, and the hypnotic preparation, and it stands to reason that I can't really be afraid."

are.

And that's without classics like        

"He was one hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead."

or ones that really give the game away like:

"Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids."

Anyway, results below the cut

Veteran Reader You have a Geek Lore rating of 77%

If you're not quite as widely or deeply-read as a few, you're still thousands of pages ahead of most. Your grasp of the speculative fiction field is worthy of note. Take a bow.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on Geek Lore

Link: The SF/F Opening Lines Test written by winternight2 on Ok Cupid

Comments

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

I scored bugger all. But then, judging by the options, a -lot- of it was retro SF, or retro-styled SF. You know, that stuff you read and I don't. A distinct lack of "harder-than-hard" stuff.

[moniqueleigh]

Same here.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I'm unsurprised at my score, except that it's identical to yours:

Veteran Reader You have a Geek Lore rating of 77%

If you're not quite as widely or deeply-read as a few, you're still thousands of pages ahead of most. Your grasp of the speculative fiction field is worthy of note. Take a bow.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 66% on Geek Lore

Link: The SF/F Opening Lines Test written by winternight2 on Ok Cupid

Oops

[paddie-gal.livejournal.com]

Forgot to cut and paste. But my power rating was 3 out of 9. Mostly I was making guesses, but you don't get to find out the answers! I know I definitely got 2 right - the one about Peter, Edmund et al (of course) and the one that mentioned "polishing a snifter when the Unmarried Mother came in", cos that's a cool story!

[tisme.livejournal.com]

It won't show you the answers when you're done...I want to know if I was right about a few of them.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

Looked at the questions. Haven't read 99% of the books, so no point at all in trying the quiz. Sort of agree with spidermonster.

But...

[wordofblake.livejournal.com]

I love books, and especially SF, but most of my answers were guesses. I've never heard of most of the options.

Like paddiegal said, I wish they told you the answers. I know I got Brave New World, Starship Troopers, Dune, I Robot, Foundation and a few others.

But like spidermonster alot of it seems to be out of my genre. I mean no Ken MacLeod or Alaistair Reynolds at all?

Re: But...

[andrewducker]

Sales-wise, Ken Macleod is a heck of a lot less popular than most of the books on the list. Alaistair Reynolds would have been a good one - does he have any great opening lines?

Re: But...

[wordofblake.livejournal.com]

Revelation Space: There was a razorstorm comin in.

Redemption Ark: The dead ship was a thing of obscene beauty.

Re: But...

[andrewducker]

Cool - two great opening lines!

You should email the quiz creator.

[thadrin.livejournal.com]

Specificly didn't guess. Only answered the ones I knew, or had a fair bash at guessing. At lest two thirds of the time I'd never heard of the book in question...though I'd heard of most of the Authors.

Several were easy...the Eddings and CS LEwis for example.
I'm actually reading one of the answers (Thomas Covenant) at the moment...