Answers for the game that isn’t Balderdash

Were you able to pick out the correct synopsis for each story, among the many alternate-timeline versions devised by MonSFFA members?

The correct synopsis is highlighted in bold.

SCORING: Give yourself a point for every correct answer, give MonSFFen a point for every time they fooled you! Who won?

1: SCANNERS LIVE IN VAIN

* life in a photo archive is futile

* robots live and look like humans but cannot reproduce and all of their emotions are preprogrammed

* cyborgs are angry because a scientist wants to fill spaceships with oysters  — CORDWAINER SMITH, 1950

* the intergalactic rock band, “Scanners”, play a concert in Vain, Colorado, and solve a mystery in the process.

* a gang of mediums organize a community in which they try to manage the everchanging future they see, to save their jobs

* a world where body scans have no effect on humans because the technology is obsolete

* mind reading serves nothing

* police radar speed scanner goes too high and kills all policemen

* in a futuristic world, aliens charged with reading the minds of humans mysteriously start committing suicide

* life is a digital fake

2: WHEN IT ENDS, HE CATCHES HER

* the story of every boy-meets-girl-meets-bug-eyed-monster film.

* a dying alien finally catches a fleeing human woman after a thousand-year chase across the universe, but dooms himself in so doing.

* a pilot is lost in his derelict spaceship, until the planetoid he is on in extremis is saved by her.

* android opera in china

* the last man on earth dies of the flu

* the zombie apocalypse makes a ballet dancer sad — EUGIE FOSTER, 2014

* how a hint force runs every space ship

* men are enslaved for reproductive purposes but one man falls in love with a client and plots to run away with her

 

3: THE TROUBLE WITH EMILY

* doctors at a space hospital teach a brontosaurus to be telekineticJ   –JAMES WHITE, 1958

* Emily has a bad habit of starting fires with her brain.

* A small cooing furry ball travels with Emily

* Emily the sentient communication AI has a bug.

* a man’s pet spaniel has cold feet about the upcoming wedding

* AI goes rogue and annihilates all life

* Woman AI goes mad

* A sentient octopus wants to rollerskate

* Emily is a bitch android

 

4: UNICORN VARIATION

* multicultural unicorns

* drunk chess against a unicorn, for the fate of humanity  –ROGER ZELAZNY, 1981]

* farmers were fed up with growing just one type of corn, and demanded variations

* someone tried to make unicorns exist via genetics

* genetically altered horses

* unicorn composes music

* teen girl gangs in the Arctic

* hypothesis about death of universe

 

5: THINGS WITH BEARDS

* what is a story set on jeopardy?

* MonSFFA’s vice-president was not as human as he appeared to be, despite the beard

* Oxhorns vanquished poverty in his life the day he grew a beard, and taught modern people to do the same.

* the Bearded Lady has new competition at the freak show, which has just introduced android members

* The Thing From Another World moves to New York and gets involved with activists   –SAM J. MILLER, 2016

* Remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

* Someone tries to invent a spell to banish beards

* A walrus floats on radioactive waste in Miami Beach

* The first men on Earth

 

6: LOVE IS THE PLAN THE PLAN IS DEATH

* a James Bond story that was never made into a film

* aliens threaten humanity with death, until they are made to understand love

* a mantis falls in love with an Earthling
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* a contraceptive pill contains poison

* coming of age during the era of AIDS

* sequel to the Fifth Element

* an alien spider tries to survive winter, until his mate eats him  –JAMES TIPTREE JR, 1973

* a Satanic couple take up competitive boxing

* future management of population growth

 

7: GO GO GO, SAID THE BIRD

* Instructions to a young bird flying over a statue

* British go-go dancers take over London

* An alien civilization attempts space travel after having been in contact with humans

* An android story about a Paul Klee painting

* Lady Byrd sends her lover home

* Adventures with a bird-shaped spaceship

* A patient breaks out of a mental institution

A woman flees cannibals, but her family are cannibals also  –SONYA DORMAN, 1967

* Evolution of space flight

 

8: BOOKWORM RUN!

* The story of a bullied genius

* Batman warns his latest nemesis to run, lest he take a batarang to the crotch

* Society invented a way to publish minds, but there are concerns about privacy

* A superintelligent chimpanzee flees the US military  –VERNOR VINGE, 1966

* A worm farmer’s experiments run amok

* Someone goes to all the greatest libraries of the galaxy

* Sequel to ‘Book Thieves’

* A nerdy high school student gets recruited by murderous cyborgs

* Knowledge revolution

 

9: HUNGRY DAUGHTERS OF STARVING MOTHERS

* a Dr Who episode set in Venice

* the zombie apocalypse begins to wind down

* people are concerned their mutually-forming star systems are dying because of the state of their dying nebulae

* story of alien incest

* story about a world where all males have disappeared

* sequel to Book Thieves

* a nerdy high school student gets recruited by murderous cyborgs

* larvae of extraterrestrial nature

* a psychic vampire eats the badness of people she meets on dating sites  –ALYSSA WONG, 2015

 

10: THE ENDANGERED CAMP

* Dinosaurs were going to the moon but then the asteroid wiped out their civilization  –ANN LECKIE, 2009

* Hikers are put upon by a sasquatch

* Xenoarchaeologists cannot find the object of their search because they are camping directly over the dangerous location

* Camp comedies come with a severe penalty

* Someone stalks L. Sprague de Camp

* Four astronauts on the international space station try to set up a tent, but end up murdering each other

* Planet destruction

 

11: YELLOW SNOW

* Sulfur mining on the moons of jupiter goes horribly wrong

* a volcano erupts sulfur after which a flying saucer crashes into a mountain, resulting in sulfuric acid snow precipitation

* Time-traveling drug dealer genetically engineered to pee heroin — CHARLES STROSS, 1990

* A lethal form of cocaine is distributed in a Martian colony

* Father Christmas laughs himself silly

* sequel to Snow Crash

* a UFO from Uranus experiences a fuel leak, is stranded on Earth

* pollution ending humanity

 

 

 

Montreal Science Fiction and Fantasy Association