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]

Probably the most egregious of those scenarios came from "V", where the aliens invade for that rarest of substances...water.

I tend to think that any reason for alien invasion would have to be fundamentally irrational, based on the equivalent of philosophical or religious motives. Something like "the aliens must be converted to our beliefs", combined with an equally irrational "Only a land owner is a true citizen" might work as a motivation.

Of course now I want to see an alien invasion that is actually a botched "This will take no effort at all- they will welcome us as liberators" operation.

[sakon76.livejournal.com]

Eh, "V" I'll give a half-pass to, on the basis that they came for water and food.

[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.

[mithriltabby]

Charlie Stross’ Singularity Sky has something like that, though the invasion scenario is much more like some of the proposals I saw for airdropping Western convenience appliances onto the Soviet Union as a way to end the Cold War...

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

Singularity sky is really kind of like a telephone repairman, gone horribly insane. "Never mind about wireless, I've got a REALLY COOL way to hook you to the internet!"

[yuusada.livejournal.com]

Funny, that's kinda how the Cardassian occupation of Bajor went down.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I had forgotten that. Though there was a strong component of resource extraction too wasn't there? Which is why the station was there.

In any case, given all the various types of Unbelievablum in Star Trek, resource extraction of some bizarre substance might be a good justification for an invasion. "Look, they have pure bosons, just lying around on the surface waiting to be harvested!"