Lore
These are the planets in our solar system.
What are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune?
What the Hail Mary is full of.
What is Grace?
The film's vision of First Contact is based on the informed ideas of this man, who died during production and to whom the film is dedicated.
Who is Carl Sagan?
This game introduced motifs relating to harm and healing in the episode "Mad Idolatry."
What is Latchkum?
The four main characters from the novella.
Who are Ariadne, Chikondi, Elena, and Jack?
The names given to the two Heptapods.
What are Abbott and Costello?
This is one of the final crops to succumb to blight on Earth.
What is okra?
This phrase appears above the entrance to the ancient Delphic Oracle, and in the Oracle's kitchen in the film.
What is "Temet Nosce" (or "Know thyself")?
This message in a bottle was launched on the Voyager spacecraft, and is now nearly a light day away from Earth.
What are the Golden Records?
The number and name of the species Grace encounters.
3: Astrophage, Eridians, and Taumoeba.
It's all right that Contact shares this in common with Interstellar.
Who is Matthew McConaughey?
She's the barista on Sargus 4.
Who is Lysella?
The four planets the mission aims to explore.
What are Aecor, Mirabilis, Opera, and Votum?
This First Contact story makes its main subject one that most SF stories skip entirely, or address via magical technology.
What is communication?
In 1976, Richard Dawkins coined this term for a unit of cultural (rather than biological) transmission.
What is a meme?
Space Fleet in USS Callister is based on the original TV series for what SF franchise?
What is Star Trek? (And near the end, it adopts the look-and-feel of the J.J. Abrams 2009 reboot.)
This cautionary tale is widely considered the first Science Fiction novel.
What is Frankenstein?
Grace learns he's no hero when he remembers this.
That he was forced by Stratt to become part of the Hail Mary crew.
Through Ellie and Palmer, as well as secondary characters, the film explores the historical tension between science and this.
What is religion?
What is 700?
This sci-fi genre focuses on human connection and quiet wonder, rather than high-stakes conflict or dystopian tension.
What is cozy sci-fi?
Louise is disturbed to discover that the Chinese are learning the Heptapods' language via playing this game, worried that every idea will be expressed through binary conflict, with one winner and one loser.
What is Mahjong?
In a nod to Archimedes, Professor Brand yells this word upon discovering the "solution" to gravity.
What is "Eureka!"?
This actor was well known before The Matrix, but the film's immense popularity made him a worldwide star.
Who is Keanu Reeves?
This occurs when an outside influence changes or erases a group's identity.
What is cultural contamination?
The name Grace calls Tau Ceti e after Rocky names it for his mate.
What is Adrian (Rocky Balboa's wife)?
Ellie brings this evidence back from her experience with the Vegans.
Nothing (which is "the way it's been done for billions of years").
The union anthropologists on Sargus 4 were prosecuted for what crime?
Not giving up a subway seat for a pregnant woman (they didn't see her).
United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim gave the novella this.
What is its title? (From the Golden Record: "We step out of our Solar System into the Universe, seeking only peace and friendship, to teach if we are called upon, to be taught if we are fortunate.")
This repeated motif--echoed in the story structure, Heptapod language, character names, and even the music--supports ideas explored in the film around time.
What is a palindrome?
MCU fans will remember the name of this construct that Cooper finds himself in near the end of the film.
What is a tesseract?
The USS Callister episode explores many SF themes: virtual reality, the dangers of supreme power, and this ethically-thorny method of genetic replication.
What is cloning?
The Fermi Paradox raises questions about the likelihood of what event?
What is First Contact?
Rocky's age, in Earth years.
What is 291? (In 1735, the same year as Paul Revere and John Adams.)
This rule of thumb states that, all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one.
What is Occam's Razor?
Bortus's preferred number of cigarettes from the Orville's matter synthesizer.
What is 500?
The author and novella are known for progressive representations. Which character is trans, which is polyamorous, and which is asexual?
Who are Jack, Ariadne, and Chickondi, respectively?
Character to whom Dr. Louise Banks offers the following: "So, this is where your story begins. The day they departed. Despite knowing the journey…and where it leads...I embrace it. And I welcome every moment of it."
Who is Hannah? (A palindrome)
This is the name of the mission the 12 astronauts are sent on to explore habitable planets.
What are the Lazarus missions? (Named after the Biblical Lazarus, who was "raised from the dead" by Jesus.)
This late 2010s movement inspired Nanette's story in USS Callister.
What is #MeToo?