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Science-Fictional Shibboleths (antipope.org)
An anonymous reader writes: SF author Charlie Stross has put together a short list of what he considers to be shibboleths for implausible science fiction. (If you're unfamiliar with the term, read the Wikipedia entry first.) So, what tops his list? "Asteroidal gravel banging against the hull of a spaceship. Alternatively: spaceships sheltering from detection behind an asteroid, or dodging asteroids, or pretty much anything else involving asteroids that don't look like [a pock-marked potato]." Another big red flag for Stross is when authors fail to appreciate Newton's second law, having their characters undergo impacts or accelerations that would turn them into a thin, reddish paste on their starship's hull. Some interesting examples from commenters include: futuristic yet manually-aimed weapons, technobabble as a plot device, and science officers with Ph.D. levels of expertise in dozens of fields. One of mine: entire races or planets full of people who behave the same, often based on some keyword. What are yours? Stross's focus is on books, but feel free to bring up movies and TV shows as well.
Your human target is 50 feet away and barely moving and yet SOMEHOW all of your crack Stormtroopers miss with a weapon that shoots at the speed of light.
Those are blasters, not lasers. If you can see a discreet glob of energy fly fast through the air, it's not made of photons, it's giving off photons as a side-effect.
For those that cant be bothered to click the wikipedia link, a shibboleth is a mythical creature, like the minotaur or the shakira.
My biggest cringe is when something changes size - like when Dracula changes to a bat or someone (as for instance Hugh Jackman in Van Helsing) changes into a werewolf of 2x volume. (Or Odo changing into a mouse, or when his full human size fits in a bucket.)
My second biggest is when the bullets hit everything except the person - such as running along a waist-high cast iron fence and the bullets hit the vertical bars but not the person. (I don't so much mind the "spark" that a bullet makes when it hits concrete in the movies - that's a good visual cue.) Also, someone outrunning the swept arc of machine gun bullets. Also, someone behind a couch being shielded from bullets.
My third biggest cringe is people hanging on by their hands for more than 30 seconds. People in *really* good shape can hold on for 60 seconds (try it some time), but unless you are an elite climber you won't get past the minute mark. Viz: the scientists in the 1997 movie "Batman and Robin".
Dear Mr. Stross,
Your little tirade there was only a little less annoying than an argument about whether an Imperial Star Destroyer could beat the Enterprise-D in battle. I imagine building a time machine into a DeLorean is impossible. I know that an X-Wing banking into a turn makes no sense in terms of real space flight. But these thing can be enormous fun. I've often found that books with similarly ridiculous scenarios are quite a bit of fun to read; that is to say, I enjoy them whether you do or not. Columns, articles, books, and documentaries about how the science in much science fiction is silly (e.g. your piece on science-fictional shibboleths) are a tedious waste of time.
Your books are quite good though
S.
Foster's is Australian for "that kangaroo piss we sell to Yanks who don't know any better". Discerning Aussies drink Toohey's. Less discerning Aussies drink VB.
*prepares for flames from fans of Victoria Bitter*
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay;
Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.
Charlie Stross meant to write about tell-tale signs for bad SF. And yes, the pronounciation of shibboleth was a tell-tale sign for being an Ephraimite instead of a Gileadite. But not every tell-tale sign is a shibboleth. For a shibboleth, you actually force the person in question to pronounce the word for you. But in bad SF, no one forced the author to put the tell-tale signs in there, he wrote them voluntarily, as he is a bad SF author.
Sorry, high fructose corn syrup != sugar.
You need to learn simple chemistry to understand that fact.
Umm... no. Just no.
High fructose corn syrup contains (in addition to water) fructose ("fruit sugar") and glucose ("grape sugar"). Both are "sugar".
They aren't sucrose, but that is not the only sugar.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
The FDA defines "sugar" as sucrose ONLY for the purpose of the ingredient list on the label. However, the FDA defines sugar to include all sugars (glucose, fructose, lactose, dextrose, etc) when the label is stating the total amount of "sugar" in the product. It is true that MOST people are too stupid to realize that fructose is scientifically sugar just as much as sucrose is (especially considering that sucrose is fructose chemically bound with glucose). Technically, any chemical for which the chemical name ends in "ose" is a sugar (that is what that ending MEANS).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Sorry, high fructose corn syrup != sugar.
You need to learn simple chemistry to understand that fact.
CAP === 'subparts'
Hello,
PhD in chem here. HFCS is ~75% sugar, the rest is pretty much water. It's not cane or beet sugar (almost pure sucrose) though.
Toohey's and VB are the Miller/Bud of Australia. Discerning Aussies drink the huge variety of craft beers that are available.
That said, unfortunately the huge conglomerates have bought up a huge number of the more popular craft breweries.