Evil races put in the story only to be killed without moral consideration
Humanoid/appealing-looking races all on the side of good, ugly/bizarre-looking races all on the side of evil
One race is the warrior race, another is the merchant race, another is the science race, etc. with no meaningful cultural variation no matter how vast and spread out the species is
All the protagonists are nobles/corporate heirs/other people of obscene wealth and privilege
Not understanding military strategy or how it would be fundamentally altered by fire-breathing dragons/magic unicorns/vast interstellar distances/bombs that can annihilate planets
Not understanding military strategy or how it would be fundamentally altered by fire-breathing dragons/magic unicorns/vast interstellar distances/bombs that can annihilate planets
I could not get over this in one of the new Star Wars movies when they establish that you can use hyperdrives on a ship to easily kamikaze a star destroyer. Like, writers, you just invalidated the entire Wars in Star Wars. No more fighters, no more blasters, no more ground troops, no storm troopers or AT-AT's. The entire galaxies' military doctrine would shift to strapping hyperdrives to rocks and lobbing them long distance an enemy home planet. Nothing would look the same!!!!
Ender's Game has a lot of problems but at least the war in that one is shown to be the result of a misunderstanding, and it repeatedly emphasizes that genociding the bugs was in fact Very Bad
The Speaker for the Dead series is pretty wacky at times, but the throughline of the first book is Ender seeking redemption for destroying the Formic homeworld by finding a planet to place the last remaining queen - simultaneously he comes into contact with a pre-industrial alien species, and by helping people come to understand them, he prevents a similar genocide from happening.
I fukken love that book and its sequels, even though Card is :yikes:
Speaker for the Dead and it's sequel are probably my favorite depictions of alien life. Like, truly different though patterns and cultures without just being meaninglessly evil.
There was, though, a famously non-charitable reading of it as Hitler apologia, since Space Hitler (Ender Wiggin) goes to a Portuguese-speaking colony to prove that his genocide was just a misunderstanding and he's just a regular guy who also happens to be a genius at interspecies diplomacy. I think it was at least a little tongue-in-cheek, seeing as Card has perfectly plausible mundane explanations for those influences (missionary work in Brazil, for instance).
Card still freaked out and wrote a long, rambling reply to it that came across as unhinged. As far as I can tell it's been purged from the written record. Can't find it anywhere.
That's what's so bizarre about the contemporary Starship Troopers content, is it's a fascist's re-imagining of an anti-fascist's re-imagining of a fascist's setting.
In the book it opens with them doing space colonialism with the space South Vietnamese aliens, in their cool robot suits that can shoot out nukes like they're passing out Halloween candy. Very :so-true:
Verhoeven found the book so depressing he literally threw it in the trash and decided to direct it as a satire of the source material
I forgive Star Trek for having aliens that all share common cultural traits because at least some writers recognized the show did that and try to explain why it's like that. Several alien species mention that they had massive, apocalyptic wars before developing space travel. Vulcans did it, Ferengi did it, several others too, including humans. They then had to rebuild, but it always ended up uniting the planet under a common ideology and culture over thousands of years. Humans are the weird ones, we develop utopian space socialism in only a few decades after global nuclear war, whereas Vulcans took 1500 years.
A few episodes try to say it's because Earth is more ecologically diverse than other planets with alien life, like the Vulcan planet is a huge desert and the Klingon planet is covered in uniform volcanoes/mountains. A few try saying humans have much squishier brains than other species and that results in more adaptable thoughts.
Not to be a gigantic nerd but I want to point out that Ferengi didn't have an apocalyptic war or any inter-Ferengi genocide or slavery (feeemoids don't count, hu-mon :quark: ) and they feel all morally superior because of that
I could not get over this in one of the new Star Wars movies when they establish that you can use hyperdrives on a ship to easily kamikaze a star destroyer. Like, writers, you just invalidated the entire Wars in Star Wars. No more fighters, no more blasters, no more ground troops, no storm troopers or AT-AT's. The entire galaxies' military doctrine would shift to strapping hyperdrives to rocks and lobbing them long distance an enemy home planet. Nothing would look the same!!!!
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Ender's Game has a lot of problems but at least the war in that one is shown to be the result of a misunderstanding, and it repeatedly emphasizes that genociding the bugs was in fact Very Bad
Starship Troopers can fuck right off though
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Another one for the "media chuds completely missed the point of" pile
Wasn’t that Ender’s older brother? Been a while since I read the books.
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Yeah Peter ends up as a big shot leader on earth once the coalition govt collapses
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Redsails has a good take (IMO) on Ender’s Game that basically agrees with your chud relative:
https://redsails.org/creating-the-innocent-killer/
Also, there are characters named Mazer Rackham, Bonzo Madrid, and, of course, Ender Wiggin.
The Speaker for the Dead series is pretty wacky at times, but the throughline of the first book is Ender seeking redemption for destroying the Formic homeworld by finding a planet to place the last remaining queen - simultaneously he comes into contact with a pre-industrial alien species, and by helping people come to understand them, he prevents a similar genocide from happening.
I fukken love that book and its sequels, even though Card is :yikes:
Speaker for the Dead and it's sequel are probably my favorite depictions of alien life. Like, truly different though patterns and cultures without just being meaninglessly evil.
There was, though, a famously non-charitable reading of it as Hitler apologia, since Space Hitler (Ender Wiggin) goes to a Portuguese-speaking colony to prove that his genocide was just a misunderstanding and he's just a regular guy who also happens to be a genius at interspecies diplomacy. I think it was at least a little tongue-in-cheek, seeing as Card has perfectly plausible mundane explanations for those influences (missionary work in Brazil, for instance).
Card still freaked out and wrote a long, rambling reply to it that came across as unhinged. As far as I can tell it's been purged from the written record. Can't find it anywhere.
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Wait, I thought that the original Starship Troopers was anti imperialist???
Verhoven's film is a satire of the book, which is legitimately fascist.
Ohhh! Damn I would never survive a sci-fi struggle session.
That's what's so bizarre about the contemporary Starship Troopers content, is it's a fascist's re-imagining of an anti-fascist's re-imagining of a fascist's setting.
Real simulacra hours, who up?
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Verhoven’s film is unironically better than the book, both as a piece of entertainment, and for having a better message.
In the book it opens with them doing space colonialism with the space South Vietnamese aliens, in their cool robot suits that can shoot out nukes like they're passing out Halloween candy. Very :so-true:
Verhoeven found the book so depressing he literally threw it in the trash and decided to direct it as a satire of the source material
I forgive Star Trek for having aliens that all share common cultural traits because at least some writers recognized the show did that and try to explain why it's like that. Several alien species mention that they had massive, apocalyptic wars before developing space travel. Vulcans did it, Ferengi did it, several others too, including humans. They then had to rebuild, but it always ended up uniting the planet under a common ideology and culture over thousands of years. Humans are the weird ones, we develop utopian space socialism in only a few decades after global nuclear war, whereas Vulcans took 1500 years.
A few episodes try to say it's because Earth is more ecologically diverse than other planets with alien life, like the Vulcan planet is a huge desert and the Klingon planet is covered in uniform volcanoes/mountains. A few try saying humans have much squishier brains than other species and that results in more adaptable thoughts.
Not to be a gigantic nerd but I want to point out that Ferengi didn't have an apocalyptic war or any inter-Ferengi genocide or slavery (feeemoids don't count, hu-mon :quark: ) and they feel all morally superior because of that
They just profit from those kinda things
I see all of this and my mind just condenses it all into "terrible fucking writing" and throws it in the trash
Any author who does this is just bad at writing
The Mote In God's Eye ticks all those boxes