Most hated Concepts

I'm strolling through the book section at the local Borders and I realized that I was looking at Star Trek books. Of these books, I noticed that a tenth of the books listed in the Star Trek section were Time Travel related books. Of the Star Trek episodes that I hated, the Time Travel episodes always erked me.

So I decided to check, What are your two most hated concepts in Speculative Fiction? or Science Fiction?

I hate that SF spawns lists.

I hate that I answer them.

Time travel is one of my favorite themes.
I hate sparkly, pretty vampires.
And warlock schools.

The alien species which cannot conceive of another intelligent life form (i.e., us), yet is intelligent enough to build spaceships.

I don't like SF that is basically a Frankenstein-type story about Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. Especially when it is about a technology that is at its early stages of development or just around the corner. Jurasic Park is one instance.

In Trek, I got very tired of 'super-powerful alien puts the Enterprise crew on trial as proxy for all of humankind'. I warmed to Next Gen when they concentrated all those plot strands into one recurring character (Q) and started playing with the concept and tropes.

Aliens that want to rape our women or eat us. The first is just too kinky & the second is ludicrous.

I'm getting really tired of the new space opera's escalating magnitudes -- characters that live for 1000s of years and seem just like us, and weapons that boil planets and crash suns. The latter left me cold in 30's space opera and the new space opera hasn't done anything different with it.

8> I've been told I'm quite a character, now how do I manage that live for 1000s of years thing?!

#9 Don't die.

#9

Store your brain in a jar.

Anthropomorphic mumbo-jumbo.

One of the few SF novels I've read to introduce truly alien life was Blindsight. I finished it months ago and it still hurts my head thinking about it.

Having said that, I absolutely love Iain M Banks' science fiction, and his stuff is pretty human centric space opera.

I hate time travel plots, because invariably the author pretends to be clever with a handful of paradoxes while ignoring countless others. The only one who pulled it off was Tim Powers with The Anubis Gates.

I also hate cyberpunk where the big secret is that entities in cyberspace are leaking into reality in some unexplained fashion. Especially if the book is coy about it. Was it just in cyberspace or was it real in some way? I don't care! I mean, I could buy it if they were using their cyberspace connections to build huge robots, but then I want diagrams.

I hate the villains who fail to read the "If I were an evil overlord" FAQ

I hate that SF always seems to involve sex in some way, when really it has nothing to do with the story. There are a number of books that I had heard good things about and read, and then got to the random sex scene and stopped. Seriously, I might as well read a romance novel.

I've read more fantasy than science fiction, so my gripes are more in that vein:

Names that appear to have been created by the writer's cat sneezing while laying on the keyboard.

Religions and religious institutions that are, for no apparent reason, poorly veiled forms of Christianity. It strikes me as lazy and doesn't add any interest to the created world.

Signed,

Father Flgrntqew, High Abbot of Saint Hrtgdoj's Mission Among The Reeds, Faithful Servant of the Risen Son. Bleh.

15: Arkholt - what sf novels have you been reading?

17: spoiledfornothing

Exactly what I was thinking. Whilst I don't read as much SF as I used to, I have read hundreds of titles over the past three decades and I can't remember sex in any of them, except some veiled references to it in one of Harry Harrison's satirical novels (and gay sex at that!).

Almost anything by Heinlein (post-juvenile period). The man was obsessed! ;)

I never liked the alien that looks totally human, but with magic powers. Escape to Witch Mountain would be an example. (I do make an exception for Superman and other comic book characters because they live in a fantasy universe.)

15> Sounds like my experience with Harry Turtledove's worldwar series (about lizard aliens invading Earth during WWII) Extremely graphic descriptions of "the act" that I found rather disturbing, and that disrupted the flow of the story.

I hate the concept of 'little green men' as aliens. How stupid can you be to even conceive that aliens are humanoids in appearance and manners? Maybe that is the only way that allowed sci-fi to engage with readers in the early days. Other worlds can challenge our notions of 3 dimensional beings bound by the laws of gravity outside of our planet. They could be blobs, gases ormade of unknown material etc.

17,18: Off the top of my head, I remember hearing great things about Snow Crash and Neuromancer, and having them be ruined for me due to random sex scenes. I also remember a few stories in Analog like that.

>7 jimmaclachlan: I'm disturbed that you find 'rape' kinky. Perhaps you'll find it less so in Gwyneth Jones's White Queen.

I dislike futures (in contemporary SF) that look and feel a lot like the 1970s or 1950s. That said, I generally dislike futures created by authors who lack imagination.

>!8 bet if you created a thread to solicit titles you'd have a long list in no time. You can start with Octavia Butler, Gwyneth Jones, Suzy McKee Charnas, Harlan Ellison, Charles Stross, Greg Egan (with detachable parts!)...

23: Arkholt - i haven't read Neuromancer, but its been on mine mental tbr list for a long time and truthfully, i never imagined it had sex in it, random, cyber or otherwise.

I don't recall the sex in Neuromancer as being bad, but there's so much in books now. I tend to skim through it. I re-read it a few years ago & the biggest impression I had was how dated it was. I read it when it first came out - before too many folks had computers - & it was radical & cool. I have to remember it for that. It was the beginning of a new era in SF.

When I first got Neuromancer, I picked another by the same publisher. I don't recall the name of the book or the publisher (Timescape?) but it was a modern look at zombies. I wish I still had them both. That publisher was a good one.

Another time travel hater. Especially when the author ignores all the paradoxes.

I'm quite happy with the other topics mentioned - mostly, it's more that particular authors are less good at handling aliens/sex/the future. But I haven't read any decent time travelling.

Time travel is quite cliched, but I've some decent books in this vein. David Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself was quite interesting, particularly because the author flagrantly disregards all time travel paradoxes.

Mine is the post-apocalypse "all men (except the protagonist of course) going along with the systemic collection of women for the purposes of serial rape".

That... and dinosaurs "come back to life"

#29

i know someone who would thrive on those types of books. Feel free to leave a few titles behind, so I can pass them on. :>

Did someone say post apocalyptic serial rape?

Put me in with those who hate time travel, except perhaps from Tim Powers.

Also include me with those who despise aliens who act just like people I went to high school with. (If you're going to have aliens, for crying out loud please make them, you know, alien.) Worse still are those who use aliens to stand in for their stereotypes-of-choice; I'm looking at you, Mr. Lucas... I also agree, in similar vein, that beings who live for hundreds or thousands of years should not behave like a teenager in a snit.

I'm generally irked by aliens that just want to eat our planet for no well-specified reason; it seems like a darned long trip for a snack. The Completely Unsympathetic Enemy thing, so common in military sci-fi (and most fantasy), sets my sarcasmotron on overload.

What I really, really hate, though, is anything along the lines of: the future is just like the past, now with lasers. (Paging Mr. Lucas again...) "Space Empires"? Puh-lease. Monarchies are almost gone from the present world; why should they dominate the future? Have the authors no more imagination than to re-invent feudalism? If you want that set of tropes, for crying out loud put 'em in fantasy where they're right at home. :)

Sounds in space.

Spaceships that bank and swoop.

#32: There's some argument for reinventing feudalism in a setting where the physics of space travel recreate the long communication lines we had in the middle ages.

#34

I'd have to agree with that. I like the idea of SF that disregards FTL travel and communication.

It's called Mundane Sf. It caused a bit of a fuss a year or two ago...

I thought mundane SF was set in the very near future, involving modern technologies.

No, I was thinking in terms of far-future space opera, but with the restrictions of no FTL travel and no FTL communication.

#33: ian, you're probably thinking of the worst offender, the title sequence to ST:Voyager.

I look at that and think 'Ah, I see Tom Paris is at the helm again.' There are bound to be space pilots in the future who will make their spaceships bank and swoop whether they're supposed to or not. But Babylon 5 with its spaceships that did behave according to the laws of physics was a blessed relief.

Well, I have liked some things in some books, and then hated them in others, so it is hard to say "Time travel" or "Noble Lords of the Sword and (space)Ship" but . . .

I really really hate aliens or even humans from the future that we are "told" by the author are super fabulous geniuses, because they never deliver.

And I hate "alien" races at war with humans where the aliens are really just the Nazis or the Viet Kong in Cos-play, either because of a failure of imagination of the author or deliberately in a sort of "let us rehash the political causes and resolutions of this war I went through, but with rayguns" way.

Not a great fan of human alien war novels anyway, but some of the David Drake novels have humans fighting aliens that seem pretty alien. So it can be done.

Msg #31 Great Post!!! Geneg,

....SF with no sex scenes?? You are talking about the quick evaporation of a literary genre. How would you sustain the economics without teen aged guys and their allowances being seduced into the field continually?

I dislike SF novels who emulate the Judeo/Christian? "values" of most fiction, especially horror I guess, where whoever has sex is killed. Does this get movies past censors? You would rarely lose money betting on who dies in a horror flick {or most any other} by betting on whoever has sex. I find it most amusing when the women participants are quickly killed off while guys blunder on- keeping with sexual mores stereotypes.

DugsBooks, I'm glad you liked it. I think most people these days if they click on some of my allusions just scratch their heads and go, huh? there are real advantages, culturally, to being an old guy.

Oh! I've finally come up with one.

Intelligent beings, of whatever sort, who cannot speak plain English. It gets rather boring quite quickly.

Any writer/story that jumps on a genre bandwagon but just doesn't get it. I can remember reading some "cyberpunk" novel by an author that evidently heard that Gibson made up a bunch of words and used sometimes complicated language. So they made up a bunch of words and wrote really complicated sentences. None of which made any sense, internally or as an extension of "now".

Teching the Tech. Sure - lots of SF has hyperdrive or whatever to get from here to someplace with mauve skies and heptopedal pink slimy things that want to sell you their equivalent of The Watchtower. But when the solution to EVERY problem is some random unexplained and inexplicable technology. Bleh.

40: You mean like all those guys who were not seduced into science fiction by sexless books by Asimov, Norton, and (early) Heinlein?

Actually, that would be a good idea of a thread.

What was the story that sucked you into Sci-fi *and did it have sexy*

:)

Most of us got interested in sf when we were about 10, at which age sex was not a selling point.
The kind of book I really don't like is the type where the author spends pages and pages setting up a fantastic world - where he tells us everything, really, we might ever want to know about it. Every chapter is prefaced by pages and pages of description, as if the author was really telling the producer of the movie what would need to be known for production.
What I like, in contrast, is where we pick that kind of thing up through the story. Zelazny was very good at doing this the right way, as is Cherryh. Peter Hamilton does it the wrong way.

#44 & 46 I dunno, Heinlein's Glory Road was big in the 6th grade only because it one of the few books in the elementary school library with sex scenes.

As for non fiction {sexless} Asimov etc. I didn't read those until later. Sexless Heinlein? - I don't remember many of those, or Norton, but at that time sex & violence were interchangeable it seems. Heinlein, Asimov & Bradbury were good for introduction of science concepts. {ack I just realized 44 was a rhetorical question}

47: Read any of Heinlein's juveniles (which compose the bulk of his output until about 1960 or so), and you will find a distinct lack of sex.

Wasn't there kissing (or a kiss) in The Menace from Earth?

#49

I wouldn't call kissing sex. Unless that person isn't just kissing the other's lips.

It certainly got my 13-yo heart beating a little faster. Of course now that I'm past 50, I just want it to keep on beating slow and steady.

I'm 50 now. What was racy in literature back when I was a kid in the 60's & early 70's is a lot different than what's considered racy now. The smallest hints of sex were shouts back then, especially in the school library.

Funny. I'm re-reading 1984 and some review I read of it said that it caught that person's attention when they were younger because of the sex in it.

I'm nearly finished it now, and I didn't see any sex in it at all. I guess those veiled images of Winston "taking" Julia in the forest were sex scenes in early sci-fi?

Having read Richard Morgan, where the sex is pornographic, maybe I'm, err, desensitized.

@53
Yep, like a vaccine jab, I think we're blasé about the sex scenes - myself, I blame the movies, more than books. ;-)
When with books you fantasize about a scene, it makes it yours in terms of interpretation. The movie somewhat makes it 'real' in the sense that the vision of a scene is no longer yours to invent - it is the movie director's vision. And sometimes, if you read the book again, you can't shake off the images from the movie, which cuts part of the fun of reading a book. And some movie directors go beyond what you would expect, and then the following movies always have to deliver 'more' to the audience.

Talking about sci-fi movies, I think I was not ready to see 'Alien' when it turned up. I guess nobody was. Geiger (the graphic artist behind the concept?) has a lot to answer for! But I have all of them on DVDs, and it still sends shivers down the spine...

I have this book to recommend Alien woman: the making of Lt. Ripley by Ximena Gallardo C, very good stuff, and explains quite a few groundbreaking sci-fi references and sexual/gender innuendos.

54: I read the novelization of Alien when I was about 13. Scared the crap out of me. I didn't see the movie until much later, and I remain convinced that the book is scarier than the movie.

Alleged science fiction where the characters quite literally find God. Forever Free is one example. One of the Star Trek movies (maybe part 5?) is another.

#56

Such a plot can be done well (Star Maker springs to mind) but when it is used to create a deus ex machina solution to a story (such as Peter F Hamilton's "Night's Dawn" trilogy or "Forever Free", that is where it does not work so well.

@ 31 -- Now that's just creepy.

Deus ex Machina storylines :mad:

It's just a cheap way of ending a plot.

Books set in far-future or non-earth worlds with government and economic structures identical to or thinly veiled facsimiles of current models. What's the point of this? These are "books for the masses" who can't handle actual imagination.

#60 > I'm not sure I agree with that. Yes, there are authors without imagination (as opposed to audiences) who simply transplant current surroundings to the future wholesale. But in some books the whole point is to let us see those government and economic structures in a new light, and some of those can be terrific. I'm thinking Ursula K. LeGuin (The Dispossessed among others), Arkady & Boris Strugatski (Hard to Be a God and some of the other "Noon Universe" series).

Then you've got PKD, who it seemed to me was always writing about '60s and '70s politics and capitalism no matter what book he wrote. UBIK and The Penultimate Truth are good examples.

#60 - I've always regarded it as one of the great strengths of SF that it can explore contemporary issues through such means in a more subtle way than a straightforward contemporary novel can sometimes do. It reduces the risk of the reader feeling he or she is being preached at, and if they don't get the analogy they cna still enjoy it as an SF novel. Ditto for religious allegory a la C S Lewis.

Like the original poster, I never much cared for time travel stories. Alternate reality stories either. There are exceptions of course, but I've found the two concepts to be way too lazy. Out of ideas? Set it in alternate reality or timeline and, bam!, instant story. Star Trek was always the worst offender, but there's enough blame to go around.

#63 - they are two of my favourite genres!

#60 #61 #62

This is one of the major points of science fiction literature in my opinion. To look at our contemporary world in a different way. To highlight its strengths and weaknesses. To mirror the politics and social issues of our day in a way that is not preaching but allows the reader to absorb a message or a new understanding or at least think about a topic they might not have been willing to embrace before.

In my opinion the strongest Scifi has always dealt with economics, politics, religion, government, racism, class struggle and the consequences of war.

#64 - heh. Different strokes for different folks. :)

I can't remember the exact title but it was a reading book when I was about 9 that had Cyrano de Bergerac's story about a journey to the moon. I didn't even know what sex was that long ago (Catholic School)

32

Given the way most politicians seem to be out for themselves a return to the monarchy might be a blessed relief, wasn't bio of a space tyrant about a planet hiring a dictator to rule them for a fixed termmight shake politics if you could choose between the government and the crown every 5 years

Wasn't that what Ross Perot wanted America to do? Hire him to be President and fix all our problems?

Perot's best line: when he was accused of wanting to "buy the government", he said, "Ordinary Americans can't afford it!" Personally thought Perot was a bit of a crackpot, but that retort was amusing.

68: The thing about monarchy is that it can be an efficient form of government over a small scale, but even, for instance, ancient China needed a whole state bureaucracy to run the place, even when the Emperor was supposed to be an absolute power. Can you imagine trying to run an Empire of, not just millions, but hundreds of billions of people, by yourself?

Besides, "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others." We've tried monarchy, repeatedly over the millenia, and there's a reason that most countries have gotten rid of it. It doesn't stop corruption - do you know what kind of messes those Chinese bureaucrats got up to? What about the court of Henry VIII? The Italian city-states practically made an art form of corruption among the nobles. Now imagine that, again, with many more levels of bureaucrats needed to run a multiple-world government, and... no. Just no.

To return to sci-fi, Bujold's "Vor Empire" actually treats this with some thoughtfulness. She imagined a planetary colony that, when left isolated, lapsed into feudal patterns. OK, I would normally take issue with this, but let it pass. She then treats the subject of what happens when that world is opened up to contact again. I think she makes a nice picture of social upheaval: the movement first toward monarchial dictatorship and then toward parliamentary monarchy, pushing toward democracy, all in just a couple of generations. It's like a compressed version of what happened to the nations of feudal Europe, or Japan after its isolationist period.

When only one person in the story has the capacity to save the world. Boring!

Themes i'm tres tired of. Primary characters who are clear surrogates for the author. See Heinlein. Sagas that go on and on and on, long after the author has died. Almost any theme, done right, can be v. enjoyable - but i really never cared for the uberschmuck theme - at least when done seriously. I'd rather not have an author go into great detail about the mechanisms by which the various and sundry amazing devices work. I'll (usually) happily take them as given w/in the context of the story.

#17-18 As Melissa Scott's best novels from Dreamships, 1992 through my favorites Dreaming Metal and Night Sky Mine, 1998, are structured around human relationships/societies/cultures that are, in some sense, transgressive, gender and sexuality are intrinsic to her books, though the visualization (or not) of sex is largely left to the reader. I've always appreciated that she treats gender relations as a "given" and deals with the "human" implications of the relationships, both within the context of her intricately constructed societies (she's also v. interested in class/power relationship) and her characters' emotional lives. Do avoid her books before 1992 (as well as Trouble and her friends, 1995).

I'll agree with time travel as a hated concept, and also humans interbreeding with aliens, esp. when it's done without the decency of at least mentioning medical technology to get it done.

I dislike (in any genre) the introduction of any character that is god's gift to mankind. A character without flaws is... inhuman to me and difficult to make a connection with. I use this phrase a lot (and possibly incorrectly...) but when you have too much "suspension of disbelief" it is difficult to get into a book.

#74 that would be the Mary Sue effect. Basically a character that always has the right abilities, skills, powers or whatever no matter the situation, overcomes all obstacles, is often "fated" to be the saviour, is beautiful, kind, loved by all, etc etc You get this a lot in poorly written fantasy but it does happen in SF quite a bit.

There is a geat Litmus Test to figuring out if you've written or are reading a Mary Sue http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm

AFAIK the term 'Mary Sue' arose out of Trek fan fiction, where new Yeoman Mary Sue came on board the Enterprise, was super-efficient at her job, drank Scotty under the table, could best Sulu at martial arts, could talk Russian literature with Chekov, slept with the Captain, was knowledgable in super-science and impressed Spock and even melted his cold Vulcan heart a llittle, traded beauty tips with Uhuru and Yeoman Rand AND saved the ship in a crisis situation by speaking fluent Klingon/taking command in a combat situation when all the other bridge officers were disabled/prevented a warp core breach by reversing the polarity of the neutron flow at a critical moment (and sometimes all three at once).

#76 I never knew that but found this after your post http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue

Quite interesting! I've never really thought of it in terms of fan fiction but have often applied the principle to works of fiction and film and like to use the Litmus tests that are available online to check my own characters. Although I would like to think that I am pretty good at not creating Mary Sues there is a fine line sometimes.

Not, you understand, that I've ever actually READ any Trek fan fiction...

Now I know how to call that. "Mary Sue" and "self insertion" are definitely things that make me stop a book, whether SF or not. I can cope with badly written story, or with plotholes you can drive a truck through, but I can't stand clichéd or unnerving characters.

In SF, the hero of Perdido Street Station, who has too many common points with the author not to be suspicious, just made me want to throw the book at a wall every two pages. As it wasn't my book, I thought that it was wiser to put it down definitely.

More recently, Jennet, the heroin of The last witchfinder just did the same, as well as the hacker and the journalist in the Larsson books, but they can't be considered SF.

Most hated concepts: Holodecks, and anything stargate/wormhole-like.

Holodecks because it breaks down any sense that there are limits to what can be done in the story.

Why stargate/wormhole stuff? Because it turns entire universes into connected rooms in a single house. You lose the whole sense of there being a whole world out there that you can get lost in.

I'm not too keen on cyber punk. I've not really read any(yet to read Gibson's Neuromancer) but the whole sub genre doesn't appeal to me. Its like the authors are saying "OK everything's been done in SF so to be original we must look inwards and just base our stories on earth in the near future!" What they don't realise is its not that important to be original!

Neuromancer and Gibson's other books are well worth reading. I don't think of them as un-original, looking inwards or just based on earth in the near future. He does often extrapolate from existing conditions, as science fiction writers have since the beginning.

The concept that doesn't entice me is alternative histories. While it can be interesting to think "what if", e.g. what if the French and Napoleon had won, it doesn't grab me as something I want to read.

There can be exceptions, of course, like Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, where the author's skill overcomes the unappealing concept.

>77 MEStaton:
Hilariously, the Wikipedia page linked to says
"The requested page title is invalid. It may be empty, contain unsupported characters..." Emphasis added.

I hate writers who don't stick to their own concepts: Like Stargate's that practically dry freeze travellers in the first instalment, but later on in the story no-one seems to suffer as much as a slight chill when crossing the entire universe practically bareback !

Media sf is not exactly known for its rigour. Or even its obedience to the laws of physics. Or biology. Or chemistry. Or cosmology. Or practically any science...

Media being defined as books, videogames, movies, music, art, and the like?

Media is short for visual media. In other words, movies and TV... (and for some people, comics).

Yes, as distinct from "written" sf (or "literary" sf, although not literary sf, which is different...).

#84

The Stargate series actually explained the lack of the freezing phenomena. Their resident Genius, was given dialog along the lines that they were able to better stabilize the event horizon ( or some such techno-babel), and hence the temp difference was eliminated.

Nifty way to explain why the production company couldn't afford to re-do the freezing effect every week.

Like a lot of other folks, I can't stand Mary Sues and superhuman protagonists who can do no wrong, are moral paragons, have powers or special abilities beyond everyone else in the setting, etc. I found this to be a particular problem with David Weber's Honor Harrington series, which basically recapitulates the British aristocracy in space. The entire setting seemed to me to be twisted to the advantage of the protagonist. I found it to be melodrama at its worst, though I know it's a very popular series.

Hey, I've got one that always bugs me. In stories involving AI, writers often have ways for AI to "move" through the network. Basically, as if the AI was a cohesive physical object and not just a patterns of zeros and ones. They treat it as the original AI moving, rather than just a copy of it. Yes, there are plenty of philosophical discussions to have branching from this, and some writers are great at exploring them. Other writers, not so much.

Okay, this is one of my personal 'hates' in movies (again) that show the internet in ridiculously over-the-top graphic forms that have no basis in reality let alone common sense. I'll even forgive forays like Johnny Mnemonic for the VR sequences because after all that was set in the future. What I am talking about are contemporary films like Hackers that make your toes curl as you watch them go on-line.

92:

I'm afraid Hackers is a guilty pleasure of mine :-) The only thing that makes my toes curl is the terribly oudtaed geekery about Angelina Jolies new Laptop.

1) Intelligent gasses, "pure energy" beings, etc.

2) Socialism that works

3) Supposedly super-intelligent aliens that are constantly bested by humans

#94

What is wrong with pure-energy beings? And socialism?

I will agree that the third is absolute rubbish, though.

Yes, what's wrong with socialism? It's worked perfectly well in a number of countries.

What's wrong with pure-energy beings? What isn't would be a better question. What's supposed to be meant by "energy" anyway? Photons? How are they confined? What distinguishes them from other photons that aren't intelligent?

Socialism, aside from being morally repugnant, has a little problem with economic calculation...

It's morally repugnant for a society to ensure that no-one is 'left behind'? That all members of a society are cared for?

Socialism is morally repugnant? Cor, a bona fide fascist.

Depends how you go about it. Socialism amounts to enslaving people. That, to me, is morally repugnant, yes. What you intend to achieve by it is irrelevant -- and it can't achieve the intended goal anyway.

#96: what do you mean by "socialism", and what do you mean by "worked"? How do you determine whether something is "working"?

Fascist? Fascism is a subset of socialism; how I can be a fascist if I oppose socialism?

Oh dear. #99 = #98. What will I do with my copy of Starship Troopers now?

I think you've been reading too many neocon apologists. Socialism is the opposite of fascism, it is not a subset of it. Some US neocons, in order to distance themselves from the fascists they resemble, have claimed that socialism is a form of fascism. That's bollocks. Socialism - left wing; fascism = right wing.

Socialism is essentially "public" ownership of capital goods. Fascism is where they're ostensibly left in private hands, but the actual control is "public". Control is the real ownership. Ergo, fascism is socialism.

Not quite. Socialism is where the means of production are owned by the workers. Fascism puts all means of production in service to the state, although they may be owned by workers, capitalists or corporations. Besides, fascism is more of a political ideology, whereas socialism is primarily economic. The two bear very little resemblance to each other.

Socialism is where the means of production are owned by the workers.

Well, different "socialists" have different definitions. Some want each factory to be owned by the people who work in it, some want every factory to be owned by every worker; some limit ownership to people in a particular country, some are internationalists; some statists, some "anarchists" (but not really), etc. But it all falls under the banner of "socialism", no?

it all falls under the banner of "socialism", no?

It depends on what you are marching against, I suppose.

93:

I didn't mean to pick on Hackers Its just the first scene that sprung to mind. Maybe I just felt let down when I eventually realised that computers were not really all that cool? ;-D

My dear Ian,

Some aspects Of the "Nationalist Socialist Deutches Arbeite Party" were in fact quite "socialistic" in nature. In fact Hitler expelled some members of the party because of their attempts to impliment some of the more radical/socialistic aspects he had promised.

BUT, I am more horrified by #97's "...morally repugnant..." comment.

My Grandfather was a guest of Joseph Stalin from 1949 to Stalin's death, thus I have no love of Communism nor Nazi-ism NOR any other 'ism!

But please don't confuse the IDEAL with the implimentation.

Socialism (in a restrained form) does work as a framework.

If #97 is a Yank, I would just like to say I would NOT want to be sick
in the USA (unless I was rich)

Yours, Guido.

Oh by the way, I did rather like the "The Black Cloud" by Hoyle. A pure Energy being.

And none of those "different definitions" bear qany resemblance to fascism.

I'm surprised you find it "morally repugnant" that people should be rewarded for their labours. Perhaps you think only the capitalists should prosper?

PaulFoley give his location as New Zealand.

But please don't confuse the IDEAL with the implimentation.

The ideal (assuming by that you mean worker ownership of capital goods) can't lead to the desired outcome (assuming by that you don't mean lower living standards and less freedom); you can pick one or the other, but not both.

If #97 is a Yank, I would just like to say I would NOT want to be sick
in the USA (unless I was rich)

I'm not American, but how does my being American or not relate to your desire to be sick in the US? :) And what does the latter have to do with socialism? (I assume you're thinking something like "the US medical system is not socialist, and is much more expensive than {other country}'s, which is, therefore socialism in medicine is good? But both premises are actually false, so...)

I'm surprised you find it "morally repugnant" that people should be rewarded for their labours.

Where did I say that?

guido, the DAP was socialist, but was hijacked by the Nazis. The Nazis were virulently anti-communist - chiefly as a result of communist activism in Germany at the time (see by many as a viable alternative to the existing ineffectual government). The Nazis were fascist.

Paul, I'm still trying to figure out why you think socialism is "morally repugnant".

I'm still trying to figure out what is wrong with pure-energy beings.

114> Be more specific about what you mean by "socialism" -- it's possible, I suppose, that your definition isn't repugnant. I've already said, my definition includes fascism, and you appear to think that's repugnant...

115> I think I answered that in 97 -- do you have something else in mind?

Well, of course I think claiming socialism and fascism are the same is repugnant. Fascism is an authoritarian, socially conservative political idealogy. Socialism is an economic idealogy, and socialists typically follow liberal social policies. A welfare state is a socialist policy; euthanasia is a fascist policy.

Not a very helpful answer, but it's enough to get started: a welfare state is a socialist policy (so your definition of socialism involves a state). And yet, people get to keep the output of their labours, didn't you say? (Otherwise they're being exploited, I presume?!) So how do you fund your welfare state?

ETA: (Oh, no, you didn't say that. I misread. You said "people should be rewarded for their labours", which is a different thing...so, yes, in fact, I do find that repugnant: if you labour all day demolishing my house (against my will) while I'm away, should you be rewarded? On it's face, the statement is nonsense)

By taxes, of course. Owning the means of production doesn't mean no one gets taxed.

Of course, there are degrees of implementation with socialism. I don't necessarily agree that every company should be made a co-operative, although there have been several successful co-operative companies. I certainly believe some industries should remain/have remained nationalised because they need the stability government control can bring - utilities and infrastructure, for example. Having said that, some privatised industries have worked very well - although I suspect technology more to do with it - such as telecoms. Free healthcare is a given. Every country should have a NHS if it wants to consider itself civilised. Likewise free education.

"I do find that repugnant: if you labour all day demolishing my house (against my will) while I'm away, should you be rewarded"

You're being silly. That's stretching a point beyond breaking point. No one would advocate that. Well, not unless you were an Israeli bulldozer driver and the house belonged to a Palestinian...

By taxes, of course. Owning the means of production doesn't mean no one gets taxed.

Many socialists claim that (part of) their problem with "capitalism" is that the workers don't get to keep the full value of their labour -- the "capitalist" keeps some as "profit" -- and this therefore constitutes "exploitation" of the workers by the capitalists. But if they're being taxed, they don't get to keep the full value of their labour, and are therefore being exploited (and this time in actuality; the belief that that's what happens under capitalism is not even true). Why is socialism better, again? :)

Free healthcare is a given. {...} Likewise free education.

Provided by whom? What if nobody wants to do it?

You're being silly. That's stretching a point beyond breaking point.

Well, of course. But that's what "people should be rewarded for their labours" means. If that's not what you mean, you should rephrase.

Profit and taxes are two entirely different things. Profit is a return on capital, just as wages are a return on labour, and rent is a return on property. No socialist would ever confuse taxes with those.

Free healthcare and education are funded by the state, and provided by people paid to provide it. It's not difficult to understand. The systems works well in a number of countries, including the UK. The free education part used to work better until grants were abolished. And entry standards lowered.

You knew exactly what I meant by people being rewarded for their labours. Arbitrarily ignoring context has nothing to do with the way I phrased it - it's just you trying to make a point that doesn't exist. It's a form of straw man argument.

Profit and taxes are two entirely different things. Profit is a return on capital, just as wages are a return on labour, and rent is a return on property. No socialist would ever confuse taxes with those.

I didn't say you were confusing them. You seem to have missed my point.

You knew exactly what I meant by people being rewarded for their labours.

No, I actually don't have a clue what you mean by it.

You're not making a point. You say "many socialists claim...", but no socialist would ever confuse profit and taxes.

You also claim people are not exploited under capitalism, but that's patently untrue... Sweatshops. Child slavery. The equity gap. Poverty.

108:

Computers haven't been cool for me since I was coding away on my VT220 green screen, hooked up to a VAX, and using Telnet to cruise the various large computers of this fine planet in the late 80s. Just not the same anymore.

I once had a VAX in my garage, took a trailer to get it there. :-)

Ian: I'm replying on a new thread.

Free healthcare is a given. Every country should have a NHS if it wants to consider itself civilised. Likewise free education.

Neither of which are actually free.

I'm surprised you find it "morally repugnant" that people should be rewarded for their labours.

Isn't that sort of the antithesis of the basic idea of socialism? "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" and all that?

If #97 is a Yank, I would just like to say I would NOT want to be sick
in the USA (unless I was rich)

It's not nearly as bad as many people seem to think. The data is manipulated in the media to make for a bigger, splashier story. The reality is that it isn't as big a problem as has been made out.

There were some nasty lies being said by the neocons about the NHS last year. They were trying to kill Obama's health care bill, but even so...

I hate stories that pretend libertarian societies would actually work, rather than just degenerate into fiefdoms and anarchy, as would happen in reality.

And pure energy being. Fuck those guys.

131: Then you'd probably like Heinlein's story Coventry, which isn't what most people expect out of a Heinlein story. The easiest place to find it would probably be in Revolt in 2100. Also Alexis Gilliland's The End of the Empire on the nastiness of a libertarian society.

>129 StormRaven: StormRaven wrote: "It's not nearly as bad as many people seem to think."

Having experienced it, more than once, first hand - I respectfully disagree.

Getting this back onto the subject of books, I read the very good The Healing of America - T R Reid last year. This book takes a look at the good and bad points of all the health services around the world and shows that the US system is a hotpotch of all the major systems depending on your age, past or present employment status etc.

The book points out that the biggest issue is not that the US system is bad for all. In fact most people benefit from one of the five major systems in place. The problem is that it is incredibly unjust for some (such as those who are denied healthcare by insurance companies at the very point they need it the most).

This is no rose tinted glasses look at other healthcare systems either. All healthcare systems have their problems. It is just that the fragmentary and non universal nature of US healthcare makes it peculiarly problematic.

*

On the socialism argument going on here - it is in danger of destroying what was a fun thread by swamping it in political idealism of varying hues. Can I suggest that anyone wishing to make the case for or against socialism, fascism, libertarianism or anarchism should at least recommend a book - or preferably create a thread discussing a book. I would be happy to contribute to a thread saying why I think Anthem qualifies as a hated Sci Fi concept for instance. :)

133> Re: destroying the thread

PaulFoley did finally take it to a new thread, as noted in #126.

I humbly suggest that would also be a fine place for the health care discussion as well.

#97, "Socialism, aside from being morally repugnant...".

Capitalism is even more morally repugnant, so what's the problem with ameliorating some of the worst features of Capitalism with a little social responsibility?

135> Ahem

Protagonists who travel a long distance to meet aliens only to be sodomised by them. See The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell.

>137 Autodafe:: What a great summary of The Sparrow! :) (I actually enjoyed the book, but yeah, that's kind of how I'd describe it as well.)

>137 Autodafe:: Which makes me think of my objections to ufo nuts' tales of abduction: why should an advanced intelligent species, capable of interstellar travel, cross the empty tractless wastes of space just to insert probes into people's bottoms?

Unless, of course, that's their speaking orifices and all they're trying to do is insert the Universal Translator...

Which, considering the audible output available, is going to have to be a very sophisticated Universal Translator indeed!

Inward looking SF(cyberpunk) and alternative history. I like to explore new worlds,to be excited,to get a sensawunda rather than be shown what's already around us.

I am bored to tears by those SF stories where humans travel to other barren planets in the solar system and get into situations where their lives are in danger due to some type of accident, and they have to figure out a way to escape with their lives.

142> Oh god, yes. Jack McDevitt can get a bit annoying that way, though I usually enjoy his books.

>142 JoseBuendia:,that describes Clarke's A Fall of Moondust which is actually quite a good yarn!

144: It describes about a hundred science fiction stories that I can think of. The "engineering puzzle" story is one of the tropes of the genre.

#139 ">137 Autodafe:: Which makes me think of my objections to ufo nuts' tales of abduction: why should an advanced intelligent species, capable of interstellar travel, cross the empty tractless wastes of space just to insert probes into people's bottoms?

Unless, of course, that's their speaking orifices and all they're trying to do is insert the Universal Translator..."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I actually thought about that {the ufo abduction part} for bit while watching the science channel the other night, premise accepting abductions as true & theorizing why/how.

Because of the time for travel involved the ufo's are robotic, programmed for autonomous functioning? {A million year experiment for beings who plan on being around a while?}. Maybe one of the programmers has a rather whimsical/entrepreneurial nature and plans to market the probe videos upon the experiment's return.?? ;-)

#146

What? Aliens have YouTube too?

I was going to say "aliens invented youtube and gave it to us by pretending to be amongst us and inventing it for us"...and that reminded me of my most hated sci fi concept!

Humans are ingenious! I hate all the sci fi that kind of makes us really stupid and in need of alien help to invent antibiotics, genetics, nuclear power, nazca lines, pyramids, ziggurats, gunpowder, democracy, stone henge and ... erm ... youtube. :)

All we are left with is the Windows operating system, Coke/Pepsi and Croydon - and thats coz no alien would claim credit for those ;)

...Coke/Pepsi...

Erm, sorry, all your soda are belong to us.

Croydon too.

Windows, now, is all your own fault.

I wonder what proportion of SF ever published has now been written off in this thread?! ;)

>149 justjim: And democracy; that's theirs, too!

Less a problem in books than in movies and especially TV shows, my least favorite plot device is the problem that is solved by "cross-circuiting to B" or whatever. Boring and meaningless. One minute mortal danger, the next a miraculous escape or even the upper hand over a seemingly superior enemy.

Star Trek, I'm thinking of you.

Don't mind time travel, even with paradoxes, but I think alternate history is pointless.

TV shows are bound to have more of this sort of thing, to fit in with the timeslot constraint. It's all part of the charm of TV SF!

And I love alternate history when done well (though I don't necessarily see it as SF)

#150

SF crossed with porn hasn't been mentioned yet.

Who could hate SF crossed with porn?

>155 jbberube:: No one I want to know!

154: If you exclude that, then there's basically nothing by Delany you can read.

Shoot, make it Fantasy crossed with Porn and you eliminate all Laurel K Hamilton as well.

Surprised no one has mentioned a big problem in sci-fi (and fantasy for that matter): one-dimensional aliens.

The universe just seems to be populated with races of aliens that have one defining (typically cultural) trait. You get violent aliens. You get logical aliens. You have aliens that only will use primitive weapons despite flying around in spaceships.

Earthlings however seem to follow their own little rules. There is no defining trait for humans - some are violent, some are intelligent, some are fanatics, some could care less. Humans seem to have the marketplace for diversity.

>159 aarondesk:
Yea and when an alien race IS discovered they are the same planetwide! No polar or tropical variants,no different languages or skin colour. Too much to conceptualise or too much to expect a reader to take in?

>160 sf_addict:

And they always have a unified political structure for the whole planet! No concept of countries or nationalities!

Maybe they're not argumentative @#%!s like we are.

>159 aarondesk: & 160:

That was one of the things in B5 that made the aliens puzzled about us humans; we still had these quaint things called "nations", let alone the even quainter "religions" (plural).

At least Trek had black Vulcans, though they should probably really have been very dark green...

Honestly, I wouldn't expect advanced aliens to have countries...but, as you say, SF aliens who don't have countries have a single planetary or interplanetary government, which is even more absurd.

>165 PaulFoley: What would you expect? No government at all? Mega-corporations? I'm curious . . .

I wouldn't expect them to have governments...and "mega-corporations" can't exist except parasitically on government -- they have the same failing: no way to determine what to produce, in what quantity, or where to deliver it. Which would prevent them developing to the point we're assuming they're at.

167: Wait, what? Corporations need governments to tell them what to produce and how much to produce and where to deliver it?

He means, a true society of advanced "people" is automatically a pure and perfect socialism. "Business" is merely greed in a rigorous framework. "Government" is merely institutionalised bullying, by groups or by individuals, depending on the type of government, and yes, all governments in the world often tell corporations much of what, where and how they produce.

Just you start a firearms company tomorrow in your garage, then get back to us with what your local and state government instruct you about, in the running of the company and marketing of your goods.
Or a restaurant. Or a printing press. Or a still. Or a shipping firm. Or a computer producer. You like to think that you are free to do anything you like, but that just means you have never really thought what that would mean to the web that is a society. In short, society wouldn't let you. Any more than it lets Bill Gates do just what he would like.

A true advanced civilisation would have a fully educated populace, free of mistaken "party" allegiances that are always against the interest of the civilisation ( say species actually ) as a whole. People would take part in all choices the society made, none would want for goods or services, because all needs would be met as a matter of first importance.

The simple way of looking at it is to realise that companies, governments, nationalism, racial segregation or even the IDEA of races when we are all one species, these concepts and the base greed they spring from, all of it, is the mark OF an un-advanced society. A childhood in fact. A true complete civilisation would see them all as faults, symptoms of disease.

An advanced society won't have these faults, these throwbacks to childhood.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, I guess. For example, you say that "all needs would be met as a matter of first importance" but I'm not sure I see the practical mechanism by which this happens.

I also tend to see government as not just a big bad influenced by special interests (which of course it is), but also useful on a practical level. Who builds the roads (spaceports), who regulates food safety, etc., if there is no government? Does an advanced society necessarily mean individuals are so advanced as to never commit crimes, act out of greed or lesser emotions, and so on? Or is an advanced society one that has found optimal (or at least much better) ways of dealing with these realities?

I am not so much arguing the point as asking the question--I don't know what the answer is.

Or a restaurant. Or a printing press. Or a still. Or a shipping firm. Or a computer producer. You like to think that you are free to do anything you like, but that just means you have never really thought what that would mean to the web that is a society. In short, society wouldn't let you. Any more than it lets Bill Gates do just what he would like.

I could start any of those tomorrow save for the still without any trouble at all. An only thing I would need for a still would be a license to produce alcohol, which is relatively easy to get (a friend of mine just opened a distillery, the hardest part was acquiring the equipment since it is expensive and bulky which makes it costly to ship).

If there wasn't a government, I don't see how this would be made more difficult, or why I would need to have a government to tell my hypothetical business what to produce and how much.

Wait, what? Corporations need governments to tell them what to produce and how much to produce and where to deliver it?

No. First, "mega-corporations", which I understand to mean massively vertically-integrated companies that really try to do everything, not just normal corporations. Second, I said they have the same problem as government in not knowing those things; i.e., neither mega-corps nor governments can know those things; I didn't say governments can know and tell the mega-corp. With the mega-corp there's no real market in producer goods (because the company does everything internally), so it can't figure out what it should do. (All large companies have that problem to some extent)

He means, a true society of advanced "people" is automatically a pure and perfect socialism

No I don't. Quite the opposite: I mean it's automatically free-market capitalism. ("Pure" socialism is an impossibility, and would only be "perfect" in the sense that everyone would be dead :|)

People would take part in all choices the society made

"Society" doesn't make choices. Only individuals do.

But the choices made by individuals are swallowed up and ignored by the majority. One reason I never vote.

171> If there wasn't a government, I don't see how this would be made more difficult

I'll send over Guido to explain it to you. We wouldn't want your restaurant to burn down in a completely accidental fire, would we?

Not my most hated concept, but certainly one that's been flogged into the dust: the technological singularity. Or rather, perhaps, the presumption of it inevitability...

175> I'll add to that "...especially when one of the major 'proofs' of the singularity happening in the future is based on the probability of us being alive versus at some later point in history when there are trillions and trillions of humans."

I'll send over Guido to explain it to you. We wouldn't want your restaurant to burn down in a completely accidental fire, would we?

Well, my privately hired security force will deal with Guido and send his head back to you. That should send a clear enough message.

But your hypothetical does nothing to demonstrate that having government makes running a business any more or less difficult. It just changes how you pay for things like protection against extortion and enforcement of contracts.

With the mega-corp there's no real market in producer goods (because the company does everything internally), so it can't figure out what it should do. (All large companies have that problem to some extent)

But all those large vertically integrated corporations exist to turn out an end product. The original vertical integrators existed to produce cars (owning the steel mills to provide their steel, and owning the mines to provide them with coal and iron ore and so on). The purpose of vertical integration is to turn out an end product. I don't see how this is hard for a corporation to figure out.

177> Yes, the privately hired security force you, the struggling restauranteur, can afford is going to be far superior to what I, the successful and wealthy established "businessman", can afford. Good luck with that.

179: Sure I can. I'm a member of a consortuim of small businesses that work together to hire their own security and enforce their contracts. Governments get created out of necessity, even if they are informal.

180> The consortium just decided they don't want you competing for their customers. Sorry, thems the breaks.

181: Sorry, its a local thing, you can't be a member. I can.

Besides, they wouldn't want those ousted to set up their own consortium with better terms.

182> I'm sorry, I can't hear you, considering you've already been whacked. Maybe you could try the Ghost Whisperer.

Hey, hey, hey, (#174 #177)

THOU SHALT NOT TAKE THE NAME OF "Guido" in VAIN

Anyway I do not do gratis work.

Although my grandfather was a "guest" of Uncle Joe Stalin for several years,
I still believe "socialistic" ideas should influence "how the pie is cut".

No further correspondence shall be entered into 101 discussions on this topic.

Guido,

PS. HOW much was this "hypothetical" contract worth?
Sending my head back (I presume NOT attached to my body) seems a bit harsh for a tradesman just doing a JOB.

173> if that's the rule they work by...but of course those "choices" are still made by individuals (the ones in charge of the apparatus of violence that is government) -- which is why government doesn't work.

174> AFAICT, "Guido" coexists with government today. I.e., government isn't a solution to organised crime (just the opposite: government is the biggest mafia organization of them all), so what point are you trying to make?

178> Sure, they turn out an end product, but they can't price the intermediate products. How do they know if the iron they're mining to make cars would be better put to a different use? And they're a "mega-corporation", they're not just making an end-product, they're making every end-product (or most of them, anyway), so they can't even rely on external markets to estimate prices (which reminds me of a nice story, I think it was in Economics for Real People, about some reporter asking Gorbachev what his ideal world would look like. He answered that all the world would be socialist, except New Zealand. "Why not New Zealand?" "We need someone to tell us the prices")

184> How about you cut your pie however you like, and leave me to cut mine? How is you forcing your way into having a say in how to cut my pie (i.e., "socialistic ideas") anything but criminal?

185> If you can't actually the difference between the actual mafia and how the (by which you mean either the US or your New Zealand govt) government works, I don't see any intellectual common ground on which to engage you in logical debate.

Goodness me. He is a New Zealander?. I felt sure he was an American.

You are an extremely unusual New Zealander, wouldn't you say, #185?.

Government doesn't work eh?. Business does though, you think?.

If I can be forgiven for answering the question you put to #184, and for doing it with a question,
how is your philosophy i.e. anti-socialist ideas, anything but criminal, given you have lived your life ( I guess at least, you claim to be a New Zealander so I GUESS you have lived your life here, feel free to correct me if I have made an error ) protected and supported by a socialist state?.

You got an education, police force, roads, public transport, hospitals, free dental care till you were 16, all the trappings of a fairly easy socialist country to live in, all your childhood, but now that you have YOUR pie, you want to drop out of the deal?.

We can't get a cut of YOUR pie, to reimburse society for all the socialist expense your life represents?.

Sounds like unqualified greed to me, but please do set me straight, explain to me why it isn't theft for you to now opt out of the social contract. I wouldn't want to denigrate you so I am quite prepared for you to explain how you decided in the womb that you were a Capitalist in the raw, and told your mum not to use the public hospital, not to accept the automatic free doctor visits for all natal services, not to have faith in the ambulance service, fire department which are all paid for by social services and social taxes, and how you paid out of your own pocket for all the vaccinations you got in your infancy, , how you never took a step on a public road in your life. How you paid for every expense in your school right from kindy. How you never relied on our socialist society for a split second in all your life.

I roll my eyes at you.

Is it unusual for a New Zealander not to be a socialist criminal? ;)
(And FWIW, the "New Zealand" on my profile doesn't mean I am a NZer (though I am), it only means I'm in NZ)

The argument you're trying to make is not valid. Aside from the fact that NZ is not a socialist state in any real sense, I didn't ask the government to get involved in education, policing, transport, etc., etc.,; it's not my fault they do that (I'd like them to stop!), and the fact that they do it doesn't mean I owe them for it. If someone showed up one day and painted your house, with or without your permission and regardless of whether or not you like the results, you don't have to pay him! (If you didn't explicitly authorize it, you can prosecute him...he should pay you! Same rules don't apply to unwanted government action, more's the pity)

Also, you say "reimburse society", but the government isn't society! Far from it: society is people interacting peacefully -- voluntarily; government is coercion -- involuntary and non-peaceful interaction by definition: giving money to the government harms society.

Oh for goodness sake people...

Sure, I knew you had some sort of rationalisation for your irrational creed.

You can squirm as you like, we both know the truth of your "philosophy" and it is ignoble. Greed, and having a free ride on society. You have benefited from the way of life here, and don't like to pay up for the privilege.

Sorry, but it's socialism that's irrational, ignoble, greedy, and wanting a free ride on society. Read Socialism (available free on-line) for a complete breakdown (and come discuss it over here)

>185 PaulFoley: ...some reporter asking Gorbachev what his ideal world would look like. He answered that all the world would be socialist, except New Zealand. "Why not New Zealand?" "We need someone to tell us the prices")

Great quote! (Though I suspect most here haven't read Mises or Hayek, so probably will miss the point.)

Books that portray russians as the enemy. any crisis, it must be the russians! Communist scum they say, well dont they realise that Jesus Christ was communist?

What about books that have the updated version of this trope - the Russian mafia?

I think this was already raised, but in all the bruhaha about -isms, I've forgotten.

Anyway, it isn't exactly a hated concept, but I'm not a big fan of stories that posit a society made up of a zillion different alien types, all of whom breathe oxygen, share the same gravity and can speak English. You know, the Star Wars/Star trek type of stuff.

Even so, I can accept that, but what really gets me is: why is the alien race always named after their planet? Vulcans come from Vulcan, Cardassians come from Cardassia, the Romulans come from Romulus. Yet Earthlings are always called 'humans' (except for on Futurama, where we are all Earthicans).

Most of them have some explanation for the ability of everyone to communicate--Star Trek had some kind of universal translator gizmo. I liked Farscape's translator nanobots.

Aren't we sometimes Earthlings and sometimes Terrans, as well?

I always liked the way the Ferengi on Star Trek pronounced "hu-man" as though it were a nasty word!

Sorry . . . random thoughts, pre-coffee.

193> Russians as the enemy? You're a bit out of date, I think...

(Oh, and Jesus was an anarcho-capitalist; Communists make baby Jesus cry)

ST had universal translators, but hardly ever seemed to actually use them (unless they were supposed to be embedded in their bodies or something?) -- they'd visit low-tech planets in brightly-coloured clothes (human-looking aliens always dress in brightly-coloured clothes) with no high-tech equipment, and everyone spoke English...even if they had embedded translators, wouldn't the locals notice that they spoke a foreign language and then a translation came out of another orifice? :)

Well, if you're going to apply logic to the question . . .!

I don't remember the universal translators really being discussed much other than in "Enterprise," the ST show I watched the least. So I'm not sure how much explanation was given for how they worked--just remember one episode in which Captain Archer's temporarily malfunctioned, and, since he couldn't understand the woman who was speaking, he adopted classic Kirk tactics and started making out with her.

Kirk simply preferred a direct translation interface.

At the risk of appearing a Trekkie, the UTs in Trek were generally supposed to be inner-ear prosthetics, though I can't remember if they were that advanced in Kirk's time; indeed, I thought they were reverse-engineered from the translation device Kirk was given in 'Arena' (the episode based on the Frederic Brown short story of the same name). I never saw enough of 'Enterprise' consistently to see if there's a continuity error there with Archer having a UT, though they make more out of the fact that Hoshi is an expert linguist. And I heard somewhere about the Klingons speaking English because it was a class/status thing amongst the officers.

By the time of TNG, the UTs were embedded functionality in the comm badges.

I preferred the B5 approach, which assumed that what everyone was actually speaking was a common tongue, which was interpreted for us as English. A lot of the humour in B5 came about through mistranslations and similar language jokes. (Or as Lennier said, "Whoo-hoo?") Certain non-humanoid races used a translation device, later shamelessly plagiarised by Dr Who's production designer for the Ood.

I have to stick an honorary mention of Douglas Adams' Babel fish.

In your ear?

Sorry, what did you say?

It's not working, then.

I want a Babel fish to help me master Russian!

If you have a Babel fish, you won't need to master Russian. At least for listening anyway.

Slightly off subject here, but there's these:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/PhraseBook-electronic-translator-PB-SGr-B-3/dp/B000ESJEJ...

-- I considered getting one, since I'm learning Greek, but the price puts me off. We are living in an SF age.

But it's only a phrasebook, not a translator; hardly very "SF". Could hook something like that up to Google translate...(but you'd still need the babel fish/whatever to understand what it was saying :))

And in Doctor WHO, the TARDIS has a telepathic field that enables the Doctor and his companions to understand other languages.

@198

I'll stand with RobertDay in the "At the risk of appearing a Trekkie" camp, but the brightly colored.... well, everything.... was part of NBC's push for color television. Color television was still catching on when Star Trek debuted and NBC (then owned by RCA) wanted to offer as much vivid imagery as possible — and they wanted to push color TV sales. So basically they said "Make everything as brightly colored as you can!"

The humanoid aliens, universal translators, and Earth-like planets mainly just came down to time and budget constraints. It was an hour-long weekly series being produced by a small company. Scripts that were overly ambitious were either shelved or rewritten into something that could be filmed quickly and as inexpensively as possible.

I have to agree though, there is a lot of Star Trek that doesn't make sense if you think about it too much.

211> I actually was thinking ST:TNG when I read that earlier message, as they loved the bright clothes, too.

#211 But of COURSE the original Trek rarely made sense. Then again, reality rarely makes sense either...! :)

I'll throw in another disliked concept in sci-fi - the idea that future humanity will somehow overcome our current vices such as pride, greed, selfishness, hatred, etc. At least without explaining in a logical fashion how such a transformation will take place.

There seems to be an assumption in some avenues that humanity will evolve into some creature that has shed its uglier traits and become "enlightened". I suppose this goes along the lines of Utopian fiction. I just can't wrap my head around this, since humanity has been trying for centuries with little luck. The 20th century was the century of science, yet a very brutal century.

For example, greed and money seem to be little problem in the Star Trek future (unless you're Orion or Ferengi). As long as people have material desires, I can't see how there can't be greed also. And there certainly doesn't seem to be a shortage of power-hungry humans in the star trek future, so how you can logically divorce greed from power makes little sense to me.

Yeah, people who think we'll "evolve" into something "morally perfect" (and what does that mean, anyway?) fail to get that evolution is an amoral process. They seem to be stuck on some teleological notion of evolution.

In post-scarcity society, why would there be greed? Plenty of sf discusses, or is set in, such societies - Banks' Culture novels, for example.

I believe Picard explains this at one point in just those terms--that everyone's needs have been satisfied. And since there are machines that produce any food you want on request, and pretty much any object, apparently, though without much explanation for how either of these things happen . . .

Okay, if all of the other ST ships had replicators for food, how come Voyager needed Neelix to do the cooking?

Random pre-coffee thought . . .

216: What you presuppose is a post-scarcity society. The future will always have scarcity. Even if the basic needs are being met (food, shelter, etc), there will be a scarcity of something.

If there are more brown-eyed people than blue, there is a scarcity of eye color. If someone else has a starship enterprise, and I don't, that's scarcity. If there are 1000 openings in the Space Patrol, and 10000 people apply, that's scarcity.

Just looking at my own western culture, most people have their basic needs met, but spend their time trying to acquire luxuries of various sorts (cars, mega-size TVs, etc.).

As long as I'm me and you are you, there will be differences that lead to greed, jealousy and other vices. That's why I typically don't go for these futuristic ideals.

>217 ejj1955: ejj1955

Okay, if all of the other ST ships had replicators for food, how come Voyager needed Neelix to do the cooking?

That was explaned somewhere at the beginning - replicator usage has to be rationed in light of Voyager's limited power supplies (via Wikipedia).

#218. Er, that's the whole point of a post-scarcity society. There is no scarcity. It's not just needs being met, it's wants too.

#220: Yeah, the point I was trying to make is that a post-scarcity society is unrealistic. Maybe it didn't come across as clear as I wanted it to.

221> I'd say no more so than FTL travel. And that's pretty much a sci-fi staple.

Dear #222,

FTL has always been one of my Pet Peeves. In the "Voyage of the Space Beagle" I vaguely remember the ship "...accelerates to 100 times light speed..."

UGH, but I was only 16 when I read it.

But the ways in which the more thoughtful SF authors tackles Einsteins limits is IMO, very interesting and is probably worth a seperate discussion.

Generation Ships/Suspended animation... and then the many variants on "sub"/"hyper"/etc. space and everything else fom the Mystical and Magical to...

In (most) SF that problem must be tackled somehow.

Its just a question of how well the author either "shrugs off" the problem
or answers it in a consistant way and then discusses the ramifications.

Your SF fan, Guido.

223> My point is not that FTL is bad sci-fi, but that post-scarcity can also be good sci-fi. Both are concepts that we think we have theories on how to bring about, but predicting the likelihood of either happening for the human race is equally dicey.

Thought of another pet peeve: telepathy and all its variants of "mental powers".

I adored Firefly. Things were confined to one planetary system, so no FTL. There was no sound in space. The maneuvering in both space and atmosphere seemed consistent with the laws of physics. The social situation seemed plausible enough, for all its pseudo-Western overtones. (Of course, it helped that I loved the characterizations and dialogue.)

... and then they went and brought up telepathy. DANG! I was so disappointed; it had come so close to being my "perfect" sci-fi show. I simply can't bring myself to see telepathy - at least, not of the "I hear your thoughts" variety - as being in any way possible within the laws of this universe. Maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part. But it kills my suspension of disbelief every time.

214> that's just the socialism thing again..."New Socialist Man"

Dear Paul,
Are you "... just pulling his chain?..."
G.

>214 aarondesk: ""I'll throw in another disliked concept in sci-fi - the idea that future humanity will somehow overcome our current vices such as pride, greed, selfishness, hatred, etc. At least without explaining in a logical fashion how such a transformation will take place.""

& other rants on this topic seem to miss the point.

Generic Soma will save the day and ambient music will reign!! One of my favorite quotes " Is that music always on?" response "What music?"

>228 DugsBooks: It's a great theory, but I know more people on more drugs than ever before, and it's not making them happy.

#225

It depends on how the use of mental powers happens. If it is used to examine how characters would change if they have said powers, and how such powers might be abused, I find it quite interesting. If it's just juvenile wish fulfilment, then not so much.

And I thought that the mental telepathy idea of Firefly was handled quite well - Summer Glau was given an excellent part and she played that role quite well.

Much as I love Iain Banks Culture novels the problem of how to produce a post-scarcity economy is given a literal deus ex-machina solution, the machines regulate the market for goods and services. Although it appears to be the ultimate socialist society it is not democratic, it is really Plato's Republic brought up to date with the machines as the philosopher kings.

#230: Don't get me wrong, I'm still a hardcore Firefly addict, and I love Summer Glau's performance. I just wish I could recommend it to the world as "my idea of well handled science in science fiction", as well as "one of my all-time favorite shows".

I was thinking it over after I posted, actually, and technically in the show I don't think it's ever out-and-out said that River is telepathic. She could just be a very, very good cold reader, among other talents. :)

Actually, I think it is said--can't remember if it was in the series or the movie, I think the movie, but one of the baddies is castigating another for bringing high-ranking members of the government to see River in the lab. He said something like "you put the ministers in the room with a telepath?!"

Which is how she knew about that special planet and what Mal and the crew discovered there in the movie.

#232, 233

If you leave the movie out of the continuum of the Firefly universe and stick to the TV show alone, there is no telepathic workings, really. They had the Blue Hand Men trying to create a telepath by stripping the mylan sheath from neurons. But all we got really was a crazy girl. I don't believe they ever addressed her as being a "reader" until the movie itself.

Then it was the Operative who addressed the scientist, at the very beginning of the movie, with the comment about high ranking officials and such.

Why would you leave the movie out? I could see that if it were created by some git without Whedon's approval, but since he created it, I think you have to assume that is part of the overall story. And I can't think of any instance in which it contradicts the series, or vice-versa.

Oh, I'm not willingly leaving the movie out in the overall scheme of things. It fits the rest of the storyline way too well not to be a part of it.

My suggestion was for April to be able to fit it without dealing with the telepath aspect of things.

Personally, I loved the movie and wished they would do the next one already. (Though that might be hard with Nathan Fillion doing the show Castle now...)

Two words: summer hiatus. That's how Katherine Heigel made movies while still doing Grey's Anatomy.

Why would you leave the movie out?

'cos the movie sucked!?

Heresy! I loved the movie, too. (Except my reservations about telepathy. )

But yeah, I might be able to use Firefly-the-series for the purposes of explaining to others why so much science fiction does the science All Wrong (tm). :)

I didnt like Firefly the series, somethig about it really annoyed me. Two factors were the dodgy camera work and the cowboy theme to it, yee haa, hated that!

I have two concepts that I don't like in SF...

One is the military/intergalactic war aspect. Don't get me wrong, this concept can work, and I think Star Wars/Star Trek/Babylon 5 made it work because the war isn't the underlying concept of those ideas. Even Above and Beyond was ok despite the fact that the war was the main concept. But when a writer (novel/series) or producer (TV) gets too indepth with the war, I lose all interest in it. War stories may have their place in fiction and TV, but the Sci-Fi genre isn't it.

The other aspect is when they try to make the setting too dark, as in FireFly.

>241 kingoftheicedragons:,what about Banks culture novels, especially Consider Phlebas, or Joe Haldeman's The Forever War
Both excellent reads!

What is space opera but cowboys and indians?

I vaguely remember a space opera "where an Opera Company" performs on different planets. It feels like Vance, but not sure. :-)

Space Opera was certainly by Jack Vance, but I think the idea's been used several times.

Sorry Ian,

And I do Kowtow to your SF knowledge.

But what do you mean?
Other Opera companies in space or a "space 'Opera' " in err. umm. Space?

I would be interested in either theme!

>243 geneg:,space opera is definitely not just cowboys and indians in space! (Altho I do like the odd western,most are pretty ridiculous)
I suppose one feels differently if you're not from the states, I don't know

Dear sf addict et. al.

We aussies (in the 1950's) also LOVED the "...cowdies and injuns..."

GO HOPALONG CASIDY

Now, what this has to do with this THREAD, I have no idea
But GO LIBRARY THING

Guido, who once won a "Daniel Boon Hat" at the flicks".
RIP Fess Parker.

You mean in Australia the kids don't play Aboos and Criminals?

Guido I like a good western (The Gunslinger, the Good the Bad and the Ugly, Magnificent 7) but a lot of them from earlier times were pretty dire. The usual cowboys are good,indians are baddies routine.

Dear above,

No Gene (geneg) Though that would have been (Abo's & Convicts) although today the term ABO is probably as offensive as "nigger" is in the USA!

I don't even think we thought about our Aboriginal peoples in the 1950's (as kids) although by the early 1960's, my Headmaster in secondary school did make us well aware of Aboriginals by inviting such people as the future Governor of
South Australia to talk to us!

Thanks Mr. Johnstone.

And sf_addict, I also am not that fond of "westerns" except for the ones you
mentioned as well as most of the works of John Ford and of course "The Duke"
when he is just being... ummm, John Wayne.

I WILL keep on thread topic in future, I promise. ;-)

Yours, Guido, who is easily diverted.

edited for spelling.

I think I'm the only one who didn't like The Forever War. I liked the concept, but I didn't like how it played out. Really the drug use in the beginning was a little shocking, of course for a book written in the 70's it made sense. I thought it was stupidthat the mechs they had in the beginning killed you if you so much as fell on your ass. Design flaws like that simply don't get allowed for in real life.

The battle scenes were tedious to read, and the only reason why you got through them was to see what happened when they got back to Earth. Of course the fear of running into an alien ship that could be so far advanced in the future than you are was of course very realistic, and the fact that the war lasted millenia made sense, but there wasn't enough time spent on the idea.

The book lost points with me becaus I simply didn't find it interesting, and it didn't explain the massive changes in culture that happens between the exits and returns from Earth, it's like, "hey, we're all gay now!" "okay, cool." You would think that someone would ask 'how?' I mean, homosexuality has always existed for a small portion of the population, and all of a sudden every single person is gay because you don't need a male and female relationship to reproduce?

Of course, the aliens' all being clones is interesting and how when Humanity comes to reach that, then the war ends, and that's why the aliens saw no need to fight on an individual level. I think the whole cloning thing is ludicrous, why even continue a species if everyone is the same? What's the poit to live, and why would you found new planets and set up colonies? If every person is the exact same as everyone else, then it would seem to me that you would simply limit the number of people and resources each person consumes, there would be no need for space travel what so ever when the people are ostensibly robotic personas.

252> I thought it was stupidthat the mechs they had in the beginning killed you if you so much as fell on your ass. Design flaws like that simply don't get allowed for in real life.

Forever War is simply a retelling of Haldeman's combat experience in Vietnam, with some allegory and metaphor thrown in. I think this part is far more realistic than you think. Soldiers are often sent into battle with equipment that will kill them if they don't treat it properly, including simply having an accident.

That's why society changes so much without giving all the details. It's a metaphor for the alienation that Vietnam vets felt in coming back. Many felt society had radically changed and they didn't have the foggiest idea why.

Obviously m16s were prone to jam, and the water they had to wade through would make equipment more likely to break, but you put people in a suit that new users would have trouble controlling, will kill you if you fall on your ass, and then send them to train in them on an iceball? Really, that seems like you don't want an intergalactic army.

I'm sure that the Vietnam vets did feel differently when they got back, and that society really had changed it's perspective on a lot of things while they were gone, but the changes in the book were a bit ridiculous.

I agree with your vampire comment. I want my vampires to be nasty bastards who are only interested in tearing your throat out.

#255

Or with a never-sated Lolita complex.

I will VOTE for Spike in "Buffy..."

Whoa, nobody's mentioned this one yet: the Adam and Eve/Noah-story. That is, either: 1 person of each sex stranded in an at least slightly hospitable place becomes the parents of a new humanity. Won't work, sorry. Two is too few.

Worse is the version where one of the stranded people (it's always a he) exterminated the rest of humanity (because it was evil or a blind alley or whatever), but "managed" to save one woman. Since he is the last man on earth/wherever, naturally she'll spread her legs and be a baby-factory, and let him in turn impregnate their daughters, grand-daughters etc.

If an author does this, it turns me off that author permanently, and sours my memory of any other books that author has ever made.

Try Bester's story "Adam and No Eve" for a good variant of that hackneyed riff.

#258 Aldiss called those types of stories shaggy God stories.

I think I'd prefer any of those stories to the appallingly crap ending of 'Knowing'.

Don't know if it's a concept, perhaps the lack of one?, but the countless books based on tv series/movies. Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr. Who, and so on. And with fantasy, the never ending sagas..Book 7 of the 3rd cycle which is a mere 900 pages..

>262 Osiris76: Yes--I have great respect for authors who can finish a story and leave it finished, rather than milking something simply because it has made money. On the other hand, if I were the one with the popular trilogy, could I resist writing book 4 and more?

What about when your fans demanding more stories to continue on the trilogy you have written, ahd you written one?

Sounds in space and ubiquitous gravity

>264 rojse: Certainly falls into the category of problems I wish I had.

The obvious thing is to go and live in seclusion in Vermont and make everyone believe that you're working on the great American novel.

That's for amateurs. I'm working on the great Sumerian novel.

#268

Didn't Neal Stephenson do that already with Snow Crash?

> 214 & 215, actually in Nicholas Wade's Before the Dawn, he touched on the interesting notion that humanity has slowly evolved to be less violent. I'm not well-read enough on the subject to comment on it, but the idea was interesting. The idea that species are evolving towards a moral goal of peaceful perfection I find quite stupid, but of course evolution isn't about goals or endpoints, just a neverending process.

> I forget the numbers already, but on the point of different alien races all containing the same characteristic (the logical ___, the militant ___ etc etc) , well this is more of a fantasy peeve but I am soooo sick of the 'humans have short lifespans because they're so gosh darn emotional" trope which always comes with the judgment that our fiery natures are apparently one of our most enviable qualities as a 'race'. Bleh.

@270
"comes with the judgment that our fiery natures are apparently one of our most enviable qualities as a 'race'. Bleh."

Ah yes, the indomitable human spirit. A rare treasure — unique in all the cosmos... Bleh indeed. You may be referring more specifically to fantasy, but it crops up often enough in science fiction as well.

I'll admit to probably having read more 1980s and older SF than 1980s and newer so maybe I'm mistaken, but that trend has died down somewhat right?

#10: lol

Unicorns

273> Really? I find unicorns a fairly underused concept in scifi. ;)

(I know, I know, other people were posting fantasy stuff, too, but I just had to pick on ya!)

>274 brightcopy: I was at OUR local Half Price Books the other day and spotted something that I thought would fit nicely in my post-apocalyptic... pile of books. As I was reading the back cover I was thinking, 'sounds good', then I get to the part where Mr. Main Character finds a unicorn in the ruins of the city (I believe it was also telepathic). I quickly put it back and looked around to see if anyone was watching.

I am glad there are people who enjoy story lines involving unicorns and dragons and I certainly won't criticize anyone's reading material, but fantasy isn't my cup of tea.

275> Perhaps not. But c'mon, give it a chance. Maybe the unicorn was actually a fusion powered nuclear robot able to communicate with Mr. Main Character's nanobot techno-virus using an ad-hoc short range wireless network!

That's why there's that old saying: Don't judge a book by the unicorns on the cover.

Dammit, now I'm going to be looking for that book at every Half Price in the twin cities metro area...

>276 brightcopy: Good point, nanobots never occurred to me! If it can shoot plasma from its horn, then I want one.

The book in question is at the Half closest to where we live. It's on the bottom shelf, on the right side of the first group of SF shelves - near the Bradbury.

I'll probably be there in the next couple of days and Ill get author and title.

277> Why do I have the feeling the author's name is going to rhyme with "berry looks"?..

I don't know for sure, but I don't think it rhymes.

Do you mean the author of 'Sword of Sha na na (Rock and Roll is here to Stay)' ?

>277 LamSon:
I can think of at least one legitimate sci-fi book that had a unicorn in it, The Earth Is All That Lasts by Catherine Wells. The unicorn made the cover of the book, flying no less, and could send an electric charge through it's horn.

>275 LamSon: Come to think of it, the book was post-apocalyptic and the unicorn was mildly telepathic. Mr. Main Character didn't find him in a ruined city though. No dragons either.

I'll recommend the book if you want to try to find a copy. It wasn't a best seller, but I liked it.

>281 pjfarm: Just to add, the book was the first of a series of four books, and again, I liked them all.

281> If that thing is a unicorn, then so is a narwhal.

Though, granted, you don't see a lot of narwhal's on book covers... Shame.

The book I was thinking about in msg 273 was ARIEL by Steven R. Boyett. The blurb is from his website.
(Ace Books, 1983. Reprinted August 2009)
A young man and a unicorn journey from Atlanta to Manhattan in a world where technology has been replaced by magic.

>283 brightcopy:
It was called a unicorn in the book. Technically, it was an animal from another world, and I'm thinking that it was more intelligent than a chimp but not as bright as the average cashier at Walmart.

It dropped out of the story line at the end of the first novel I think, though it may have been the second. It's been a few years since I read the series.

If you want an actual, honest-to-goodness unicorn in an SF book, you'll have to let me know if you think of Madeline L'Engle's book A Swiftly Tilting Planet as SF or Fantasy. I'd go with SF but it could be argued the other way.

Now you've got me trying to think of a cover with a narwhal, but I've been unsuccessful so far. Maybe one of the editions of Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders trilogy although that would be fantasy not SF.

285> Sounds like a job for Tim's Cover Guess data.

>286 brightcopy:
Yeah, but then you'd have to sort through the multitude of books with narwhal's on the cover to figure out which ones were SF. ;-)

By the way, I realized I misspelled Madeleine L'Engle's name in >285 pjfarm:. Mea culpa.

>285 pjfarm: How can you insult chimps in that way? Or maybe its just my Wal-mart... Good reason why I despise shopping there and avoid it unless utterly unavoidable.

Not to mention the real classic, "Family D'Alembert".

OK, not an Opera Company, but a Circus Troupe. So, not Cowboys and Indians but Highwire Acts and Secret Agents.

Someone pointed this out about 100 posts ago-but if we assemble all of the scifi objected to in this thread what's left? At least one or two posts dragged just about all of my favorites through the mud...

But, as usual, one person's least favorite it bound to be someone else's most favorite, right? I for one enjoyed all those Star Trek time travel episodes, at least the ones in the original series. Less so in later series.

#289 I have all of those. Never worked up the fortitude to read them, though. Well, I did read the first six when they were published back in the early 1980s... The last two books are very difficult to find now in the UK, and I've seen copies going for £20 on eBay.