Towards a taxonomy of cliches in Space Opera (2016)
Entire list is a little bit forced. I love sci-fi and have been reading or listening to it almost every day for over 30 years, and most of these I don&#x27;t even remember ever encountering or being a problem.<p>Also, remember, the point of a good book is an interesting story. Since we are already talking about aliens and space travel, we are already assuming some scientific facts are at least bent to serve the story.<p>Some examples:<p>&gt; Plate tectonics is easily ignored, unless the plot requires a Volcano&#x2F;Earthquake<p>Most planets do not have plate tectonics. And even if it does, why is it important to not ignore it when your story is about something completely different?<p>&gt; Planetary ring systems are picturesque, not dangerous<p>They are not dangerous. It is not like it will go out of its way to kill you. Entire mass of the ring system is usually in very thin, small bands. Just avoid crossing those and you are fine.<p>&gt; You can change orbital inclination easily<p>Of course you can. If you can easily travel to other stars, changing inclination should not be a problem.<p>&gt; New Colonies may be either agricultural or mining colonies; rarely, resort colonies<p>Maybe resort colonies are not fun to write about. Actually... Star Trek TNG has a bunch of episodes about Risa, which is a whole fricking fully climate-controlled resort planet.<p>Why are you expecting parity on everything? Do you think there should be more fiction about garbage men than private detectives? After all, there is many more of them.<p>&gt; Everyone uses Money to mediate exchanges of value<p>Actually, I feel like most of stories do not have anything about money. A writer makes a choice. If everybody made choice to create world without money, would you be nitpicking about it, too?<p>&gt; Inflation? What is this, I don&#x27;t even ...<p>&gt; Deflation? What will they think of next?<p>&gt; Sales tax? What&#x27;s that?<p>&gt; Income tax? What&#x27;s that?<p>Now you are being silly. Are we still talking about science fiction or would you rather make every author include thousands of pages of explanations on every topic from physics to biology to economics to whatever else you are bitchin is not included there.<p>And why do you assume economy can&#x27;t exist without any or all of these things? At some time in the past we had thriving economy without inflation&#x2F;deflation or sales or income taxes.