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September 5th, 2008 at 8:21 am
Over on my livejournal mirror, I got a couple of very worthy additions:
11. “Things man wasn’t meant to know.” I hate this too. Says who? Says the writer who things people are children or worse and aren’t intrinsically capable of doing the right thing, and that learning things isn’t always good.
12. Dumb clothes. A silver jumpsuit does not sf make. Clothes should not make sense and just be arbitrarily different or strange.
September 5th, 2008 at 9:33 am
The Doppleganger Gambit (from the 1970s) has a fairly striking cover.
It shows a tall blonde woman whose hair is oddly matted, chewing out a tall skinny black man. She is wearing a blue top and miniskirt with matching go-go boots and he is wearing a shirt with horizontal green and purple stripes with green overalls. The overalls have the flexi-ribbing one sees on flexi-straws at the knees and his shoes look like low top Doc Martins with bright red soles. He is carrying a pistol in one hand. She has one stuffed down the front of her miniskirt; if it’s the same model pistol as the man’s, it’s almost long enough to peek out the bottom of her miniskirt.
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/sf/books/k/covers/bchaos1.jpg
Except for the lack of holsters, that’s straight out of the book. The author imagined an era when fashions were even uglier than the late ’70s.
September 5th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Good one, James! Or bad one, rather. And your post early this week about things that annoy you in sf inspired this post, so glad to see you here.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Insert what appears to be a conditioned reflex that involves quoting the end of Alice’s Restaurant.
Did you see the Jetse de Vries post where during an optimism rant, the happy future proposed for the midwest involved making cities no longer economically viable? And not in “better lifestyles became cheap enough to afford” sense.
Mind you, the person who steered the conversation in that direction was S. F. Murphy, one of the people who has made the Asimov’s forums the sewers that they currently are.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:42 am
I actually liked Killough’s SF a lot and I thought it was a good sign that she thought about fashions at all. She also remembered to have the skeevy parks named after forgotten Presidents named after Presidents who have yet to be elected. SF where nothing of note seems to have happened between the year the book was written and distant period when it is set is annoying.
September 5th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
That last one is a good one, too. The one where there’s no future history. I guess there could be a general category of “bad worldbuilding” that would encompass a few of these points.
September 5th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Back to the Future is SciFi now? I always thought it was a comedy.
September 5th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
I think of Back to the Future as a science fiction action comedy blockbuster Michael J. Fox vehicle.
September 5th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
#1, 2, 5 and 8 are my biggest peeves, but I can tolerate more bad science than blatant moralizing. The former makes me rant (and blog) but the latter makes me put down the book or change the channel.
SF where nothing of note seems to have happened between the year the book was written and distant period when it is set is annoying.
Yes. Along with futures where mid-20th century America is the pinnacle of culture. That’s mostly seen in the Star Trek universe, where the characters - even the non-humans - all seem to love either jazz or old time rock n’ roll.
September 5th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Yeah, well. Old music is safe because someone else already did the job of sorting the crap from the good stuff.
I want to write a story where some ancient relic keeps grumbling that nobody has written decent music since Marilyn Manson retired, then go on to comment negatively on the fashions and morals of the young.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
I think you’re wrong about nonsense science. I view Voltaire as one of the first action/SF authors. He wrote stories, fun ones, to illustrate philosophical points. He had aliens, genies, and even a Tarzan character in the 1700s. The details of how things worked in his stories weren’t important, they were just a medium to introduce you to the theme, which was always something about life on Earth.
Star Trek was exactly the same way. It doesn’t matter if a transporter can work, but rather how the humans work. Then you the viewer/reader can extrapolate that information and use it in your life.
Science fiction about science is like masturbation when a philosophical theme isn’t more more important. The same goes for ultra violent stories. One is science porn and the other violence porn.
September 6th, 2008 at 12:41 am
While the film Armageddon has many faults, training roughnecks as payload specialist rather than training astronauts to run the drills is not one of them.
Remember that the roughnecks weren’t semi-skilled labourers, but experienced drillers and geologists. This isn’t a case of “heart over mind”, but of which specialist skillset is quicker to become good enough at to do the job.
September 6th, 2008 at 8:03 am
The Alderian — science porn….shudder…in a good way. If something doesn’t try to be scientifically accurate, it’s fantasy in my book and should be clearly written as such and outside my boundary.
September 6th, 2008 at 8:08 am
Pick Pikul — my friends who have worked as roughnecks (I do live in Wyoming after all) tell me the movie got all that stuff wrong, too. And with all the screw-ups in space caused by these “experienced” rough-necks, I don’t think the movie makes your case. Armageddon goes way out of their way to make the NASA astronauts look incompetent, when they’re really highly trained people and likely would have included several PhD-level geologists. The highly “experienced” drillers rely on, intentionally and in a highlighted way, their intuition rather than their reason. Michael Bay plays it exactly as I’ve described it. It’s not about facts or information…feelings and determination are more important. And I hate that message being consistently made in movie after movie, especially when it’s about technological and scientific issues.
September 6th, 2008 at 10:21 am
As I said: The film does have many faults, and not just on the space side. Consider it a stopped clock effect.
September 6th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Fair enough, Rick. Fair enough.
September 7th, 2008 at 7:55 am
13. Mirror Universe. It’s Been Done. It was reasonably innovative when ST: TOS presented it in the mid sixties but it has been beaten to death. Although… I would be interested in a Movie/TV treatment where *we* are the Evil Universe and the Mirrorverse is some sort of Norman Rockwellian idealized version of earth. You know, blacks and whites more or less get along, less sexism, the rich actually give a damn how their actions impact the community, that sort of thing.
September 7th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
I think that was called Zot! by Scott McCloud.
September 9th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Steven Rogers: been done. Maybe by Scott McCloud, as James David Nicoll says. At any rate, the story I recall has an author drinking beer with fellow authors, telling about how he created a world, and felt an odd kind of *click* every time he decided a major detail. “It was a lot like our world *click*, only stupider *click*, more violent *click*, more short-sighted *click*. And then I imagined myself in that world and *click* there I was.” “So what’d you do?” “Nothing. *sip beer* I’m still here.”
September 9th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
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September 9th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Mike, I agree with the concepts you discussed on your list. However, I have to say that “Armageddon” was not the best example you could have chosen for point #10. The whole point of “Armageddon” was not to put down intellect and men of science, but to highlight that sometimes, despite our best technology, BF&I along with guts will see you through the day when all else fails.
Second, you did realize that Harry Stamper’s (Bruce Willis) crew were trained professionals and technical experts, right? Steve Buscemi’s character was a geologist. Most of these men were not any less intelligent than the NASA experts; in fact they were top flight experts in their field, which is why they were called in to do the job.
There have been countless times where “technical experts” have gotten so caught up in the minutia surrounding the technology that they forget that the ultimate goal of any project is to complete it, regardless of the technical nature of the tools involved in said project.
A better example escapes me at the time of this reply, but when I have more time, I’ll post back….
September 9th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
kragshot, while I appreciate this concept in theory, it wasn’t what was portrayed in the film. Buschemi’s character gets the irrational “space madness” for no apparent reason, for instance, and Harry Stamper succeeds, but not through reason but only through faith. “Guts” as you put it, is exactly what I’m complaining about. The message is that trained professionals (NASA) is not the best to succeeed, but someone who is going to rely on guts rather than training and education. While this could be true once in a long while, this is the message of one of the highest-grossing movies of all time, and many others as well.
I want to see the bookworm, Hermoine from Harry Potter, or the James Spader character in Stargate, consistently be the hero. But no, it’s Harry Potter, Kirk Russel, and Bruce Willis. About 99% of the time. That is my peeve. The roughnecks may have known their geology/drilling (although there wasn’t a lot of evidence in the movie that was right), but they couldn’t be trusted to sit quietly in their seats when that was the smart thing to do.
Sorry if I’m belaboring this point, but I really do think I picked a great example in this case. Harry intentionally ignores rational advice over and over again because of his gut, and succeeds because the screenwriter has his back, not because it makes sense. That was really clear if you’ll watch the film again.
A better example is very welcome, however. I’m confident that they are out there.
September 10th, 2008 at 4:25 am
Excessive details. Where the author goes on for 10 pages about the turbo-light-jump engines, or the effects of zero G travel on the subjects.
The author doesn’t know any of this as fact - they’re just supposing and it doesn’t help the story.
September 10th, 2008 at 8:29 am
I agree with the author on Armegeddon. I hated the concept of the “screwups” being the heros that I have yet to finish actually viewing the entire film.
–
September 10th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Regarding no. 10: ver intellect: I suspect that having heart win out over intellect is not so much a conscious choice of the author as it is taking the easy way out - it doesn’t require a writer to actually have a strong understanding of science, and as a bonus they can wax poetic about grand crowd-pleasing themes such as faith/conviction/morality/purity/*insert fluffy character trait here* ….
To which I say, ‘boooo’….
September 10th, 2008 at 10:16 am
tweeks, good addition. I have more tolerance for the “infodump” than many, and am probably guilty of them in my own novels once in a while. My editor had me trim a few for the last book, but actually made me add some in the first. I love SNOW CRASH by Neal Stephenson, but he’s several pages about Babylonian mythology that aren’t as fascinating as he seemed to think they were.
September 10th, 2008 at 10:42 am
ps - is there actually a serious argument going on here about the validity of the movie Armageddon? o.0
…ok, nevermind, I guess that since most of us still enjoy a bit of Star Trek every now and then (despite it fulfilling almost all the above-listed hates), serious debate over Armageddon is ok… in which case I’d like to add that the best part of that movie was Steve Buscemi dry-humping a nuke - there’s your take home message
September 13th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
While I agree with you on some points, I’ll have to disagree on n.4, the time travel bit. Claiming that time travel can be inconsistent or illogical in some stories strikes me as absurd on its own, since the entire concept, with its many paradoxes, is already inconsistent in the first place. Every sci-fi story that involves time travel will turn out to be inconsistent if you try hard to make sense out of it. In Terminator, Kyle Reese is John Connor’s father, but wouldn’t exist if John Connor had never been born - it’s a paradox which makes it inconsistent, but it’s what sci-fi is all about.
Which brings me back to n.1: Writers aren’t scientists. Even if they were, and could provide a valid scientific explanation on how stuff like hyperspace, laser guns, force fields or terraforming work, that would mean they’d actually be able to conceive them, but they can’t, thus the “fiction” bit of “science fiction”.
“Stories that involve time travel devices and technologies that take people backwards and forwards in time and space are considered part of the science fiction genre, whereas stories that involve time travel through supernatural, magical, or unexplained means are considered part of the fantasy genre.
The genre of science fiction is often characterized by incorporating technology either as “a driving force of the story, or merely the setting for drama.” [1] Therefore, it is this key component—technology—that can be used to distinguish between time travel of the science fiction and fantasy realms.
Isaac Asimov, when asked to explain the difference between science fiction and fantasy, once explained that science fiction, given its grounding in science, is possible; fantasy, which has no grounding in reality, is not.” [2] Any story involving time travel may be considered to include an element of science fiction. However, novels and short stories from the science fiction genre usually feature time travel via technology (a ‘time machine’) rather than time travel by supernatural means, and often play with the possibility of time paradoxes such as the grandfather paradox.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel_in_fiction
September 13th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
While I may not agree with everything he says, I do agree Steven Dutch of the University of Wisconsin Green Bay when he says that people today, far from needing to get “in touch with their feelings”, actually need to get OUT of touch with them to an extent. The standard view in Hollywood seems to be that rationality is not a “natural” mode of behaviour, and even when characters are portrayed as reacting to stressful situations in a rational fashion they are perceived as “one dimensional” and unbelievable, whereas characters reacting emotionally are seen to be more rounded and believable. While it naturally makes for better drama, it’s not necessarily the optimum survival strategy, nor does it make one a cold fish or any less “normal”.
September 13th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Psychic or telepathic powers, particularly when justified as a part of human evolution. This is just a wild card for the author avoiding any real explanation by effectively saying “it’s magic, lol”. It’s a horrible cliche that just keeps popping up everywhere.
September 14th, 2008 at 4:33 am
Try Gundam 00
1. For the most part things make sense, they just have this one uber source of energy
2. Suffers from it on a few instances, but good overall
3. No aliens (or NewTypes) just human vs human. Or enhanced humans in a controlled environment.
4. No time travel, even the travel times are slow
5. Some politics, not too blatant, but you can derive from it what you will.
6. Nope nothing really
7. No FTL everything happens in our solar system.
8. Just Earth, nothing really united, even within the power blocs there are still infighting
9. Only dark things in there is the fact that sociopaths still exist.
10. Unfortunately this is one thing that happens still. However, never underestimate blind luck.
September 14th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
In my opinion the only way time travel can “work” is with the many universes/multiple histories theory, this is used, several times, in Stargate SG-1 and SGA without introducing any paradoxes.
September 15th, 2008 at 7:04 am
What about computer programs in science fiction? I recently read a book where the heroine wrote a C++ program with GOTOs.
September 15th, 2008 at 8:40 am
That’s a good one, too, Ivan. I’ve seen a lot of computer abuse in science fiction, movies and tv in particular, but in print as well. I remember one Star Trek episode, or was it three or four of them, in which Kirk defeats a computer by hitting it with a logical paradox. Do they teach that in Starfleet?
September 15th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
I could enjoy a story with bad aliens, obvious themes and FTL drives spanning a million galaxies. Bad can be a good device to a writer who knows what he wants to write about. Rather, pick three and infringe the rest, I say, but make the bad stuff fun.
September 15th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
RE: #5- [remember the top of the page?] Sit through “Enemy Mine”, and see if the blatancy doesn’t smack you in the face between 3/4 and the end. Very good movie with a message for all of us.
September 15th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
From where i’m standing you have a great list, but i’ve one more thing to add. It’s the same thing which pissed me off in fantasy, horror, and other genres, but is most prelevant in SF.
RECYCLING. just because a long dead author made a heap of cash by cooking up the concept of *tractor beams/laser swords/laser shields/plasma rays (dragons, elves, trolls in fantasy) and so on and so forth* does not mean every single author after that has to use the exact same concepts!!!! Your whole freaking purpose is to bring me something new! I hate literary recycling >:P
September 16th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Computer abuse drives me crazy as well. I can’t count the number of times I wanted to throw my remote at the screen during Star Trek:TNG. They’ve got a virtual AI with what has to be zettaFLOPs of capacity, and they can’t write a freaking macro that pings the captain when someone leaves the ship without authorization? And don’t get me started on the bad engineering decisions that went into the deathtrap known as the Holodeck.
But my initial impetus to comment had to do with list item #7. Oh, sweet Firefly. How I loved thee. But nearly every damned episode they’d do something to make space feel like a foggy crowded backyard where you couldn’t see more than 100 yards off. They were completely unable to “sense” another ship until it was right on top of them when it could be seen with the naked eye when it was miles away. Believe me, I could make a sensor right now that would easily pick out a ship that emits or reflects visible light at a range of 10 miles and probably much further with the addition of some lenses. And that’s just a passive optical sensor, where the hell is the radar?
September 16th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
I hate: All aliens look the same as each other, the people are always jaded and boring as hell, you can tell if an alien is good or bad just by looking at him, robots are inferior fighters, humans pilot space craft and control weapons rather than their vastly superior computers, and artificial intelligence doesn’t get human jokes or emotions, despite them obviously being programmed with it.
September 16th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
10 Miles?
Try a couple light-minutes for current off the shelf hardware to pick up the waste heat from a ship. Turn any kind of reaction drive on, (like, say, a photon drive), and well… those off the shelf sensors can pick up the Space Shuttle’s _manoeuvring thrusters_ from the asteroid belt, and the main engines from Pluto. What’s more, in general the better the drive, the farther away you can see it.
For the Serenity, assuming the description given on the Wikipedia page is accurate and the drive is 90% efficient, you could see it over 230 AU away when it was poking along at 0.1G.
As the line goes: There ain’t no stealth in space.
(Cue the “Haw can we get stealth in space? discussion”)
September 17th, 2008 at 3:34 am
And one man, one bare-faced Messiah, managed to commit most of these crimes in just one book, or at least points 1,2,3,5,7,8,9 & 10.
I give you L Ron Hubbard & Battlefield Earth. Yes I read it. While I’m not proud it helps sometimes in conversation to have read the worst SF book ever written. 25 years ago and my brain still hurts.
As I recall…he expressed a desire in the preface to use “real science”…so he used an alternative periodic table of unknown elements. His aliens are like big rednecks but with 11 fingers, and therefore use a Base 11 number system. His hero is a caveman who topples an intergalactic empire.
Another good thing was that after that book I almost gave up SF and started reading the classics of english literature, educating myself to good writing, characterization & plotting. Now my Sf reading is light but skewed exclusively towards very good writers (Gibson, Wolfe etc).
September 17th, 2008 at 10:24 am
To Rick:
Yeah, I was quite certain it could be done better, but I was just thinking of stuff that I could personally design off the top of my head with very little thought. Limited to the visible spectrum, no less.
Regardless, it’s still crap. I recall one episode where they were sitting less than 300 meters from a ship 100 times the size of theirs before “realizing” it. Makes me hurt inside as the writing quality of that show was generally quite high.
September 18th, 2008 at 3:22 am
I normaly don’t like top 10 lists, but the comments here made it a good one.
As for that some says that writers are not scientist is like saying a writer is not a history professor when doing a film about a historic thing.
I just say ->Research<- as you can hire a geek (like me for example) for $10/h (or many for free) to tell you the obvious crap in your stupid ideas (like time travel paradoxes). I mean geeks must be the absolutely cheapest expert consultant for a film or book you can get. And if a true geek think it´s ok, 99.9% of the rest of the world will too.
And no, they don´t have to explain how stuff work as long as it possible (or at least plausible) by our understanding of the universe today, otherwise it´s in the category Fantasy, that I like too but it still isn’t SciFi.
One of the (in my opinion ofc) best SciFi writers is David Brin, as he is indeed a scientist that writes, and he never explain too deep how stuff work, just what they do.
September 18th, 2008 at 7:20 am
I’m going to do something dangerous and defend a show from a point made. You made a criticism about no bathrooms on Vipers. But, currently the USAF flies up to 17hr trans-atlantic flights without bathrooms in their fighters. Surely in BSG the pilot’s flight suits would incorporate a system like the USAF’s “Advanced Mission Extender Device”. A bigger glaring question when it comes to Vipers is WTH would you build a fighter with artificial gravity in cockpit?
September 18th, 2008 at 7:52 am
David Brin has a PhD, yes, in Physics, and I like his work, too, very much. And me, I have a PhD (astronomy) and an a science fiction writer. And Gregory Benford, Alastair Reynolds, Vernor Vinge, and a bunch more. Well, several more, anyway. It’s not too uncommon.
And you’re right, Khenke, that all kinds of geeks are available to consult and the smart writers do it.
September 18th, 2008 at 10:34 am
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September 19th, 2008 at 3:40 am
Sorry if didn’t read all the comments and repeated something.
What about human superiority? Too many sci-fi stories, either written or on TV, have the human race being so so very special -and the aliens continuously saying so-. The aliens are fundamentally flawed and keep learning lessons from the humans. Either this superiority complex is based on intelligence, emotions -this one is the worst-, culture, or a certain “uniqueness”, it’s always unbearable.
September 19th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Baalcebub: I must recomend that you read David Brins uplift series as it is realy fun for once to see humans as small and tiny ants compared to most other aliens. Ok, the humans are special (for a GOOD reason) but far far from superior, except in the area of getting in trouble.
I realy like the uplift universe and if anyone would make a TV serie or movie in the uplift universe I put up my preorder of the Blueray collectors edition right now.
September 19th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Khenke: Yes, the Uplift Saga is on my to read shelf… it’s a very long shelf . I’ve so far read Sundiver, and I liked it. The funny thing about that book was, it had an error I had never seen before or after; the entire third chapter was a chapter from a book about sexual dysfunction on the elderly… really, first I was furious -and couldn’t return the book since I had bought it in a book fair-, now I found it amusing really. Still, that chapter I haven’t read to this day.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Enjoyed the list. The explanations with each point made it more interesting than such things usually are.
Not to disagree, but just to add a bit, I think the photo thing in Back To The Future was just a dramatic device, a way of showing in a few seconds what would otherwise take pages of “Tell me, Professor” explanations about the nature of time and paradoxes. As you say, the photos are not something we should think too hard about.
I like Star Trek, but I didn’t like the way Kirk’s leaps of logic often weren’t connected with anything known by the characters in the story at that point.
As for unsound science in time travel stories, I’m under the impression that, scientifically, there couldn’t be time travel, so once a writer is using it, as with fantasy, they can make up their own rules.
The problem with aliens is making them alien to some extent, but able to interact with Humans so as to produce a story. This means, able to share some sort of environment, communicate, share goals. True, that leads to a lot of lazy and sloppy writing which I don’t bother reading.
Which leads me to my biggest beef, which sort of combines your points 5, 8 and 10 : The simplicity of moral constructs. White hats versus black hats. There is no examination of the nature of good and evil, they just basically hate the color of the other guy’s hat.
September 20th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Nice points/additions, Morva. And there is time travel that physics allows for, perhaps as many as three types. That’s probably worth a blog post in the near future…
And Joss Whedon has updated hats to coats (brown).
September 21st, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Sci-fi is a funny thing. I am a scientist and somedays the inconsistencies nag at me and on other days I welcome the suspension of disbelief with open arms. One of the books I’ve read with a mass of problems and character issues was actually written by my own dad, so I won’t name it here, but I guess what I want to say is I love all Sci-fi, whether it’s feasible or fantastical pseudoscience mental masturbation…. but I enjoyed the list and am amazed to have finally run onto a blog where people intelligently comment
September 21st, 2008 at 8:37 pm
So for Christmas last year my mom gave me the book, “The Decade’s Best Science Fiction Short Stories”. The kicker is that the decade in question is the 50’s. I’ve read the whole thing, and LOVE it. However when it comes to “hard” science fictions, it’s horrible. It violates all of Mike’s rules time and time again. (For those of you who can’t get your hands on that particular tome, read Heinland’s “The Door into Summer”. You’ll get the feel for what I’m talking about.) The point is that all hard science fiction goes soft with enough time. A writer would have to have a serious gift of prescience to make it otherwise. If a writer has that kind of foresight, then he shouldn’t be writing stories for a living, he needs to go to Vegas.
September 22nd, 2008 at 11:16 am
GoatFeathers, there were a lot of fun things written in the 1950s, although the majority did indeed suffer significant flaws in one area or another. And I may be wrong about this, but I think it’s possible to write hard sf that is time-resistant if not time-proof, at least in terms of not making outrageous errors. Reading those old books though, it really makes it clear how hard it is to predict things. Heinlein’s interstellar travelers were computing courses on slide rules!
September 22nd, 2008 at 1:48 pm
TheAdlerian: “Science fiction about science is like masturbation when a philosophical theme isn’t [sic] more more [sic] important.”
This is the stupidest statement I have ever read from someone who could spell masturbation.
September 22nd, 2008 at 5:05 pm
A previous post mentioned psychic powers as an excuse for magic, but in general I am really annoyed by abuse of Clark’s Axiom (Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology is Indistinguishable from Magic).
Sometimes it seems that authors introduce magic and call it science with no further justification.
September 22nd, 2008 at 9:23 pm
I agree that Clark’s axiom is often an excuse for sloppy writing. It’s a pity that this happens even though facing up to the known laws can, with a little thought, make a better story. A similar mindset happens in every day life where many people want to believe in magic without acknowledging how amazing the world around them already is. It leaves them wide open to exploitation by charlatans.
Which brings me to my point, which is that sometimes Clark’s axiom is true. Think of stories where people travel great distances in a trice and arrive almost as soon as they started and without getting wet despite the rain. Then think how fast and comfortably our cars travel. Perhaps many writers are trying to escape reality rather than think how amazing it is. I’m pointing this out in an attempt to reinforce my point that facing reality can lead to better stories than avoiding it could.
By the way, that sentence from TheAdlerian: “Science fiction about science is like masturbation when a philosophical theme isn’t [sic] more more [sic] important,” doesn’t make sense to me. Is The Adlerian trying to say that SF about science is always masturbation unless, and only unless, some philosophical theme is included?
I’ll look forward to the post on time travel possibilities. The nature of time is something I am interested in and have blogged about in my own, non-scientific sort of way a couple of times.
Cheers
Morva Shepley
September 23rd, 2008 at 5:26 am
Alright, I have two extras.
11. Needless sex scenes, often involving zero-gee and/or some pharmocopic/neural network stamina enhancement, that reveal the pent-up-nerd author living vicariously through his ‘chisel jawed’ character and swashbuckling his way through the galaxy.
12. Dream/virtual elements that do not enhance or progress plot/story (I AM fine with D/V elements that are narrative critical). They seem to be the refuge of poor prose. Like the ‘poem’ that each author has inside them, yet can’t ‘fit’ into their novel without resorting to D/V. Their solution, bang, slam it into a D/V sequence. Fucking dross…. If you need to vent such crud, then self-publish a book of quasi-mystical stream of conscience poetry, don’t jack it into ya fucking novel.
September 23rd, 2008 at 5:41 am
@MorvaShepley:
“By the way, that sentence from TheAdlerian: “Science fiction about science is like masturbation when a philosophical theme isn’t [sic] more more [sic] important,” doesn’t make sense to me. Is TheAdlerian trying to say that SF about science is always masturbation unless, and only unless, some philosophical theme is included?”
First of all, I think the first “[sic]” is wrong, though not the second. I think the sentence should read “Science fiction about science is like masturbation when a philosophical theme isn’t much more important”. And, yes, I think TheAdlerian means science in SF is comparatively pointless self-gratification unless you have a deeper philosophical point.
I can see the point, but I disagree. Sometimes you’re in the mood for something really meaty, and only a steak will do, (metaphorically speaking :), but, you know, sometimes you’re in the mood for something lighter, and only angel food cake with a drizzle of chocolate syrup will do. And I think science fiction is a broad enough genre that it can encampass both roles.
I can’t think of a good “angel food cake” example, but consider, at least, Dune vs. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Very different in mood and, ah, scientific authenticity, to put it mildly, but both (in my opinion) outstanding science fiction.
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:14 am
There are too many examples of screw-up hero types:
- twister
- con air
- transformers
- back to the future
- fifth element
- farscape
- the last starfighter
- mom and dad save the world
- dante’s peak
- matrix
some great time travel movies:
- butterfly effect
- sound of thunder
- galaxy quest
- 12 monkeys
- army of darkness
- planet of the apes (original version!)
- primer
- bender’s big score
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:26 am
“Sometimes it seems that authors introduce magic and call it science with no further justification.”
Good point, Clark. I think the idea of advanced technology = magic can be used well in science fiction, but an effort must be made to make sure things like conservation of matter/energy, momentum, etc., are taken into account. That’s the real difference. I always wondered where the Enterprise got the energy to replicate the food and other items — they didn’t seem to be constructed with nanotech from existing matter, but to be an energy-to-matter process. Am I confused on that issue?
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Deux ex Machina, Unobtanium and/or Handwavium have always been a pet peeve for me. So has the language barrier, or lack thereof, which can be fixed by one of the above three things.
A really bad science fiction movie would be The Core, with Hillary Swank and Aaron Eckhart. There’s so much badness in that movie it’s actually hilarious!!
September 23rd, 2008 at 2:53 pm
[...] Ten Things I Hate About Science FictionTop Ten Science-Based Sci-Fi MoviesOutside the Ghetto and the Ghastly Example of Michael CrichtonTen Superpowers You Can Have NowThe Hard SF Writer’s BookshelfFive qualities required to be a Scientist…Muffy the Vampire Layer…Learning a Language with Rosetta StoneWhy don’t more girls dress up as Phoenix???Some of my favorite quotes… [...]
September 23rd, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Re theClapp’s angel food cake. I can think of plenty of guilty pleasures. Star Trek for one.
Re Matt’s comment on needless sex scenes, I’m inclined to think that those replace imagination. In childrens lit, where sex scenes and violence above a certain level are not permitted, it’s astonishing and wonderful what the writers come up with. Hence, Artemis Fowl, where the fairies use machines to perform their magic. Northern Lights. Even The Day my Bum Went Psycho. OK, it’s fantasy really, but the inventiveness on the part of the authors is still wonderful.
Cheers
Morva Shepley.
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:56 pm
I have to agree with TheAdlerian’s much debated comment. Science itself is only the vehicle of a good story. I don’t see how you can write a fiction purely ABOUT science. It’s understood that science is inherently objective, but what reader would look at a totally objective story and think, “Wow that was really great.” At the very best it might feel like an autobiography, at worst it would feel like a text book.
The story always needs subjects that are easy to identify with. Space, spaceships, the year 3000, a galaxy far far away are all just settings.
September 24th, 2008 at 2:00 am
Always Chaotic Evil bad guys. Far from being a failure exclusive to Sci-fi, I’ll admit, but it’s especially egregious in this case, as you often have entire planets of Always Chaotic Evil bad guys. The seminal example has to be the Klingons. If their entire culture is built around the idea that all Klingons should be warriors then how did any kind of advanced civilization arise on that planet? How did they build cities and harness science and build faster-than-light ships that can render themselves invisible?
Or, if you want an exclusively Sci-fi gripe, then I’ve got 2 words for you. Space Jews. Again the highest profile offender is Star Trek, with Ferengi culture being utterly laughable until you replace the aliens with people of Jewish abstraction at which point it suddenly stops being funny.
September 24th, 2008 at 10:26 am
It’s not like your only options are “philosophy w/ science setting” and “pure science.”
Simply having it set as an adventure kind of leads to having an idiot succeed “just because” but you’ve got other options still and a good author should be able to avoid such pitfalls anyway.
-
As for time travel. You can have time travel without multiple time lines pretty easily so long as you think of time as actually having to progress and the time travel does not remove the reason the trip back was actually made.
-Since somebody mentioned Terminator-
Kyle Reese doesn’t make sense as John Connor’s father so he’s not John Connors father. The kid is born with some different father but is similar enough that he still ends up in the rebel position years down the road.
The machines send back a terminator and by some unknown story he manages to live through it and still become a rebel leader but let’s say his mother dies to keep him alive.
Then throw on the movie as we saw it and give him a few years to work all of this out in his head and you find that he’s still got a reason to set up the time travel event.
The loop’s start lies in a time line that no longer exists but time marches on just fine now that this loop has been established.
*I wish I could remember the site I read that off of. It dissected about every time travel movie there is to see how well they could fit to a single time line.
September 24th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Andy, I think you can write great stories about “science” as an endeavor, a philosophy, an adventure, and more. It just depends on having a really good writer show you the way. I’ve tended to include a lot more science in my novels than be actually writing a story about science. My first, Star Dragon, does have some threads in it about science as a way of appoaching life, for better or worse.
October 8th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
(15) Wesley Crushers - the super-smart kids who know so much about everything scientific that their elders do not, and somehow have not yet been strangled to death. Or lesser Mary Sues– characters who happen to know everything that has to be known for a particular plot point to happen.
October 8th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
The main thing I don’t enjoy about Sci-Fi (particularly films/tv) is that I have become to much of a cynic in my older age.
October 9th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
I have to disagree with #9, dark futures. True, it’s rare that they’re well done, but take Warhammer 40,000 as an example. In my opinion, at least, it’s a pretty good vision of what would happen if something terrible happened and people got kicked back a few notches on the tech scale.
It’s one of the best dark futures I’ve read so far, tied with the book Kop by Warren Hammond.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Absolutely true.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
I disagree with calling ST the prime offender of No. 1. STNG went to extensive lengths to make their science plausible, going so far as to pull things directly from cutting edge theory (ie string theory, quantum mechanics, tachyons, etc). The problem with STNG ran into was trying to use these complex scientific ideas as plot devices in an hour long show that was aimed at a large demographic. For instance, the replicators had to be generally scientifically plausible, but also had to be limited as a storytelling device so as not to make any obstacle easily surmounted by generating the appropriate object out of “thin air”.
October 10th, 2008 at 5:54 am
So limiting your technology without explanation just so it fits into the story better is good science?
Just making that a bulky and slow process would have been better for the plot and plausibility but would have left you without a detail about their lives to flash at the camera all of the time.
October 10th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Mint: I have to strongly disagree about ST:TNG, at least for its depiction of the biological sciences. Some of the bad biology is intrinsic to the Star Trek universe (human-alien hybrids like Troi, Spock and Torres). But the really bad biology comes when it’s the focus of an episode, such as the episode where the crew “devolves” into different animals. Sure there are a lot of technical terms thrown around in the dialog, but that doesn’t mean that they actually are being used correctly.
October 10th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Mint -
Basic rule of hollywood: where science interferes with the story, the science goes. Like the ST:TNG episode where they cause global warming in a ten or twenty minutes rather than ten or twenty decades.
The replicators have no limits other than those required for a particular episode. Remember the one where the “virus patterns” stored in the transporter buffers somehow worked their way into the hardware of the replicators and created “macro-viruses” that stung people and blah blah blah?
October 11th, 2008 at 1:02 am
ST:TNG used to annoy me by having an interesting, science fictional teaser, and then ignoring it for the rest of the show while they got on with some soapy type drama.
The replicators, though, especially coupled with the notion of the transporter beam, is great.
I know transporter beams are not really workable, but just think of the fun to be had with them. I hope they’re not Paramount copyrighted, because there is so much more to be done with them.
Cheers
Morva Shepley
October 13th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Transporters are not copyrighted or copyrightable. It’s possible that their sparklies and sound are copyrighted or trademarked, but teleporters of various types have been used in SF for decades and if yours goes vwoo vwoo vwoo rather than eeeeeeEEeEeeeeEEE then you’re fine.
The term “phaser” was at one time trademarked, if I recall correctly from the seventies, but appears to have passed into the public domain. Nonetheless, if you use it to refer to a ray gun in a story, it marks the story as fanfic-influenced.
October 26th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
I fully agree with the assessment of “Ten Things I Hate About Science Fiction”. but I would think that it would be fairer to use the modifier “bad” in the title. The author seems to lump all writings into the same category. Let’s face it, there is a pile of garbage out there and that stuff gives a smell that sticks to the legitimate material. “Star Wars” is at best good fun, but is that what you want the general population to think of as true sci-fi? “Star Trek” was famous for moralizing, yet I would submit that their universe was much more realistic than many other depictions of future possibilities. As for heart/faith/determination dominating over intellect, I suggest that the writer has never read any books by the Grand Masters. Would you not want any Heinlein character to be a lawyer for your defense?
November 6th, 2008 at 11:30 am
hi, sorry to knock down how much you hate having blatant morals in your books, but you know what, sometimes its important. I am doing a research paper on the time machine, and its pretty obvious in the book that the warning is of caution for the upper classes. it got its point across, and it was one of the books that first placed some deeper context into science fiction than “good guy versus bad guy” type thing. science fiction is good to entertain, but all books, or the good ones, have something deeper in them than the obvious plot. those are the ones that last centuries, and not months. so yes, soemtimes the morals are obvious, but sometimes they are needed to be obvious, especially when the author is writing for the average audience.
November 7th, 2008 at 6:19 am
I think a big part of it is that the newer stuff with morals included can’t ever find a good set of morals to make a point about.
All those old books brought up the topic when people weren’t wary of this kind of thing and the ones that did it well are classics now.
You either end up saying something we already knew about or you end up choosing a goofy set of morals to promote and the readers end up annoyed that you’re shoving such objective morality down their throats.
It was good way back when but you almost always end up in a lose/lose situation when you try to put a big moral message in science fiction now.
January 11th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Great list Mike,
One of my top ten would include the total lack of sync between the society the authors/screenwriters are portraing and their technology or level of development, specially in movies.
An example is that Sunshine flick where the characters go thru all kinds of odds and difficulties during the trip in a fragile ship with their lives hanging on a single solar shield…then they show up the saviour “device” and what it could do…man, compared to them it was like something from another planet or sent from millions of years in the future.
A team of australopithecus flying the space shuttle would make as much sense…
January 31st, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Actually the computer thing gets me. Somehow we can always interface with alien computers and make our programs work. What if the aliens are running Vista?
March 13th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
I just got done reading Rosemary Kirstein’s work. This list of what doesn’t work neatly illustrated why her books are some of the best of the last couple of decades.
It is interesting though, that she has this system that’s pretty openly gimicky, and the political economy wouldn’t work for it. However, the suspension of belief brings rich rewards…
A lot of writers have emphasis that you should follow your ears, not the rules (if you know what you’re doing…)
March 13th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
So gut instincts are ok as long as they are from somebody experienced rather than some layman who’s just winging it and filling in the gaps with bravado?
I’ve recently been exposed to some of the history of the nature vs nurture argument and it’s disappointing how quickly even actual scientists will fall into the old habits of humanity when they convince themselves that one view or moralistically necessary.
(The supporters of the blank slate did, and sometimes still do. Somehow saying that a particular gene imparted some percent likeliness of a behavior became equivalent to saying that it imparted a 100 percent likeliness of it. They attacked what they saw as determinism quite fiercely, and often in a very inappropriate manner.)
March 19th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Wow, I guess I should be keeping an eye on this website. Seems that many new and exciting stories and novels are going to be hitting the market soon. I always knew that Bradbury, Asimov, Cambell, Herbert and company had it wrong. I’m looking forward to awesome literture that is to come from the august and knowledgeable sci fi doyen that are assembled here.
May 14th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Here are 3 things that I can’t stand about modern “Hard SF” and aspiring “Hard SF” writers and conservative futurists.
1. Kardashev Scale: Outdated as far as I’m concerned. Pretty much just a lazy way of measuring technological progress. Why assume that higher technology will require more energy to function? Why not a few low-energy “back doors” and techniques that we are simply unfamiliar with or perhaps simply ignoring? Why must we also assume that more advanced species will choose to become more energy consumptive and expand across the stars?
2. Singularity: Many futurists such as Michio Kaku have already shown a lot of skepticism when it comes to this concept. If indeed higher technology requires radically higher power levels, then progress will level off as a function of decreasing energy supply/energy need ratio. If not, well, singularity might just be possible (though it will look more like a pulp era/macrotech sci fi setting if these “back doors” to progress are discovered). I’m not convinced about the viability of molecular nanotech (at least without a lot of waste heat!)
3. Fermi’s Paradox: Geez. Only 3 possibilities here; A. Communicative aliens do not exist within the 100-odd light year listening radius of SETI. No duh in my opinion. B. We’re being left alone on purpose. C. Those big triangles and discs that have been photographed in the sky are not illuminated methane gas after all.
May 15th, 2009 at 10:09 am
1. You wanna expand to at least a few stars for planetary redundancy. Maybe some billion year old society can say “we can 100% guarantee our survival on a single planet” but that’s too different from our way of thinking- anyone who wrote that out would be doing it to write a disaster down upon that society because, somehow, choosing to not spread ends up being not humble to an extreme.
3. Well if you go the lazy route and stick easily used wormholes in the story options A and C are viable at the same time.
May 17th, 2009 at 2:24 am
My one pet peeve is how books are no longer *edited* - I dont care for slow-moving, poorly written junk that is being cranked out nowdays. Usually this is seen in the fantasy field with books 500 plus pages where the author feels they have to explain everything, even the clothing down to minute detail. Unfortunately, this problem also rears its head in Science Fiction Novels also -
What happened to *editors* - one author told me recently they are all being re-named to aquisition agents… Lets bring editing back, and that doesnt mean cleaning up the grammer, it means deleting paragraph after paragraph of useless meaningless trivia thrown in to pad the book.
May 30th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
I understand that highly trained eggheads get touchy about such things, but there are indeed times when persistance and experience (experience is what creates intution of any worth, after all) do pay off.
8 years of college won’t make a dull person ’smart’, and yes, a dim person can do it. One of them became your President.
Classes won’t teach perception, proportion, or wits. They teach scholastics.
If a person imagines that the ‘right’ character for a fictional job goes to the egghead character by default, I’d accuse that person of being an egghead insecure in their technocratic status.
That’s only my opinion, admittedly. Your own mileage may vary.
I’d also point out that it’s fiction we’re talking about here. Stories. Stories are supposed to capture imaginations. While it would be nice if everyone would be thrilled to wallow in their own undereducated inferiority, that’s not the case. Writing for the masses means giving honor to the masses.
May 31st, 2009 at 1:33 pm
I think that because the writers usually aren’t eggheads they let a lot of jobs go to egghead by default because they don’t know how someone else could do the job.
July 5th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
I am presenting a new science fiction writer Romualdas Draksas. His new book „Man.The Awakening“ has just been published. Here is a short presentation of the book.
Man—the galaxy’s most fearsome creature, constructed as a unique war machine, who rose up and escaped from his creators and ended up a captive on a planet inhibiting most of his powers. But what were to happen if Humans again found themselves beyond the limits of their incarcerating planet’s effects, and they regained all of the awesome abilities their creators had given them? In other words, what would it mean if they started the process that the other races of the galaxy referred to as “the awakening”?
Just as a single rock can suffice to set a lethal avalanche in motion, so can a lone awakened Human be enough to rattle the entire galaxy.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Any, ANY, Sci-Fi that has a deus ex machina ending, that and brilliant Sci-Fi that I can’t bear to watch again; pointing my finger at you A.I… as a parent with young kids it’s heart-breaking to watch.
August 28th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
I don’t know if this has been pointed out (because there are like 500 posts and i don’t have time to sift) but if the “intelligent” characters (hermione for example) had their way nothing would happen… harry wouldn’t go into the sewers and he wouldn’t fight any massive serpents etc.
People like to watch people make bad decisions because they are more interesting than good decisions.
If you have two people crossing the street, one decides to go before its green and gets hit by a car etc. and the other waits and crosses when its safe… which person’s story is more interesting?
idk I’m rambling a bit.
Anyway I’m also going to porto alegre, brazil in january, for a semester.
August 30th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Dunno if anyone else brought it up in a response but you brought up BAD science, how about some sci-fi that doesn’t have any science? or rather, no explanation at all what happened or why and how they finally manage to defeat the foe. Ive seen a couple of series and movies that rode the “its-too-hard-to-explain-so-just-accept-it”-wave. And that really bugs me out atleast.
August 30th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Well no, taking intelligent people’s advice would just look more like a lot of classic Greek stuff.
Instead of brainless mistakes you barely overcome with luck and main character style bravado (well, there’s still a lot of the latter type,) the trouble you get into is the sort of thing you couldn’t have avoided. If you could have avoided it there’s no escape and a horrible death awaits.
It’s not that we’re opposed to taking risks, it’s that we’re opposed to taking totally uncalculated risks. “I’ll just wing it” absolutely should not work every time; if somebody is lucky so repeatedly they didn’t earn any of their success, they were just granted it by fate or the gods or something. So down with Greek style hero plays and up with Greek style… uh, I lost myself there.
The good points stand.
September 13th, 2009 at 1:55 am
Re Point #7: So who says the Vipers don’t have Porta-Potties installed just under the seat cushions? Have you ever looked? LOL!
September 13th, 2009 at 11:31 am
A lot of sci fi actually gets schematics of the ships published and then you just need to see if there’s a waste storage unit or not so ya, some of us have looked.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Talk about being anal! (Get it?) Seriously though, I know just what you mean. Back when there were Star Trek conventions I myself couldn’t resist buying a few sets of ship schematics. I remember thinking that if the USS Enterprise was actually built according to those schematics the deck floors would have to have been no more than 6 inches thick! And even at that anybody taller that 6 feet would have had to stoop to walk down a corridor. I guess Ruk would have had to use a wheelchair (or a bicycle)!
May 14th, 2010 at 7:48 am
I totally agree with you!
June 14th, 2010 at 10:14 am
Mr. Brotherton,( me again)
I don’t mean to rehash this post but I just had to say something about #9 on your list.
I agree completely! It seems like most of the SF stories these days are dystopian, I hate that! It’s completely boring to hear how everyone suffers and is in slavery. Machines take over; the earth is ruined (yawn).
I miss the late 19th century SF stories, the utopia’s that inspired people to achieve greatness. More people should write about how science helps.
-Zac
June 14th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Zac, there was a recent anthology called SHINE of positive near-future science fiction stories. You might track that down.
July 23rd, 2010 at 12:06 pm
(I was pleased to see a recent post so this thread isn’t completely dead…)
Someone (I have no idea who but it could have been Robert Sawyer) said - I paraphrase - pick your one or two ‘magic’ concepts, be consistent and keep the rest grounded in real science.
Thus in Star Trek - warp drive, transporters, phasers (okay so that is already three…) + the ’special sauce’ for a given episode.
The last ST:TNG episode I watched had them beam to an asteroid with earth normal gravity on the inside(!) - okay so film budget comes into play - and a breathable atmosphere but no plant life(!). They find dead aliens who materialize from another dimension(!) at the moment of mortality and subsequently decompose into trans-uranic elements(!!!!!!) There was more but mercifully I have blocked it from memory. I stopped watching after that episode.
Oh, and the inability of people to learn from the past is a major irritant. How many conversations were there on ST:TNG that went as follows…
**********
Warf: Captain, I’m detecting an unknown sub-space disturbance.
Picard: What is it? (ref: ‘unknown’, you git…)
Warf: I (*still*) don’t know. Should I raise shields?
Picard: No.
Warf: A decloaking Romulan warbird! They are attacking, shields are offline, weapons are disabled and we are screwed. (You stupid git…)
Picard: Whoops. My bad. (Okay, he never actually says this but he should… Maybe at the court martial.)
************
Thanks, I’m done ranting now.