# Favorite Sci-Fi Mumbo-Jumbo **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 25, 2013, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915 "2013-06-25T21:12:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915/101 "2013-06-27T02:53:51Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > Watch it! Cynthia and I have been married for over 3 decades now. Do not make me go all xmex-like on you… I am so terribly sorry. Did she say anything about the ice cubes? Perhaps it is not the same woman at all; is there a knife scar on her left hip? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915/102 "2013-06-27T03:09:31Z")
“What is that stuff?” “Black blood of the Earth.” “You mean oil?” “I mean black blood of the Earth!” \* -Big Trouble in Little China\* ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915/103 "2013-06-27T03:15:40Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I am so terribly sorry. > Did she say anything about the ice cubes? > > Perhaps it is not the same woman at all; is there a knife scar on her left hip? Perhaps not… It looks more like a blaster scar. She does say that the combination of ice cubes and my zymolosely polydactile tongue is what keeps our relationship ever new. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915/104 "2013-06-27T12:20:38Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > She does say that the combination of ice cubes and my zymolosely polydactile tongue is what keeps our relationship ever new. “Hey baby - I’ve got a tongue that can lick through neutronium” is a helluva pickup line. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915/105 "2013-06-27T14:58:48Z")
“You have been a participant in the biggest interdimensional cross rip since the Tunguska blast of 1909!” - Ghostbusters (extra points for turning an actual event into mumb-jumbo, although it was June, 1908 not 1909) ---
**Author:** ![DirkGntly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d9b06d/32.png) [@DirkGntly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DirkGntly)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915/106 "2013-06-27T15:30:43Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > “You have been a participant in the biggest interdimensional cross rip since the Tunguska blast of 1909!” > > - Ghostbusters (extra points for turning an actual event into mumb-jumbo, although it was June, 1908 not 1909) But see, that’s the GENIUS of it! We KNOW about the Tunguska blast of 1908… ---
**Author:** ![tanstaafl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba8739/32.png) [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915/107 "2013-06-27T18:14:33Z")
There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea’s asleep and the rivers dream, people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there’s danger, somewhere there’s injustice and somewhere else the tea is getting cold. Come on, Ace, we’ve got work to do. ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915/108 "2013-06-27T19:21:08Z")
## Frank Herbert’s “Destination: Void” is full of wonderful techno-philosophical ramblings that seem to make some kind of sense. This book is a work of babble-dependent suspense-building genius. Bickel stood up, wiped his hands on the sides of his vacsuit, swung his own micro-manipulator and viewer to one side. “This, in addition to giving us our analysis of built-in misfunction, this little ‘Ox’ we’re driving will provide a three-way energy interchange.” “You’re tied into the computer,” she accused, pointing to the connections in the plugboard. “Every line in that board has a diode in it. Pulses can come from the computer to our test setup, but anything going into the computer has to be coded by one of us and inserted over there.” Bickel pointed to the input heads lined up at the right corner of the wall. “Three-way interchange?” she asked. “We’re going to test my field-theory approach. I have a source program ready to insert. If our Ox doesn’t work, it’ll just produce an unconditional transfer of the material at the readout. If the field is produced, it’ll act as a filter, and we’ll get truncation. It’ll pass only the significant digits.” “What about the roulette cycles?” “The zero suppress will be intermittent,” he said, “but we’ll still get only the significant digits at the readout.” Prudence nodded, looking at Bickel with a new understanding of what he was doing: “All sense data are intermittent into the human consciousness.” It was an explosive thought: Wave forms! Everything which consciousness could identify had to move in some organized way. It had to move against a background which set off . . . which outlined! . . . the organization. Therefore: intermittence. And Bickel had seen right through to this necessity. ---
**Author:** ![bleach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bleach/32/3106_2.png) [@bleach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bleach)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915/109 "2013-06-27T20:16:36Z")
**The Architect:** The function of The One is now to return to the source, allowing a temporary dissemination of the code you carry, reinserting the prime program. After which you will be required to select from The Matrix 23 individuals, 16 female, 7 male, to rebuild Zion. Failure to comply with this process will result in a cataclysmic system crash, killing everyone connected to The Matrix, which coupled with the extermination of Zion, will ultimately result in the extinction of the entire human race. **The Keymaker:** There is a building. Inside this building there is a level where no elevator can go, and no stair can reach. This level is filled with doors. These doors lead to many places. Hidden places. But one door is special. One door leads to the source. -Matrix Reloaded ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915/110 "2013-06-27T22:04:34Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > _Qadgop the Mercotan slithered flatly around the after-bulge of the tranship. One claw dug into the meters-thick armor of pure neutronium, then another. Its terrible xmexlike snout locked on. Its zymolosely polydactile tongue crunched out, crashed down, rasped across. Slurp! Slurp! At each abrasive stroke the groove in the tranship’s plating deepened and Qadgop leered more fiercely. Fools! Did they think that the airlessness of absolute space, the heatlessness of absolute zero, the yieldlessness of absolute neutronium, could stop QADGOP THE MERCOTAN? And the stowaway, that human wench Cynthia, cowering in helpless terror just beyond this thin and fragile wall…_ > > E.E. “Doc” Smith, _Children of the Lens_ And now, he posts here.🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915/111 "2013-06-27T22:25:18Z")
“I’ve been thinking about this. A few weeks ago, I got a message from my mother. She said her new chief engineer had been experimenting with the warp drive. Now, I’ve seen the Hera. It uses trionic initiators in the warp coil. They have side effects if you play around with them. There have been reports of warp bubbles and subspace deformations. So, what if that’s what happened? Not a warp bubble, but a subspace funnel. Connecting two points? The Hera could have created a distortion that emptied out here.” **Lt Commander Laforge, Interface, TNG** ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915/112 "2013-06-27T22:50:38Z")
[Ruminations on the Elder Scrolls](http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Ruminations_on_the_Elder_Scrolls) from Skyrim. [QUOTE=Doorways in the Sand] Time. More fragments, pieces, bits…time. Epiphany in Black & Light, Scenario in Green, Gold, Purple & Grey… There is a man. He is climbing in the dusky daysend air, climbing the high Tower of Cheslerei in a place called Ardel besides a sea with a name he can’t quite pronounce as yet. The sea is as dark as the juice of grapes, bubbling a Chianti and chiaroscuro fermentation of the light of distant stars and the bent rays of Canis Vibesper, its own primary, now but slightly below the horizon, rousing another continent, pursued by the breezes that depart the inland fields to weave their courses among the interconnected balconies, towers, walls and walkways of the city, bearing the smells of the warm land toward its older, colder companion… [/QUOTE] Just because I’ve been reading it today; Zelazny tended to write like that a lot. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915/113 "2013-06-27T23:03:08Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > Uhm, aren’t neutrons … neutral in polarity? :dubious: 😕 :rolleyes: Yup, of course they are, and the Doctor Who writers knew it. But Jon Pertwee sometimes had trouble with the technical mumbo-jumbo, so that line became a cliche since he memorized it and used it in many different circumstances, including in The Five Doctors. 🙂 (It occurs to me that Time Lords are incredibly brilliant, so maybe they’ve figured out a way to do it.) Here are my faves: “Timey-wimey.” “The Blinovitch Limitation Effect” (another one from Doctor Who, which Three used to start to explain why they just couldn’t go back in time a few minutes and straighten things out that way. He was interrupted–I think by Daleks–before he could go into what this meant.) ---
**Author:** ![Battle\_Pope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Battle\_Pope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Battle_Pope)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915/114 "2013-06-27T23:30:54Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > “You have been a participant in the biggest interdimensional cross rip since the Tunguska blast of 1909!” > > - Ghostbusters (extra points for turning an actual event into mumb-jumbo, although it was June, 1908 not 1909) "Symmetrical book stacking. Just like the Philadelphia mass turbulence of 1947. " ---
**Author:** ![vontsira](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/51bf81/32.png) [@vontsira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vontsira)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2013, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915/115 "2013-06-28T00:29:34Z")
Not sci-fi, at least in most people’s view; but I feel, mumbo-jumbo for sure. The recurring four lines in Lewis Carroll’s “The Hunting of the Snark” (a long poem not overburdened with meaning, in the first place), telling obscurely and unenlighteningly about how the members of the expedition concerned, quested for their obscure quarry: “They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care; They pursued it with forks and hope; They threatened its life with a railway-share; They charmed it with smiles and soap.” ---
**Author:** ![Bumbershoot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bumbershoot/32/3428_2.png) [@Bumbershoot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bumbershoot)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2013, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915/116 "2013-06-28T00:57:08Z")
Okay. Time circuit’s on. Flux capacitor, fluxing. Engine running. All right. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2013, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915/117 "2013-06-28T02:47:58Z")
Also from \*Ghostbusters: \* > [@](#): > > Spengler: “Don’t cross the streams.” > Venkman: “Why?” > Spengler: “It would be bad.” > Venkman: “I’m fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, ‘bad’?” > Spengler: “Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.” > Ray Stantz: "Total protonic reversal. > Venkman: “Right. That’s bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.” > [@](#): > > Stantz: “Sir, what you have there is what we refer to as a focused, non-terminal repeating phantasm, or a Class Five full roaming vapor. Real nasty one, too!” ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2013, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915/118 "2013-06-28T04:14:44Z")
> [@Bumbershoot](#): > > Okay. Time circuit’s on. Flux capacitor, fluxing. Engine running. All right. The time circuits are just the panel display and the flux capacitor is the doo0hcikey that makes you travel through time. These were both explained in the first film. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2013, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915/119 "2013-06-28T06:13:52Z")
That’s a big Twinkie. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2013, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915/120 "2013-06-28T11:14:21Z")
One in a song: Jonathan Coulton’s [The Big Boom](http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/The-Big-Boom-lyrics-Jonathan-Coulton/862E9F56698A25DA482579B40044DAC4). The country - or possibly the world - is being destroyed bit by bit, and we never find out how or why or by whom. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo/661915.md?page=7)