I received 442 entries for my Spot the Schlock Reference Contest that Howard Tayler was kind enough to announce on the Schlock Mercenary site. I judged 338 of them to be referring to the correct answer.

There were a lot of interesting and well-reasoned incorrect answers.  Many people thought the nanoswarm was similar to Ennesby in appearance, or that it was a reference to the nanobots in this strip.  Others thought the AI’s attitude toward biological intelligences was similar to Petey’s.  Some thought that the prehensile tongue of the alien that attacked Bokeerk was a reference to Legs’s tongue, or that the tentacled plant was like the Carniflowers.  Quite a few felt the teleportation network was similar to the wormgates.  Several thought the general concept of genetically enhanced sophont animals was the point of similarity.

The closest wrong answers were the ones dealing with the talking gun.  Several people thought that was a parallel to the sentient munitions that have appeared in the Schlockiverse.  Others thought the gun’s attitude was very reminiscent of Sergeant Schlock.

Those were close, because the correct answer does have to do with the gun.  Here is the key scene from “Rejiggering the Thingamajig”:

Halfway up the volcano’s slope, Bokeerk squatted near a stream to drink and catch her breath. Thick jungle had given way to a sparser forest, though the trees still towered over her head. Hunger gnawed at her stomach, and she considered hunting one of the elk-sized animals she had glimpsed along the way. She could smell one now, close by. It might not provide any nutrition, but it would fill her stomach.

It might also poison her, so she reluctantly abandoned the idea.

Like a silvery mist, the nanoswarm swirled around her feet.

The gun emitted an ominous hum.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

The hum continued, steady.

Was the gun going into some sort of overload? She tried to pry it off her claw, but it clung too tightly. “Gun, answer me!”

The hum stopped. “Huh? What? Is there somethin’ ta shoot?”

“You were making a strange sound.”

“Well,” said the gun, “when you sat down, I figured it was time to do me some meditatin’. So jes’ pardon me for tryin’a become one with the universe.”

If you still haven’t spotted it, perhaps this link to the very first Schlock Mercenary strip will help.

The gun making an “ominous hum” was a deliberate tip of the hat to Schlock Mercenary. Any other similarities were purely coincidental. A few commenters on the contest announcement post suspected that the whole story was set up in order to allow that joke.  That is not the case; it was just serendipity as I was writing the story, and I realized I could make the joke.

I counted any answer that made reference to the “ominous hum” (or any recognizable variant spelling thereof) as correct.  I created a spreadsheet with the names and email addresses of the correct responders, and then used a random number generator to pick the winning line of the spreadsheet.

And the winner of the Spot the Schlock Reference Contest is: Dave McKee!  Here’s Dave’s winning answer:

Guns with ominous hums.
Personally, I’d like to see Schlock’s reaction to his gun taking up
Buddhist teachings :)

Dave has won the Schlock book of his choice and a copy of my forthcoming story collection, including my Nebula Award-nominated novelette “That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made.”