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

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Huh! I never noticed about Chakotay. I didn't think he got enough screentime to develop improbable expertise. :-P You're right about the others, but OTOH it was getting a bit annoying that no matter how clever Crichton was (in things other than science, mostly tactics) he was the stupid human for far too long. I'm glad they dropped that one.

[daiseechain.livejournal.com]

I always read that as a combination of specism on the part of the other characters and John still finding his footing in a new part of the universe with vastly different cultural rules to any he'd ever encountered. I did like the way he suddenly regained his confidence in season 4 though.