Why do sci-fi writers do this?

[Ashannon Blackthorn]

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....

I don't find it lazy at all. Why couldn't a universe (well galaxy anyways) that essentially started from scratch only end up having 1 dominant race? Just the way evolution worked that cycle. This time around we get 25 or so races.

That's not getting into things like there may have been other lesser races that we know nothing about, races the Protheans may have destroyed, races that died off due to war or plagues or whatnot.

I'd only cry lazy if the mass effect only had humans, thereby kinda insinuating there is only ever 1 race. but that would be just boring.

 

[Da Orky Man]

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.

Because it's realistic. On Earth, cultures rebuilt their cities on the ruins of previous civilizations. Troy as rebuilt about a dozen times, as as Uruk, and Athens. Whern you consider the mathematics of it, there should have been thousands of previous civilization out there among the stars. Most of them would have collapsed somehow, so their technology remains.

It also allows for quick technological development without cultural changes, as well as tech for the humans and aliens to fight over.

Despite how used it is, I do still love that way of doing it.

 

[Thomas Hardy]

I agree it would be nice to see a few more plots that don't depend on finding the right Ancient Alien Toaster before the bad guys do.


"Precursor" Civilizations are pretty much just all-purpose plot grease. Take the good old-fashioned myths of Atlantis and throw on some Alien paint and you've got a "new" variation on this useful-but-tired trope.

In addition to all the other reasons others have already given, you get to have your cake and eat it too when it comes to "macguffins". A Fantasy-style ancient magic artifact of great power but with the added flavour of also being "advanced" and futuristic at the same time for example. In video games it provides a ready-made set of power-ups, Quests, plot-lines and even currencies.

Much more powerful civilizations that have still fallen, been defeated, or were wiped out also can be used as simple set dressing to make the Bad Aliens of the piece more menacing because another alien race with much fancier toys was wiped out "X thousand years ago" and presumably the Bad Aliens are even more powerful now while humans aren't even at par with the dead guys.

Even less advanced extinct alien civilizations could still be the focus of the story in much the same way as ancient human civilizations are the "focus" of the Tomb raider and Uncharted games.

Plus it's a great way to make comments about human nature and its good/bad/greedy/occasionally wise varieties.


There are other ways to do all of that of course. The only problem is that writing is basically a "non-issue" to most Publishers and as good as video game writers are getting when they do have room to stretch their legs a little, the QUALITY of the writing is nowhere near what is available in other media so anything that makes the process easier is leaped at.

 

[manic_depressive13]

In all that time, we'd be able to have completely blended to where race was pretty much undefinable, and we could have some crazy superior language that makes so much more sense than English.

Absolutely. It's possible that in a few thousand years we'll all be speaking french.

 

[PlasticTree]

I had an idea for a book where humanity was the lost race.It would be set, say, 1500 years in the future, after humanity basically killed itself.Several medieval kingdoms sprung up from the ashes, and they have no knowledge of the previous human civilisation.However, the remains of the old world rise from hidden underground bunkers and wage war on the vastly outclassed knights and lords.

Actually, I'm pretty sure I read some fantasy books with that concept a few years ago already. The setting was just standard fantasy, with magic and swords and all that, but after a while the books started hinting about things that had happened a few thousand years ago that were extremely similar to bits from our recent history, and in the end you found some ruins and 'strange technology' that looked like 20th century stuff..except the ruins were ruled by the standard GlaDOS-type robots.

(Yet with less cakes.)

 

[Terminal Blue]

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.

Apparently this was confirmed in Serenity, so you're right.

However, this simply replaces my earlier incredulity with a series of new ones. How the hell does such a complex solar system remain tidally stable? How are planets and moons not periodically baked or frozen by the interaction of it's five stars? How do all these planets and moons have tolerable gravity and atmospheric density, terraforming or no?

My point was that space opera tends to do away with realism. How does a lightsaber work? It kind of doesn't, but damned if it doesn't look cool.

I'm not using this as an insult to space opera, it's simply a balance between prediction and broad narrative, and actually I think prediction is only possible or productive in near future settings. Any setting where people are flying around in space ships and moving between inhabited planets has a pretty tenuous claim to be predictive of any real or plausible future we can imagine right now, so you may as well have a little fun and have everyone dress and act like stock Western characters in space.

 

[Thaluikhain]

It was an exciting idea, once, and being an exciting idea, everyone felt they had to do it.

Why does everyone have to stick undead you have to shoot in the head in their stories?

Why does everyone have to have things beyond human understanding that like pissing off Euclid?

These ideas didn't start out as cliches, strange as it may seem, but they've been over-used to ridiculous extents.

Though, what really gets me is TV shows that have a whole bunch of ancient god-like races that explored the galaxy before humanity had crawled out of the primordial ooze etc etc...and they are mentioned in one episode only, and never seem to interact with each other.

Not a new thing, Conan the Barbarian kept running into pre-human civilisations that used to run the entire world nobody (including each other) had ever heard of before or since. One is believable, half a dozen is not.

...

As mentioned by others, they allow you to easily have "Today, but with alien tech" stories, though these tend to handwave teh difficulties of using advanced alien tech.

 

[Electric Alpaca]

Discovery is the most interesting thing for a human mind. Being part of the discovery draws you in. Not to mention it ensures that the reader isn't separated from the world because they aren't clued up on the happenings that the main characters are.

It's a literary shortcut that makes the reader feel at one with the world they are coming to inhabit and I personally don't see the issue.

 

[iaculum]

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

Slightly off-topic but if you ever do remember the author, tell me! I'd love to read that book.

 

[Terminate421]

Because we only have two ways to go with aliens. The past and the present.

Lost civilizations allow us to see tech that wasn't made by us but create a sense of mystery.

 

[Buzz Killington_v1legacy]

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

Slightly off-topic but if you ever do remember the author, tell me! I'd love to read that book.

That "aliens eating/destroying right angles" thing sounds a bit like Jack McDevitt's work.

 

[Iron Criterion]

It's more likely that we'll still be racially diverse and speaking English in a few hundred years, than it is in a few thousand. In all that time, we'd be able to have completely blended to where race was pretty much undefinable, and we could have some crazy superior language that makes so much more sense than English. So, the closer their timeline is to ours, the more likely things will generally be the same.

Someone has been watching South Park...

 

[Korten12]

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.

Actually they have been in the halo lore since the start.

In Halo: The Fall of Reach, Dr. Catherine Halsey states the the Forerunner crystal found on Sigma Octanus IV was created by a "precursor race".

From the Halo wiki.

 

[Jedoro]

It's more likely that we'll still be racially diverse and speaking English in a few hundred years, than it is in a few thousand. In all that time, we'd be able to have completely blended to where race was pretty much undefinable, and we could have some crazy superior language that makes so much more sense than English. So, the closer their timeline is to ours, the more likely things will generally be the same.

Someone has been watching South Park...

I actually didn't think about that episode until you mentioned it, but it does make sense that as we grow more tolerant of other races over time, that we'd all eventually blend into one. The language thing came from my Arabic class, in which I found out that learning another language shows you how stupid some things about English are.

 

[Owen Robertson]

Shit, Halo's got two.

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

The Precursors. From that new-ish book. The intergalactic crab-people.

 

[Owen Robertson]

Even easier than introducing lost races, what about a Chaotic Neutral race, that randomly drops off a bomb and a ship. Some people escape and the rest die! That's impartial and chaotic!

 

[remnant_phoenix]

Well there are examples of this within our own history, I mean greek mathematics and philosiphy and Egyptian engineering, craft working, and farming techniques were all lost to Europe for hundreds of years only for them to rediscover them later after the crusades (the knowledge was preserved by Arab peoples during Europe's "Dark Ages") So it's not unheard of for people to find
"lost civilizations" with untold knowledge

This is a good point.

I'm not sure if it's true or not, but I heard from someone who knows a lot about history that the Great Library of Alexandria had a workable blueprint of the internal combustion engine...around the time of the birth of Christ.

Yeah, the same engine that wouldn't come into wide use until the Industrial Revolution over a millennium and a half later.

If this is true, it's a perfect example of of what agentorange98 is talking about.