Love them or hate them there are a lot of common tropes across the science fiction genre. What are some of your favorite and least favorite tropes?
I think it goes without saying that one of the least favorite tropes is Deux ex Machina. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it at first, but after watching the German TV show “Dark” I was utterly dissatisfied with it. The entire series up until the very last episode is about this inescapable time loop and alternative universes which is pretty cool while watching it, but then you get closer and closer to the end wondering how they are going to solve this impossible problem. Then surprise they just do it instantly in the last episode.
Another trope I am not very fond of is nanotechnology where there are trillions of tiny robots that can effectively act as magic. It just feels like a lazy way to write science fiction because you really want a fantasy.
A trope I do actually like despite how overdone it is, is the idea of a precursor or forerunner. It often brings to light the absolutely massive scale of the universe which I find fun to think about.
I fell in love with an book series called Expeditionary Force, the first book Columbus day hooked me. It’s fun, it’s interesting, and the writer does an amazing job making the technology being discuss sound realistic and not too far fetched.
With that being said, ExFor has ruined space battles for me in Sci-Fi and made me realize a trope we all just took for granted - The Dog Fighting type of close combat you see in ship to ship battles in Sci-Fi. There just isn’t any way that would ever play out that way, instead combat would happen at ultra far ranges, so far apart, that railguns could be dodged, even lasers and other high energy beam weapons could be evaded just by moving out of the way as light crawls along. Combat would be about bracketing your target with fire, and ultra fast, high g smart missiles.
Space is so insanely large, that you’d never see dog fighting like in Star Wars.
Whenever “this universe” versus “that universe” comes up I always look at one thing for space battles. Effective Range.
Why would Mass Effect ships absolutely dick on Halo ships? Because their weapons fire ten times faster which means they can literally side step enemy rounds while landing them all. Day. Long.
Nothing else matters when you can just casually avoid everything your enemy throws at you.
My biggest peeve in this context is when the official “technical specs” for ships and other technologies have ludicrous numbers that make no sense with what we see on-screen. Star Wars is a big offender here, their ship weapons are often said to deliver shots with “kiloton” or “megaton” yields but when they actually show the shots hitting unshielded matter (such as a strafing run hitting the ground or shooting asteroids) there’s just the equivalent of a few kilograms of TNT popping off. Yet people pull out those megaton numbers when “battleboarding” as if that’s more relevant than what we actually see on screen.
Star Wars and their 5768392845792919375859391957583929194873939293875 ultrabiggajoule shields lol yeah.
No one working on star wars understands energy, laser shots do what modern missiles and bombs can, those aren’t even close to the thermonuclear yields that turbolasers supposedly have.
It’s not just energy numbers, though that’s very prominent. Star Wars writers just have no sense of scale.
AT-ATs are listed as having a maximum speed of 60km/h. I would love to see an animation of one of those things actually managing to gallop along at that speed, it would look so goofy.
That’s crazy, like any highschool physics student should know that’s crazy, crazy.
60km/h? Wow.
How do you feel about the ship to ship battles in The Expanse?
They did a great job! It’s one of the only other Sci-Fi stories I’ve seen that give a nod to the distances you’d encounter during ship to ship battles! I also loved the book series version of the Expanses take on ship to ship combat because they didn’t have sci-fi ship shields. Going into combat meant, donning your vac-suit because the ship could very well get peppered with holes and lose pressure.
An attempt to explore how space combat would actually work at relativistic speeds is one of the few things I actually remember about the Lost Fleet series. The writing is wooden, the characters are one-dimensional and the plot is obvious, but it might be worth reading one just for the space battles.
The Three Body Problem also shows this in quite a dramatic fashion.
Give the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell a try too, lots of space battles explaining dealing with those exact problems.
Several discussions around orchestrating movements with groups of forces light-minutes apart, predicting actions of the enemy moving a significant fraction of light speed given your time-late view, and operating automated systems for maneuvering, targeting, and weapons control at those speeds.
I’m sure you are aware, but the Expanse is much the same way.
Oh yes, I worked through the audio books for The Expanse last year, they did a fantastic job too! I also love that they address the idea of “on the float”, no artificial gravity except spin or thrust gravity. The Expanse tackled a bunch of thing more relaistic then 99% of sci-fi does.