Search Results for: question-and-answer

For many years the starships of earth searched the heavens for places where men could live. Many planets were found, but always something was wrong: too hot; too cold; atmospheric contaminants; poisonous biochemistry; intelligent natives – something. At last a deep-space survey vessel has reported a planet that seems perfect, an uninhabited paradise where people can roam free. But the first Troas Expedition never returns. And now the crew of the De Gama must find out why or mankind will lose the stars forever.

A super computer asked to answer the question “what is time?” freezes Earth and everything on it in a single moment in time.

University Challenge is one of the world’s top quiz shows, enjoyed by millions, both participants and observers. But Discworld fans may feel that not many questions cover the real questions in Life, for example, Who or what could be seen as the inspiration for the near-tragic accident from which nanny Ogg is saved only be a special willow-reinforced hat made for her by Mr Vernissage of Slice? And give a plausible origin for Mrs Rosie Palm, proprietor of the famous House of Negotiable Affection in the Shades.
Each Faculty at the Unseen University has provided a set of questions, and answers are included for those who are not sure how the poisonous effects of quicksilver fumes are an occupational hazard of magic-users.
The questions have been compiled by Mr David Langford, who knows quite as much – and arguably more – about the Discworld as its Creator, and Terry Pratchett has provided an Introduction.

With the arrival of spring, the Emperor Maniakes vows to unleash his battle-hardened troops against the enemy capital, where a hated despot sits arrogantly upon the throne.

But from the moment Maniakes reaches the land of the Thousand Cities, he is plagued by a question no one can answer. Where is his nemesis, the ruthless commander whose cavalry no opposing force can withstand? The answer is cataclysmic. In a bold tactical stroke, the enemy general has thrown his bloodthirsty army against the very gates of Videssos itself.

Now besieger becomes besieged, as Maniakes struggles to avert total catastrophe…

In answer to an unanswerable future, science has created Bohn, the omnipotent computer whose flashing circuits and messianic pronouncements dictate what tomorrow will – or will not – be.

But Matthew Oliver is flesh and blood and full of questions – not nearly as certain as the machine he’s appointed to serve.

And the right hand of science seldom knows what the left hand is doing . . .

Every Sunday on Radio Ardennes, the Counsellor had his hour. His voice clear, expressive and sympathetic as it answered a selection of the queries that crowded his post-bag.

‘Just ask a question’ was his motto. But even he did not expect Wallace Whatgift to ask for his help in solving the mysterious disappearance of a young woman.

The answers behind the mind-bending origins of Riverworld lie at last within reach, as the remarkable gathering of Earthlings – including Sir Richard Burton, Samuel Clemens, Alice Liddell Hargreaves (the real-life Alice in Wonderland) and the Chinese poet Li Po – finally breaches the stronghold of Riverworld’s extraordinary super-race.

But answers would lead to more mind-bending questions. Who is the Mysterious Stranger who taunted the Riverworld resurrectees with hints of the truth? What is the key to the gargantuan computer that wields the power of life and death?

The astonishing secrets lie within the Dark Tower – but only for those brave enough to seek them and wise enough to decipher them .

They came out of the void, from Venus, only to find there was no answer to their radio signals. Earth seemed dead. And on the Moon, Man’s greatest achievement, the Lunar Military Base was a mass of rubble and blasted wreckage.

Here, the crew of the Stellar Polaris, led by Commander John Forrest, discovered one sole survivor. He was mad! To their questions he could only answer that the children had destroyed the armed might of the Military Base.

When they finally reached Earth, they found that what he had said was true. The children had taken over control of the world. But then, these were no ordinary children – and their little weapons were almost enough to overthrow the armed superiority of the Stellar Polaris herself!

Who was that masked woman?

That was the question plaguing Perry Mason. No one loves a good mystery more than Mason – but being asked to represent a client who is concealing her identity, not to mention the particulars of her case, has given even the legendary legal eagle a case of ruffled feathers.

Yet the intriguing cloak-and-dagger tactics have Perry hopelessly hooked. As for the silent siren behind the mask, is she heiress Byrl Gailord or penniless Adelle Hastings? Both women have ties to a man named Tidings, a man who may be a protector or predator. A man who could answer a lot of tough questions – if only he hadn’t been murdered.

Their quest was to find the Elders. But hellhounds, witchcraft and harpies barred their way. From the theft of a manuscript in a fusty library an amazing tale develops. From a young man’s obstinate questions emerges an answer of stupendous import. The quest for an elder civilisation becomes a terrifying ordeal. Enchanted Pilgrimage is like no other fantasy novel – a stunning adventure set in an alternative universe where myths still walk the earth.

What happened on Judgement Day? Do we have Martian ancestors? Will we blow up the world? In this collection of his best SF stories, Edmund Cooper gives his own inimitably entertaining answers to these and other such intriguing questions. From The Death Watch to The Brain Child, Cooper ‘considers possible scenarios’. Sometimes he is serious, sometimes satirical. Sometimes he is uncomfortably close to the truth.

Ainslie meets Mary Allison in an ancient Highland graveyard. It is a tantalising meeting that raises more questions than it answers. Later encounters with Mary and with other local people gradually involve him in a mystery that, as a newcomer to the glen, he is not equipped to solve.

While the mystery deepens, Ainslie is employed for the winter by one of the local lairds to cull the surplus hinds from the red deer herds. Against the backdrop of the harsh and empty world of the Highlands, this strange and necessary rite will have an explosive climax.

In this collection of eight stories by one of America’s most gifted writers, Helen McCloy takes the reader into a world of mystery and imagination.

In the signature story – ‘The Singing Diamonds’ – Mathilde Verworn enlists the help of Basil Willing, a psychiatrist-sleuth, to answer the question of whether there is such a thing as collective hallucination. Six people from six different locations testify to seeing diamond-shaped objects in the sky, and four of those six have died in peculiar circumstances in the past twelve days …

Etjole Ehomba and his companions brave the Kraken haunted waters of the impassable Semordria. Then they must cross yet another continent in their search for the kidnapped Visioness – past berserk giants, skeleton armies, a desert prospected by Hell’s demon and at the end of the world waits Hymneth the Possessed: the sadistic necromancer of unspeakable horror.

But Ehomba already knows the prophecy: His quest is doomed to failure, and Hymneth will kill him. Unless somehow, the simple herdsman can ask the questions that even Death must answer…

Jacob Mandra had a million-dollar apartment on the fringe of Chinatown … and a reputation.

Early one morning they found him dead. And a few hours later Terry Clane found himself in the District Attorney’s office – by request. The District Attorney began asking strange questions that Terry Clane didn’t care to answer, and when Terry finally sailed out of the D.A.’s office he realised that he and some of his friends were involved in the Mandra murder … up to their necks.

In the shadowy hallway of clockmaker Johannes Carver’s house a policeman is found murdered, the arrow-tipped minute hand of an antique clock embedded in his neck.

For Dr Gideon Fell this is the only case that has ever really frightened him, and before he can solve it he must find answers to some seemingly impossible questions: why was Calvin Boscombe standing near the corpse with a silencer on his gun? Who locked the attic door? And what has become of the sixteenth-century death-watch?

Are there aliens among us? Are the chariots of the gods returning? If so – are they for us or against us?

John Brunner, award-winning author and science fiction writer extraordinary, takes the questions now on everyone’s mind, and gives one possible answer in this startling novel.

Here is an edge-of-the-seat story of the man who discovers that the vanguard of the aliens are indeed amongst us – and that the human species has but a few hours left before our time runs out.

It’s a science fiction thriller you won’t be able to put down.

At first it seems that Lord Henry Grayle has taken an overdose of sleeping medicine, but the autopsy reveals a tiny amount of scopolamine along with the draught – harmless in itself, but fatal when mixed . . .

A poisoner with apparently expert knowledge is at work in the great house at Tassart. But from what motive, and how? Before he can find an answer to these questions, Detective Inspector John Poole is faced with a second, more horrible murder.

And when there are shocking revelations both above and below stairs, Poole starts to see light breaking on the horizon.

Janey Elliott fails to return home one evening from a friend’s, and her husband John goes out looking for her car. He and the friend’s husband find Janey, brutally murdered.

The gruesome killing of beautiful but wayward Janey Elliott calls for the special services of the Metropolitan Police. Does the element of sexual violence point to a frenzied killer, or is it a cover for a more straightforward motive? Scotland Yard soon find the answer to that question, but the murderer remains elusive.

Someone is caught in the tangle of relationships that goes along with the wealth and social prestige the Elliotts and their circle enjoy …

When the starship Meteor crash-landed on a strange world orbiting a solitary sun in the vast darkness outside the galaxy, her crew of Earthmen had no idea of what to expect. The planet was Earthlike in gravity, air, animal and vegetable life – but what of the native races they glimpsed from a distance?

What kind of culture would evolve on a planet whose sky was dominated by the glow of an entire galaxy – and with no other stars save its own dim sun? What kind of gods would they worship?

The Earthmen had to find the astounding answers to these questions on a planet split by a world-wide war.

From the moment when young Christopher Blackburn is prevailed upon to attend a seance at The Seekers’ Temple a series of seemingly inexplicable and increasingly terrifying experiences gradually convinces him that he has been singled out by some unknown power which is bent on his destruction. But why? And what can he have which has attracted the attention of the sinister Guardians? In a desperate hunt for the answers to these questions Christoper learns for himself the old truth that no man is an island; the new one that it is possible to be in two times at the same place; and the sombre one that some of us are more responsible to posterity than we care to admit!

THE HARD-CORE SCIENCE OF HAL CLEMENT
The supreme practitioner of “hard” science fiction, Hal Clement combines ingenious problem-solving with suspenseful drama and action. These ten stories show the mastery of science and fiction that Clement has displayed in such favourites as Mission of Gravity, Iceworld, and Needle.
UNCOMMON SENSEIf your back’s to the wall, even a deadly predator can be useful.
ANSWER”Know thyself” is great advice…if you don’t follow it all the way.
QUESTION OF GUILTWas he a medical pioneer…or the first vampire?
IMPEDIMENTMind-reading makes for perfect trust – as long as it works both ways!
-AND LOTS MORE!

Ciudad de Vados was the pride of Latin America – a gleaming city of the future where only ten years before there had been barren rock and wasteland.

But Vados had problems. When Boyd Hakluyt was called in, his brief seemed simple: reroute the traffic to drive out the shanty towns that disfigured the city. It was an easy job – until Hakluyt found himself unwillingly involved in a web of deadly political rivalries. Then came the first murder . . .

Hakluyt started getting answers to questions he hadn’t asked. Too many people got too interested in him. And the pattern that started emerging was sinister, terrifying – and almost unbelievable . . .

First published in 1965.

Barbaric customs and bizarre human cults are prserved on the planet Elsewhere. The rest of the universe has been taken over by the Hobbs Land Gods, which means that everyone alive, with the exception of the people on Elsewhere, lives in perfect harmony with nature and with each other.

But Elsewhere is ruled by computer-encrypted professors who have been dead for a thousand years. The professors werededicated to maintaining human diversity. Their ancient analogs are dedicated to something far more sinister.

The time has come to consider whether enslavement by the Hobbs Land Gods is not preferable to the depravity being cultivated on Elsewhere. The time has come to ask the Big Question: what is the Destiny of Man?

And answer it . . .