Why do sci-fi writers do this?

[BehattedWanderer]

Part of it stems from that whole "whoa, how did x civilization do such amazing feats with stone picks?" concept. Maybe they had space lasers! Or that an advanced race of beings stopped in for a Starbucks three thousand years before they opened, and got discouraged and left before the cute barista that they have a secret crush on came to open the door.

Another part of it is "Oooooh, hey, guys, look at this amazing plot device I just found! It solve all our problems with physics and chemistry simultaneously, despite being written in a language we have no basis for translating, and integrates perfectly into our existing software! Who knew a hyper advanced race of people would use Notepad?". It saves time, and it kind of fun to give them a "here's the enemy that wiped us (or tried to) from existence, kthxbai, btw, it'll wake up and come hunt you, but help yourself to the fridge." story, because suddenly it gives humans an unambiguous conflict that must be attended to, and, with the combined powers of dead dudes and complaining physicists, overcome.

 

[Klumpfot]

I imagine it's because stories involving lost civilizations and such tend to involve exploration, and exploration is exciting. In terms of plot convenience, there are other common elements in sci-fi that annoy me much more. Like how most sentient races tend to be bipedal humanoids who adopt human language as the norm after the races meet.

douglas adams fixed the whole of sci fi for everyone, just imagine they have those

I find the very implication that I have not read HGttG highly insulting. Mr. Adams's opus has rather a different tone and atmosphere than most sci-fi settings however, which makes such self-deception very difficult.

Still more believable than the Tardis psychobabble field, though!

 

[Crusader1089]

Usually it is to inspire a sense of wonder. That even as humanity breaks the light barrier and develops massive space ships, they're still little fish in a big sea.

And also, in our own history there have been a lot of lost empires that regular people have to make space for. Most of the roman cities were almost abandoned at the fall of Rome and were later repopulated after they had fallen into ruin. Before then, the greek cities were built on the foundations of long-abandoned (c. 500 years) cities from the Trojan War. It's only thanks to the last 400 years or so of constant technological development that we seem to have broken the loop of empires rising, collapsing and then being wondered at by the next generation.

 

[JesterRaiin]

Without even reading what you wrote : answer is money. Always.

After reading...

But I'm simply wondering why?

Someone wrote once that every rpg fantasy setting is a postapocaliptic one. All those ancient necropolies, cementaries, vaults and sh*t...

It's exactly like you wrote : cheap trick, but still, very fast, clean and efficient way to introduce an element of unknown. Both heroes and reader doesn't have a clue what they will find out. The tension, thrill are there and author doesn't have to do sh*t.

 

[StarCecil]

I've noticed recently that nearly every popular science fiction universe has one or more "lost" civilizations. Shit, Halo's got two. But I'm simply wondering why? I can't see a reason other than plot convenience. By having Humans (or any other species) discover ruins on a planet, of technology far beyond theirs, you can allow a jump several thousand years forward in technological advancement, without any time actually passing, thus keeping civilization as we know it close enough to still be relatable (as in we haven't mixed into a Eurasian blend of skin tone and language.) But to me, that seems a bit like lazy writing. It takes maybe 30 minutes to shit out a "timeline" of technological and/or societal advancement that leads you to 10,987 (assuming we keep B.C.E. that long) where we're still racially diverse and speak English. So if anyone can explain to me why else you might want to introduce a long-lost species that conquered the galaxy before the dinosaurs died out on Earth, please do.

As a scifi writer, I can tell you that it's a lot easier to make people that speak English in the future and have a clear American influence. That way you can get to the parts you really wanna write, like sweet action sequences or hookerbots or whatever. If everything is similar to the modern day, you can draw more attention to the actual scifi parts you want to show off.

 

[Hal10k]

i find it especially lazy in mass effect. yes, NOW there are many races in teh galaxy. humans, salarians, korgan, asari, hannar, volus, turians, elcor, quarians, batarians, vorcha, etc. and yet in the last galactic cycle, the mysterious and powerful protheans! nobody else. just one race.... that's all....

Protheans are just the only ones we've heard of. It's entirely possible that the Protheans were just the only ones to escape having the record of their existence eradicated by the Reapers. Half of the stuff that archaeologists call "Prothean" might well be the product of some other culture.

 

[NickCaligo42]

Try reading Isaac Asimov's robot novels. From what you say you look at a lot of space fantasy but not a lot of science fiction.

 

[uzo]

I remember reading a science-fiction book .. unfortunately don't remember title or author. But it was a rather interesting idea:

It's at least several hundreds years into the future. We've mapped a significant chunk of our end of the galaxy, but we've never made contact with another civilisation. There's species that show the possibility of evolving to our level in a million years or so, but established cities and societies just don't exist, anywhere. It keeps seeming that we, as humans, are the most advanced species in the galaxy -- everyone else is centuries or thousands of years behind us.

But then, archaeologists start finding things. Ruined cities, entire species eliminated. But none of them beyond our level. There's some species that have seemed to reach the Industrial Revolution, yet never develop computing nor flight. There's some that reach Cold War space flight, but nothing beyond their own satellite.

The strange thing, is they find these big stone blocks on one of the moons of one of these extinct species. Just big blocks. Organised like it was a city, but with no people and no way of entering the buildings. For ages we seem to think it must be some kind of religious or spiritual construction ... but then the truth emerges.

There is ONE supremely advanced species out there. Somewhere. They were the first to evolve and take to the stars. Their technology is incredible, their empire vast. And they DO NOT want to share. They know that space is unimaginably vast. Too vast to monitor and ensure no other species are developing too far.

So there's 'cleaner' machines that roam the galaxy on insanely long routes, taking thousands of years to complete their paths, and then repeating them. Forever. The cleaner enters a system ... and scans the planets. Not for life. Not for resources. But for RIGHT ANGLES.

If it finds them, it blasts the motherloving shit out of them in a reign of fire that annihilates cities, empires, and civilisations. And then, content that this species won't be doing anything for a few thousand years, the cleaner continues on its merry way to the next system on its route.

They had visited us before - the story makes Sodom and Gamorrah actual cities that were destroyed in these 'cleanings'. But we were only just starting on the road to civilisation and the bots decided 'meh .. we'll get em next time through, I' m running late on that bronze age civ over in Sector 491B'.

Frightening idea, to me. And, frankly, I wouldn't be surprised. We do it to bugs and rodents - set automatic traps and sprays and poisons to stop them overtaking whilst we aren't looking. They're really no threat to us, but eeeewww bugs. *splat* The idea that all advanced species must conform with our sense of ethics and see our worth is stupidity.

EDIT: oh, I forgot to explain the blocks on their moons. This extinct species was aware of what was happening, and had built the 'decoy' cities to try and draw fire from their home planet. It didn't work.

 

[Wintermoot]

Gundam doesn't have this.
I find it more weird that every other species uses the same atmosphere as our selfs.

 

[Joccaren]

1. Allows for relate-able human culture. Human culture will change drastically in the next 100 years, let alone a few thousand. Pretending that nothing changed will just get on a lot of peoples nerves as it makes little sense and is as much of an excuse as alien technology. Some people will find an alien form of human culture entertaining and interesting to read up on, but many will be put off by it as they find it more difficult to understand everyone in the world.

2. It is unknown and allows a certain extent of freedom. I.E: FTL travel can be explained by alien technology that no-one knows how it works as opposed to them trying some sciencey explanation that anyone in the know will just see as fake. It also allows you to break the laws that you have set down in your universe with the explanation of 'Alien Tech'. No-one has the technology to make an invisible ship? Those old aliens did and it allows your heroes to get somewhere they otherwise wouldn't have been able to, like an enemy home planet.

3. Easy conflict. Alien tech draws attention, and war, and worshipping aliens too. That or the alien tech could be the problem, see Mass Effect Reapers.

And I have completely lost my train of thought whilst on a Skype call so... I'll get back to you...

 

[Reaper195]

Shit, Halo's got two.

....certain Halo just had the Forerunners. Just the one.

 

[Silverfox99]

It is to give the Universe a more realistic feel in the sense that it has existed and will exist beyond earth. You go to any country in the world and you find examples of lost societies. It makes sense that if humans are not alone this would happen on a planetary scale. I don't think its to advance tech. A good writer can always justify a tech break though by a discovery. It more about setting up the alien society.

If you take SF as a metaphor then the fallen societies in some way are a warning of what we are doing wrong currently and maybe a fix to that error.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Clarke's third law of prediction.

The problem is that right or wrong (probably wrong) we have a pretty clear idea of how we 'expect' human technology to develop, which means that if we all followed it science fiction would be very, very homogenous. Need a space ship to go faster than light? Well, your options are some kind of space-compressing effect (warp speed, at least I think that's how it was meant to work), or transferring into some kind of other dimension where Einstein doesn't get angry with you if you go faster than light (hyperspace, node space). Sure, if you're making space opera you could just give Einstein the finger and have a big glowing engine which makes your ship seem to go super fast (firefly style), but some people will notice that that's stupid and probably call you out on it.

It's a serious problem if you want to be in any way original.

However, if you introduce another species with a whole different (and superior) technological path and paradigm, then you can break the rules however you want without needing to explain them. It's okay, they're too complicated for your puny human mind to understand at the moment, aliens did it!

Unfortunately, 'aliens did it' has probably become about as overused as the tropes it's meant to replace, hence your problem.

 

[Sean951]

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Clarke's third law of prediction.

The problem is that right or wrong (probably wrong) we have a pretty clear idea of how we 'expect' human technology to develop, which means that if we all followed it science fiction would be very, very homogenous. Need a space ship to go faster than light? Well, your options are some kind of space-compressing effect (warp speed, at least I think that's how it was meant to work), or transferring into some kind of other dimension where Einstein doesn't get angry with you if you go faster than light (hyperspace, node space). Sure, if you're making space opera you could just give Einstein the finger and have a big glowing engine which makes your ship seem to go super fast (firefly style), but some people will notice that that's stupid and probably call you out on it.

It's a serious problem if you want to be in any way original.

However, if you introduce another species with a whole different (and superior) technological path and paradigm, then you can break the rules however you want without needing to explain them. It's okay, they're too complicated for your puny human mind to understand at the moment, aliens did it!

Unfortunately, 'aliens did it' has probably become about as overused as the tropes it's meant to replace, hence your problem.

In Firefly's defense, that entire show takes place in the same solar system, and it can still take days, or even weeks, to reach some of their destinations. So it's not super fast, it's just faster than the much larger ships they come across on such a regular basis.

 

[Vicarious Reality]

It's the manifestation of our collective yearning to know our true history.

 

[Zhukov]

It allows for a story that involves discovering more than floating rocks.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Shit, Halo's got two.

....certain Halo just had the Forerunners. Just the one.

They recently introduced another one that achieved a higher level of technology than the Forerunners and these guys are called the Precursors. Google Precursors Halo and have a look yourself.

 

[ThreeWords]

I've noticed recently that nearly every popular science fiction universe has one or more "lost" civilizations. Shit, Halo's got two. But I'm simply wondering why? I can't see a reason other than plot convenience. By having Humans (or any other species) discover ruins on a planet, of technology far beyond theirs, you can allow a jump several thousand years forward in technological advancement, without any time actually passing, thus keeping civilization as we know it close enough to still be relatable (as in we haven't mixed into a Eurasian blend of skin tone and language.) But to me, that seems a bit like lazy writing. It takes maybe 30 minutes to shit out a "timeline" of technological and/or societal advancement that leads you to 10,987 (assuming we keep B.C.E. that long) where we're still racially diverse and speak English. So if anyone can explain to me why else you might want to introduce a long-lost species that conquered the galaxy before the dinosaurs died out on Earth, please do.

Parental issues on the point of a writer? It may well be easier to write a story about expanding out into someone else's old power than forging new horizon's. Also, it allows for the "Don't ask how it works; we don't know either" excuse about the science.

Also, perhaps, drama?

Furthermore:

It takes maybe 30 minutes to shit out a "timeline" of technological and/or societal advancement

Your professional attitude toward writing really helps put your point into perspective.

 

[Jodah]

For what its worth, not all series do that. Warhammer 40k, for example, actually has the advancement of time.

 

[That_Sneaky_Camper]

Actually there are 3 super advanced, ancient civilizations from the Halo Universe. The Forerunners who had super-advanced technology that allowed them to achieve all the wonderful things they did. Ancient humanity who were on the same level as the Forerunners but regressed to the level we know of in real life after the Halo Rings fired. And the Precursors that were said to be on such a level of evolution that they could warp reality itself.

What is special about these types of ancient civilizations is that it allows convenient plot devices that can expand on the in-story universe and characters, and even solve situations that the protagonists can't fix on their own. Beyond that though in my mind the real appeal of super-advanced civilizations/aliens, whether long-since extinct or currently active and whom influence the plot directly, is that it humbles the humans and allows them to realize how small a fixture they are in a larger universe and that there is so much more out there to experience. It gives the humans a goal, a benchmark, to reach in their evolution that gives them hope for the future that their efforts in expanding their civilization aren't meaningless.