Common Sci-Fi tropes that annoy you!

[Gary Thompson]

Humanity is always either a Federation knock-off or a feudalistic society in the future.

I want to see humanity as constitutional monarchy, or a fascistic state, or something different than the usual.

Also, that, and the fact that every species seems to have one government.

So, you want to tell me that there're no groups within the same species that want to rule themselves and not be in the same state as the rest of their species?

One name for you: Warhammer 40000. Theocratic Oligarchy where the State Church is the law. There's a reason that the Imperium of Man is often nicknamed Catholic Space Nazis.

The whole "One Government" thing gets sidelined as well. Yes, the Imperium overall commands humanity, but individual Planetary and System Governors are free to rule their territories as they see fit, so long as they hold up the State Religion and pay their military tithes.

And there are several non Imperial human societies out there. They just happen to be at war with a galactic superpower that has more bodies than they have landmass.


Regarding the cliche of "Humans are the best!", I'd actually love to read a story where Humans were the best, but they were also the worst calamity that ever hit the galaxy. Humans as the genocidal, xenophobic alien invaders, crushing all in their way. The trouble is that writing protagonist aliens with a completely different culture to humans and making them sympathetic would be very difficult.

I'm a huge 40k fan, and the Imperium is very much feudal, in the sense that it's a loose empire of worlds mostly ruled by hereditary governors.

They do subvert the single culture thing though, with each planet being pretty unique, even though it's mostly shown through the regiments.

Mostly what I can think of that does something unique is the Caldari from EVE are a fascist corporate state, and the Terran Republic from Planetside is a military dictatorship.
Also the Terran Federation from Starship Troopers.

 

[DementedSheep]

Aliens that look like humans but are just "better" and live longer. Essentially they are space elves. Most the time they come across as a wish fulfilment species.

Speaking of wish fulfilment species the mostly human "doesn't have hold ups about modesty" one that just so happens to be exclusively female or males just aren't there or the males don't look anything like the females at all. It mostly just in older stuff at least.

With GE, augmentation or modifying people some other way the protagonist being the original and for this reason stronger than all others. If anything it would be the other way around.

Species where everyone in them just seems to to have the same personality and culture. Humans vary, why would aliens not?

Time travel/multiple universe plots which seem surprising common in sci fi. Argh.

"I thought I was in the past but I'm actually in the future!" plots.

Instant universal translators I'll give a pass just because the language issues are awkward to write about if that not a big focus of your plot.

 

[Tassit]

Futuristic laser or energy weapons that are less effective than a normal gun like what we have on Earth today, Star Trek is a big culprit of this, especially Voyager. Meanwhile on DS9 someone takes a shot in to the leg and loses the leg.

I dunno, I kinda liked how effective the Tommy Gun Picard used on the Borg was. They're adaptive and eventually immune to certain lasers due to their unique armor and what not, armor that's obviously not designed for kinetic damage.

 

[Chris Moses]

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.

This idea has bugged me for a long time. Forgive me for singling you out for it, but I feel the need to add my "gay voice" to this.

Homosexuals are perfectly capable of reproducing, we just engage in sexual activities that preclude it. You can bet your britches that if we were to start running out of humans that I would donate as much man-seed as needed (or at least as much as I can make...) to continue our race. Homosexuality need not be a barrier to reproduction and I find it offensive the implication that gays would be the ultimate pricks dooming humanity to extinction by selfishly choosing not to reproduce.

Your hypothetical cataclysm would also have to wipe out any and all "turkey baster/tube" technology before homosexuals would actually have to "do the deed" with the opposite sex to continue the species. Hell, even naturally occurring hollowed out reeds would do the trick or large rolled up leaves... add the sauce and a little puff of breath and viola` baby batter delivered without any homosexual having to overcome their revulsion or just plain not being turned on by the opposite sex!

Captcha: no way

yes way, "Life always finds a way"...

 

[Tassit]

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.

This idea has bugged me for a long time. Forgive me for singling you out for it, but I feel the need to add my "gay voice" to this.

Homosexuals are perfectly capable of reproducing, we just engage in sexual activities that preclude it. You can bet your britches that if we were to start running out of humans that I would donate as much man-seed as needed (or at least as much as I can make...) to continue our race. Homosexuality need not be a barrier to reproduction and I find it offensive the implication that gays would be the ultimate pricks dooming humanity to extinction by selfishly choosing not to reproduce.

Your hypothetical cataclysm would also have to wipe out any and all "turkey baster/tube" technology before homosexuals would actually have to "do the deed" with the opposite sex to continue the species. Hell, even naturally occurring hollowed out reeds would do the trick or large rolled up leaves... add the sauce and a little puff of breath and viola` baby batter delivered without any homosexual having to overcome their revulsion or just plain not being turned on by the opposite sex!

Captcha: no way

yes way, "Life always finds a way"...

Speaking of this, there's a book called "The Forever War" where the main character, due to traveling and cryosleep manages to skip large time periods. There's a point where population control is mandatory, then it's relaxed, then strongly encouraged, then finally there are so many people Homosexuality is the norm and to not be "Homolife" is considered perverse. It's really quite interesting.

Or.. I think that's the name of the book lol

 

[GamerFromJump]

ive recently been watching The Next Generation on tv and it kind of bugs me every time the doctor uses her "futuremajiggy" healing device. it kind of saps the danger out of the show when any injury can be healed just from her waving her magic wand over the site of the damage.

People biting it from injuries that we could theoretically treat in a current trauma center is one of mine.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Speaking of this, there's a book called "The Forever War" where the main character, due to traveling and cryosleep manages to skip large time periods. There's a point where population control is mandatory, then it's relaxed, then strongly encouraged, then finally there are so many people Homosexuality is the norm and to not be "Homolife" is considered perverse. It's really quite interesting.

Or.. I think that's the name of the book lol

The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman.

IIRC, he wrote it, at least in part, as a response to Heinlein's "Starship Troopers". Also, IIRC, both Heinlein and Haldeman served in the US military, however, there wasn't a war going on while Heinlein served, which is given as a reason for rather different views about the military.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I'd say the only incredibly common thing I see is that Sci-Fi, at least the very popular Sci-Fi, doesn't understand the scope and scale of numbers very well. As an example, consider the photon torpedo from Star Trek - while shown as being reasonably powerful weapons, many ships are capable of shrugging of many of these before exploding. Furthermore, most of the time it would take a sustained bombardment of such weapons to do something like destroy a city. Both of these are strange considering the lowest possible yield is a weapon capable of reducing any city on earth as well as miles of surrounding countryside into nothing but a smoking crater. At it's weakest, it could annihilate a city. At the largest yield, complete planetary destruction (and not simple mass extinction) would be fairly trivial.

In this regard, Mass Effect stands out as a rare example of something that actually realizes the magnitude of the weapons in the universe as it includes bits pointing out that, because of the power of dreadnought guns, planetary battles around an occupied planet gave tremendous advantage to the defenders simply because the attackers didn't want to be responsible for throwing hundreds of multiple kiloton charges on the planet should they miss.

 

[GamerFromJump]

Three big ones for me are "Businesses (or to use the bete noir word, "corporations") directly run the government, cause they're evil", which is completely f'in stupid, and would make no business sense whatsoever. I had to give up on Continuum because of this one.

Related is the trope of said evil businesses keeping Phlebotinum X at some ludicrously high price, cause evil. Even worse is when they show this being successful, instead of what would actually happen, "GOING FREAKING BROKE". Writers, Moore's Law* has been a thing for over 100 years, and a named thing for nearly 50. PAY ATTENTION!

Third is the idea** that far-future humans will remain essentially unchanged from the current variety. I understand relatability and all that, but humans are capable of a very broad circle of empathy. It's traits that are relatable. Considering that such things as better nutrition and getting lead out of the piping effected major change on humans, the idea that there will be NO move to use future tech to do even better is ludicrous, unless using oppression to stop it is part of the plot (looking at you, Star Trek).


* As in, the principle that a given technology, absent restricting factors, tends to decrease in price and increase in capability over time. First applied to computers, where it is most noticeable.

** http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoTranshumanismAllowed

 

[Zontar]

As an example, consider the photon torpedo from Star Wars

Does not compute, does not com.... (*head explodes*). You better be careful, you don't want to cross the streams, that's the two largest sci-fi fandoms you're rustling the jimmies of.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

As an example, consider the photon torpedo from Star Wars

Does not compute, does not com.... (*head explodes*). You better be careful, you don't want to cross the streams, that's the two largest sci-fi fandoms you're rustling the jimmies of.

Good catch - I changed the post. Though, it should be noted that the PROTON torpedo of Star WARS suffers from the same problem being a weapon that, if I recall correctly, uses an anti-matter charge as it's payload which annihilates more than a kilogram of matter in total - enough that all the nuclear weapons ever used in human history to date would look like mere firecrackers.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Though, it should be noted that the PROTON torpedo of Star WARS suffers from the same problem being a weapon that, if I recall correctly, uses an anti-matter charge as it's payload which annihilates more than a kilogram of matter in total - enough that all the nuclear weapons ever used in human history to date would look like mere firecrackers.

Not true, totally converting 1 kilogram gets you just over 22 megatons. Now, if you have a kilogram of antimatter, for that to be totally converted it requires another kilogram of matter, so 2 kg, or 44-45MT.

The largest nuclear device ever initiated was the Tsar Bomba, with a test yield of around 50MT.[footnote]It was planned that it'd have 100MT, but they ran out of uninhabited USSR to test the thing in (!), and the plane wouldn't be able to get away, so they scaled it down. There is some debate over whether or not the full yield would have reached 100MT, building the thing bigger and bigger keeps getting you a less and less increased yield, there comes a point where there's no point making it any bigger. The Tsar Bomba might have reached that point before it hit 100MT.[/footnote]

Third is the idea** that far-future humans will remain essentially unchanged from the current variety. I understand relatability and all that, but humans are capable of a very broad circle of empathy. It's traits that are relatable.

In theory...not so much in practice. They still have to have the hero be a straight white male, religion christian or not mentioned because people wouldn't relate otherwise. Audiences presumably relate to aliens more than minorities.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Not true, totally converting 1 kilogram gets you just over 22 megatons. Now, if you have a kilogram of antimatter, for that to be totally converted it requires another kilogram of matter, so 2 kg, or 44-45MT.

I just did the math and this entirely checks out (2kg would be 44.9 MT). Regardless, considering these were common weapons loaded on everything from fighters and bombers and up, the fact that a non-doomsday weapon is something on the order of a thousand times more powerful than the only two weapons thus far fired in warfare, the gist of my point still stands.

I think the reason this bugs me is simply that the energy output of these weapons is such that if a ship was capable of withstanding a direct hit, there is literally nothing stopping it from flying through the outer layers of a star or some other fairly absurd feat. We are talking about a weapon that is releasing something on the order of 90 petajoules of energy. Even badly without any attempt to direct the blast for greater effectiveness (and, really, why bother when dealing with such energy levels) that amounts to roughly the total energy of the sun that strikes the earth in a second being directed to a particular spot of a thing. So staggering is the energy in question that the only defense you could reasonably muster against it is simply not being anywhere near the blast.

They, like Star Trek, hand wave this by saying "well, shields". Had they simply used something even remotely reasonable for their weapon systems (like not arming the smallest vessels with poorly guided weapons of mass destruction) we wouldn't have a problem. Even the lesser weapons of either universe (Phasers, various large scale blasters) suffer a similar problem as they both have absurd energy outputs.

The only advantage to this sort of scale of weaponry is that it makes the notion of destroying a planet seem fairly reasonable. After all, it doesn't take much to destroy a city and if a run of the mill fighter can carry six weapons capable of the task, it stands to reason you'd be able to easily muster the absurd firepower necessary to actually destroy a planet. Hell, a small fleet in that universe would be capable of blanketing every inch of a world the size of earth (and all but assuring complete extinction of all life) in fire.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I think the reason this bugs me is simply that the energy output of these weapons is such that if a ship was capable of withstanding a direct hit, there is literally nothing stopping it from flying through the outer layers of a star or some other fairly absurd feat. We are talking about a weapon that is releasing something on the order of 90 petajoules of energy. Even badly without any attempt to direct the blast for greater effectiveness (and, really, why bother when dealing with such energy levels) that amounts to roughly the total energy of the sun that strikes the earth in a second being directed to a particular spot of a thing. So staggering is the energy in question that the only defense you could reasonably muster against it is simply not being anywhere near the blast.

They, like Star Trek, hand wave this by saying "well, shields". Had they simply used something even remotely reasonable for their weapon systems (like not arming the smallest vessels with poorly guided weapons of mass destruction) we wouldn't have a problem. Even the lesser weapons of either universe (Phasers, various large scale blasters) suffer a similar problem as they both have absurd energy outputs.

The only advantage to this sort of scale of weaponry is that it makes the notion of destroying a planet seem fairly reasonable. After all, it doesn't take much to destroy a city and if a run of the mill fighter can carry six weapons capable of the task, it stands to reason you'd be able to easily muster the absurd firepower necessary to actually destroy a planet. Hell, a small fleet in that universe would be capable of blanketing every inch of a world the size of earth (and all but assuring complete extinction of all life) in fire.

The other problem, is who regulates this stuff? What's to stop any terrorist or criminal organisation getting their hands on one? How do any cities exist?

Having said that, that's also a serious problem with any spaceship, the amount of power required to conveniently travel from planet to planet, let alone from star to star isn't something you'd entrust...anyone, really, to have.

If any random can have a spaceship, then mass murder happens regularly...until there aren't facilities left to allow every random to have one, I guess.

 

[Tassit]

Speaking of this, there's a book called "The Forever War" where the main character, due to traveling and cryosleep manages to skip large time periods. There's a point where population control is mandatory, then it's relaxed, then strongly encouraged, then finally there are so many people Homosexuality is the norm and to not be "Homolife" is considered perverse. It's really quite interesting.

Or.. I think that's the name of the book lol

The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman.

IIRC, he wrote it, at least in part, as a response to Heinlein's "Starship Troopers". Also, IIRC, both Heinlein and Haldeman served in the US military, however, there wasn't a war going on while Heinlein served, which is given as a reason for rather different views about the military.

Hah well, good to know my memory isn't so bad considering I read the book about 14 years ago.

 

[K12]

Human-alien half breeds annoy me a bit. There is no way for this to be biologically feasible. Why would we even assume that aliens would produce sexually like we do? They could have 9 different genders as far as we know.

Pretty much all the scientifically implausible stuff that is just assumed for no real reason(e.g. sound and explosions in space) irritates me a bit. I'm fine with this stuff if it's for story reasons (I'm not going to begrudge faster than light travel in an intergalactic show) or if it's cool enough but I'd like a little nod towards the fact that they know this is wrong otherwise I just feel like I'm celebrating ignorance.

The general assumption that "we will be psychic in the future" I find rather baffling as well. Why does this seem to be such a standard idea? So much so that it can be a tiny little background (oh by the way psychics) kind of deal rather than the main focus of the story.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Human-alien half breeds annoy me a bit. There is no way for this to be biologically feasible. Why would we even assume that aliens would produce sexually like we do? They could have 9 different genders as far as we know.

The general assumption that "we will be psychic in the future" I find rather baffling as well. Why does this seem to be such a standard idea? So much so that it can be a tiny little background (oh by the way psychics) kind of deal rather than the main focus of the story.

Does it really matter? And why? Removing those two situations would seriously limit the scope of the genre. We've got some really nice stories based on the possibility of breeding aliens and telepathy which actually do mirror relevant issues today. On the other hand, removing anything that is 'impossible' in sci-fi based on the grounds that our current science cannot foresee the possibility only serves to restrict the potential creativity of the genre. As far as I can see, the basis for such an argument can only be that the purpose of science fiction is to discuss life as we think it will be lived in the future and the issues we might have then. While I don't doubt that such sci-fi exists, it's a rather pointless type of fiction - I mean why write such fiction at all, why not make it non-fiction? Good sci-fi is interesting because it's relevant to our immediate circumstances, not some far off future life when we're dead.

And anyway, if you want to talk about (the completely boring topic of) scientific possibilities, it's not impossible that similar conditions give rise to sexually compatible life on two different planets. Very unlikely, but then so is FTL travel.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Does it really matter? And why? Removing those two situations would seriously limit the scope of the genre. We've got some really nice stories based on the possibility of breeding aliens and telepathy which actually do mirror relevant issues today. On the other hand, removing anything that is 'impossible' in sci-fi based on the grounds that our current science cannot foresee the possibility only serves to restrict the potential creativity of the genre. As far as I can see, the basis for such an argument can only be that the purpose of science fiction is to discuss future life and issues we might have then. While I don't doubt that such sci-fi exists, it's a rather pointless type of fiction - I mean why write such fiction at all, why not make it non-fiction? Good sci-fi is interesting because it's relevant to our immediate circumstances, not some far off future life when we're dead.

Yeah, going to very strongly disagree with you there.

There's plenty of decent hard science fiction out there. Sure, you can complain about the lack of laser guns in the science fiction movie Outland, but then, why aren't you complaining about the lack of laser guns in the western movie High Noon, that Outland was inspired by? Having to set Napoleonic war era films in the period of the Napoleonic wars is a restriction, but people don't seem to mind too much.

Secondly, and I'll admit this point is highly subjective, putting scientific accuracy in, IMHO, tends to enrich the story. Anyone (and everyone) can have giant insects or spiders in their stories, it's not that interesting anymore. But for them to be able to breathe, you need the oxygen content to be dangerously high. So, now you've got giant spiders in an environment humans need respirators to live in, and things are waiting to burst into flame, including lots of things that we normally don't think of as flammable. Suddenly you've gone and made your world a lot more interesting.

Now, certainly, you don't need to be scientifically accurate to do that sort of thing, but it tends (again, IMHO) to prod people along. Like they say, truth is stranger than fiction.

 

[hermes]

Human-alien half breeds annoy me a bit. There is no way for this to be biologically feasible. Why would we even assume that aliens would produce sexually like we do? They could have 9 different genders as far as we know.

The general assumption that "we will be psychic in the future" I find rather baffling as well. Why does this seem to be such a standard idea? So much so that it can be a tiny little background (oh by the way psychics) kind of deal rather than the main focus of the story.

...And anyway, if you want to talk about (the completely boring topic of) scientific possibilities, it's not impossible that similar conditions give rise to sexually compatible life on two different planets. Very unlikely, but then so is FTL travel.

Sexually compatible is still not the same as breeding compatible. Other species having the equivalent of human erogenous and genital organs is not statistically rare (after all, there are thousands of widely different species on earth that have the equivalent of two genders, one with a penis and one with a vagina), but having compatible genetic material, reproduction processes and life cycles, while not technically impossible, it is pretty damn close to statistically impossible. It would be like having sex with an alligator and giving birth to a Werealligator.

Hybrids in scifi are close to wish-fulfillment, like having a future where we cured every single disease and affliction. Sure, it makes for some interesting (and some really bad) what-ifs, but I don't see why its not a valid trope that annoys some people.

 

[mistahzig1]

The not-too-distant-future thing.

Stories where 200 years from now, we have 15 new colonies in interspace... my suspension of disbelief takes a beating with that.

A few thousand years, authors... a few THOUSAND years in the future!!!