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

[sakon76.livejournal.com]

Are we talking "War of the Worlds" the Tom Cruise debacle, or the older original version where the mecha are freshly-arrived from Mars? Because, really, yeah, the "let's bury the suckers on Earth for however long before activating them" change to the plot made no sense whatsoever. But, then, I like the original. And don't like the remake.