What are you tired of in Science Fiction?

[Coyote]

I tell you what, it seems like so many science fiction shows have the "one special person" that comes along to set things right. It was all over in Star Wars (first Anakin, then Luke), and of course it's the whole linchpin of the Matrix, it's in Ender's Game, it's in Titan AE, it's in a lot of sci fi.

I think it must be a connection to Western mythology's focus on the notion of a/the "messiah". Blah, enough already.

Another thing that annoys me sometimes is "science fiction" with obvious magic in it. The Star Wars movies were okay, but the EU is chock full of flat-out wizards, witches and warlock types. Sci fi, to me, means technology.

What other tired worn ol' tropes personally wears at you?

[Ryan Thunder]

Melee weapons being portrayed as an equal alternative to guns. Pistols being treated as useless for close quarters fighting that are easily knocked away.

Prevalance of melee combat being supposedly excused by highly effective personal armour.

[Stark]

I tell you what, it seems like so many science fiction shows have the "one special person" that comes along to set things right. It was all over in Star Wars (first Anakin, then Luke), and of course it's the whole linchpin of the Matrix, it's in Ender's Game, it's in Titan AE, it's in a lot of sci fi.

I think it must be a connection to Western mythology's focus on the notion of a/the "messiah". Blah, enough already.

This has NOTHING whatever to do with science fiction. This is POPULAR fiction. It's the hook all kinds of literature uses to draw in an audience of people with escapist fantasies, and has been for ten thousand years.

Another thing that annoys me sometimes is "science fiction" with obvious magic in it. The Star Wars movies were okay, but the EU is chock full of flat-out wizards, witches and warlock types. Sci fi, to me, means technology.

I have recently read a pile of E. E. Smith stories, and seriously I have no idea how he got his reputation. It's magic; it's Flash Gordon level pulp stuff. A smart guy and a chick with huge titties do totally impossible stuff to members of various racial stereotypes in a story with worse dialog than Lovecraft! Anyway, the 'magic' of science fiction is as old as the genre. Scifi and fantasy are essentially the same thing. The pretentious idea that science fiction is about 'describing future societies' or whatever was just invented by people in the chess club.

I am sick of science fiction that trades on brands and nerd-buttons like large-scale warfare to cover for the lack of actual drama, characters, plot, etc. A great deal of modern science fiction I've read lately is very clearly aimed at the sort of person who likes reading the word 'vaporised' or 'utterly destroyed'; the kind of story where the hero saves the day and changes the world in two pages then goes back to whatever boring shit he was doing before unchanged. People love it anyway because it's xyz brand with abc character and it used words like 'millions of ships' in a poorly structured paragraph which describes an entire battle. You could almost rename much of 'science fiction' as 'battleporn', except a 20s clip from nBSG contains far more detail, sense of spatial position, clarity and dramatic merit than some whole books.

[Nephtys]

I'm sick of sci-fi where it's a dramatic showdown of gadgetry. Yes, there's lots of subgenres of Sci-Fi, but they should not be about what toys you have. If technology is the backdrop for a setting, then fine. That's a defining part of it (IE, genetic engineering in Gattaca, or cold lonely spaceships in Alien), but I am sick and tired of stories where everything is averted because of the X device, which is superior to the Y Gizmo.

Honor Harrington is especially guilty of this. I mean, really? Having a superweapon come out of the blue to save the day, on two seperate occasions in two books? Star Trek is notorious as well. Even DS9, for it's generally good writing and actually compelling storylines falls back on this more than once.

The setting is supposed to highlight the drama between characters and frame them. Otherwise, I don't care how many Superpodlaserdreadnaughts you have blown up because of The Thanatos Device or whatever of the week. Or how close a call it was to producing an army of Moriarties because the Tachyon Wave Inverters were depolarized.

Edit: Oh yeah, I'm also tired of Canadian wilderness being every single planet in the universe.

[Junghalli]

Future settings where basically every technology that's likely to radically transform human existence is systematically ignored, handwaved away, and/or banned so the author can have the future basically be just like the present but in space, with lasers. I get why authors do it but it starts to look like a really depressing and unimaginative view of the future when almost everyone who isn't creating a dystopia seems to do it this way. We have no shortage of SF that serves up worlds tailored for us to relate to and identify with super-easily and feel at home in already, I'd really like to see more authors start to explore other possibilities. I want to see more SF settings where things are fundamentally different and better than they are in our world just like things in our world are fundamentally different and better than they were in 1500.

I could come up with lots more if you give me a few minutes but I'll leave it at this so as to keep it as "what are you tired of" thread instead of using it as an excuse for "rant about things that you hate in SF again". That's the thing that best fits the description of "tiring" me offhand, in that I wouldn't mind it at all if the genre wasn't so oversaturated with it.

[Shroom Man 777]

"Hard" sci-fi. A setting where the background technology becomes a key issue or something, where crap like space ovens and space guns and space pew-pews become the defining trait of the genre or shit and where people like to throw around irritating buzzwords like carbon bucketballs or nanotubules or whatever gets kinda grating, especially when they go around and give their bullshit "hard" shitware obscene specs that make it more ridiculous than "soft" stuff, or when they go into indepth definitions about their "hard" shitware that nobody really gives a crap about. I guess it's pretty much the same point as Strak elucidated.

[adam_grif]

Infantry in the future using tactics that would make a Napolean Era infantryman blush. Future armies forgetting what combined arms is. Future military engineers forgetting what beyond line of sight combat is.

People throwing around numbers like "a million people" as though they're enormous. Homogeneous aliens, that have exactly one culture, one religion and one small set of interests. Females of all species having the exact same sexual dimorphism that human females do, including space tits.

EDIT:

The assumption of infinite technological progression over time. The idea that civilizations that have been active in space for millions of years wouldn't have discovered basically everything there is to discover.

"Humans are special" in general. It usually comes in the form of creative sterility from other civilizations, and inability to comprehend that thing you humans call love, and so on.

The near-total absence of transhumanism in the future (a TV / film SciFi problem).

The "It's just a machine, of course it can't think" line of reasoning that is so pervasive in our culture.

[Guardsman Bass]

I'm kind of sick of "body-snatcher"-ish aliens, where the aliens are basically infiltrators in human form. If you're going to do humanoid aliens, then do humanoid aliens - and better yet, show differences in more subtle ways. There's no reason why a humanoid-looking race should necessarily have a human-ish culture - subtler differences could lead to a whole wild distinction.

I'm also sick of psychic stuff. If you're going to throw magic into your story, at least try to make it something original, or just make it magic (which is basically what the Force is in Star Wars).

[Crossroads Inc.]

Greetings, I really really hope this isn't counted as either spam or a shameless plug... But im wondering if the more hard scifi minded in this thread might check out the story I am working on to see if I am making any egregious cliches or glaring standard SciFi errors

((if this is considered in bad form I'll ask a mod to remove it))

[Zor]

People making a big deal about cloning. Making an identical twin of someone is not that facinating a subject when you get down to it and the ethical implications are all overblown.

Zor

[Junghalli]

I'm also sick of psychic stuff. If you're going to throw magic into your story, at least try to make it something original, or just make it magic (which is basically what the Force is in Star Wars).

Personally what bugs me is the way psychic powers are treated as something that can't be replicated and vastly improved on with technology. Anything evolution can cobble together that runs on a 1.4 kg wad of neurons that pulls 20 watts a plausibly advanced interstellar civilization should logically be able to quickly figure out a way to do vastly better with technology. There was a story in Charles Stross's The Attrocity Archives where they had written up a computer program to give security cameras pyrokinetic abilities by having the computer behind them simulate the brain of a type of pyrokinetic, I'd like to see more science fiction with psychic powers where people apply that kind of thinking to them.

I would love to see some wanker with horrifically uber psychic powers go up against a side that had only technology, and the psychic's all crowing about how their technology is nothing before his godlike mind powers, and then the tech guy says "actually, I took the opportunity of scanning your brain at molecular resolution a while back, and I'm having my AI run 5000 simulations of it. They have the same psychic effect as your actual brain. But he controls them. So he's got all your abilities but at 5000 times your power. And of course he can react and think many thousands of times faster than you too. Did you think your abilities were actually some sort of fucking magic that my cybernetic friend couldn't reverse-engineer them and apply the same vast advantages to them that he has over your meat brain in every other area? Go ahead, just try to crush my skull with your mind, make my day."

Greetings, I really really hope this isn't counted as either spam or a shameless plug... But im wondering if the more hard scifi minded in this thread might check out the story I am working on to see if I am making any egregious cliches or glaring standard SciFi errors

((if this is considered in bad form I'll ask a mod to remove it))

It would be a pleasure. Might I have a link?

[Formless]

I'm a little tired of the general assumption of sci-fi that it always has to be set in the far flung future. I mean, seriously, I know people like their pew pew lasers, their spaceships, their fancy shit technology, their military wank IN SPACE; and I do too, but that isn't all there is to sci-fi! The farther into the future it is, the less it seems like a real world to me because I just know precious few of the predictions and speculations the setting is resting on will ever pan out. Its kinda depressing to think about, actually.

Also, it leads to a lot of the other things people are complaining about ITT. Its damn hard to relate to a truly futuristic setting, so writers feel they have to resort to all sorts of handwaves that make it basically like the modern day, but IN SPACE. If you wanted to talk about the present day, why not just set your story in the present goddamn day? If you only want to consider the effects of a couple technologies on society at a time, would it kill some people to set it decades years into the future rather than centuries?

Note that this does not apply to Star Wars simply because it gives up all pretense of being set anywhere near Earth or the real world, and instead takes the tack most fantasy writers use of creating a unique setting with its own history and assumptions. Sad that its the only exception of its kind, at least that I know of.

[adam_grif]

The "less far flung" nature of cyberpunk is in some ways where its appeal comes from. Oh, it was still horribly wrong in prediction terms as a rule, but still seemed more plausible.

Also, other than the obvious one (Star Wars), there aren't all that many SciFi shows set in the distant past. BSG for one, Assassins Creed is another. I really enjoyed the alternate take on Norse mythology in Too Human, loved the setting and so on. Which is all the more reason to be crushed that the game itself sucked.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Greetings, I really really hope this isn't counted as either spam or a shameless plug... But im wondering if the more hard scifi minded in this thread might check out the story I am working on to see if I am making any egregious cliches or glaring standard SciFi errors

((if this is considered in bad form I'll ask a mod to remove it))

It would be a pleasure. Might I have a link?

Click "one wrong turn" in my banner,

[Formless]

I was actually thinking less of cyberpunk, since I have a natural aversion to most "----punk" genres and their aesthetics, and more of stories like A.I. Artificial Intelligence, District 9, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. Heck, even many of the local RAR's would make for great "less far flung future" style sci-fi (they're supposed to be, I imagine) if it weren't for the medium they were submitted to.

[Junghalli]

Although if we're honest Star Wars suffers from the same basic problem. A society with their technology, which has had that technology for tens of thousands of years, should not logically look anything remotely like that. We pretty much have to resort to a lot of potential applications of their technology being banned or incredibly taboo or the Force (i.e. magic) to explain why their society looks the way it does. It's a little more believable in that we're more free to invent exotic alien cultural factors that push people away from the transformative technologies in question (although given how big the galaxy is it's a stretch that this could explain everything), but the basic issue is still there.

[Formless]

Maybe, but the fact that at no point in the history of the setting do they mention where humans come from or when civilization started makes it seem much more believable. Consider that as far as we know hyperdrive could be an incredibly easy technology to invent in Star Wars, which would explain why so many species managed to spread out among the galaxy at large at a stage that is pre-transhumanist singularity wank. Cultural factors can take care of the rest from there. I know you don't like it, but face it: like someone already pointed out, technology does not always steadily advance nor affect civilization like we would predict it would. Its plausible, which is all I really ask for.

[adam_grif]

Same problem with a lot of treknology. Transporter means that there shouldn't be any such thing as an incurable disease or physical condition. Any kind of physical injury should be easily curable. As well as having the ability to meticulously train an elite soldier, pilot, scientist etc and spare no expense on their eduction to get them to their peak.

And then duplicate them. Fifty hojillion times.

Or the holodeck.

[Shroom Man 777]

I am tired of retarded aliens, like the ones that go SQUAWK, and really, retarded aliens. From Klingoffs to Covenant Gremlins to whatever, you hardly see sci-fi alien races that are wholly sensible and not fuck off retarded. If they aren't, then they're obscenely powerful (AND still retarded). This goes hand in hand with those aforementioned one-note aliens.

[adam_grif]

It's difficult to imagine something truly alien. The Alien film series was actually pretty good in that regard, it doesn't at all resemble anything terrestrial.

Retarded Alien Syndrome usually stems from the nature of the format they appear in. In a TV Series, it's nice to have a one off story about a god-like alien, but if they start recurring it's troublesome. Obviously, they can't really be enemies with the protagonists, nor can they be allies, since they could instantly solve any plot point that comes up. So they have to be neutral. When they ARE allies or enemies, they must have their hands tied for some reason or another. Genuine reasons are difficult to come up with, so half the time it's something really dumb like with the Ancients/Ori arc. Since they can't act believably for the sake of the story, they get railroaded into stupidity for the whole of their existence.

I'd also say that a lot of the problems stem from trying to make them alien in the wrong ways. Obviously, human cultural idiosyncrasies have no place in an alien society, but when you do change them, the aliens quite often seem silly for one reason or another. So a lot of the time they end up staying.

Conversely, sometimes they change things that make no sense to change. We can expect other intelligent, tool-using, space faring like to be able to logically analyze things and come to the same conclusion. Self interest is a guiding principle in evolution, but so is reciprocal altruism. I've seen more than a few instances of aliens that have no idea about helping each other or refuse to compromise, even when it's in their best interests to do so.

[Rye]

I am tired of retarded aliens, like the ones that go SQUAWK, and really, retarded aliens. From Klingoffs to Covenant Gremlins to whatever, you hardly see sci-fi alien races that are wholly sensible and not fuck off retarded. If they aren't, then they're obscenely powerful (AND still retarded). This goes hand in hand with those aforementioned one-note aliens.

Actually, in defence of retarded aliens, we should remember that as technology advances, people stay more or less the same. The holocaust and purges and such attest to this. Being capable of mass production or building starships doesn't mean you stop hunting for fun, or that the average joe becomes a competent, enlightened critic. This is especially true of species that found technologies or were designed to use them by someone more advanced. That said, a lot of it is just laziness.

This has NOTHING whatever to do with science fiction. This is POPULAR fiction. It's the hook all kinds of literature uses to draw in an audience of people with escapist fantasies, and has been for ten thousand years.

Indeed. Soviet cinema tried to make films about masses of people rather than individual "idolatry", and as a result it was horribly confused, dull and near-impossible to empathise with.

As for what I hate, it's mainly the fans and the bizarre comforting conservatism they engender as a group. Take steampunk for example; when I think of the pastiche steampunk world I would one day like to film, like The Prestige or Sleepy Hollow, the bits the genre-fans would spooge over are critically underplayed rather than overplayed. Like Stark says, the fans want battle porn that reduces actual stories and narratives and even settings into one easily consumed bland thing.

[Lord of the Abyss]

I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned yet; the robot or android that wants to be human. Especially the ones that are clearly superior to humans and still want to be human.

The human who is enhanced or "more evolved" who becomes evil Just Because. It's just assumed that anyone who is genetically or cybernetically enhanced, especially intellectually would be evil. I think what bothers me the most is that it tends to be portrayed as an inherent flaw of being superhuman when if you need dramatic conflict there's a much more plausible reason; the corruption of power. I doubt a society of superpeople would be any more cold and ruthless than we are; but just one guy, who realizes that no one else can match him? It would be nice if, say, the superbeing was dealt with simply by being arrested by his equals, say; instead of the plucky normals killing/depowering him with a speech about He Tampered In God's Domain and Learned Things Man Was Not Meant To Know.

A closely related issue; the conflation of genetic engineering and eugenics, and the portrayal of GE as almost automatically leading to some sort of Nazi-like or Social Darwinist society. It strikes me as extra annoying because in fact genetic engineering is the nightmare of any tyrannical eugenicist if you think about it; genetic engineering means that even if they are right about this or that group being inferior - it can just be fixed. So much for your excuse for massacring them. Oh, no doubt GE can be abused; but I'm tired of the assumption that it must be.

[Nyrath]

Aliens that are human beings with forehead disease.

Real aliens are far more likely to resemble a cross between a tarantula and a jellyfish than resembling us. Or resembling a biped in general.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Aliens that are human beings with forehead disease.

Real aliens are far more likely to resemble a cross between a tarantula and a jellyfish than resembling us. Or resembling a biped in general.

That's a combination of special effects budgets, and the fact that most people want an alien they can "read" visually. Which is why you see a whole lot more non-humanoid aliens in written sci-fi than in the visual medium.

[adam_grif]

Well, you can't blame them. There are surprisingly few non-humans in the screen actors guild.