What Sci-Fi clichés do you resent?

[Chris Miller]

I dislike time travel in SF. Especially into the past where a tiny act creates some drastic change.

 

[Battlemage!]

I dislike time travel in SF. Especially into the past where a tiny act creates some drastic change.

I really liked Primer :/ No drastic changes though.

 

[r8chard]

Late to the conversation

I'd say, off the top of my dueling heads, that my pet peeve is the failure of writers to convey the all too normal existence of stultifying boredom.

i.e. an cosmos-spanning alleged civilization, thousands of years old? Has nothing better to do with their time but travel umpteen parsecs to harass some dweeb kid?

A vast international conspiracy of powerful, wealthy personages, spanning centuries? Is deliberately frustrating your ambitions in life to be the best damn carpetcleaner in your neighborhood. And, wreck all your attempts to get laid on a regular basis. The bastards!

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Laser guns

I really liked Primer :/ No drastic changes though.

I need to watch this again!

 

[RyanJones]

Why are so many starships built with submarine-like interiors, cramped and claustrophobic, with dim lighting and shadows everywhere? Sounds like a recipe for psychiatric problems on a long term voyage.

Love the old NCC 1701, with its huge hallways and bright primary colors. That's a happy ship.

 

[BWV]

Mining raw materials in space to send down into Earth's gravity well. Don't see how this would ever be economic vs. just digging deeper holes in the Earth. For that matter, its hard to see how the economics of any human space travel will ever be driven by anything other than tourism or aesthetics.

 

[gleem]

Packing so much energy into such small weapons. I need some of those batteries or energy cells, whatever.

 

[DrClaude]

Packing so much energy into such small weapons.

And how heavy they must be!

 

[Stephenk53]

Mining raw materials in space to send down into Earth's gravity well. Don't see how this would ever be economic vs. just digging deeper holes in the Earth. For that matter, its hard to see how the economics of any human space travel will ever be driven by anything other than tourism or aesthetics.

I think maybe eventually it might if the civilization ends up digging up so much Earth is basically resource-less. And maybe they create ships that can easily go from planet to an asteroid belt cheaply. And maybe they find another civilization that lacks some resources due to a war so humanity trades with them

 

[BWV]

I think maybe eventually it might if the civilization ends up digging up so much Earth is basically resource-less. And maybe they create ships that can easily go from planet to an asteroid belt cheaply. And maybe they find another civilization that lacks some resources due to a war so humanity trades with them

I don't think this would ever happen. Just think, for example, how much mineral wealth is in, say, Antarctica or the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. With robots one could mine asteroids, but also dig far deeper in the Earth than human miners could go. Given the energy requirements of getting material in and out of Earth's gravity well, it should always be less energy-intensive and therefore cheaper to just exploit more resources on Earth. We are nowhere near running out of minerals on Earth currently and have not even touched many areas of the planet that are currently uneconomical to mine

 

[GTOM]

I don't think this would ever happen. Just think, for example, how much mineral wealth is in, say, Antarctica or the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. With robots one could mine asteroids, but also dig far deeper in the Earth than human miners could go. Given the energy requirements of getting material in and out of Earth's gravity well, it should always be less energy-intensive and therefore cheaper to just exploit more resources on Earth. We are nowhere near running out of minerals on Earth currently and have not even touched many areas of the planet that are currently uneconomical to mine

Mining on Earth is damaging to environment. If one builds ships in asteroid belt, then get down the stuff to Earth is the easy part.

 

[Fig Neutron]

I find movies that say we are a young race to be annoying. We meet some powerful race that has the technology to do whatever it is that we need, but we're not ready for it. With the proposed number of civilizations I think it would be quite unlikely that we are always the newest.

I also think that the story line where an alien race invades Earth is over used. Why can't there be a friendly race of alien that comes to Earth? And, the attackers are always ten times stronger than us. Not every race can have laser guns (but we do seem to have an unlimited supply of bullets, until we really need them, of course).

 

[russ_watters]

I also think that the story line where an alien race invades Earth is over used. Why can't there be a friendly race of alien that comes to Earth?

Arrival:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrival_(film)

 

[Vanadium 50]

Why can't there be a friendly race of alien that comes to Earth?

Overlords, Childhood's End.
Vulcans, Star Trek
E.T, E.T. the Extraterrestrial
Unnamed aliens, Close Encounters of the Third Kind
The Giant, The Iron Giant
Thomas Jerone Newton, The Man Who Fell To Earth
Superman, Superman

And that's just a few that I could come up off the top of my head.

Oh, and to add to my previous post, even Klingons have plumbers, I would argue that with their fondness for prune juice, they better!

 

[gleem]

Why can't there be a friendly race of alien that comes to Earth?

Starman

and Paul wasn't unfriendly.

 

[Fig Neutron]

Ok, point taken, but there are a lot of unfriendly aliens.

@Vanadium 50 Sorry, I've only seen few of those, but Superman wasn't fighting friendly aliens.

I'll change it to this. Why can't more friendly alien visit Earth.

 

[Bystander]

Why can't more friendly alien visit Earth.

Makes for very dull fiction/stories/reading.

 

[Vanadium 50]

but Superman wasn't fighting friendly aliens.

Superman is a friendly alien.

 

[Fig Neutron]

Superman is a friendly alien.

I said the aliens that he was fighting such as Lobo, Darkseid, or Faora we’re not friendly. (I’m actually not that familiar with Superman. I just found these examples on Wikipedia.)

 

[russ_watters]

I said the aliens that he was fighting such as Lobo, Darkseid, or Faora we’re not friendly. (I’m actually not that familiar with Superman.

V50 is certainly aware that Superman's alien enemies were unfriendly. I'm not clear if you are aware that Superman, himself, was an alien.

[edit] Or perhaps this is an existential dilemma? Superman's unfriendly alien enemies were friendly to each other; maybe that makes him the unfriendly alien and them the friendly ones?

 

[Vanadium 50]

Superman is a "strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Superman, who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands. And who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never ending battle for truth, justice and the American way."

 

[Fig Neutron]

I just meant that the story line of bad aliens coming to Earth was use in Superman (even though Superman himself was friendly).

 

[Fervent Freyja]

Time travel irritates me.

 

[Khashishi]

Imbalance between weapon technology and propulsion technology. If you can travel at light speed, it makes no sense to use little pew pew guns.

 

[Ken Fabos]

Wrongly portrayed activities in zero gravity irritate me - like the Bullock character in Gravity being towed along "behind" by the Clooney character. Should have tried that, discovered they spin around each other out of control, then figure out they need to lash themselves together into a single mass to move effectively. It wouldn't even have been any harder to make to do it right - and even present an opportunity for a bit of sexual tension, with B&D overtones, as they tie themselves to each other face to face or even better (or worse), face to crotch. Might have helped if the EVA suits could calculate the right trajectory to get to that space station too; line of sight will be a tad unreliable under those circumstances.

Artificial gravity is, I suspect, an artifact of movie making rather than any kind of profound technological advancement; it just makes it easier to make movies that way. Written SF can do it a bit better, not having that constraint, but often doesn't.

There are plenty of other things that annoy me, from good guys are good shots but the bad guys can't hit the side of a spaceship - or if it's a Western, a barn - to post apocalyptic spectacles like warlords leading supercharged V8's in an oil depleted world or towns surviving in bleak deserts without any farms.

It also annoys me that near futures can be portrayed without any reference to the ongoing affects of climate change - or else extremely exaggerated and unrealistic effects.

 

[lekh2003]

I hate random big words. Especially in the more commercial sci-fi TV series like The Flash, DC Legends of Tomorrow, etc. I used to watch these TV series all the time from about 4 years ago. After taking some physics courses and really advancing my skills, I realized all of the nonsense the characters were spewing.

 

[EmileJ]

Once upon a time, many light years ago...

 

[Fig Neutron]

@lekh2003 Yeah, I've also noticed that. Occasionally enjoy pointing them out to my parents who have no idea what I'm talking about and really don't care. (Although, I have to admit sometimes I use random big words to confuse/impress my friends.)

 

[Jonathan Scott]

The standard sci-fi film representation of an "asteroid belt", with a dense field of huge boulders, really irritates me. Also, amazingly, such asteroid belts frequently create "obstacles" to travel, despite the fact that one could easily go around them. In the asteroid belt in our solar system, I think it would be difficult to see more than two or three of the largest from the same location, and then only as points of light apart from the closest one.

Another thing which annoys me is any view showing details of three or more moons or planets. Two is possible when one is in the foreground, but if three are visible it usually means they are too close together to be stable.

One thing which I no longer mind so much is a certain amount of noise in space; long ago I was surprised when I heard a noise (a hiss ending in a pop) which definitely seemed to be associated with the simultaneous sight of a Perseid meteor, which seemed physically impossible. I later read that meteors create electromagnetic disturbances which could possibly induce sounds in metal objects or in electronic equipment, and that seems like a plausible explanation. It therefore seems vaguely plausible to me for sci-fi purposes that electromagnetic weapons and propulsion systems could induce some sounds across the vacuum of space.

 

[Buzz Bloom]

Time travel irritates me.

Hi Freyja:

I agree that most time travel stories are seriously flawed, but some are quite good:

The Time Traveler's Wife - novel - Audrey Niffenegger - 2003 (movie 2009)
By His Bootstraps - short story - Robert Heinlein - 1941
Outlander - 1st novel of a series - Diana Gabaldon - 1991 (Technically not actually a sci-fi genre, but a combination of time travel, romance, history, and adventure. Season 1 TV series 2009. The time travel component is only a mechanism for a 20th century character to be embedded in an 18th century culture.)​

Regards,
Buzz