SF conventions--of another sort

[vilakins]

Someone on an SF mailing list directed me to an interesting post on james_nicoll's LJ.

If you could make one convention of modern SF go away, which one would you choose?

If you could add one, what would you add?

I commented there but I decided I'd like to know what you think. My picks are:

Get rid of the hackneyed civilisation where--gasp, how original!--women are oppressed. Even Farscape and Firefly have done it. Use some imagination already.

I want more alien aliens. How about furry aliens, or insectoid ones instead of the usual humanoids, and let's play with gender with a little more imagination. How about societies with several sexes, where you need more than two to procreate, or a hive society? Anything but clichéd old recycled human ones.

But you knew that. :-)

Comments

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

I want more alien aliens. How about furry aliens, or insectoid ones instead of the usual humanoids, and let's play with gender with a little more imagination. How about societies with several sexes, where you need more than two to procreate, or a hive society? Anything but clichéd old recycled human ones.

I think that it's largely down to cost as far as the physical aspect is concerned.

As for which convention I'd like to do away with, there are any number. How about the one that reckons that highly advanced civilisations will be unaware of the fuse or circuit breaker, so that any damage to any piece of electronics will make the whole lot go up in flames.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, like the exploding consoles in Star Trek! And of course there's Independence Day where the clever humans used a computer virus to bring the aliens down. Serves them right for running Windows. Mind you, I could explain that one away: Bill Gates was one of them, sent here to soften us up for invasion. :-P

Right, I'm cold and tired and off to bed.

[spacefall.livejournal.com]

Shame on you, the computer in Independence Day was a PowerBook running Mac OS! ;) (http://www.stidy.com/MondoMac/applefilm.html)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

:-P It's been years since I saw that and I probably didn't notice at the time--but of course it was. Apple get their stuff into every TV show and film and even newspaper photo of astrogirl2 even though she does use Windows. I've often wondered how they do it but there you are, they must have alien backing.

[kerravonsen]

I think that it's largely down to cost as far as the physical aspect is concerned.

Yeah, I remember that they had an insectoid alien on B5 for a while, but they stopped using it because (a) the animatronics was very hard to work with and (b) it's impossible to have a character subtly portray emotions when it doesn't have human-like eyes and mouth. It really is amazing how much gets conveyed by facial expressions.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

It doesn't have to be very humanoid; look at Number Five in Short Circuit and Zoidberg in Futurama. I suppose the arrangement of features has to be vaguely human to work though. Farscape had an insectoid alien with eyes right out to the sides. I don't think they did, but I think you could use them to convey emotion by drooping or tilting them.