Common Sci-Fi tropes that annoy you!

[beastro]

Seriously, in such a story, I'd root for the bug-eyed aliens. Let them wipe us out - we're a hopeless and apparantly inherently evil specie.

Naturalistic fallacy right there.

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.

I think this is avoided because it would diminish interest in the story.

Honestly, if in the future women are back to being breeding-betties while the menfolk run things - then I simply would have no interest and no stakes in whatever story is being told. Because then I would simply NOT CARE anymore. Why give a frak that we're living in space stations or whatever? If women are back in the kitchen (or the futuristic equaliant) while men govern and explore and fight - then all our technological advancements simply don't matter.

Seriously, in such a story, I'd root for the bug-eyed aliens. Let them wipe us out - we're a hopeless and apparantly inherently evil specie.

From your perspective yes, but that is also the interesting thing about such scenarios - seeing the conflict between an old and impractical mentality butting heads with new and dire necessities.

The amusing thing about what you've said is to think about if speculative fiction had been around for centuries and some arrogant, chauvinistic, ultra Catholic nobleman taking a look at a novel detailing a world like ours and declaring he'd rather die than live in a world like that and how it would show that what a horrible, irredeemable people we are to let ourselves slide into such a moral cesspool full of Protestants, infidels, loose women and sodomites.

The one comment about not caring anymore is telling - you'd be self-selecting yourself for extinction and leaving the world to those who are able to adapt and thrive, be they those craving for such a society to return or those like yourself who have to swallow a hard pill, but do so hoping that, in time, things will go back to how they once were and our post-apocalyptic society would return , one day.

 

[Isra]

Swords, fist fights and other melee weapons, and rejection of the idea that personal and infantry weapons would have advanced in any meaningful way. Lasers that travel slowly and bounce off of armor, people still running around with wild west revolvers and rifles that look futuristic, but offer no apparent advantages over an AK47. Idiots trying to kill each other with vibrating steak knives and shurikens instead of simply packing some proper heat. Captain Kirk invariably getting into a biff.

I wish we'd see more stuff like District 9's weapons - shooting lightning, green fire, emptying a hundred round clip at pull of a trigger, setting off explosions that sizzle and crackle with electricity. Futuristic, brutal and highly effective. But even if you're talking about someone who's caught off guard and unarmed, if they're in a dangerous profession surely they'd at least carry future pepper spray that physically castrates on the spot, a little guardian drone that burns an assailant with a laser, or gloves that put 600VAC & 200 amps into someone at a touch. Within 50 years I imagine phones could automatically assess someone as a threat, taze them and call the police at the same time. They can already do just about everything else.

This stuff?

Spoiler

.

Future ninja mumbo jumbo. They fly through space just to hit someone with an axe.
I mean I like Firefly but I just have to switch my brain off and tune out when I see stuff like River's melee flip out and I can never quite understand why they're using rifles and shotguns from the 50s.

 

[Thaluikhain]

The issue is old prejudices we're very predisposed to coming back by mixing up habits.

For another example here's a link (http://www.tboverse.us/HPCAFORUM/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=117) to part of an article written by someone I know in the defence industry who has done studies into the aftermath of a nuclear exchange from the immediate results to the long term. In this case it concerns women:

Winning that race is vital. Lose and we're extinct. The population drops like a stone as disease, radiation and injury take their toll. Then, it should bottom out and start to recover. Teams of older men and infertile women go to the cities to recover what they can. The radiation levels continue to drop. Fortunately we don't have to worry about nuclear winter, that's been largely discredited (the atmospheric models that were used were far too simplistic and the reality seems to be we may actually get a more temperate and less changeable climate out of things - somebody once described it as a Nuclear Autumn). The ozone layer also won't be a problem - it'll regenerate fast enough and the effects of the bombs may actually be beneficial.

The ugly side of life continues. Abortion and contraception are likely to be highly illegal. We MUST have those babies. There will be more than enough parents who have lost their own (or have received too high a radiation dose) to look after any that are unwanted. Women are enslaved by their reproductive systems again. Don't like that but there is nothing we can do about it. The social pressure on women to have children will be immense in both material and moral senses. Women who can have children get the best of everything, the cleanest and best food, the most comfortable housing, the most careful protection. Women who can have children but refuse to do so will be social outcasts (and in this sort of society to be an outcast is virtually a death sentence). We're likely to see a situation where women of childbearing age are "protected" by severe restrictions ("don't go outside the house, the radiation may harm your babies" gets abbreviated to "don't go outside") . This is a grim and disturbing picture; we take an old woman out of her house and throw her in the snow to provide shelter for a pregnant mother and her children - then lock her in. Newborn babies obviously damaged by radiation are likely to be killed on the spot. That may or may not be justifiable but I think its inevitable.

Now you can look on it level headed now, but in such circumstances, given how people are, especially in a world where the quality of education would be dropping like a stone, you'll have plenty of people pushing to maximize reproduction rates butting heads with homosexuality and getting things like the whole "electrical outlet and plug" analogy stuck in their heads.

Ah, Stuart Slade...very good on technical aspects, but his politics do tend to intrude.

We just don't know what will happen in the aftermath of a nuclear war (long term). What he describes is feasible (excepting he was talking about one nation being affected and ignoring the rest of the world), but not a certainty.

 

[beastro]

Ah, Stuart Slade...very good on technical aspects, but his politics do tend to intrude.

We just don't know what will happen in the aftermath of a nuclear war (long term). What he describes is feasible (excepting he was talking about one nation being affected and ignoring the rest of the world), but not a certainty.

He doesn't hide where his biases lay, on of the reasons why I find him endearing. Politically I have more in common with than without.

My only issue with him is when a topic gets him heated he doesn't takes on a rather intolerant tone, but fortunately that is entirely limited to technical matters in my experience. He's used to being right, usually is, but at least he's willing to admit when he's in the wrong.

With that said, I haven't nor ever will read his books. Most aren't my sort of fair.

With that said, I tend to lean in his direction, that society would become very reactionary, conservative and cautious very very quickly in the event of social breakdown.

 

[Thaluikhain]

With that said, I tend to lean in his direction, that society would become very reactionary, conservative and cautious very very quickly in the event of social breakdown.

Not sure...even if it did, what form it's conservatism would take.

You also get socialism and the like spring up in times of crisis as well, though.

 

[Rowan93]

Artificial gravity.

Having zero-g on spaceships is cooler anyway, but if it's deemed necessary to have gravity, there are two actual real science ways to produce artificial gravity, but instead the writers just pull magic out of their ass and have the gravity work like the spaceship is a ship on the ocean. It's incredibly stupid, 95% of sci-fi outside of books does it, and there is no excuse.

 

[CHUD]

The one comment about not caring anymore is telling - you'd be self-selecting yourself for extinction and leaving the world to those who are able to adapt and thrive, be they those craving for such a society to return or those like yourself who have to swallow a hard pill, but do so hoping that, in time, things will go back to how they once were and our post-apocalyptic society would return , one day.

Possibly. But my answer was related to why we don't see this in FICTION. It IS true that such a misogynistic future holds no interest for me, to the point where I consider oblivion for our specie to preferable - regardless of whatever technical advancements are also made.

However, this ALSO means that I have no interest in fiction that depicts such a future. I would simply not be able to enjoy stories taking place in such a gender-dystopia - unless the story SPECIFICALLY is about how the new feminist resistance fights back, vanquishes the oppressive men, and liberates the women of that society (or some variant).

A world like that (fictional or real) is simply something I have no interest in. And which I do not want to read about (or see movies about, or play games about... etc.) And that sentiment is shared by many, it seems. I imagine the only group of people who would find stories set in such a woman-hostile setting to be enjoyable, are the same kinds of people who truly enjoy the "Gor" novels.

 

[beastro]

The one comment about not caring anymore is telling - you'd be self-selecting yourself for extinction and leaving the world to those who are able to adapt and thrive, be they those craving for such a society to return or those like yourself who have to swallow a hard pill, but do so hoping that, in time, things will go back to how they once were and our post-apocalyptic society would return , one day.

Possibly. But my answer was related to why we don't see this in FICTION. It IS true that such a misogynistic future holds no interest for me, to the point where I consider oblivion for our specie to preferable - regardless of whatever technical advancements are also made.

However, this ALSO means that I have no interest in fiction that depicts such a future. I would simply not be able to enjoy stories taking place in such a gender-dystopia - unless the story SPECIFICALLY is about how the new feminist resistance fights back, vanquishes the oppressive men, and liberates the women of that society (or some variant).

A world like that (fictional or real) is simply something I have no interest in. And which I do not want to read about (or see movies about, or play games about... etc.) And that sentiment is shared by many, it seems. I imagine the only group of people who would find stories set in such a woman-hostile setting to be enjoyable, are the same kinds of people who truly enjoy the "Gor" novels.

Oh I certainly wouldn't read a book centered around that, but to have it be a facet of cultural setting of the books, like Dune's highly stratified, neo-feudal society.

Tied into the subject this thread has drifted into, I seek to read fiction that is very grounded and realistic and wlel, that's left me reading most non-fiction these days as I can't stand even slight biases giving certain characters and groups plot armour. Gor being one of the worst of the bunch: It's nothing but wish fulfillment. Really fucked up wish fulfillment, but wish fulfillment nonetheless.

I loath wish fulfillment works thanks to Roddenberry.

 

[beastro]

With that said, I tend to lean in his direction, that society would become very reactionary, conservative and cautious very very quickly in the event of social breakdown.

Not sure...even if it did, what form it's conservatism would take.

You also get socialism and the like spring up in times of crisis as well, though.

Using conservative in it's modern, political sense wouldn't apply, nor would any modern political angle.

Strictly speaking, yes, socialism and communism would come in with a vengeance, but it would be because everyone would be bombed back to the days of small bands working via Village Democracy where the tyranny of the tribal good comes before all else.

It would be less Noble Savage, Socialism/Communism triumphing and more the Somalian social model suddenly becoming the global standard: Technology driven back to the 1500s, politics and governance set back 6000.