What tropes in science fiction annoy you?
- Thread starter Gingerbread Demon
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It’s true of China and India but not of smaller countries.
Star Trek had a salt vampire and a vampire cloud (neither of which annoyed me).
Reading quickly, I thought you had a hard-boiled noir Godzilla book in mind.I have the opposite attitude. I love tearing down genre barriers and and mashing them together...hard-boiled occult noir, superheroes vs. Gothic
It depends on the work, of course. I'm not going to insist on inserting a leprechaun into a "serious" hard-sf novel, unless you're talking a holodeck or "Shore Leave" planet scenario, but when in doubt I tend to lean toward playful if you can get away with it. If genre conventions block you from doing something cool and fun and interesting, damn the conventions, full speed ahead. "Playful" is generally a positive in my book.
And, to my mind, a cross-genre story doesn't have to be writing about writing (although I confess I enjoy that kinda thing sometimes). Sticking an ancient Egyptian mummy into a space opera doesn't mean you can't get invested in the characters and their challenges and feelings. An alcoholic starship captain wrestling with the demons of his past can still have "real emotions" regardless of whether he's tracking down a space pirate or a cyborg or a were-coyote.
Or a cyborg were-coyote space pirate.
As for "grotesque" tonal shifts, I gotta admit that one of the things I most enjoyed about writing for DC years ago was that sometimes I got to write a different genre every other scene: I could do spooky horror stuff with the Spectre, Greco-Roman fantasy with the Amazons on Paradise Island, and gritty urban crime stuff in Gotham City . . . all in the same book!
It was a blast.
(That being said, I did once ask an author to delete an extreme gross-out horror scene from a novel just because it felt out of place with the rest of the book, which was more of a romantic fantasy about elves and fairies. But that wasn't a case of genre conventions so much as that one particular scene standing out like a bloody, dismembered thumb.)
I like seeing different things blended together into something new, but I have to agree that huge tonal shifts are usually a massive turn-off.
For example, I was recently reading the original Brood saga from the Uncanny X-Men. Starts as clear sci-fi horror, basically the x-men version of Alien, and then suddenly Storm is being resurrected by a magic space whale which had no previous introduction and telling the whole team that the brood are some cosmic force of chaos or destruction which has to be 'balanced out' by a cosmic force of creation (which is, of course, the magic space whales - never mind how they're supposed to balance anything out, given the brood repeatedly conquer them with ease, nor why 'balancing out' the brood is supposed to be at all good, rather than annihilating them). And in the end their mission is to go mercy kill the magic space whale messiah who's trapped on the brood homeworld so that his spirit can be released and establish a new magic space whale messiah to restore the balance, and as soon as they do that the magic space whale's magic will just instantly solve all their other problems.
The concepts here weren't all bad. But they way they started with the sci-fi horror angle and then just threw it out the window so they could use a fantastical reset button happy ending was really irritating - like I was robbed of the rest of the actual story they started out with. And I'm not saying they needed to drop the magic angle altogether, but if it was going to be an important part of the story, it should've been there from the beginning. Don't toss that kind of stuff in halfway through.
There's a difference though. Vampires are supposed to be dead and kept in motion by some outworld magic. That's where conventional sci. fi. and fantastic part ways.
Eh, folk mythology, fiction, and film have envisioned vampires in so many ways that it's nigh impossible to say what vampires are supposed to be in any definitive sense. They are always whatever the writer/creator determines them to be. That has covered a lot of ground down through the ages. It is nice to see western media get out of the western version of them whenever possible. Can't say I have much use for sparkly goth vampires, though.
It's not that I dislike blended Sci-Fi/Horror, the complain is more when there's a jarring transition. As in it's not laid out as horror in space, you had a straight up Sci-Fi story that just seemed to get lost in the 3rd act somewhere and couldn't figure out how to wrap up the premise, so someone went nuts. It's like the writer thought he had a good concept, but couldn't figure out the ending, or couldn't figure out how to make it exciting/challenging enough without a psycho loose on the ship towards the end. There are ways to do it without just having a boring conclusion or tossing it overboard for a slasher film.
it would be like towards the end of The Martian, where instead of working through technical challenges, they just tossed some Martian monsters out there for Matt Damon to have to fight/escape from. Not needed, and would have wrecked a good movie. Just seems some writers can't help themselves...
Event Horizon was always intended to be like that, so while it went a little over the top, it wasn't out of character. Aliens, same deal, it was a blended story the whole time. Sunshine just couldn't figure out where to go, so just had someone go nuts and stalk people for no reason to add 'drama'.
it would be like towards the end of The Martian, where instead of working through technical challenges, they just tossed some Martian monsters out there for Matt Damon to have to fight/escape from. Not needed, and would have wrecked a good movie. Just seems some writers can't help themselves...
Event Horizon was always intended to be like that, so while it went a little over the top, it wasn't out of character. Aliens, same deal, it was a blended story the whole time. Sunshine just couldn't figure out where to go, so just had someone go nuts and stalk people for no reason to add 'drama'.
Well the UK is literally 4 nations
Why not? The leprechaun could be wrestling with her demons while tracking down some crazy human
Exactly. There are no "rules" regarding vampires: sometimes they're supernatural creatures out of folklore, sometimes there's a pseudo-scientific explanation regarding viruses or mutation, sometimes they're an evolutionary offshoot of humanity, or secretly extraterrestrials, sometimes it's just a psychological kink, etc. See "Shambleau" by C.L. Moore, "I Am Legend" by Matheson, "Some of Your Blood" by Sturgeon, etc. Vampires are an all-purpose metaphor for just about anything: addiction, disease, sex, capitalism, predatory relationships, co-dependence, etc., which is why they're such a versatile plot device.
Did I mention that I once wrote a non-fiction book on vampire literature for an academic press? You don't want to get me started on the subject . . .. .
Horror is a genre in the sense of belonging to a tradition of stories and novels with a thematic family similarity. In the case of horror, about real world fears in fantastic form, revising borrowed tropes. At its crudest, horror is like riding a roller coaster, which is a safe way of being scared by falling. The payoff in horror is goosebumps.
Science fiction doesn't have a specific kind of pleasure that it delivers. It's just a stylistic choice, a kind of fiction that has something fantastic in it that is yet somehow supposed to be real, or potentially real in some other land or planet or dimension or time. This stylistic choice is at odds with fantasy, a style of fiction where the fantastic is prized precisely because it interrupts, disrupts, replaces, displaces, underlies our boring science/technology, with all its reliance on social production and industry and transportation and so on. Fantasy may be a genre in the sense that its payoff is the wishful thinking that magic is real, just like the happier people of the past believed. The commercial indifference to style is an issue in marketing where the goal is to appeal to as many people as possible.
Personally I have gotten to the point when I read a fantasy story about an alcoholic, I wonder why they don't get a magic cure. And if they aren't looking, I'm thinking they don't really have a problem with it. But I can't say it's bad fantasy, because alcoholism isn't a mental disease or neural incapacity, it's a spiritual malaise. In fantasy, there are no rules. When I read about an alcoholic in SF where medical technology can't cure diseases of the soul like alcoholism, I'm thinking the writer is just thoughtlessly inserting reactionary prejudices, that it's bad SF.
Science fiction doesn't have a specific kind of pleasure that it delivers. It's just a stylistic choice, a kind of fiction that has something fantastic in it that is yet somehow supposed to be real, or potentially real in some other land or planet or dimension or time. This stylistic choice is at odds with fantasy, a style of fiction where the fantastic is prized precisely because it interrupts, disrupts, replaces, displaces, underlies our boring science/technology, with all its reliance on social production and industry and transportation and so on. Fantasy may be a genre in the sense that its payoff is the wishful thinking that magic is real, just like the happier people of the past believed. The commercial indifference to style is an issue in marketing where the goal is to appeal to as many people as possible.
Personally I have gotten to the point when I read a fantasy story about an alcoholic, I wonder why they don't get a magic cure. And if they aren't looking, I'm thinking they don't really have a problem with it. But I can't say it's bad fantasy, because alcoholism isn't a mental disease or neural incapacity, it's a spiritual malaise. In fantasy, there are no rules. When I read about an alcoholic in SF where medical technology can't cure diseases of the soul like alcoholism, I'm thinking the writer is just thoughtlessly inserting reactionary prejudices, that it's bad SF.
It's funny. I have at least one friend--a huge SF fan--who doesn't get horror at all, mostly because he always approaches the plot in terms of problem-solving and practicality: "Well, why don't they just . . . ?" I keep trying to explain that horror is not about cool, competent professionals solving problems, it's about emotional states--fear, guilt, despair, regret, anxiety, paranoia, madness, obsession, etc--not to mention hefty amounts of mood and atmosphere. Which, to my mind, is at least as compelling as figuring out how to terraform Mars or cope with artificial intelligences.or whatever.
Ideally, combining genres gives you the best of both worlds: you get the cool futuristic, world-building stuff AND goosebumps.
Granted, you can do it wrong, too. I once caught an off-Broadway adaptation of DARK SHADOWS that suffered because there was no consistent tone: half the cast was playing it straight, while the other half was camping it up as though they were doing THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE. Didn't really work.
I will concede that if you want to mix and mash genres, you should probably make that clear from the beginning. Suddenly introducing a leprechaun into the last act of THE MARTIAN would be jarring. But if a book or movie begins with a robot, a leprechaun, and a time-traveling Amazon princess walking into a bar, you know what you're in for!
Ideally, combining genres gives you the best of both worlds: you get the cool futuristic, world-building stuff AND goosebumps.
Granted, you can do it wrong, too. I once caught an off-Broadway adaptation of DARK SHADOWS that suffered because there was no consistent tone: half the cast was playing it straight, while the other half was camping it up as though they were doing THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE. Didn't really work.
I will concede that if you want to mix and mash genres, you should probably make that clear from the beginning. Suddenly introducing a leprechaun into the last act of THE MARTIAN would be jarring. But if a book or movie begins with a robot, a leprechaun, and a time-traveling Amazon princess walking into a bar, you know what you're in for!
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Forgive the double post, but this seemed like a separate issue that deserved its own response.
I'd argue that the same applies to SF, where much of the appeal is strangeness, novelty, exoticism, and even disruption. Few people come to SF because they want to be "bored" by science and technology; they want to experience amazing new worlds and discoveries. And indeed much of classic SF is about our present world being disrupted or replaced by some shocking new sci-fi development: first contact with aliens, the invention of time-travel, an apocalyptic global disaster, apes taking over the world, etc. See, for example, "The War of the Worlds," "The Day The Earth Stood Still," "Childhood's End," "More than Human," "Colossus: The Forbin Project," and pretty much anything written by Wells or Wyndham . . ..
In my experience, lots of people are drawn to SF for the same reason they're drawn to fantasy or even supernatural horror: because they're attracted by the strange and different, regardless of whether you're talking about a flying carpet, a witch's broom, or an "anti-grav textile."
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An alcoholic starship captain wrestling with the demons of his past can still have "real emotions" regardless of whether he's tracking down a space pirate or a cyborg or a were-coyote.
Or a cyborg were-coyote space pirate.
I'm sure there's an anime like that out there.. some where..
As a genre, I don't care much for horror, but I do like Gothic Horror, I guess because it serves more as story structure and as ways to explore things more than it does to expressly scare which modern horror has evolved to. In that vein, it's interesting to see just how much the language and how it's interpreted has changed. In the past, you'd get a description of a "hulking horror", mostly referring to a thing we didn't understand or some creation. Now it seems like it's more about jump-tactics and eliciting strong reactions. On the other hand, supernatural thrillers and psychological thrillers seem to be more like the horror of old.
Doesn't Switzerland have four official languages and cultures to match?
"Horror" is a big umbrella, just like "science fiction," encompassing everything from Poe to TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.
Same way SF encompasses everything from A Princess of Mars to 2001.
A little reminder, we are talking generalities here, not about Greg Cox's writing, some of which I personally own, so no, this isn't about his badness.
But people, "horror" is not a big umbrella. Horror stories try to horrify the reader. Those are the only kinds of stories that fall under the horror "umbrella." To be sure, there are all kinds of horrors, including psychological and existential. That doesn't make it a different kind of story, just a different story. And a horror story that has some fantastic element that is presented with an effort at verisimilitude merely uses SF style. It still means to chill. One that has a magical threat uses a fantasy style has exactly the same aim. Other horror stories and movies use no fantastic elements at all. (Or at least not visibly, by accepted convention.) SF, fantasy, realist horror is all horror, not SF horror, not fantasy horror, not realist horror. No one has ever been confused enough to talk about realist horror. And that's why sticking a horror story into what began as an SF story was so jarring in Sunshine. Even if Danny Boyle thought he was just crashing genre barriers and none of it made a difference, he was just wrong. As for SF, that's written with an attempt at verisimilitude. That's what makes it an SF style. Fantasy is not written to seem "real." That's why it's really a kind of category error to mix them up.
As to the readers who don't distinguish between fantasy and SF, well, yes there have always been readers completely indifferent to style, valuing creativity and vicarious wish fulfillment much more highly. H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs and E.E. "Doc" Smith made a living at it.
But people, "horror" is not a big umbrella. Horror stories try to horrify the reader. Those are the only kinds of stories that fall under the horror "umbrella." To be sure, there are all kinds of horrors, including psychological and existential. That doesn't make it a different kind of story, just a different story. And a horror story that has some fantastic element that is presented with an effort at verisimilitude merely uses SF style. It still means to chill. One that has a magical threat uses a fantasy style has exactly the same aim. Other horror stories and movies use no fantastic elements at all. (Or at least not visibly, by accepted convention.) SF, fantasy, realist horror is all horror, not SF horror, not fantasy horror, not realist horror. No one has ever been confused enough to talk about realist horror. And that's why sticking a horror story into what began as an SF story was so jarring in Sunshine. Even if Danny Boyle thought he was just crashing genre barriers and none of it made a difference, he was just wrong. As for SF, that's written with an attempt at verisimilitude. That's what makes it an SF style. Fantasy is not written to seem "real." That's why it's really a kind of category error to mix them up.
As to the readers who don't distinguish between fantasy and SF, well, yes there have always been readers completely indifferent to style, valuing creativity and vicarious wish fulfillment much more highly. H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs and E.E. "Doc" Smith made a living at it.
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