Common Sci-Fi tropes that annoy you!

[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.

 

[tmande2nd]

Oh were to start:

The comically inept armed farces with horrible accuracy, garbage tactics, and stupid leaders.
Why yes lets exchange fire ala the Napoleonic era, have broadsides at point blank range, and make everything look cool! There is a reason why real armed forces dont carry out infantry charges or fire their ships guns at things close enough you can throw rocks at.
Or have a military whose idea of a battle ship goes around with shields or weapons ready, and waits to get SHOT AT before engaging....cough Starfleet cough.

Technobabble:
Honestly it is so annoying to hear "Create a subspace wave at a neural wiggly figgly of 98 shindigies!". Just for God's sake use some real science or not at all. Its painful to watch shows misuse terms and actual science like that.

Alien space babes:
Making an entire group of aliens "hawt" so that people can get cheap fanservice.
Twileks
Orions
Asari
I dont mind fanservice in works of fiction, but when Captain Dude lands on a planet and the female population consists entirely of bikini models in skin paint with some rubber ridges added to their forehead my eyes roll so hard they hurt.

I now await the "LEAVE MY GREEN SKINNED SPACE BABES OUT OF THIS!"

 

[Zontar]

Or have a military whose idea of a battle ship goes around with shields or weapons ready, and waits to get SHOT AT before engaging....cough Starfleet cough.

But didn't you know? Starfleet isn't a 'military', it's just an organization which has a military rank structure, uses starships with weapons to keep the peace and uphold the law, and to act as diplomats, it isn't a 'military'. (though sarcasm aside, I honestly have no idea WHY Starfleet members double as diplomats when that should be representatives sent by the government, not ship crew members who can be as low as a Lieutenant who just happen to command a starships).

And because you said it: LEAVE MY GREEN SKINNED SPACE BABES OUT OF THIS!

 

[Nosferatu2]

Alien space babes:
Making an entire group of aliens "hawt" so that people can get cheap fanservice.
Twileks
Orions
Asari
I dont mind fanservice in works of fiction, but when Captain Dude lands on a planet and the female population consists entirely of bikini models in skin paint with some rubber ridges added to their forehead my eyes roll so hard they hurt.

I now await the "LEAVE MY GREEN SKINNED SPACE BABES OUT OF THIS!"

I'm cool with that one. But there is a word for that. "Xenophilia" roughly describes what you're talking about. It pretty much means a love, or attraction, to something alien.

 

[LadyLightning]

Pinocchio Robots. Fuck you, I am fucking sick of your "I wanna be a real human!" bullshit. Mass Effect 3, you're one of the biggest culprits of this. The Geth and EDI were perfectly happy living as bits and bytes, why did you have to go and ruin that in favor of this played out junk?

I'm torn on this. On the one hand it can be used well (See Data from Star Trek) but I agree with you that Mass Effect 3 took synthetic characters that were interesting the way that they were and make it so that them being like Humans was ideal in the sake of fulfilling a cliche when it really didn't work. (For fuck's sake, Legion was SCARED by the concept of individuality.)

Legion ~were~ scared. You have to remember to use the plural when talking about them. Many Geth, one platform.

 

[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.

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.

Reading that I agree with most of it but it's also confusing because I'm not sure whether you're for or against fantasy in sci-fi, since you seem to be for realism then bring up Dune, a work of fantasy, in a positive light. I fully agree with you that the science in sci-fi must be there for a reason - to raise issues actually relevant to the way we live now or may live in the future. I don't see how greater realism and "grittiness" do anything but limit the scope of the work.

In the future anything must be considered possible - things people considered impossible 1000 years ago are now our reality. Saying something's impossible in the future must be done for a greater reason - for example in Babylon 5 the station needs rotating parts to create gravity - something which is ignored in say, Star Trek. But this is not just to show off the knowledge of physics, but to contrast the humans with the more advanced species which have artificial gravity, something which may well be impossible.

TLDR: I'm not against realism, more against realism for its own sake. The shaky-cam and lots of blood we're stuck with in new sci-fi is there to look cool, not for any good reason.

 

[xPixelatedx]

One of my biggest pet peeves:
1. Human hangs out with Alien of opposite gender. They are clearly good companions, and even have a chemistry; may even fight or die for one another. Same human meets another human of opposite gender. INSTANT ROMANCE! Doesn't matter if they even like each-other, they are now a couple... just because! I recently saw this in that god awful movie John Carter. The green alien risked everything for that fuck and they seemed really friendly with one another. Then a human woman shows up and clearly thats the love interest... because! It's nearly as insulting as those movies/shows/books where the only two black people end up becoming lovers just because they're black.

This one isn't as bothering, but it's annoying over time:
2. Every alien acts distinctly human, never any real divergence. And no, being more warrior like, or greedy, or religious doesn't count (looking at you Star Trek). I am sorry, but NO. The mind is a really amazing but frail thing. Much of how we think and act is dependent on the very shape of our brains and the chemicals it produces. An animal with completely different physical characteristics literally cannot think exactly like us. They would have to have a human mind and produce human chemicals in it. That's not to say we might find things that closely resemble the way we think, those would be the things we'd have the easiest time communicating with, thats for sure. But it is highly likely we would encounter things so beyond our comprehension they would seem either frightening, nonsensical or animal-like to us. Dolphins are a good example of something approaching human-levels of thought but being so distinctly different it opens a frightening precedent of what an alien might be like.

Aliens being very human in appearance. It's perhaps not as prevalent now as it was a few decades ago although even now most aliens are at least humanoid shaped. I just feel like there should be a lot more evolutionary diversity. Not mentioning any names but slapping a couple of pointy ears on someone's head makes for a pretty underwhelming alien (nothing against a particular character, just the idea in general).

I agree fully, and while I believe another primate(or primate-like) species is more then capable of becoming the citizens of that respective world, the type of animal we are differ so much between species, I still have a hard time believing they would look so perfectly human-like. If anything they would look more like "another monkey" to us. Just look at the huge difference between primates on earth.

 

[Dreadjaws]

Alien space babes:
Making an entire group of aliens "hawt" so that people can get cheap fanservice.
Twileks
Orions
Asari
I dont mind fanservice in works of fiction, but when Captain Dude lands on a planet and the female population consists entirely of bikini models in skin paint with some rubber ridges added to their forehead my eyes roll so hard they hurt.

The Asari shouldn't count. The interesting deal about them is that they're "shape-cheaters". They actually look like a member of whichever race whomever's watching them belongs to. They look human-like to us because we're human, to the Turians, they look turian-like and so on.

On topic, I have to say what really irks me is lack of diversity in alien worlds. Here on Earth humans have several races, languages, cultures and religions, but in Sci-Fi whenever other planets are shown, most of the time the entire planet there shares the same race, culture, belief and language.

The only times this is different, when a planet shows diversity between inhabitants, rest assured it's because there's two or more different species in it. But species-wide, they're all basically the same.

This wouldn't bother me as much if we were talking about some super-advanced civilization, which has done away with the differences between their members, but it's usually not the case, as those worlds tend to show individuals very much like us humans.

Another thing that grind my gears is presenting humans as saviors. Humans travel to worlds much more advanced, yet they all lack "humanity", which ends up saving the day all the time. Give me a break, please, humans don't need an ego boost.