What tropes in science fiction annoy you?

[stj]

The objection that so much SF is really stupid doesn't mean that it's a subset of fantasy. To my mind, it's exactly the idea that it's all the same which inevitably leads to the conclusion you can write any stupid thing in SF. Sure you can always write badly. But in SF, the style is supposed to be naturalistic, not supernaturalistic. Stupid, nonsense is bad SF style. Knowing what the alien ate in Alien would have been superior style. I was so shocked and horrified when John Hurt's chest burst open I didn't wonder too much how such an awful creature could grow. But if I had been quicker I would have found it harder to willingly suspend disbelief. If we're supposed to believe something fantastic is still somehow a natural phenomenon (potentially, for artistic purposes at least) then it is just good writing to help us out a little.

I suppose it's tempting for the fantasy apologists to focus on substantive issues. But again, I think style is really important in writing. The science in SF is always fiction, pretty much (barring near future thrillers, where---amazingly!---some readers promptly deny it's SF!) So no, being writer ignorance of real science and technology doesn't make it fantasy any more than a director who doesn't know Newton's Third Law of Motion is making a fantasy movie. SF based on outdated science doesn't suddenly turn into a fantasy. And if the only science a SF writer knows is homeopathy, the fact that's idiocy still doesn't make it fantasy either. Yes, it's only style. But in writing style is, well, some people say style is everything.

 

[Discofan]

Eating isn't the only way of consuming energy. Plants don't eat. Maybe xenomorphs can convert background radiation into cellular energy or some such thing. Maybe they absorb trace materials from their surroundings to grow, just like plants absorb minerals from the ground.

The problem is that you're ignoring the fundamentals of biology. (most) Plants are autotroph and an ecosystem can't exist without autotrophic types of life, IE creatures that make their organic matter from inorganic matter and solar/geothermal energy.
However, there is a price to pay for being an autotroph and that is a very slow metabolism, so slow in fact that if the plants don't move it's not solely because they haven't developed muscles, it's because they don't have enough energy for it.

All Moving forms of life, especially one as evolved as the Alien, are forcibly heterotroph, IE they have to eat/absorb/get-inside-of-them organic matter in order to survive. Your objection is not valid.

 

[JD]

You are thinking way, wwwwwwaaaaayyyyyyy to hard about this shit. I don't really see where any of that matters, all we really need to know about Xenomorphs is that they're scary and they kill people, we really don't need to go into every little detail about how they function. Especially with stories like Alien, you pretty much just want to give people what they need to know to follow your immediate story, and if it doesn't have an immediate impact on the story then you don't put it in you're story. If the Aliens are eating their victims, then it really matter what, if anything, they do eat.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Alien is SF because in the fictional universe the alien isn't supernatural

Does horror require a supernatural element? Were Michael Meyers or Jason Voorhees supernatural? Is Annie Wilkes from Misery?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The objection that so much SF is really stupid doesn't mean that it's a subset of fantasy. To my mind, it's exactly the idea that it's all the same which inevitably leads to the conclusion you can write any stupid thing in SF. Sure you can always write badly.

Even if one believes that science fiction is a subset of fantasy, that wouldn't mean that all fantasy is science fiction. And even if the line between sci-fi and fantasy (or between sci-fi and non-sci-fi fantasy) is difficult to prescribe, that doesn't mean that people can't generally agree on certain distinctions. I personally know of no one who believes Lord of the Rings is science fiction, for example; everyone agrees it's fantasy.

 

[Greg Cox]

Does horror require a supernatural element? Were Michael Meyers or Jason Voorhees supernatural? Is Annie Wilkes from Misery?

Supernatural elements are common, but not mandatory. (Many Poe stories have no supernatural elements.) Which means that, inevitably, the line between "thriller" and "horror" can get a little blurry, with a lot depending on the mood and atmosphere. Does the story take place in a spooky old house during a thunderstorm? You can probably call it horror. Is it a gritty police procedural about hunting down a psychotic serial killer? Maybe more of a mystery or thriller than horror . . . although stories can belong to more than one genre at a time. See sci-fi detective stories, or paranormal romance novels.

Here's the thing about genres. At the extremes, it's easy to pigeon-hole things. "The Lord of The Rings" is fantasy. "I, Robot" is SF. But there's a lot of stuff that isn't quite so easily categorized. And any attempt to come up with, say, an iron-clad distinction between sf and fantasy is doomed to failure because you'll inevitably end up excluding some well-known classics of the field. Is "The Martian Chronicles" sf or fantasy or magic realism or what? More importantly, does it matter?

And it's perhaps worth remembering that scientifically-rigorous "Hard SF" is just one kind of SF, otherwise we wouldn't need an extra adjective to distinguish it from other kinds of SF: space operas, military SF, swashbuckling planetary romances, allegorical SF, sci-fi comedies, etc.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Supernatural elements are common, but not mandatory. (Many Poe stories have no supernatural elements.) Which means that, inevitably, the line between "thriller" and "horror" can get a little blurry, with a lot depending on the mood and atmosphere. Does the story take place in a spooky old house during a thunderstorm? You can probably call it horror. Is it a gritty police procedural about hunting down a psychotic serial killer? Maybe more of a mystery or thriller than horror . . . although stories can belong to more than one genre at a time. See sci-fi detective stories, or paranormal romance novels.

Here's the thing about genres. At the extremes, it's easy to pigeon-hole things. "The Lord of The Rings" is fantasy. "I, Robot" is SF. But there's a lot of stuff that isn't quite so easily categorized. And any attempt to come up with, say, an iron-clad distinction between sf and fantasy is doomed to failure because you'll inevitably end up excluding some well-known classics of the field. Is "The Martian Chronicles" sf or fantasy or magic realism or what? More importantly, does it matter?

And it's perhaps worth remembering that scientifically-rigorous "Hard SF" is just one kind of SF, otherwise we wouldn't need an extra adjective to distinguish it from other kinds of SF: space operas, military SF, swashbuckling planetary romances, allegorical SF, sci-fi comedies, etc.

It may be best to think of genres as a publisher's shorthand to give retailers and readers an easy way to find products they want. Thinking in terms of genres as some kind of bounded country defined by conventions will produce tropic writing. A writer has to be careless of the boundaries since they really don't exist except as a marketing tool or a class descriptor for LitCrit classes.

 

[JD]

Here's the thing about genres. At the extremes, it's easy to pigeon-hole things. "The Lord of The Rings" is fantasy. "I, Robot" is SF. But there's a lot of stuff that isn't quite so easily categorized. And any attempt to come up with, say, an iron-clad distinction between sf and fantasy is doomed to failure because you'll inevitably end up excluding some well-known classics of the field. Is "The Martian Chronicles" sf or fantasy or magic realism or what? More importantly, does it matter?

I think Star Wars is one of the hardest to categorize. It's got robots and lazer guns and faster than light space ships, but it's also got knights (Jedi), wielding swords (lightsabers), and using magic (the force). It also has multiple characters called "Dark Lord" (the Sith) which is one of the biggest fantasy tropes out there, along with the lower class person (Luke, Anakin, Rey) with the great destiny. For pretty much every element you can point to from one genre, you can counter it with one from the other.

 

[Greg Cox]

It may be best to think of genres as a publisher's shorthand to give retailers and readers an easy way to find products they want. Thinking in terms of genres as some kind of bounded country defined by conventions will produce tropic writing. A writer has to be careless of the boundaries since they really don't exist except as a marketing tool or a class descriptor for LitCrit classes.

Honestly, sometimes I've labeled a book a particular genre just for marketing reasons. Is this new book "horror" or "dark fantasy"? Well, what's selling better these days? Is Zorro a superhero, a western hero, or a swashbuckling historical adventure? Depends on where you want it shelved at the bookstore, although this is arguably becoming less relevant as brick-and-mortar bookstores decline . . . ..

True story: Back in the day, I wasn't allowed to use the word "paranormal" on a book cover because "paranormal" meant "occult" which equalled "Satanic" in some territories, which meant the book might not get displayed in the Bible Belt. Nowadays "paranormal romance" is a category, which is printed on the spines of books. Sometimes "genre" can simply be a marketing decision--and changeable with the times.

EDIT: I replaced "paranormal" with "unknown," as in "a shocking tale of the unknown."

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Honestly, sometimes I've labeled a book a particular genre just for marketing reasons. Is this new book "horror" or "dark fantasy"? Well, what's selling better these days? Is Zorro a superhero, a western hero, or a swashbuckling historical adventure? Depends on where you want it shelved at the bookstore--although this is arguably becoming less relevant as brick-and-mortar bookstores decline . . . ..

True story: Back in the day, I wasn't allowed to use the word "paranormal" on a book cover because "paranormal" meant "occult" which equalled "Satanic" in some territories, which meant the book might not get displayed in the Bible Belt. Nowadays "paranormal romance" is a category, which is printed on the spines of books. Sometimes "genre" can simply be a marketing decision--and changeable with the times.

Words change and lose their meaning over time isn't it? "Paranormal" doesn't seem to hold the weight it used to as a word these days.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Honestly, sometimes I've labeled a book a particular genre just for marketing reasons. Is this new book "horror" or "dark fantasy"? Well, what's selling better these days? Is Zorro a superhero, a western hero, or a swashbuckling historical adventure? Depends on where you want it shelved at the bookstore--although this is arguably becoming less relevant as brick-and-mortar bookstores decline . . . ..

True story: Back in the day, I wasn't allowed to use the word "paranormal" on a book cover because "paranormal" meant "occult" which equalled "Satanic" in some territories, which meant the book might not get displayed in the Bible Belt. Nowadays "paranormal romance" is a category, which is printed on the spines of books. Sometimes "genre" can simply be a marketing decision--and changeable with the times.

I've often felt that is how new genres evolve. Magical Realism and Speculative Fiction always seemed more an attempt to distance works from a perception that fantasy and SF was elves and Dungeons and Dragons and laser pistols and so not high brow enough to get positioned away from the long rows of whatever series was currently taking up shelf space and a desired demographic the publisher, and perhaps the writer, hopes will read the book would seldom look.

 

[stj]

Does horror require a supernatural element? Were Michael Meyers or Jason Voorhees supernatural? Is Annie Wilkes from Misery?

No, it does not. In a previous comment I wrote that no one talks about horror without a supernatural as realism. This is for the good reason is that horror really is a genre, a kind of story that aims to deliver a certain kind of emotional impact, namely, being scared or grossed out. Slasher movies aim to do this, they are horror, written in a supposedly realistic way, that is, the terror stems from the wholly natural, even if blessedly unusual. Horror stories and movies that use supposedly natural means use SF style, but they are still horror stories or movies. Horror stories and movies that use the supernatural are written in a fantasy style, but they are still horror stories and movies. Fantasy and horror are substantively alike in that they both use something fantastic. A lot of people don't like this, being unable to suspend disbelief, which isn't completely voluntary anyhow. The only difference is stylistic. It's just that a huge, huge difference.

There is no specific kind of emotional payoff, no thematic unity in SF. There are traditional SF tropes, but this is well nigh completely irrelevant, except that using them stupidly (or not noticing they are worn out) is bad writing. There are what are usually called sub-genres in SF, like time travel paradox stories, which is about changing the past, the equivalent of a child praying "God, please make it didn't happen!" (Or the deliberate subversion, where the past/future are unchangeable, or ontologically opaque as in causal loops.) There are robot stories, about how we are dehumanized by society/technology/biology. There are alien invasion stories, about colonialism inverted. (There were once lost-race stories, about upright colonialism.) There are superpower/superhero stories, about how when we grow up we might become anything (or we ordinary people might become anything.) There are planetary romances which are pretty much the same as the old romance genre stylistically updated to a technological age. And most of all it seems like there are boys' adventure stories, though the boys are often disguised as tall.

Even if one believes that science fiction is a subset of fantasy, that wouldn't mean that all fantasy is science fiction. And even if the line between sci-fi and fantasy (or between sci-fi and non-sci-fi fantasy) is difficult to prescribe, that doesn't mean that people can't generally agree on certain distinctions. I personally know of no one who believes Lord of the Rings is science fiction, for example; everyone agrees it's fantasy.

An island that sinks into the sea is a perfectly good SF trope. Genetic experimentation on humans to create monsters, ditto. Mind reading, telepathy, also, and that's three strikes: LOTR has all three. LOTR isn't struck out though, it's struck in, into the SF field...if you insist on trying to define SF and fantasy by substantive issues like actual possibility, or by some sort of majority vote on whether a convention like being able to see the future is SF ("ESP" or "paranormal",) or fantasy (visions from God.) LOTR is a fantasy because it is written like one, a prolonged immersion in a pastoral world where God selects his agents and by his wonderful and mysterious ways saves us. I'm saying again that it's not the actual content of the fantastic, it's how it functions in the story. I'm afraid I really do think that if you do that, then you have very little trouble assigning the vast majority of works to the proper category.

Greg Cox above asks what difference it makes? With bad writers it doesn't. He mentions The Martian Chronicles. That was an unfortunate example because I read that book as an adult. There were many good things about it, but I always kept wondering why they had to go to Mars to find their small town childhood? Mostly the fantastic elements were detachable, idle ornamentation. (Is this why literary people tend to like Bradbury in the first place?) There was a frustrating feeling that the real story was here on Earth, and the fantastic was a derailment, a kind of bait and switch. Which, to me, come to think of it, turned out to be Something Wicked This Way Comes, which I thought more gripping because it was stylistically of a piece. And this is not least because the combination of escapism and self-absorption, very much a fantasy in the vicarious wish fulfillment sense of the word, suits fantasy in the style sense of the word so much better.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

An island that sinks into the sea is a perfectly good SF trope. Genetic experimentation on humans to create monsters, ditto. Mind reading, telepathy, also, and that's three strikes: LOTR has all three. LOTR isn't struck out though, it's struck in, into the SF field...if you insist on trying to define SF and fantasy by substantive issues like actual possibility, or by some sort of majority vote on whether a convention like being able to see the future is SF ("ESP" or "paranormal",) or fantasy (visions from God.) LOTR is a fantasy because it is written like one, a prolonged immersion in a pastoral world where God selects his agents and by his wonderful and mysterious ways saves us. I'm saying again that it's not the actual content of the fantastic, it's how it functions in the story. I'm afraid I really do think that if you do that, then you have very little trouble assigning the vast majority of works to the proper category.

That really has so little to do with what I wrote and my other posts in this thread that I have no idea why you're quoting me. For one thing, I never said that I favored the use of checklists or prescribed criteria to assign genre. If anything, I've been arguing against those.

It does however shed some light on what you meant upthread by "SF is a style, not a genre." However, I still think that's incorrect. SF is a genre. I, Robot has been cited as an example work from that genre. Case closed, science fiction is a genre.

I haven't committed to a formulation of what makes a work sci-fi, or of what defines the genre if you want to put it that way, because my experience indicates that trying to express such a formulation is a futile endeavor.

---

But on a factual matter, God is not a character in LOTR, and in my opinion your interpretation of LOTR as being a work about how God saves mankind or us by his agents and his other mysterious ways is all wrong. When it comes to saving Middle-earth, it is the choices of the bearers of the One Ring and their sacrifices that matter the most. The remaining Company of the Ring, including Gandalf, perform crucial tasks, as do others, but those tasks are of only secondary importance compared to the task of destroying the Ring, and are all therefore ultimately diversionary in nature.

Actions of Eru, the One, were discussed in The Silmarillion. AFAIK, the only time that the One is stated to have done anything at all in LOTR is in Appendix A when "Númenor was thrown down and swallowed in the Sea," which was ancient history as far as LOTR is concerned. Appendix A also makes reference to death being the gift of the One to Men according to Eldar lore, and AFAIK this is the only other time that the One is mentioned in LOTR at all.

When Gandalf is resurrected, Gandalf says only that he was sent back naked for a brief time until his task is done. He does not say who or what sent him back, and nor does he say who or what assigned him his task. In Appendix B, it says about the Wizards in the Third Age:

When maybe a thousand years had passed, and the first shadow had fallen on Greenwood the Great, the Istari or Wizards appeared in Middle-earth. It was afterwards said that they came out of the Far West and were messengers sent to contest the power of Sauron, and to unite all those who had the will to resist him; but they were forbidden to match his power with power, or to seek to dominate Elves or Men by force and fear.​

Again, there is no mention of who or what sent the Wizards or assigned them their tasks. For all that, one must consult The Silmarillion.

Again, in LOTR it is about the choices that people in Middle-earth make, especially the Ring-bearers.

 

[Mysterion]

And it's perhaps worth remembering that scientifically-rigorous "Hard SF" is just one kind of SF, otherwise we wouldn't need an extra adjective to distinguish it from other kinds of SF: space operas, military SF, swashbuckling planetary romances, allegorical SF, sci-fi comedies, etc.

Yup, SF is a pretty broad playing field. I've noticed, especially the last few years, more and more of fandom who don't consider something to be SF unless it has spaceships, aliens, and robots. There's plenty of SF that has none of those things and yet are still brilliant examples of science fiction (i.e. Robert Silverberg's novel Dying Inside). And, in my opinion, the movies Sneakers is a SF film - the premise revolves around a basic SF "what if?" concept - what if there was a device that could break any encryption near instantaneously (I'm pretty sure no such code breaking device currently exist, but please correct me if I'm wrong)? The fact that it's framed as a "caper" type story with some humorous elements doesn't change it's inherent SF-ness, IMO.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Yup, SF is a pretty broad playing field. I've noticed, especially the last few years, more and more of fandom who don't consider something to be SF unless it has spaceships, aliens, and robots. There's plenty of SF that has none of those things and yet are still brilliant examples of science fiction (i.e. Robert Silverberg's novel Dying Inside). And, in my opinion, the movies Sneakers is a SF film - the premise revolves around a basic SF "what if?" concept - what if there was a device that could break any encryption near instantaneously (I'm pretty sure no such code breaking device currently exist, but please correct me if I'm wrong)? The fact that it's framed as a "caper" type story with some humorous elements doesn't change it's inherent SF-ness, IMO.

Sneakers is a most excellent movie. It seems to go under the radar a bit and I've tried to get people into it.

A lot of good lines in the movie and a lot of very relevant points made in the last 30 minutes of it which I feel relate to the present day.

 

[Mysterion]

Sneakers is a most excellent movie. It seems to go under the radar a bit and I've tried to get people into it.

A lot of good lines in the movie and a lot of very relevant points made in the last 30 minutes of it which I feel relate to the present day.

Couldn't agree more. It deserves a lot more attention then it has gotten. Smart and witty script, and a great cast who really come across as an interesting group of people you immediately like and root for. And, IMO, it is a good science fiction story - what would happen if you could break any code/encryption? What effect would this have on society? And you are right that a lot of the issues this movie raises were just a little bit prescient.

I keep a spare copy of this movie on DVD to lend out to folks who've not seen it.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Couldn't agree more. And, IMO, it is a good science fiction story - what would happen if you could break any code/encryption? What effect would this have on society? And you are right that a lot of the issues this movie raises were just a little bit prescient.

I keep a spare copy of this movie on DVD to lend out to folks who've not seen it.

Things I took great note of

Cosmo's speech sitting on the Cray computer about money.

That speech he also gave to Martin on the roof as they escaped about information being the new warfare. Whoever wrote this movie was way, way ahead of their time. Also the NSA wanted the black box to spy on Americans.

 

[Mysterion]

^^^^
Yup. Cosmo's speech is one of the highpoints of the film, and Kingsley is fascinating to watch in this. You can't help but pay attention to him whenever he's onscreen.

BTW, this was from the same folks who gave us Wargames - also a good piece of SF which raise some important questions.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

^^^^
Yup. Cosmo's speech is one of the highpoints of the film, and Kingsley is fascinating to watch in this. You can't help but pay attention to him whenever he's onscreen.

BTW, this was from the same folks who gave us Wargames - also a good piece of SF which raise some important questions.

I have to agree. Now you got me wanting to watch this again and it's past 1am. I am going to watch it again later on today.

 

[stj]

CorporalCupcake I quoted you because you seemed to be responding directly to me, when you quoted me. My apologies. I will note that words in English have multiple meanings, so that "genre" can refer to the kind of writing it is, in general terms such as prose, poetry, drama. Or it can be more specific forms, such as autobiography, essay, epistolary novel, dialogue, fable, romance (which has two common meanings itself,) and so on. And it can mean a very specific kind of story, such as time travel story, robot story, alien invasion story, mutant story, etc. That kind of story has a thematic unity. The thing is, the terms "fantasy" and "SF" are misleading. SF has no thematic unity. (If fantasy does, it's reactionary escapism which people would mostly deny, so I will continue the assumption fantasy has no thematic unity.) People who err in misusing them as synonyms tend to write the pseudorealism of SF badly because their mistaken ideas of how the fantastic is the fantastic and there's no real difference is tone deaf to the difference in style. And that's why pretending they are really the same makes a difference. They're the same for people who have a visceral rejection of the fantastic, true...but why should people who aren't even interested provide the understanding. Seems like a path to misunderstanding to me.

The near future element in Sneakers does indeed provide a fantastic element. Thus, it does indeed rely on a pseudorealistic style. As it happens, this one is more plausible, needing less rationalization in story (fantasy doens't need rationalization, rather resists it in fact, another reason confusing SF and fantasy styles is such a problem in the long run.) Doesn't make it any less SF style. But the thing is, Sneakers is still a caper movie. That is it's genre. The only people who really need note the SF element in Sneakers are those who get peeved because it's not plausible to them, who can't suspend their disbelief. Because the Sf element in Sneakers seems at first glance to be plausible, people who confuse fantasy and SF think Sneakers can't be SF style, because it's not an impossibility. There are submarines now, they are no longer an impossibility, so Verne's Leagues isn't SF any more? Thinking fantasy and Sf are the same is madness.

I, Robot is an interesting example of SF which can only be written as SF. If you had to boil it down, like all robot stories I, Robot is driven by an interest in how we are a kind of robot programmed by evolution. Many of the stories are about how simple rules cannot serve in all cases, how we will still do unpredictable things. The conclusion of course is that programming/reason takes over in the form of the Machines. These kinds of stories could only be written by someone holding scientific materialist views about our nature. (The same is true of Frankenstein, by the way.) Most stories still could be written by people who believe in God but just don't think much about Him.

There are actually some instances of truly orthogonal approaches to the fantastic...but they're not Star Wars and such. They're writers like Flann O'Brien or Jorge Luis Borges. The pseudorealism of SF is wholly irrelevant to them. And there is zero commitment to the revival of the supernatural. So nobody wastes any time thinking of these guys as exemplifying the unity of fantasy/SF, because they don't. They too have the fantastic, but they are stylistically entirely different. Fantasy and SF are about style.

My judgments of course.

PS Were Graustark or Prisoner of Zenda fantasy? And, cross-posting, so I will add that WarGames is in the thriller genre. And if anything really distinguishes it, it is the anti-war message, not the near future SF element. (This is especially true since the near-futureness turned out to be a mistake on the makers' part.)