Although sounding like mumbo-jumbo, this does turn out to be a sound set of directions to the legendary planet.
Also from Soon I Will Be Invincible:
If the line had been twelve minutes, that would at least have been a unit of time (in most uses). If the line had been phrased that way, we could have inferred that the Kessel Run normally takes more than twelve minutes, and that ship was faster than normal, despite its appearance. Even if the line had contained a nonsense word, we could have inferred that this was a measurement of time, not distance. Instead, the writer just pulled some word with a defined meaning out of the air, and misused it.
Well, the funniest that comes to mind is from an episode of Voyager: Torres saying “Get the cheese to sickbay.”
But I’ll always be fond of “By the seven green moons of Gongle”, a “strong oath” from Pel Torro’s “Galaxy 666”.
I love the very short Space Opera story by Robert Sheckley “Zirn Left Unguarded, the Jenghik Palace in Flames, Jon Westerly Dead”
The story is not much longer than the title, and it captures almost all the cliches in a few well-constructed paragraphs.
*Dune *has so many of these things but unfortunately I can’t recall a specific quote. I think that pretty much the whole first book counts as unexplained Mumbo-Jumbo, and that’s what makes it the greatest sci-fi book ever written. One that I like is:
Jihad, Butlerian: (see also Great Revolt) — the crusade against computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots begun in 201 B.G. and concluded in 108 B.G. Its chief commandment remains in the O.C. Bible as “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.”
Ok so this fragment is itself an explanation of something, but it leaves so much to the imagination, and the full idea of that “thou shalt not…” quote is mind boggling and interesting.
“The target of the Jihad was a machine-attitude as much as the machines,” Leto said. “Humans had set those machines to usurp our sense of beauty, our necessary selfdom out of which we make living judgments. Naturally, the machines were destroyed.”
There’s something grand in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, but I’ll have to check that later.
For now, here’s something from Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan:
“Oh Lord Most High, Creator of the Cosmos, Spinner of Galaxies, Soul of Electromagnetic Waves, Inhaler and Exhaler of Inconceivable Volumes of Vacuum, Spitter of Fire and Rock, Trifler with Millennia — what could we do for Thee that Thou couldst not do for Thyself one octillion times better? Nothing. What could we do or say that could possibly interest Thee? Nothing. Oh, Mankind, rejoice in the apathy of our Creator, for it makes us free and truthful and dignified at last. No longer can a fool point to a ridiculous accident of good luck and say, ‘Somebody up there likes me.’ And no longer can a tyrant say, ‘God wants this or that to happen, and anyone who doesn’t help this or that to happen is against God.’ O Lord Most High, what a glorious weapon is Thy Apathy, for we have unsheathed it, have thrust and slashed mightily with it, and the claptrap that has so often enslaved us or driven us into the madhouse lies slain!" -The prayer of the Reverend C. Horner Redwine”
"The illudium Q-36 explosive space modulator! That creature has stolen the space modulator! "
“We can reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.”
“By Grabthar’s Hammer, you will be AVENGED!” Posting this here is sort of a meta joke since the line itself is known by the speaker to be a fictional reference.
Star Wars is just chock full of minor, irrelevant references to places like the Spice Mines of Kessel, or Ord Mandell.
Uhm, aren’t neutrons … neutral in polarity? :dubious: 
:rolleyes:
“Following the Great Nebula Burst our people were one people. But then came the Zactor Migration, and then the Melosian Shift and a dark period of discontent spread through the land. Fighting among Treeb sects and Largoths… ah, the foolishness!”
Could be worse. At least your neutrinos haven’t mutated
Originally posted by Where No Fan Has Gone Before
Not sci-fi but a funny moment from Rango: they’re walking along a pipe in the underground tunnel when an enormous eye opens up behind them and watches them pass. None of the group react or pause, apart from one character eventually commenting: “Yep. That’s a big 'un.” It’s never mentioned again.
Benjamin Franklin screwed it all up in the first place.
What are you, some kinda nerf-herder?
Madame Pepperwinkle is the author of “101 Recipes for Womp Rat”.
Until the prequels, “The Clone Wars” was one of these.
For a funny one: in The Fifth Element, Leeloo’s skin is reconstructed when her body is “bombarded by slightly greasy solar atoms.”
For adding a dash of color and mystery, does Sherlock Holmes’ Giant Rat of Sumatra count as Sci-Fi?