Sci-Fi bad plot devices

[scintor]

Energy shields are not impossible, just impractical. The Earth's magnetic field acts as a quite effective energy shield for all of us, but this would be a bit difficult to reproduce for the average starship.

There are all sorts of theories about how you could use energy to deflect dangerous particles or energies, but making a solid wall of energy is not one of them. The biggest problem is that darn inverse square law. It makes projecting a field at any distance nearly impossible.

On the other hand, do not underestimate the creativity of inventers and engineers.

Scincerely,

[e-mail]

[dizzyjam]

Dec 29, 2008 23:43:36 GMT -5 J Jack said:

Channel the energy, ok, that might work. But creating a wall of said energy? You're better off trying to make a firewall, that being said they lose all manner of defense as you get higher.

Fire burns things pretty well and is physical, but wouldn't work in outer space because it requires oxygen so I don't really see why you brought that up as an example since it's flawed by its own nature. Don't know how electricity works in outer space, but I'd hate to see someone try to walk through a wall of that. I know the times when I was a kid and got shocked didn't feel all that great and it sure did feel physical at the time. Maybe it would work on space debris too?

[seraphim]

Not all fires require air. Some flamable metals can aquire needed oxygen from other sources...not that most of those would be suitable for structural purposes.

For example if you had a hydrazine fuel leak in an area with iridium and aluminum...bad highly exothermic things can happen: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrazine

Or you can get a magnesium fire going...even underwater: www.burningart.com/meico/pyro/mag.html

Perhaps for a force field you could work out a plausible artifically sustained and modulated quantum topagraphy..."vibrating" in and out of existance by the picosecond, creating a barrier that is both there and not there...maybe translucent but reactive when 'touched'...like looking through or sticking your fingers into a fast spinning fan.

[Teskas]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but isn't an energy shield/force field/whatever already pretty much a given in sci fi? Unless a person is planning to write Ben Bova-style "hard" science fiction, I'm guessing most readers would just go with the idea and not try to work out whether it were technologically possible as real science.

Afterall, the telepods in The Fly and the transporters of Star Trek were make-believe devices. (As it happens some hard science research has caught up, and teleporting now seems to be theoretically possible.) For the novelist's purposes, the trick is to avoid trying to explain the "science" of the fictional technology and simply persuade the reader to suspend disbelief. Let the scientists catch up with our imaginations and get on with telling the story.

[seraphim]

The problem is not in the imagining of a force field, its in the name. You might as well speak of rayguns, atomics, and velocipedes. The term has become a bit tea stained and sterile with age. It conjurs up images of bad space opera and lazy writer's jargonsprach. Force fields are out. Deflection fields, inertial dampers, containment barriers, aft shields, etc. are in.

[dizzyjam]

Dec 30, 2008 14:12:20 GMT -5 Teskas said:

Maybe I'm missing something here, but isn't an energy shield/force field/whatever already pretty much a given in sci fi? Unless a person is planning to write Ben Bova-style "hard" science fiction, I'm guessing most readers would just go with the idea and not try to work out whether it were technologically possible as real science.

Afterall, the telepods in The Fly and the transporters of Star Trek were make-believe devices. (As it happens some hard science research has caught up, and teleporting now seems to be theoretically possible.) For the novelist's purposes, the trick is to avoid trying to explain the "science" of the fictional technology and simply persuade the reader to suspend disbelief. Let the scientists catch up with our imaginations and get on with telling the story.

You're quite correct, but I think this discussion of a more "realistic" nature started because of Jeff's link to the article.

Dec 30, 2008 16:51:47 GMT -5 seraphim said:

The problem is not in the imagining of a force field, its in the name. You might as well speak of rayguns, atomics, and velocipedes. The term has become a bit tea stained and sterile with age. It conjurs up images of bad space opera and lazy writer's jargonsprach. Force fields are out. Deflection fields, inertial dampers, containment barriers, aft shields, etc. are in.

I'm not going to debate the name because whatever energy is being used will create a "force" to "field" off anything coming at it.

I like the comparison to an active fan. That was pretty cool.

[metalikhan]

This doesn't have much to do with energy fields, but it might help with some background information pertaining to beams, rays, etc. When I ran a laser machine, I had to pay close attention to the x, y, & z axis for the set ups. X and Y were most important for locating the beam on the work-piece. Z was important because the beam came from overhead of the work-piece and determined the depth of the beam's cut. Setting the piece too close or too far meant the beam's focal point either could not make the cut at all or the cuts were incomplete. A couple of times, a power surge (when city power failed and the generators kicked on) caused a beam pulse that burned through the metal lid of a work-piece and damaged the ceramic substrate below.

[Jeff Gerke]

Whoa.

[J Jack]

I think I need to mention I wasn't talking about in outer space for the firewall. My friend and I were talking about the newest Japanese, well, weapon system. They've been working hard on creating a walking suit, it's causing quite the stir in military circles, as well as the exoskeleton system. We were talking about a shielding system because the only issue with walkers and exoskeletons is weak points that bring them to their knees. Hydraulic systems, joints, and all that.

[scintor]

OK I am going to talk about another topic I have seen botched in multiple Sci-Fi venues: Dark Matter.

Dark matter aka the missing mass.

I have seen this killed in everything from Star Trek(dark matter disrupts energy in starships) to X-files (A man infused with dark matter kills anyone who touches his shadow) to an entire novel by Allen Dean Foster (Glory Lane: about how that missing mass in the universe became a satient transforming blob that eventually destroyed itself because everyone was fighting over his power, thus creating a new universe.)

Dark matter is actually something pretty simple. Anything that is not bright enough to show up on a telescope is dark matter. Planets, comets, asteroids, basically anything in space except stars and nebulae is dark matter.

Missing mass is a related concept. Some astronomers calculated that the rotation of the galaxy does not make sense unless it is more massive than the object that can be observed can account for. It was then proposed that the "missing mass" was composed of "dark matter." That, or their calculations are off.

The only way to seriously use it in a story is as a navigational hazard or something like that.

"Well, Mr Sanders, It will take us two days to make the three jumps to Marius II."
"I didn't think it was that far."
"It's not really, but we have to go around the Gramm Void."
"Why?"
"That area has a lot of uncharted dark matter, and I, for one, don't want to be the first one to run into an uncharted comet or planetoid."

Scincerely,

[e-mail]

reprinted from Lost Genre Guild forum

[J Jack]

I remember someone mentioning once the fuel for the star trek ships couldn't exist because it would implode the lines. It was the anti matter drive, but it would blow up the ship. Just thought of that.

Off topic, the massive red timers on bombs. Umm, no. That doesn't happen.

[Spokane Flyboy]

Color coded wiring in the bombs too. I'm a psycho villain on a budget? Splurge on multiple spools of different colored wire instead of the jumbo CostCo spool of black wire? I think not!

[waldenwriter]

The Evil Overlord List (http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html) gives a lot of examples of bad sci-fi plot devices (fantasy ones too). It's quite funny.

One bad plot device in sci-fi is that aliens are always bad or have bad intentions toward us, whether they are bent on total destruction (like the scary jellyfish-like things of War of the Worlds) or if they abduct humans and brainwash them or whatever else aliens are said to do when they lure humans onto their spaceships.

This is not always the case; Star Trek show alien societies coexisting peacefully with Earthlings, for instance. Another good example of the misunderstood alien concept is the movie Race to Witch Mountain, which I saw recently (and which was a remake of the older Witch Mountain movies). The government was out to capture the two alien kids because of their stereotypical views on aliens. But in reality, the kids were there for a peaceful purpose - to retrieve the results of an experiment their parents conducted to find a way to save their dying planet without their people having to invade Earth.

In my own sci-fi stories, the planets (and most stars) both in our solar system and in other galaxies are inhabited by native peoples who through the UIIC (United Interplanetary and Intersidereal Council) have friendly relations with us (with the exception of the death-loving people of Pluto and the witch-sirens and vampires of Charmia and its moons). These people have existed on these planets long before we knew what we know now about space, but their existence was hidden from us by the Lunarissé, the native people of the moon (a slight reference to C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, in which the moon acts as a barrier to confine the Bent One to Earth/Thulcandra) until we made contact with the Lunarissé during one of the Apollo missions to the moon.

So I think that aliens are misunderstood too much in sci-fi.

[torainfor]

I think aliens may be too well understood in standard sci fi. If there really was a race on another planet that evolved from its own primordial slough, I think it would be so alien that we'd have a much harder time relating to each other than most stories say. Elizabeth Moon's "Thek" come to mind--floating pyramids made of telepathic rock.

[J Jack]

New movies coming out beating dead sci fi horses, it's starting to get on my nerves honestly. The whole peaceful aliens actually tricking us so they can turn later or enact some dubious and devious plan that will be foiled by some group of heros. I can't wait.