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Any Questions #313 - "The Moon In Fiction"

WAMC's Ian Pickus and resident quizzer Mike Nothnagel cap off eclipse week with a show about the moon.Last week's challenge
Start with the name VIRGINIA DARE. Change one letter to an N and you can rearrange the result to spell two words (five letters and seven letters) that you might see on a map. (As a hint, one of the words is a proper noun.) What are the words?
Answer: If you change the G to an N, you can spell RIVER and INDIANA.

THIS WEEK'S CATEGORY: THE MOON IN FICTION
On-air questions: On August 25, 1835, the New York Sun published the first of six articles detailing the discovery of life and civilization on the Moon. Named the Great Moon Hoax, the story was attributed to Sir John Herschel, a well-known astronomer of the time, but a reporter named Richard Locke took credit for the hoax some five years later. The story succeeded in increasing the Sun's circulation, and even after the hoax was discovered, the paper did not print a retraction. To commemorate the Great Moon Hoax, this week our quiz is about other fictional depictions of the Moon.

1. In a 2011 film subtitled Dark of the Moon, the Apollo 11 moon mission is a cover story devised to investigate the crash landing of a device that can end the war between the Autobots and the Decepticons. Dark of the Moon is the third live-action installment in what film franchise?
2. The 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon recounts the story of a post-Civil-War society and their attempts to send three of their members to the Moon. Noted for the author's inclusion of calculations for the cannon that is built to launch the space vehicle, it was written by what author, four years before his novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea?
3. Played by actress Gates McFadden, Commander Beverly Crusher was born in 2324 in Copernicus City, a city on the surface of the Moon. For six of the seven seasons of the show she was on (the character was written out of season two) and in subsequent movies, Crusher served as the Chief Medical Officer on the Starship Enterprise, under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, played by whom?
4. The 2005 work titled The End of the Moon, a 90-minute monologue about topics ranging from nanotechnology to penguins, was one of the products of the 2003 residency of performance artist Laurie Anderson, who is to date the only person to hold the title of Artist-in-Residence at what governmental agency?
5. What classic 1947 children's book – the text of which is essentially one long rhyming poem – was written by Margaret Wise Brown and is about a rabbit who, before going to sleep, addresses a number of objects in his room, including a balloon, kittens, and the light?

Extra credit
1. A man wandering alone in an uninhabited town discovers he's actually an astronaut training for a solo mission to the moon in an episode titled "Where Is Everybody?", which aired in October of 1959 as the first episode of what series?
2. The 2009 film Moon stars Sam Rockwell as an astronaut who is the only human on an otherwise automated facility on the far side of the moon. The film marks the directorial debut of Duncan Jones, the son of what singer?

This week's challenge
Start with the phrase LUNAR ECLIPSE. Change one letter to an R and you can rearrange the result to spell two words (five letters and seven letters) for things an architect might use. (As a hint, one of the words is plural.) What are the words?

ANSWERS
On-air questions

1. Transformers
2. Jules Verne
3. Patrick Stewart
4. NASA
5. Goodnight Moon

Extra credit
1. The Twilight Zone
2. David Bowie

 

A lifelong resident of the Capital Region, Ian joined WAMC in late 2008 and became news director in 2013. He began working on Morning Edition and has produced The Capitol Connection, Congressional Corner, and several other WAMC programs. Ian can also be heard as the host of the WAMC News Podcast and on The Roundtable and various newscasts. Ian holds a BA in English and journalism and an MA in English, both from the University at Albany, where he has taught journalism since 2013.
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