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Irrational Science Fiction & Fantasy Clichés

Bigphoot2 said:
They never seem to realise that they can avoid a face to face punch-up with us Earthlings simply by bombarding us with asteroids from a safe distance.
The cliche that always annoyed me was when someone got zapped with a ray-gun they would glow and then vanish - how did the ray of whatever it was know exactly what to disintegrate? The person being shot would disintegrate but the ground they were standing on would be fine.
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It would be even easier to bombard Earth with viruses.
 
tuco said:
It would be even easier to bombard Earth with viruses.
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It seems they don't have to.

Alien hives run by a queen It seems we have a human need to assume someone's in control, even when creating fictional species whose weird sinister threat stems from them not being individuals. But queens are not in charge of social insect colonies in any real sense. They're just breeding machines.
 
One more item, although I know others have occurred to me over the years. I should have taken notes. To reiterate, my list is not things that make no sense but appeared in one or two franchises. That's just the rules of that franchise. Nor is it cliches in science fiction in general. It's those things that appear repeatedly in science fiction, so much so we rarely question them, but actually are so unlikely they really don't have a place in fiction.

Force fields/deflector shields What spaceship would be complete without an apparent physical barrier somehow projected at a programmed distance around it? And how the hell is it remotely feasible? I know an electromagnetic field can be generated, and would perhaps be necessary for prolonged space flight. But what we commonly see depicted in science fiction is a world away from that. It's a barrier which is physical in every practical sense.

So, this has been an exercise in establishing how dull my science fiction novel would be. No interstellar spacecraft. No aliens, unless they're drifting by just to say hi. Certainly none of the thinly veiled commentary on racism one might get from human/extraterrestrial breeding. No gravity manipulation, no holograms, no ray guns, no force fields, no thrilling space dog fights, probably no practical space travel for humans whatsoever, no intelligent machines that might rise up against us.
 
eburacum said:
Artificial non-rotating gravity is a bug-bear of mine. The movie Silent Running is a particular offender. They have magical artificial gravity, but lack the ability to grow plants in space (for some reason they place their greenhouse in orbit round Saturn, where sunlight is about 100 times less bright than on Earth).
I can't imagine any reasonable pattern of technology development where they gain the ability to manipulate gravitons but lose the ability to calculate light intensity.
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Also, when two such ships with artificial gravity meet, they're always the same way up! What're the chances?
 
I'm skeptical about a lot of tropes, but I'm not skeptical about AI. It's pretty much inevitable in one way or another. But it probably won't be anything like the way we imagine it today.
 
Bigphoot2 said:
They never seem to realise that they can avoid a face to face punch-up with us Earthlings simply by bombarding us with asteroids from a safe distance.
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You've not seen Starship Troopers then? Though I've always felt it is strongly implied it is a "false flag" operation by the Earth military government.
 
Yeah IIRC the situation in SST is that Earth's expanding to colonize the galaxy then they start finding planets inhabited by bugs. At first they don't even realize the bugs are intelligent and just try to exterminate them... which turns into a full scale war eventually.
 
eburacum said:
I'm skeptical about a lot of tropes, but I'm not skeptical about AI. It's pretty much inevitable in one way or another. But it probably won't be anything like the way we imagine it today.
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Do you think we'll ever create an AI that is capable of more than the job for which it's designed? I'm not convinced.
 
PeteByrdie said:
Force fields/deflector shields What spaceship would be complete without an apparent physical barrier somehow projected at a programmed distance around it? And how the hell is it remotely feasible? I know an electromagnetic field can be generated, and would perhaps be necessary for prolonged space flight. But what we commonly see depicted in science fiction is a world away from that. It's a barrier which is physical in every practical sense.
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Arthur C Clarke had an interesting variation of this in his short story The Songs of Distant Earth. The spaceship would fire water into space before leaving orbit which would be moulded into a cone of ice carried in front of the ship to deflect space debris.
 
PeteByrdie said:
Do you think we'll ever create an AI that is capable of more than the job for which it's designed? I'm not convinced.
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What will probably happen is that we'll continually redefine what true intelligence is, so that we can say that humans are capable of intelligent action while AI is not. Over time the number of things humans can do (while AIs cannot) will get smaller, but quite likely this number will never reach zero.
 
eburacum said:
I'm skeptical about a lot of tropes, but I'm not skeptical about AI. It's pretty much inevitable in one way or another. But it probably won't be anything like the way we imagine it today.
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I'd classify AI (as all too many people misunderstand it - i.e., as an artificially created version of human "intelligence") as one of the "irrational" tropes as described by PeteByrdie.

More specifically ... Most folks have never understood that AI (as a scientific / technical effort) seeks to emulate situation- or task-specific human performance we call "intelligent" only because we extend credit to those among us who act "well" (in some sense) within those situations or tasks. This demonstrably feasible and useful sort of thing may as well be labeled Artificial Situational Skill (ASS :evillaugh: ).

Instead, the casual reader erroneously presumes AI refers to an artificial version of whatever innate, generalized, and context-free capabilities underlie effective action / performance in humans. This latter spin is the purported purview of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), and it's the version that's been the standard in science fiction since long before the label "AI" originated.

The entire concept of "intelligence" at this more general level is still an ill-defined mystery. It's known by ascribing it in a given case or to a given individual, but we don't seem to be able to clearly say what it is in and of itself.


eburacum said:
What will probably happen is that we'll continually redefine what true intelligence is, so that we can say that humans are capable of intelligent action while AI is not. Over time the number of things humans can do (while AIs cannot) will get smaller, but quite likely this number will never reach zero.
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My sole resistance to this statement concerns the notion of "redefining." You can't redefine something that hasn't been positively defined in the first place.

Until and unless we ever develop a defensible positive specification for what constitutes "intelligence" in the first place, it will remain as futile and "irrational" to think we can speak intelligently about artificial intelligence as it is to think we can speak definitively about alien intelligence.

In any case, we have a more appropriate thread for any further discussion ...

Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/artificial-intelligence-a-i.493/
 
escargot said:
The miracle invention of artificial gravity made the Star Wars, Star Trek etc franchises possible. It's so taken for granted that nobody even mentions it.

Dunno how it's supposed to work but the cliche is exploited for comic effect in iAvenue 5.
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In one of The Expanse novels there's a whole bunch of spaceships congregating for reasons of plot, when more plot happens and everyone forcefully loses power, including artificial gravity. This causes lots of deaths due people being slammed into things. And many more serious injuries. This is made worse as, without gravity, wounds don't bleed properly, blood doesn't clot properly and lungs filled with fluid don't drain. You almost never see this in films. It's just gravity or gentle floating.
 
EnolaGaia said:
I'd classify AI (as all too many people misunderstand it - i.e., as an artificially created version of human "intelligence") as one of the "irrational" tropes as described by PeteByrdie.

More specifically ... Most folks have never understood that AI (as a scientific / technical effort) seeks to emulate situation- or task-specific human performance we call "intelligent" only because we extend credit to those among us who act "well" (in some sense) within those situations or tasks. This demonstrably feasible and useful sort of thing may as well be labeled Artificial Situational Skill (ASS :evillaugh: ).

Instead, the casual reader erroneously presumes AI refers to an artificial version of whatever innate, generalized, and context-free capabilities underlie effective action / performance in humans. This latter spin is the purported purview of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), and it's the version that's been the standard in science fiction since long before the label "AI" originated.

The entire concept of "intelligence" at this more general level is still an ill-defined mystery. It's known by ascribing it in a given case or to a given individual, but we don't seem to be able to clearly say what it is in and of itself.




My sole resistance to this statement concerns the notion of "redefining." You can't redefine something that hasn't been positively defined in the first place.

Until and unless we ever develop a defensible positive specification for what constitutes "intelligence" in the first place, it will remain as futile and "irrational" to think we can speak intelligently about artificial intelligence as it is to think we can speak definitively about alien intelligence.

In any case, we have a more appropriate thread for any further discussion ...

Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/artificial-intelligence-a-i.493/
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Notwithstanding redirection to that other thread. I read an article many years ago about computer games. I think it specifically involved the release of the game Quake. It spoke of the game's lauded AI, saying that the term 'artificial intelligence' is misused in gaming contexts. One might as well call a flight simulator 'artificial flying'. The baddies of the game were directed by simulated intelligence. They appeared to be acting upon rational thought but were simply programmed to respond in certain ways.

As an analogue, someone earlier in this thread, I'm sorry I can't remember who, talked about artificial gravity being created in a rotating vessel large enough. I may be not be representing their statement correctly because I'm on my sixth Guinness (lockdown life). Anyway, that use of angular momentum simulates gravity, but it's not the creation of actual gravity artificially. Similarly, we're making headway creating learning intelligence in the way animals do, but most of what we refer to as AI is actually simulated intelligence.
 
I would point you to a fantastic (if unusual) science fiction movie of recent years, Computer Chess, where they find AI in a chess playing program, but...

...the computers with this revolutionary program are left out in the rain, ruining the new life for good.

Thus AI is shown to be far more vulnerable than natural life. All you need to do is switch it off.
 
PeteByrdie said:
... someone earlier in this thread, I'm sorry I can't remember who, talked about artificial gravity being created in a rotating vessel large enough. ...that use of angular momentum simulates gravity, but it's not the creation of actual gravity artificially.
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That's a different type of simulation. A rotating vessel exerts pressure underneath the feet of an occupant, and therefore accelerates that occupant towards the axis of rotation. Since acceleration is equivalent to gravitation according to Einstein's Equivalence Principle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_principle
this turns out not to be simulated gravity at all, but real gravity. It would be indistinguishable from gravity if it weren't for the annoying effects of spinning and coriolis forces.

Indeed, the other scientifically plausible form of artificial gravity is that experienced in a constantly accelerating spaceship. They use this effect in The Expanse, and in many of Heinlein's stories. This form of gravity is indistinguishable in principle from mass-gravitation, until you turn the rocket motor off, that is.
 
Another trope that annoys me is the rocket-at-the-back syndrome. Almost every film and TV series shows the spaceships with a rocket at the back, blasting away all the time; but for most journeys the rocket would be at the front for at least some of the time, decelerating after the ship has reached maximum velocity.

You certainly wouldn't be accelerating towards a planet you were hoping to land on; during a landing you either rely on atmospheric friction to slow yourself down, or you fire your rockets towards the planet, or (usually) both.

Here's the re-entry procedure for Shuttle, showing how the ship decelerates (image 2) by pointing the rocket motor forward, then needs to reverse again to become an aerodynamic flying brick.
JbUZB.jpg
 
Kryptonite said:
Highly evolved alien civilisations will always;

a) wear togas

and/or

b) have lots of ornamental fountains in the corridors of their white plastic cities.
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I'd never spotted that before. I suppose such advanced beings are made to resemble our ideas of Heaven, Olympus or whatever.
 
H G Wells might have been influential in creating this trope. Here he is on the set of Shape of Things to Come.

Remote-linked image inaccessible or missing. Here's a replacement that's probably the same image.
(It is-Ebur)

WellsOnSet-ThingsToCome.jpg
​
 
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On a couple of other related future fashion themes ...

What's with the elaborate shoulder treatments in "futuristic" or "space" garb?

Why do so many vintage versions of "future" or "alien" garb resemble liturgical clothing and accessories?
 
That's all a bit 'Cruella De Vil'.
 
eburacum said:
Indeed, the other scientifically plausible form of artificial gravity is that experienced in a constantly accelerating spaceship. They use this effect in The Expanse, and in many of Heinlein's stories. This form of gravity is indistinguishable in principle from mass-gravitation, until you turn the rocket motor off, that is.
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This is a bit of a weird one as it requires you to use a specific acceleration speed to achieve the effect. Too fast and you get more than 1g, too slow and you get less than 1g. Also the Gs drop to 0 at any time you're coasting. Which IRL has been the #1 tactic for fuel conservation. Mark a heading and burn until you hit your cruising speed, then let a ballistic trajectory take you where you want to go. How long of a burn at 1G acceleration can you do even? At some point you just stop getting faster.
 
As I recall, 6 months of 1G acceleration will get you close to lightspeed.
 
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