Common Sci-Fi tropes that annoy you!

[Vegosiux]

Aside from many things already mentioned (single biome planets, always class warfare, always humanoid aliens, the universal translator, technobabble), it really irks me whenever "lasers" work as slow-moving discrete "bullets of light". That ain't how lasers work, dammit!

And "asteroid thickets". Seriously, asteroid fields don't tend to be that dense.

Oh, and the annoying "This is Earth" ending. How original...

Explosions in space. A vessel that was moving at some funky speed explodes, and the explosion is stationary? What? Planar shockwaves around space explosions? Seriously? Explosions in the vacuum of space being noisy? Come the hell on! Not to say anything about how explosions in space should be pretty much spherical.

A distinct lack of Kessler Syndrome around planets where ships often blow each other up also bothers me.

 

[floppylobster]

if we are talking about overused sci-fi tropes im pretty sick of seeing the ancient and highly advanced race of aliens that mysteriously vanished leaving only their ruins full of advanced technology

The Xel naga from Starcraft
The Protheans from Mass Effect
The Forerunners from Halo
The Precursors from Jak and Daxter (im reaching with this one)

You can add Panzer Dragoon to that list (which was inspired by Miyzaki's Nausicaa).

But I have to say I'm not sick of this trope. I'm just sick of seeing it done poorly.

 

[beastro]

Certainly, that could happen. Only, that's never mentioned.

For some reason, most sci-fi shows that are dominated by white straight people don't have the heroes talk about how they wiped out all the black people and drove homosexuals underground, for example.

Because most Science Fiction, especially that on TV and in theaters, especially the popular stuff, is the produce of Western, mostly Anglosphere nations, which by their very nature are predominantly white.

A far more interesting and subversive possibility would be exploring the racial repercussions of such a setting that I stated would be where, to use your example as one, if blacks suddenly became endangered or whites literally were the predominant "race" thanks to an alien menace wiping out most human populated plants and leaving others untouched. How that would affect not only the development of subsequent human history and culture but the shock it would cause to the framework of Mankind as a whole where it's a given that whites have always been one of the smaller population groups.

Or to explore that in a more deeper, focused example, what if the Han found themselves a tiny ethnic group amongst not only the Chinese but of Mankind? How that would affect the broad Chinese identity? Would it even survive with the different ethnic groups finding identities broadening out and differing, essentially reverting back to the days before China was united when to be "Chinese" was to be "Germanic", "Slavic" or "European" in Western terminology.

Along with that would be how that would affect the self-perception of the Han and how they'd evolve, maybe becoming reclusive or maybe furious at their loss of prestige and standing in Mankind and work to recover their past glory with all the entails given how humans always try to recover a mythical, utopian past.

 

[Queen Michael]

When certain things really show their age when it comes to diversity. Like in old SF especialy, where there are way more male scientists and leaders than female ones. This isn't a social justice thing; it's the lack of realism in the idea that people hundreds or thousands of years in the future still wouldn't have decreased racial and gender discrimination a bit since the book was written, even though it was written in a time when that kind of discrimination was steadily decreasing.

I don't find it an issue of realism at all and has more to do with your perceptions of the progress of society being linear.

While this may be the way the world is going presently, when dealing with speculative fiction you're open to a wide range of things, and yes, a more "old fashion" outlook is a possibility due to environment and social pressures.

What if Mankind gets reduced to only a few tens of thousands and maximizing childbirth goes from an imperative to a moral virtue and any which gets in the way of that is looked on as a social evil, like homosexuality, long after the need for such a view has passed because necessity turned into tradition.

Or, for a revival of racism one could have Mankind (or certain ethnic groups) be so decimated that the surviving groups are so small that the fear of losing their identity and literally their appearance makes people coalesce into tight knit groups which avoid others and again look on miscegenation as social evil.

Given the ebb and flow history these possibilities are just as likely, if not more so likely given human nature, than a future with little to no racial, sexual or gender discrimination.

That's a fair point, and I would have written about it myself in the post you quoted if I hadn't been so lazy. (Thanks for doing it for me.) But my problem is that it never feels like that. It always feels like the writer just didn't anticipate that things would change.

 

[beastro]

4.) Humans as "the standard". The humans have no special abilities....BUT ALSO NO WEAKNESSES! Wooooooo! Really, there are actually a lot of things we kind of suck at. We're not terribly physically strong and don't have a great deal in the way of natural defenses.

The problem when Sci-Fi deals with this is that it brings the misanthropist out in many writers and why fantasy tends to have humans be the middle man within the usual Tolkienesque gallery of fantastical races.

With Sci-Fi, going back to it's very beginnings and walking hand in hand during the 50s with patriotism and xenophobia is going on about how weak we are ranging from physically weaker (the most common form) to spiritually weaker (usually revolving around us being a broken race who can't be in touch with nature) or mentally and emotionally (Vulcans or any given super advanced race of brainy aliens), or all of the above with a heavy mix of hatred towards are apparent lack of wisdom.

For all it's faults, Plan 9 sums up that aspect of Sci-Fi the best with the climax being the head alien spewing "You're stupid! Stupid! Stupid!" like a domineering mother would as she spanked a baby.

That also reminds of something just as bad and something which dominated Sci-Fi for faaaar too long, especially in the 60s with Star Trek being the banner carrier: Not so much Mankind being perfect, but Mankind "evolving" from very basic, fundamental things that are at the core of human nature like "negative" emotions or simply being frail beings prone to err.

The though is the negative emotion thing and how in the perfect future it's somehow possible for human being to literally, not socially, evolve away feelings like anger, hate, even sadness. The funny thing is that the worst cases of this weren't in the Original Series but came from the first couple of seasons of TNG thanks to Roddenberry having too much creative control.

It got so bad that after he died the producers went on to create an episode expressly to criticize such a mentality and try to explain it in universe when a kid loses his mother to a mine and struggles to grieve while being helped out by the crew. Wesley, in one of his few shining moments, really gives it to Roddenberry by proxy by letting the kid know what shit it was for him after he lost his father when everyone expected him to act as if nothing bad had ever happened and to dare not express the grief anyone would expect would come from a young child basically putting the mentality down to an older generation that strove to overcome Man's darker aspects by acting as if they no longer had them at all.

 

[Varrdy]

Intertial Dampers made out of eggshells and wet toilet paper.

Seriously, and Star Trek is very guilty of this, the first time anything makes a ship so much as wobble almost immediately someone pipes up that the inertial dampers (or is it "dampeners"? Whatever...) are offline. If they were such a critcal component you'd think that they'd make them a tad more robust!

 

[beastro]

That's a fair point, and I would have written about it myself in the post you quoted if I hadn't been so lazy. (Thanks for doing it for me.) But my problem is that it never feels like that. It always feels like the writer just didn't anticipate that things would change.

That's at the heart of why I feel Sci-Fi needs to leave it's old tradition of distilling present times and presenting them in a light to us behind and focus more on being speculative, namely, trying to create and flesh out worlds that are as different from ours as possible, or take from history and not just rehash things.

One of the other bad, worn out aspects is the whole organics vs synthetics deal, at least as it's presented, which is either murderous machines out to kill all meatbags, bigoted luddites who refuse to accept the nice, peaceful robots, or some endless, unresolvable conflict where organics and synthetics are doomed to never ending war.

Of them I find the latter the most worn out as it's just another variation of the "aliens are just human minorities with funny ridges on their grow" and the lesson in the end is that we should all just get along.

Second to that taking human fears of AI to ludicrous extremes and the most over done over all.

The least, but most offensive is not treating human fear of technology with respect and actually looking at it through a reasonable lens, that being either our refusal to make ourselves obsolete and remain just the way we are to the eternal frustration of Transhumanists to actually considering if an AI can ever be completely human like and the possibility of it being similar enough to be disturbing and revolting, never being human enough to be accepted, because at the heart of it, AI are the mos alien thing humans can imagine.

Any "alien" alien has to ultimately emerge as life naturally, even if it's nothing like us as in, not carbon based or using anything like, that or if it's engineered, it at least functions on a baseline no different than ours. In short, they suffer from the same environmental pressures we do and somehow adapted to them. They may not view the world like us or think logically or have their own twisted reasoning that seems completely insane to us, but they somehow emerged from the same process that created us and thus there's at least some commonality.

 

[Serioli]

Proud warrior race guys who are:

A - (western view?) Samurai analogues. What about warrior guys whose culture rewards sneaky, dishonourable or whatever wins thinking?

B - Might is right. How about a culture where the view on 'powerful warriors' are ones who are skilled at fighting rather than just being 'batter each other to submission' strong?


The points made about swearing reminded me of a brilliant touch I saw in a Shadowrun novel, though I don't remember the exact quote. (Shadowrun uses the word 'frag' as its censor friendly swear word)

Protagonist:- 'Fuck you.'

The street kid rolled his eyes at me, ' "Fuck" you too, grandpa.'

 

[Serioli]

Huzzah!

My first double post courtesy of the back and resend buttons!

Nothing more than my foolishness to see here, move along.....

 

[beastro]

Proud warrior race guys who are:

A - (western view?) Samurai analogues. What about warrior guys whose culture rewards sneaky, dishonourable or whatever wins thinking?

Western history has too many of them.

(Really that's human history in general, but bringing that up ruins the joke).

The virtuous Knight has been out of fashion in popular Western culture for the better part of a century (But it is a dead horse George Martin is beating so badly that it might make a comeback quicker than expected) and has been out of fashion in Western gaming for a good twenty years - think Dragon's Lair and other, ironically mostly Japanese developed games, which dug through Western fantasy and folklore with broad, shallow stripmining that mostly rehashed King Arthur or were clones of Conan the Barbarian, or were odd combinations of the two.

B - Might is right. How about a culture where the view on 'powerful warriors' are ones who are skilled at fighting rather than just being 'batter each other to submission' strong?

Because Western history, whether it's proven right it or not is up to you, has at least proven that it's a much more EFFECTIVE than being a dead pile of principled moralists.

Might not be right, but it keeps you alive.

 

[Squilookle]

Suicidal kamikaze death dives being heroic.

I am so sick of the whole 'If I'm going to go, I'm going to take them with me!' crap being jazzed up as some heroic action of self-sacrifice. You're possibly about to die, crashing into one last enemy not only makes it 100% certain you will perish rather than 'finding a way' to pull through, but it's essentailly a coward's way out. Usually effective the first time, true, but it's not heroic at all, and has much wider consequences than just that incident.

For example, in WW2 the Japanese were idealogically opposed to ever being taken prisoner. Wounded soldiers would call out for help, and when Allied soldiers approached, they would produce a grenade and try and blow as many away as possible. This strategy is not heroic, and was never regarded as such at the time. As a result of witnesses to this strategy, the Allies would give the Japanese no quarter or mercy. The wounded would be shot on sight. Bodies would be bayonetted to 'make sure' they were dead. Japanese who wanted to live weren't given the chance, because the Allies could no longer risk leaving them alive.

If a spaceship does a death dive like that- chances are the ships of that faction will be seen differently after that. They'll be engaged from further away, and shown no quarter when mercy is asked for. The actions of one stupid, arrogant big ship captain condemn countless other lives that could have been saved... to death.

The new Star Trek is probably the worst. Didn't even scratch the other ship. He should have been seen as the absolute useless moron that he was.

Beam weapons

They just look like garbage. Laser blasts can tell you in two frames where they're coming from and where they're headed. Beam weapons always have to show either the source or the target in shot for you to know what the hell is going on. The idea of a beam like weapon just stretching off into nothing is just daft. Granted, slower-than-light laser blasts are too, but cinematically they work a hell of a lot better than beam weapons do.

Explosion rings

These just seem to be one of the latest 'everyone else is doing it so we may as well' effects. Put one in and instantly you're reminded that you're watching a movie or playing a game, because they just Do. Not. Happen. There's nothing wrong with the old ringless explosions- just stick to them for crying out loud.

HUMPH! /rant

 

[Serioli]

Because Western history, whether it's proven right it or not is up to you, has at least proven that it's a much more EFFECTIVE than being a dead pile of principled moralists.

Might not be right, but it keeps you alive.

Sorry, my poor explanation skills. What I meant was that for many proud warrior race guys, strength seems the only important characteristic. I haven't seen many proud warrior race guys* who were warriors based on speed, evasion or redirection, for example, just hit and be hit.

*Maybe the Echani in star wars? Going on KOTOR as I haven't read any of the expanded universe....

 

[beastro]

Suicidal kamikaze death dives being heroic.

I am so sick of the whole 'If I'm going to go, I'm going to take them with me!' crap being jazzed up as some heroic action of self-sacrifice. You're possibly about to die, crashing into one last enemy not only makes it 100% certain you will perish rather than 'finding a way' to pull through, but it's essentailly a coward's way out. Usually effective the first time, true, but it's not heroic at all, and has much wider consequences than just that incident.

The problem it's been overdone, has been overdone in one form or another since the advent of film and has been long since been bleed white of drama and thus has lost all its meaning and power.

 

[beastro]

Because Western history, whether it's proven right it or not is up to you, has at least proven that it's a much more EFFECTIVE than being a dead pile of principled moralists.

Might not be right, but it keeps you alive.

Sorry, my poor explanation skills. What I meant was that for many proud warrior race guys, strength seems the only important characteristic. I haven't seen many proud warrior race guys* who were warriors based on speed, evasion or redirection, for example, just hit and be hit.

*Maybe the Echani in star wars? Going on KOTOR as I haven't read any of the expanded universe....

Ok, I get you.

Sadly, that seems to be another aspect that Fantasy shares with Sci-Fi, yet Fantasy explores more (ironic saying Fantasy is sometimes more speculative when it's so dominated by Tolkien) through Elves and their various imitations.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Well, what do you guys want? It's science fiction. If you want realism go watch some boring legal-crime drama or medical series. It doesn't matter what future tech they come up with, it's about exploring the possibilities were such techs actually possible. In fact I'd say it's their impossibility which makes it work. That's why cockable beam weapons don't matter to me one tiny bit.

What I hate: Shows which try their hardest to make the future the most realistic they can. I got this impression from watching a bit of Battlestar Galactica which is probably why I didn't like it. Just present the tech vaguely and get on with it. The details aren't important.

 

[beastro]

Not sure if that necessarily follows, but if you can build one cyborg, you can build zillions, and the technology can be applied to lots of other things. Star Trek style transporters could very, very easily get weaponised...this is mentioned in an episode of Voyager, when it turns out that that you can teleport photon torpedoes into enemy ships, only they'd never bothered doing it before. For that matter, you could not bother converting the energy back from matter...one kilogram of matter have the same energy when it's converted by a transporter as a 22 MT nuclear device. Likewise, replicators need that much energy to make one kilogram.

What you mention is actually something I really loved in the later season of Stargate where they did this exact and it proved to be VERY effective, that is until the show just flopped back into Star Trek territory when the enemies "remodulaed" their shields or whatever the equivalent term was on that show.

What you mention above is something Star Trek and none of it's handlers will ever deal with and that is to accept and apply the franchises technology to it's logical extremes, extremes that would quickly turn Star Trek into a form of grimdark that would make any and all Warhammer 40k characters cry out in despair with replicators unceasingly churning out ships, weapon, robots, even organic beings by the countless multitude resulting in a purest form of attrition ever seen with the victor being the one who simply has the most every to convert into mass... if they have any last by then, that is.

Imagine what the Dominion War would have looked like...

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

Also, going outside a spaceship without a helmet. Even if you are absolutely sure the air is breathable, what about airborne pathogens?

The chances that the natural pathogens of a planet would be able to affect an alien and completely foreign species is pretty ludicrous. You are implying this virus/bacteria has evolved to effect a species it has never encountered beforehand. Even most earth bound viruses only affect a few species at maximum.

 

[beastro]

Well, what do you guys want? It's science fiction. If you want realism go watch some boring legal-crime drama or medical series. It doesn't matter what future tech they come up with, it's about exploring the possibilities were such techs actually possible. In fact I'd say it's their impossibility which makes it work. That's why cockable beam weapons don't matter to me one tiny bit.

What I hate: Shows which try their hardest to make the future the most realistic they can. I got this impression from watching a bit of Battlestar Galactica which is probably why I didn't like it. Just present the tech vaguely and get on with it. The details aren't important.

We want Science Fiction that has weight to it.

Sci-Fi isn't like other forms of fiction, it's inherently rooted in reality and if it had been developed (or rather, labelled) earlier than it had been it would have been considered just a sub-genre of fantasy. It's no coincidence that Sci-Fi and High Fantasy took the forms we know in roughly the same time period, they were divisions within fantasy that broke with folk and fairy tales opting to be more grounded only with one focused on the past and tradition while the other looked into the future and possibility.

Human nature prefers to accept things the more realistic they are and dismisses others which aren't with condescension at best and hostile contempt at worst. Folk and fairy tales are the realm of children's stories now because they lost their ground with adults becoming so silly in our eyes that they were only worth telling to ignorant kids while High Fantasy and Science Fiction have always aimed to be more mature and deeper.

Your complaint has less to do with us or anyone else that desires ever realistic Sci-Fi and more to do with the fact that people as a whole have grown sick of more fantastical Sci-Fi and it's hang up with utopia and the triumphal march of Positivism. The last century showed us that such high hopes were nothing but silly delusions and wish fulfillment, people now increasingly seek darker, more gritty fantasy because it's not only refreshing, but it's also more relatable, and when it all comes down to it, seems far far more plausible, something that doesn't matter to you, but matters to most people.

In my case I'm frankly sick of technology and as funny as it sounds, science, dominating Science Fiction at the expense of the social and historical aspects of the genre and exploring their repercussions and evolution. It's why I've grown sicker of TV/Movie Sci-Fi and find the Dune series to be the only novels which tackle those aspects of the genre while giving pure lip service to the tech: "These things were invented, this is these things work, here are their limitations, here's how they react to other technology. Wanna know how it all works? That's not the point of these little books!!! Just accept it that they work in the way that they do and focus more on how civilization and society evolved into this odd form you now find it in and where it's going".

Also, most people are utterly sick of the science in Science Fiction being a stand in for magic without any set parameters that is incessantly used to get lazy writers out of the corners they've written themselves into, written themselves into such corners so badly people have spent entire careers spewing technobabble out and not only lowered themselves into contemptible levels but have done a lot of lower the standards of the genre as well.

 

[Squilookle]

Suicidal kamikaze death dives being heroic.

I am so sick of the whole 'If I'm going to go, I'm going to take them with me!' crap being jazzed up as some heroic action of self-sacrifice. You're possibly about to die, crashing into one last enemy not only makes it 100% certain you will perish rather than 'finding a way' to pull through, but it's essentailly a coward's way out. Usually effective the first time, true, but it's not heroic at all, and has much wider consequences than just that incident.

The problem it's been overdone, has been overdone in one form or another since the advent of film and has been long since been bleed white of drama and thus has lost all its meaning and power.

It's overdone because it's overdone in real life. I have no problem with the frequency- I have a problem with the film showing the act to be heroic when it is absolutely anything but.