What tropes in science fiction annoy you?

[Greg Cox]

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.

Can't speak to SUNSHINE since I've never seen it. Very possible there was a jarring change of tone that the movie didn't manage to pull off. As opposed to something like EVENT HORIZON (which, ahem, I edited the novelization of), which, as I recall,struck an ominous tone from the beginning. Hell, the spaceship itself looked like a spooky Gothic cathedral . . . ..

(Although I remember inviting a friend to a screening while neglecting to warn her that it was as much horror as SF. She was a bit taken aback, having apparently expected a straightforward space adventure or something. Oops.)

And, honestly, I think you can write fantasy or horror with as much "versimilitude" as SF if you're so inclined. Ultimately, Klingons are no more "real" than genies, so it's simply a matter of how "seriously" you approach the subject matter. Genre can be useful as a marketing tool, but why worry about "category errors" if it means you can't have robot vampires? (See "The Stainless Steel Leech" by Zelazny.) It's science fiction after all. It's an art not a science. To my mind, imagination and creativity trump any textbook definitions of what constitutes proper SF or whatever. Ultimately, we're all just telling campfire stories.

Granted, you pegged me with the Edgar Rice Burroughs thing. I devoured Burroughs as a kid, so that probably helped shape my personal tastes and views of science fiction..

(And don't worry. I'm not taking any of this personally. Never thought this was about my writing, just the pros and cons of mixing genres together, which is a fun topic to discuss.)

One can also argue that horror and SF have overlapped since Day One. See "Frankenstein," "The Island of Doctor Moreau," "The Invisible Man," "The Flowering of the Strange Orchid," even the blood-sucking octopoids in "The War of the Worlds"--which was probably the first "grown-up" SF novel I ever read, way back in third grade.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

Doesn't Switzerland have four official languages and cultures to match?

Pretty much every country has its backwoods traditionalists versus city progressives, plus all manner of regional variation. That's without even mentioning the many places where traditional ethnic groups/nationalities spill across borders leading to major ethnic communities that don't correspond to any political border. Whether that rises to level of 'might as well be different countries' or not is a matter of interpretation, but I'd strongly suspect there's a significant helping of oversimplification of foreign countries/cultures going on here.

Personally, I would not say that the cultural differences between West Virginia (where I was born) and New York, Illinois or Nevada (where I have family) are really any more overwhelming than the cultural differences between Brabant (where I live now) and the Randstad (the metropolitan agglomeration between Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht), let alone the far north in Friesland where they literally speak a different traditional language and have their own (admittedly anemic) indepedence movement. And that's within a single country that isn't even as big as the state of West Virginia by itself.

 

[Greg Cox]

You can pretty much split Washington state down the middle. West of the mountains, you're mostly talking coastal liberals. East of the mountains, you might as well be in Idaho.

 

[JD]

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.

I don't think you can really set such solid barriers between the genres, there's just to much similarity and bleed through between the genres. Star Trek is pretty much as sci-fi as it gets, but there are times where it goes pretty close to full on fantasy, and Star War kind of see saws back and forth between fantasy and sci-fi.

 

[Discofan]

Doesn't Switzerland have four official languages and cultures to match?

There are over 300 native languages in Indonesia.

 

[Greg Cox]

I don't think you can really set such solid barriers between the genres, there's just to much similarity and bleed through between the genres. Star Trek is pretty much as sci-fi as it gets, but there are times where it goes pretty close to full on fantasy, and Star War kind of see saws back and forth between fantasy and sci-fi.

And even STAR TREK featured a guest-appearance by Jack the Ripper, written by the author of PSYCHO.

Expanding on that idea, it's perhaps worth pointing out that imaginative literature is full of creators who cannot be easily pigeon-holed as SF or fantasy or horror writers, and whose works are all over the map: Bradbury, Matheson, Leiber, Sturgeon, C.L. Moore, Poul Anderson, Ursula K. LeGuin, Gene Wolfe, Tanith Lee, Harlan Ellison, Rod Serling, etc.

In short, the lines are just as blurry behind the scenes.

 

[JD]

Wow, I did not know that about Wolf in the Fold, that is crazy.

 

[Discofan]

Wow, I did not know that about Wolf in the Fold, that is crazy.

What's crazy about it?

 

[Owain Taggart]

"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.

Well sure, and in fact, I think in many ways, Sci-Fi owes a lot to the Horror genre, and I think Sci-Fi might have even evolved from it. In Classics like Frankenstein, we see clear Sci-Fi elements even though I don't think they were labeled as such. And I think Jules Vernes gave us the modern idea of what Sci-fi could be all about. The more and more I think about it, the more I realize they're hard to separate.

 

[Greg Cox]

Wow, I did not know that about Wolf in the Fold, that is crazy.

Bloch, who is probably best known as the author of PSYCHO, actually contributed three eps to TOS, including "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" and "Catspaw."

 

[Discofan]

Bloch, who is probably best known as the author of PSYCHO, actually contributed three eps to TOS, including "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" and "Catspaw."

Three episodes that are strangely similar.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Three episodes that are strangely similar.

What's strange about it?

 

[Greg Cox]

Well sure, and in fact, I think in many ways, Sci-Fi owes a lot to the Horror genre, and I think Sci-Fi might have even evolved from it. In Classics like Frankenstein, we see clear Sci-Fi elements even though I don't think they were labeled as such. And I think Jules Vernes gave us the modern idea of what Sci-fi could be all about. The more and more I think about it, the more I realize they're hard to separate.

It's been argued that Mary Shelley is basically the mother of science fiction, even though, of course, that label wasn't coined until nearly a century later.

 

[Nyotarules]

Bloch, who is probably best known as the author of PSYCHO, actually contributed three eps to TOS, including "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" and "Catspaw."

Three episodes that scared me when I was young. Now I know why.

 

[JD]

What's crazy about it?

Just that I wouldn't usually associate Psycho with Star Trek, they are two very different types of stories.

Bloch, who is probably best known as the author of PSYCHO, actually contributed three eps to TOS, including "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" and "Catspaw."

He definitely gave us some of the creepier episodes.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

What I don't like is when they create a complicated situation that gets you interested and they solve it in a matter of seconds at the end of the episode with nothing more than technobabble. Each time that happens I feel like I've been cheated.

That would cover most of Star Trek.

Oh O....K. I just said that out loud in public.

Shields up

 

[Owain Taggart]

It's been argued that Mary Shelley is basically the mother of science fiction, even though, of course, that label wasn't coined until nearly a century later.

Yep, I'd probably agree with that. She was quite ahead of her time! It's a fantastic story and character study.

 

[Greg Cox]

Yep, I'd probably agree with that. She was quite ahead of her time! It's a fantastic story and character study.

She also wrote one of the first post-apocalyptic novels, "The Last Man," about the sole survivor of plague that wipes out mankind. She certainly thought science-fictionally, well before Verne or Wells or Stapledon.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I'll have to track that down. I'm intrigued to see how it plays out. It certainly seems like she was full of amazing ideas in her time period that we take for granted these days. The whole idea of a post-apocalyptic scenario in those days must have seemed impossible in the sense that it's something that feels more modern.

 

[Discofan]

Yep, I'd probably agree with that. She was quite ahead of her time! It's a fantastic story and character study.

I must have read "Frankenstein" about a dozen times. It's definitely way better than any adaptation that has been made of it.