Ten Things I Hate About Science Fiction

September 5th, 2008

First off, I love science fiction, but when it’s bad, oh boy, there’s little worse. As a writer and scientist, I’m probably more sensitive to some of the bad things than the average person, but there are plenty of things that happen too often that we can probably agree to share for a good two-minute hate. With me so far?

1. Bad science. AKA technobabble or just plain getting things wrong. You know, reverse the polarization and charge this doohickey and wham bam thank you ma’am the aliens are toast! There are a million examples out there. Star Trek, though I love it, is a prime offender. There are a lot of sub-categories, but I’ll try to keep them lumped together except for a few cases that need their own number.

2. Bad writing. This happens less, I think, than in decades past, but it still happens. The President of Earth can still be heard slamming his fist on his desk and ordering that Space Commander Sparky Jones and his sidekick Space Babe Sally do something about the alien menace. OK, there’s probably very little this bad out there any more (Galaxy 666, how I miss you), but some of the sci-fi channel movies have echoes. I recall the first-season intro to Babylon 5 being pretty badly written, for instance, and happily noticing it was later revised.

3. Bad aliens. Aliens who are exactly like humans except for their skin color or nose shape. Aliens with biologies that make no sense with ridiculously simple ecosystems.

4. Inconsistent or illogical time travel. It seems like writers just make up rules for time travel that make no sense a lot more often than other types of stories. I mean, WTF was with that fading photograph in Back to the Future? Don’t try to make too much sense of it, please, or your brain will hurt. And while I’m talking about this, bad history or irrational projection of today’s morals/beliefs on other peoples.

5. Blatant politics or moralizing. Science fiction isn’t a good medium for overt polemics. Covert ones, sure, when you can’t come right out and say what you mean because your government will disappear you, or a topic that is too hot socially, ok. But if you can be blatant, sf is not needed. Be clever, be subtle, otherwise use a posterboard and stand by the roadside.

6. The singularity. Every sf story that takes place in the future doesn’t have to be about the singularity, or even address it. If it ever happens, I doubt people will be looking around and saying, “Hey, did you see that singularity happen?” It won’t be like that.

7. Small universes. The universe is big. Really big. Just acknowledging hyperspace or FTL to avoid this issue is usually not enough. The dang Vipers on Battlestar Galactica, with rocket power alone and not too much fuel, still manage to let pilots zip around entire solar systems without having bathrooms.

8. Monocultures and monoworlds. While arguably plausible in some cases, those cases are rarely made. Instead, worldbuilding is given short-shrift and entire planets are reduced to single simple settings. And Waterworld really wasn’t that good.

9. Dark futures. I like the occasional cautionary tale, but at some point dark became cool and all too prevalent. Despite our problems and challenges, technology and the quality of life has been improving dramatically for the majority of people on Earth. Don’t think about this year compared to last or even this decade compared to the last. Think about your grandparents’ experience at the doctor or the dentist, or shopping by catalog vs. internet, or the outhouse. And who remembers dial-up?

10. Heart/faith/determination triumphing over intellect. This happens all the damn time and it drives me nuts. I like my heroes as smart as my villains, and in a technological world being smart is important. Too often, however, writers seem to like to put all sorts of qualities ahead of intelligence and education. It’s probably thought to be reassuring to mass audiences to put down elites and play up traditional values, but I’m tired of that message, especially during election season. A recent example is the movie Armageddon, where the roughnecks are so much better than the idiots NASA’s been training for months. Ugh!

What am I wrong to hate, and what is even more hateable that I didn’t list?

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