SF quote of the day

[roseembolism]

Nicked from rec.arts.sf.written:

        "One of the things SF has taught me is that in the future,
people will be frickin' morons when it comes to solving day to
day problems (In fact, they will forget things that we know now)
but this will not prevent them from building near-C or FTL starships."
- James Nicoll 

Given that this was a discussion that involved tho old "There's a water shortage because the space settlers have to get water from Earth?" cliche, this quote is especially appropriate.  But the sad thing is there's an entire subgenre of SF that involves leaping through hoops to solve A Major Thorny Problem, while the reader sits there and mutters "why don't they use (technology that's available now), or gripes "Given the technology they have in the setting, why don't they (obvious use of tech)". 

Does anyone want to bring up their favorite versions of SF stupidity?

Comments

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

IIRC, they once got some actual SF writers to do a "V" novel, and poor dears, they were frantically jumping through hoops to try to make the scenario make sense. They eventually explained the fact that the lizards could eat Terran meat (along with being reptilian bipeds) with the concept that the lizards weren't actually aliens, they were DINOSAURS, who had left Earth millions of years ago, and who had just now come back.

This is why you don't get SF authors to do TV novelizations: it leads to psychotic breaks.