Thursday, March 08, 2012

The Best Of Everything 100-day 100-question Star Wars Blogathon, Question 18



Grumpy Bulldog -- who in his real life as an author has a new website to celebrate his upcoming book series "Tales Of The Scarlet Knight," got yesterday's question right, and is in a solid second place, while Rusty got the 10 points for Being Caller Number 2.

On to today's question and topic of discussion, which is: Fake Holidays in Science Fiction.

Over on his blog today, Michael Offutt mentioned that IQ84 has a complete short story in it -- a story that plays into the novel's plot itself, and he mentioned that Grumpy did a similar thing in his book "Where You Belong." A while back, on this blog, I did a post on what I called, for lack of knowing anything better to call it, "The Best Fictional Plot Point," in which I talked about movies and TV shows and books that had created something out of whole cloth to revolve the plot of the story around -- things like the equation in The Infinities or Jerry's move in Seinfeld. And even earlier before that, I'd done a whole post on The Best Fake Musical In A Real Movie, and now today I'm thinking about all those things authors make up to further the made-up story they're telling -- everything from fake songs like in Norman Spinrad's old book Little Heroes to full on fake short stories like John Irving did in The World According to Garp (and Dilloway, and Murakami did in their stories.)

So far as I know, nobody has yet written an entire fake novel within a novel -- but I'm sure that's not very far off.

And also, that's off the track. What I'm specifically thinking about today are the holidays that populate sci-fi (and fantasy) books and movies and TV shows, and I've been wracking my brain trying to think of what holidays those might be, because I am 100% certain that in the course of reading my many sci-fi and fantasy books over the years, I've read about holidays that only exist on strange worlds or in service of strange gods, but I cannot think of a single one except Festivus, and that doesn't count.

So, I resorted to Googling, and here's a few I came up with:

Assumption of St. Antwelm. Because King Antwelm assumed everybody wanted to be happy, enjoy themselves, and have the best possible time together, on his death he willed his entire personal fortune to financing an annual festival for this purpose. Events of this holiday include a feast, dancing, and fatuous games such as Hunt the Wocket. (Celebrated on Saquo-Pilia Hensha, the ultimate headquarters of the publisher of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy)

The Five Extra Days in the Númenórean Calendar: days added to the Middle Earth calendar to set it straight, celebrated as holidays.

Colonial Day, an annual holiday that celebrates the official signing of the Articles of Colonization that occured 52 years prior to the final Cylon Attack in the Battlestar universe that I loved so much before it ripped off Hitchhiker in a finale that made no sense.

Anyway, that's what I came up with. I'm sure there's more, so here's the challenge: If, in your comment, you can name real... or "real" bona fide holidays in a sci-fi or fantasy book, TV series or movie -- holidays that DO NOT exist in our world, you'll get 10 extra points... per holiday.

And, here's today's question, worth 46 points:

What holiday was celebrated via the pod race in which Anakin Skywalker won his freedom?

Also, commenter number 5 gets the 10 bonus points today, but remember: while you can comment multiple times, you can't get the bonus points if you're commenter 4 and 5.

8 comments:

Andrew Leon said...

Boonta Eve

Andrew Leon said...

I'm assuming that Boonta Eve doesn't count as one of the extras you're looking for since it's the one you're looking for. :P

Here are some others:
Durin's Day (The Hobbit)
Founder's Day (Warhammer 40K)
Hogswatch (Discworld)
Whacking Day (The Simpsons)
Decemberween (Homestar Runner)
Emperor's Day (Warhammer 40K)
Vermintide (Warhammer)
Merlinpeen (30 Rock)
Freedom Day (Futurama)

PT Dilloway said...

About the only one I can think of that's not on here is Festivus from Seinfeld, which makes me want to donate some money to the Human Fund.

Andrew Leon said...

Here, I'll be #4 so that someone can get 10 points...

I know there are other LotR ones, but I can't think of them off the top of my head, and I have to take my daughter to softball practice. Someone should look those up.

Rusty Carl said...

You know, I was going to post earlier but I decided not to after I saw Andrew's answer about the Oompa Loompa festival, or whatever it was. I was totally going to say that.

Regardless, before I totally rewrote my decade old, and still unpublished novel, The Blutonian Death Egg, I did write a novel (also unpublished) where a kid found a journal and as we went through his story, he was reading through this journal about aliens and crazy government types, and he found as he read that the things he was reading about seemed similar to people he was interacting with now... that journal he was reading the whole time? THE BLUTONIAN DEATH EGG! It had text interspersed throughout the novel that the kid would read... man I was so smart back then.

But I eventually rewrote The Blutonian Death Egg and it didn't quite fit anymore. I also rewrote most of the other novel, but I sat it to the side after I got confused about a plot point and couldn't be bothered to go back and recheck what I already had said was going to happen... I do remember lots of solar powered cell phones in it though, for some reason that seemed like a big deal at the time.

So, what were we talking about? Oh, made up SF holidays. They celebrate something in Firefly. I can't remember what it was, but it's like their 4th of July or something, except Mal hates it because it'a also a celebration of him losing the battle or whatever.

I'll be raring to go tomorrow.

Maurice Mitchell said...

Great list. Another Futurama holiday is xmas. Not technically a new holiday, but the killer Santa-bot is a new twist.

Andrew Leon said...

Oh, dude! That's right! I totally forgot that one in Firefly! Now, I'm going to have to look that up.

However, I totally want credit for Jayne's Day since no one said that.

Andrew Leon said...

Oh, and I forgot to mention that I plugged the blogathon again today in my Ghost Rider post.