Little things that get to you in terms of beleivability

[adam_grif]

Also, psychic spacemen. The idea that humanity will inevitably "evolve towards greater things", one of which is always psychic powers and/or energy beings.

[Lord Relvenous]

5) Huge ground armies. Other than Bolo books and star wars to some extent I have not seen a single universe where a large army would not get annihilated from orbit.

On the flip side of this, armies that are much too small. As in a world is taken and occupied by an army that is smaller than the number of troops in Iraq right now. Surprisingly enough, 40K is one of the big offenders in this category for me. While we hear about countless IG and Tyranids and Orks and whatnot, when quoting specific numbers, the authors usually quote very small numbers, even when talking about crusade fleets, or garrisons for worlds (even including the PDF). Very, very rarely do we ever hear anything about billions of IG in a force, even when it would make sense (crusade fleets come to mind). Usually we hear about thousands, hundreds of thousands, or when the authors really wanna blow our minds, millions. This just doesn't make sense in the universe and I have yet to read any books which really make me believe the numbers stated for army numbers (except maybe Starship Troopers, as it's hard to judge appropriate numbers with the MI).

[Shroom Man 777]

In the Cain books, they're involved in defending pretty much backwater planets. Not every world is a megapolis, or has billions of people in them. It makes sense that lots of the smaller backwater worlds can get threatened by relatively small enemy raiders of thousands, and that a force like the Imperium can send not-so-heavily equipped guys like Ciaphas Cain's Valhallans and their usual sidekicks (asshole Tallarnians) to deal with these "brushfires".

While, in other places like Armageddon and the Sabbat worlds, millions upon millions of Guardsmen are sent to the meat grinder and in Cadia, battles are done by their billions or something (presumably).

In the grim darkness of the far future where there is war, war comes in all sizes - small, medium, large and extra large planetkillfuck!

[Lord Relvenous]

I'll take some time tomorrow and find some examples of what I'm talking about.

Like I said, in the abstract, 40K does pretty well. However, when stating concrete numbers, the authors can sometimes be pretty far off believable for me.

And yes, I do understand that war comes in all sizes.

[Raxmei]

I'll take some time tomorrow and find some examples of what I'm talking about.

Like I said, in the abstract, 40K does pretty well. However, when stating concrete numbers, the authors can sometimes be pretty far off believable for me.

And yes, I do understand that war comes in all sizes.

Planetstrike: A company of Ultramarines (bit over a hundred guys) vs a planet completely overrun by Tyranids. The Ultramarines are attacking.

[Zixinus]

Also, psychic spacemen. The idea that humanity will inevitably "evolve towards greater things", one of which is always psychic powers and/or energy beings.

I gotta go with the mis-portrayal of scientists, but I can especially back this. I can go along with some level of psychic-wackiness, but when its all about humans "evolving" into this kind of shit... I stop watching.

This sort of thing is nothing more than new-age bullshitism. Psychic powers do not make sense in the evolutionary timeline, we do not see it in any other animals, there is no evolutionary need for them. Primitive natives easily dominate their environment without such tools. Humans are easily the most powerful and terrifying creatures on Earth, they don't need such bullshit to wank them further. Raw intelligence and attitude can do more than such copout wank.

[sirocco]

I'd say experimenting in the middle of a big populated city. It started with King Kong and ended in spidermen 2 (Doc Ock and his fusion reactor in the middle of New York! Am I the only sane guy here ?).

[Broomstick]

Truth can be stranger than fiction - the first atomic pile, you know, new untested potentially highly dangerous form of energy generation, was built on the south side of Chicago. Um, yeah, good thinking, that, let's try an atomic chain reaction for the first time in the second largest city of the US....

[Zixinus]

Yes, but that was a bit different age: it is easy for us, post-Little Boy, post-Tsar Bomba, post-Chernobly to harp about how dangerous nuclear energy can be. Back then, Kelvin talked about how cumbersome and difficult the technology was. The researchers barely expected to reach new rate of fission, never mind something as big as anything near an explosion.

That said, a disregard of safety is indeed a common staple in sci-fi but in fiction in general as well. Sadly, it is due to how it is more exciting to show a tragic accident. It's dramatic and that's what ultimately every scriptwriter wants. Showing people using proper procedure, taking precautions to prevent catastrophe is harder to write and harder to place.

[Junghalli]

This sort of thing is nothing more than new-age bullshitism. Psychic powers do not make sense in the evolutionary timeline, we do not see it in any other animals, there is no evolutionary need for them. Primitive natives easily dominate their environment without such tools. Humans are easily the most powerful and terrifying creatures on Earth, they don't need such bullshit to wank them further. Raw intelligence and attitude can do more than such copout wank.

Psychic powers do make no sense from an evolutionary perspective, but not because they're useless. A lot of psychic powers would be pretty huge survival advantages. The ability to read the minds of potential prey, predators, enemies, and allies? Damn useful. The ability to communicate over long distances by mind? Damn useful. The ability to manipulate objects and harm enemies at a distance just by thinking it? Damn useful is a serious understatement.

The problem is that in a world where people had these things everybody should be able to do it. Writers usually seem to treat psychic powers as something you can get from a single gene or mutation, which is utter bullshit. Any mechanism that lets you read minds or start fires with your mind or whatever is going to be complex; thinking you can get it from a change in one gene is like thinking a shark could develop lungs and legs from a change in one gene. It would have to result from a long evolutionary process involving changes in many genes and many less useful intermediate stages between "normal human" and "can crush people's skulls WITH MY MIND!" And since this requires huge amounts of time and all the intermediate stages are going to have to be useful (or else they wouldn't be selected for) they should be disseminated over the entire human race. The idea that you can have a species where some tiny fraction of people have psychic powers but most people don't is complete bullshit, unless the people with psychic powers are all descended from some reproductively isolated population, which most universes with psychic powers give zero indication of. We're supposed to believe it's some sort of natural variation within the species, like eye color and hair color, which is bullshit. It'd be like having a species where the average member is some eyeless deaf worm thing but some individuals have fully functional hands and eyes and ears. It's completely absurd.

Then there's the writers who suggest that everybody has latent psychic powers and some people just have it "activated", which is just as bad. Apparently we're to believe that people developed complex physical mechanisms that let you do all this awesome shit with your mind while it was TOTALLY USELESS in almost all the population. It would be like if everybody was born blind but with fully complete eyes, optic nerves, and optical processing areas of brain, only it was all totally useless and just sitting there waiting for one mutation to let them be something other than useless flesh. The only way that could remotely make sense is if there was some point in our history where there was selection pressure against having psychic powers (like, to go with the eyes analogy, the species had a period where they lived underground and their eyes atrophied) - maybe there are psychic predators of some kind that home in on psychic humans but ignore muggles - but most writers never bother coming up with any such thing.

[Admiral Drason]

I really can't stand how most Sci Fi has no appreciation for industrial capabilities. Take the TIE fighter being cheap as an example, EU authors created this myth, and it makes no sense. This is a universe where they build moons in secret, they feed and water people on city planets daily yet they can't afford to buy top notch fighters.

We see this all the time where supposedly useful tech is too expensive and is only availble in small quanitites yet they can build multi kilometer warships by the butt load.

[Samuel]

I really can't stand how most Sci Fi has no appreciation for industrial capabilities. Take the TIE fighter being cheap as an example, EU authors created this myth, and it makes no sense. This is a universe where they build moons in secret, they feed and water people on city planets daily yet they can't afford to buy top notch fighters.

We see this all the time where supposedly useful tech is too expensive and is only availble in small quanitites yet they can build multi kilometer warships by the butt load.

If you assume that the Empire has trillions of TIEs it makes more sense. You don't just pair them with starships, but give to local governments to enforce the new order (were the lack of hyperdrive is a benefit). When you build enough cost per unit becomes important, especially for something not seen as vital. Of course TIE pilots aren't conscripts, but crack pilots so that would argue against going for crappy designs.

[Zixinus]

Psychic powers do make no sense from an evolutionary perspective, but not because they're useless.

Oh, definitely. My point in the sense of "don't need it" is that humans are already easily the most powerful and terrifying creatures on Earth. Our tool-use, ability to communicate and intelligence already establishes us as a dominant species.

So where would psychic powers enter into this? Where would have we picked it up? If it was useful, why wouldn't we have kept it? Why would it go into recession?

Of course, the usual justification is that of the insecure person's fantasies, with hasty explanation as to why he or she has psychic powers but not everyone else (ergo, why she is special).

[adam_grif]

Evolution in general is treated horribly in fiction. The evolution of psychic powers is just one offshoot of this horrible characterization.

The worst is shit like that Trek episode where evolution was "killing off the species to make room for an upcoming dominant species".

[Coyote]

Sorry for the double post but Stargate and no wheeled transportation. EVERYBODY is always either walking, flying about in spaceships, or outright teleporting. SGC has UAVs and missiles up the wazzoo but can't send them a few trikes or a dune buggy?

Never mind trikes or a dune buggy - they could have fitted a Bradley through the gate if they'd tried.

That always bugged me, too. A Bradley might be a bit of a tight squeeze, but think of an Alvis Scorpion recon tank. They're tiny and the 76mm gun on it would fuck up the Jaff'a in short order. A single SG team could have a Spartan troop transporter and a Scorpion (or Scimitar with a 25mm chain gun) for fire support... of course, the way the Jaff'a were portrayed I guess it would have been a fairly short show.

But, fuck, even motorcycles would have been an improvement.

[Coyote]

It's especially sad when ST:TOS in the late 1960's managed to come up with very alien aliens like the Horta and the Medusans with even lower budgets and lower tech than today, isn't it?

Hell, I'd stack Farscape's puppetry expertise against most more modern shows. Between puppet skills like that, and CGI, there's no longer any need for cheapo "forehead aliens" unless you're specifically making a story about near-human evolution for some reason.

[neoolong]

To be fair, Farscape was produced by the Jim Henson company. They had the puppetry and animatronics experience going in. Not every show is going to have that advantage.

[Broomstick]

That's why I used the 1966-68 run of Star Trek as an example - they were concocting a lot of their stuff on the fly on a shoestring budget with no production house with a long history of creation of unique characters, yet managed very alien aliens.

[neoolong]

Not all the time. They've also made use of human looking aliens and whatnot. I don't know if they had the capability to do it on a consistent basis for characters with more screentime over the show's run.

[Eleas]

I always get ticked off when humanity in space is presented as homogenously one country. Usually, it's shown as interchangeable in look, feel and behavior with a sanitized TV version of the USA, but the tendency is by no means solely American.

This is particularly galling when we're asked to pretend this is a society that does not even remember Earth (nBSG, of course), and when being really really alien means your behavior and accent is less pronouncedly different than your typical Hungarian immigrant would be. Take Babylon 5, for instance, where Straczynski claimed that "people are a bit more formal in the 23rd century than today". A bit more formal compared to... what, exactly? Germany, where the polite thing is to wait for permission from a coworker before addressing him as "du" instead of "Sie," where teachers are referred to as "herr X", "frau Y," or by any academic titles they possess?

[Wicked Pilot]

I'll throw in something that unlike gravity and M-class planets isn't a result of production limitations. The 'Insomniac Captain'. Yes, anytime something or someone unexpected shows up the captain is always on the bridge. With of course all of his or her senior officers. Does no one fucking sleep on a starship? I understand if there's a planned rendezvous with something or someone the captain might want to adjust their sleep cycle to be present, but otherwise you're looking at best a 2 in 3 chance they're going to be on the bridge when the Cylons jump in. Just for once can we have a captain awakened from deep sleep by the code red alarms, who then runs to the bridge in their 20th century Transformers pajamas?

[Coyote]

I'll throw in something that unlike gravity and M-class planets isn't a result of production limitations. The 'Insomniac Captain'. Yes, anytime something or someone unexpected shows up the captain is always on the bridge. With of course all of his or her senior officers. Does no one fucking sleep on a starship? I understand if there's a planned rendezvous with something or someone the captain might want to adjust their sleep cycle to be present, but otherwise you're looking at best a 2 in 3 chance they're going to be on the bridge when the Cylons jump in. Just for once can we have a captain awakened from deep sleep by the code red alarms, who then runs to the bridge in their 20th century Transformers pajamas?

I tried to do that, once, and wrote a story where a female captain ran to the bridge in a bathrobe, bare feet, and soaking wet from a shower with lather in her hair. But yeah, the top crew is always on duty.

Isn't it the duty of the 1st officer to be on duty when the captain is not? Or how is the rotation of command usually handled? I know how things devolve in the Army, but what is it like on a ship?

[Patrick Degan]

That's why I used the 1966-68 run of Star Trek as an example - they were concocting a lot of their stuff on the fly on a shoestring budget with no production house with a long history of creation of unique characters, yet managed very alien aliens.

Like Sylvia and Korob ("Catspaw") in their true forms. You could tell that they were puppets made up from beanbags, foam balls, pipe-cleaners and other odds-n-ends. You could see the strings manipulating them. But all in all, for something that had to be whipped up on very short-notice for that week's episode, it was a valiant effort to produce something very different from humanoid creatures or people in very obvious costumes.

[Sheridan]

I'll throw in something that unlike gravity and M-class planets isn't a result of production limitations. The 'Insomniac Captain'. Yes, anytime something or someone unexpected shows up the captain is always on the bridge. With of course all of his or her senior officers. Does no one fucking sleep on a starship? I understand if there's a planned rendezvous with something or someone the captain might want to adjust their sleep cycle to be present, but otherwise you're looking at best a 2 in 3 chance they're going to be on the bridge when the Cylons jump in. Just for once can we have a captain awakened from deep sleep by the code red alarms, who then runs to the bridge in their 20th century Transformers pajamas?

This is actually a staple of Weber's Honorverse. The captain never shows up on the bridge in his/her jammies, though; since this is Napoleonic-era Britain in SPAAAAAAAAACE!, the captain has a personal valet to have his/her skinsuit ready (who never seems to sleep, either, so I suppose it has the same problem, only devolved onto another level of the crew...ah, well...).


What really gets me is the lack of Newtonian movement from most ships (I'm looking at you, Trek). Now, if your ship design has super-duper gravity engines that run on technobabble, I can see that. But, if your ships run on reaction thrusters, well...

[Junghalli]

Civilizations where they have advanced starships but medical tech seems to have barely advanced beyond present day is one that really strains my suspension of disbelief. I realize technology levels are a fallacy but come on, you can build torchships and big bad lasers and whatnot but you can't figure out how to regrow an amputated limb or broken spine? When we're already starting to experiment with regrowing tracheas from stem cells and shit today? And then there's how in almost every pop SF they can give half the limits in our physics textbooks the finger but people still die of old age...