What are you tired of in Science Fiction?

[Stark]

The entire 'EU' of Predator society is a 2-dimensional extrapolation from a couple of action films. The only 'bad' thing about it is anyone thinks it has merit.

[Steel_GENI]

Not a popular view, I realize, but as I frankly am irritated by the vast majority of character driven writing as opposed to event/history driven writing, I've been fond of some of the more recent scifi trends.

[Stark]

What do you see as 'event/history driven writing'?

[Vendetta]

Not a popular view, I realize, but as I frankly am irritated by the vast majority of character driven writing as opposed to event/history driven writing, I've been fond of some of the more recent scifi trends.

The thing is that the entire rest of the world disagrees with you.

People care about stories about people, that's a massive part of our evolutionary heritage, which drives our day to day lives in almost every way. Stories that don't have a strong character focus tend to fail, because no-one is interested.

[Stark]

I'm not sure what he means, but I'm not sure they're exclusive anyway. You can have a story with a broad sweep of events and large scale; you just need interesting characters to tie it together. 'Drama' doesn't mean 'must be cliched and lame teary nonsense'.

[Coyote]

More interested in well-developed settings than the characters that inhabit them? Kind of Jules Verne in a way, I guess.

[Stark]

Oh, I thought he was talking about a sort of 'chronicle' approach, describing events primarily, and people only insofar as their personalities impact events. Like a popular history book or something?

[Peptuck]

I am tired of one dimensional honor bound advanced alien races and the love they get from audience spreading the brain bug. Recently I came across a post in a Halo forum where the question was "should Elites get to use human weapons in situations where it is advantageous like shotguns against the flood ?". The universal consensus was Elites were too honor bound to do that. They would rather die than touch a human gun. Also the Covenant is so backward they can't fix their own ships. They solely exist to provide a shooting target to Spartans. They have no functioning economy,industry, scientific bases. Just like the Predators who solely exist to kill xenomorphs and humans. The Predators ships and gear appear out of dimension x instead of purchased by sport hunters who spend weekends hunting primitives after hard days work at hyperdrive manufacturing plant.

This is (aside from the shotgun question) directly contradicted by cannon, they have an economy however its somewhere between feudal and early Renaissance, they have industry as we see it and research facilities but their research is geared towards adapting and assimilating forerunner tech, anything else or inventing their own stuff is blasphemy.

Also contradicted in canon by the fact that you can arm Elites with human weapons, and as the Arbiter, you can pick them up yourself, and Elite AI troops will hijack and use human vehicles without compunction. Hell, give them a rocket launcher, and they'll even be happy to have one. They may consider the weapons inferior to Covenant arms, but they'll still use them.

[Knife]

More interested in well-developed settings than the characters that inhabit them? Kind of Jules Verne in a way, I guess.

On the other hand, I see them as a balance. I prefer a story with both well developed characters and a well developed setting that makes sense. If one lags, a really good counter part will hold the SOD and enjoyment of the movie/story for me. Basically, if I care about one of those things, I'm good. If both are good, it is bonus.

[Shroom Man 777]

I would pay good money to see a Predator movie featuring their version of PETA.

The PETA would throw synthetic xenomorph blood at any Predator who's wearing xeno skull/carapace trophies.

[adam_grif]

Predators for the Ethical Treatment of Aliens.

[Coyote]

Depth is what is needed to make a story work: depth of a character, primarily, with depth of setting following up (for me). I agree about the Klingons; there's a lack of depth a lot of people pointed out here: somewhere out there there have to be Klingon retail workers, running cash registers; Klingon farmers; Klingon librarians; someone stocking the store shelves at 3AM with the latest in disruptor powerpacks.

It shows up; in one episode of DS9 Klingons were talking about a specific year of Bloodwine that was good, and it was obvious they were giving the year in relation to the Earth standard year, which was apparantly still based on the Christian calendar. Why Klingons would date their wine vintage years according to an alien cultural & religious figure as opposed to, say, the year Kahless did something grand is silly.

But I'll take a story with good characters and writing over a glamorous setting full of asstastic characters. For example, if I was going on a long voyage and I had a choice between two books to take with me to read-- one was Herman Wouk's Winds of War (a WW2 historical drama) and the other was Vonda McIntyre's The Crystal Star (a Star Wars EU novel) I'd take Herman Wouk without a second thought. I love Star Wars and science fiction in general, but Crystal Star fucking sucks.

[Darth Hoth]

Me, I cannot stand:

*The transhumanism that seems to infect most popular sci-fi these days. I could not care less whether this is plausible or not, to me it is a terribly depressing thing to imagine that humanity is basically meaningless and helpless and constantly at the mercy of the "super intelligences" that can snap a finger and kill us despite our best efforts (because they so uber!) or worse, make us pets in some machine-dominated technocracy. I identify with the human protagonists; I do not desire to constantly see my species caught in a giant hamster wheel, or as an anthive with a bulldozer approaching. What is worse, this idea now permeates sci-fi throughout, even in stories and settings that have nothing whatsoever to do with such themes and would do very well without them; writers include the omnihypersuperduperarchubersuperior God-like creatures for the Hell of it and then have to invent plot devices to keep them from wrecking drama entirely, with varying degrees of success success. (Stargate, anyone, with how the Ascended Ancients basically ran the entire Ori War on fiat and then conjured up a Deus Ex Machina ending, with the heroes playing extras in the middle?)

*Pretentious "hard" SF that is usually anything but. Baxter's Xeelee books are probably a good example: They are supposedly "hard," yet their societies are built with enough technobabblium and handwavium to resemble the Imperium of Man (with technobabble and quantum mysticism instead of Warp and magic). More blatant, of course, is Orion's Arm technowankery. This is also a function of fanbases, not just authors; I have debated idiots who have thought that everything from Star Trek to the Culture is "hard" and at the same time looked down on other franchises for being "science fantasy".

[Darth Hoth]

E. E. Smith got his reputation because, when he was writing, he was one of the better writers around. I've read Galactic Patrol, Skylark, and Skylark Duquesne and found each one of them hilarious in different ways, but Smith was actually one of the better writers in the days of the pulps. Part of his survival is that older people wax nostalgic and reminiscent about Lensman, and so younger readers pick it up when they're fourteen or so, and have very little taste, and so convince themselves that they like it, after which nostalgia kicks in.

I am a die-hard Smith fan, so I naturally consider the books good, among other things for the vibrant, imaginative and positive future they portray. The concepts are greater than the execution. I think his stories are a little deeper than Stark gives him credit for as well, but I suppose you can be of another opinion there. I will cheerfully admit that dialogue is not his strong point.

But what I think made his legacy is really that he was the first at more or less everything in space opera - he defined the entire genre virtually by himself. Think of any trope in SF - total matter-energy conversion, rail guns, tractor beams, Galaxy-spanning federations, Ascended Ancients, even interstellar travel itself; Smith invented most of these from scratch, and was the first to popularise many others. These things are clichéd nowadays, but back when he wrote his stories people had never seen anything like it. Naturally that made an impression, and he deserves all recognition for his creative genius and for making something like Lensman in a time when people thought scientifiction [sic] meant Flash Gordon-style fantasy.

[Gramzamber]

(Stargate, anyone, with how the Ascended Ancients basically ran the entire Ori War on fiat and then conjured up a Deus Ex Machina ending, with the heroes playing extras in the middle?)

During that whole affair I actually found myself rooting for Baal with his "kill all the bloody ascended tossers" plan. Too bad it never went anywhere.

[Steel_GENI]

For example, out of the scifi I've read recently, the series I probably enjoyed most was the Stars at War. The characters mattered, sure, but it wasn't really about them. I probably would have actually enjoyed BSG if it had taken that path also.

[Zixinus]

Darth Hoth

Do you object to transhumanist fiction as a whole or rather that the characters or even humankind are running in a giant gerbil wheel (ie, doing archiving nothing)?

Because of its the latter, I can agree: I can only imagine running a thing line if you want super-intelligences with rateable characters.

[Darth Hoth]

I generally find the idea that humanity is "inevitably" going to be "superseded" by something else depressing. That said, it can still make for powerful stories if done right. I more positively detest the latter variant, where the human (or human-like) protagonists struggle and sweat and are threatened with death in a long campaign, and then it all turns out to be irrelevant anyway because some ubermonster has been sitting on a plot device "super intelligence" all along and merely been humouring the heroes.

[Coyote]

I generally find the idea that humanity is "inevitably" going to be "superseded" by something else depressing. That said, it can still make for powerful stories if done right. I more positively detest the latter variant, where the human (or human-like) protagonists struggle and sweat and are threatened with death in a long campaign, and then it all turns out to be irrelevant anyway because some ubermonster has been sitting on a plot device "super intelligence" all along and merely been humouring the heroes.

Stay away from Arthur C. Clarke, then.

Seriously, yeah. The humans toil and sweat and suffer and scrabble to reach the top and suddenly, godlike super-aliens come out of no where and say , "Oh, is this a problem for you?" *snaps fingers* "There ya go, fixed. Bye."

Fuck you, godlike super-aliens.

Half the time they aren't even "humoring" the heroes, they don't even notice or are indifferent, which makes their sudden benevolent interference somewhat out of context. Or the "universal fix-all boon" that they grant is a reward for being the first to make it to X point of development-- "if you've made it this far, you've earned the cheese at the end of the maze secret to interstellar travel!"

Like WTF, is the universe a giant game show, and the aliens are gaudy-suit wearing carnival barkers or something?

"Congratulations! You've won... FTL! WooHoo!!

[Shroom Man 777]

Holy shit. The concepts of godlike super-aliens being, in actually, some kind of interdimensional omnipotent Japanese gameshow people is awesome. That'd be a wonderful setup for comedy sci-fi. Like, Hitchhiker's Guide, but with more animus and sushis.

I think lots of the "tropes" (ugh) in sci-fi can be done right if portrayed for humor, preferably absurdist humor.

(Imagine a Klingon woman who's giving birth, really painfully, and instead of Klingon doctors we have Klingon warriors telling her to recite warrior sings and they do shit like cut umbilical cords with battle'hs and whatever. I mean, put Klingon warrior culture in all sorts of inappropriate places!)

[Khaat]

There has been a recurring "I was in the military, I can use any piece of equipment the military uses" thing. Granted, a truck is a truck, a gun is (usually) a gun, but pilot/artillery/medical training is a special program for a reason.

I'd love to see a sci-fi story where the civilians turn to the soldier when they reach the uber-plot-device-weapon. They get him into the operator's seat and ... nothing. The soldier says, "I'm only trained to use the (basic rifle weapon), I'm a clerk/cook/machinist!" and they then fall all over themselves looking for the operator's manual.
"Make it idiot-proof and someone will make a better idiot."
"... in space."

[Emerson33260]

Of course, you can write perfectly respectable fantasy without magic, though no-one's ever tried, save for perhaps the best of alternate history (hah).

Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down, wrote two fantasies set in the same world, completely without magic/sorcery/necromancy or any variant. They are Shardik and Maia. Shardik is brilliant, and still in print after 35 years (expensive trade paperback), which means some people agree with me. Maia is still worth reading, if you can find it. Both may be in your local library; they were best sellers when they came out.
Spoiler

In Shardik, you may have trouble getting past the scene in which a slaver stomps a small child to death to keep her crying from giving him away to his pursuers.

The absence of supernatural powers added to the attraction of the books for me.

Oh, it's been done. C.J. Cherryh's Paladin, for example; no magic anywhere.

Will find and read.

[sirocco]

Oh Yeah : The usual rebellion of outer colonies and Earth-Mars war for liberation.
I seriously doubt the emergence of world governments either on Earth or on Mars. and the UN don't strike me at all as a warlike organization.

[Patrick Degan]

Depth is what is needed to make a story work: depth of a character, primarily, with depth of setting following up (for me). I agree about the Klingons; there's a lack of depth a lot of people pointed out here: somewhere out there there have to be Klingon retail workers, running cash registers; Klingon farmers; Klingon librarians; someone stocking the store shelves at 3AM with the latest in disruptor powerpacks. [/quuote]

You'd think the Klingon drugrunner who kept Gowron supplied with his daily gallon amphetamine drip would have been a significant figure in the Empire...

It shows up; in one episode of DS9 Klingons were talking about a specific year of Bloodwine that was good, and it was obvious they were giving the year in relation to the Earth standard year, which was apparantly still based on the Christian calendar. Why Klingons would date their wine vintage years according to an alien cultural & religious figure as opposed to, say, the year Kahless did something grand is silly.

For the same reason we had the spectacle of a Klingon general babbling about appreciating Shakespeare "in the original Klingon".

[Elfdart]

I'm more interested in drama than demanding scifi conform to my idea of 'true futurism' or whatever. I don't give a shit how backwards or stupid the future is so long as interesting things happen to meaningful people. Scifi writing about grandstanding one's hobby-horse is generally terrible.

How true. I can forgive a lot of things in fiction, but a lack of interesting characters isn't one of them. If the characters are interesting, I'm in. I the characters aren't, but what they're doing is interesting, I'm in. If neither the characters nor the tasks are interesting, I'll pass. Unless there are lots of 'splosions and titties, in which case I'll watch it on cable.

One thing I'm sick of is the implication that humans are the only Earth creatures to colonize other planets -as if humans wouldn't take dogs and cats with them. Or accidentally bring rats. The whole point of colonizing an area is to bring your way of life to a faraway land.