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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.
I was unaware of this new definition of shibboleth that essentially mean cliché or trope.
Two of those actually seem reasonable...
(1) The manually aimed weapons.
Especially in the event that there is some probability effect that the gunner is able to take advantage from, which a computer can not; for example: the gunner may be a main character, in which case, they can't die, which means if a preternatural aim is necessary to their survival, they will of necessity have a preternatural aim. But there's actually no reason to step past the fourth wall in this case, if we posit psychic capabilities, or very long distances relative to the speed of light vs. the speed of the craft: you will need to shoot where the enemy will be when the weapon passes through their location, rather than where the enemy currently is, and you can't depend on them to not be taking bridge-lurching evasive maneuvers.
(2) Science officers with Ph.D. levels of expertise in dozens of fields.
This isn't that unbelievable, although most of the people I know in the "science officer" range tend to be struggling somewhere early in their second dozen...
> Columbian coffee. Canadian bacon. Irish whiskey.
I think you really nail it here. Canadian bacon is the best example: it's not bacon, and it's not from Canada, but the name sticks. I think the problem is when people hang out *with Romulans* and talk about "Romulan ale"- the Romulans would, of course, know better, as would some ale aficionado. But in the general case, it's very safe to say "Earth Sugardrink" when talking about whatever the most popular human soda is. Sure, *we'd* know better, but the aliens might not, etc.
In contrast, consider (from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe):
It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85% of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian "chinanto/mnigs" which is ordinary water served at slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan "tzjin-anthony-ks" which kills cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds.
What can be made of this fact? It exists in total isolation. As far as any theory of structural linguistics is concerned it is right off the graph, and yet it persists. Old structural linguists get very angry when young structural linguists go on about it. Young structural linguists get deeply excited about it and stay up late at night convinced that they are very close to something of profound importance, and end up becoming old structural linguists before their time, getting very angry with the young ones. Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy discipline, and a large number of its practitioners spend too many nights drowning their problems in Ouisghian Zodahs.
I ordered Canadian bacon for breakfast when in St John's and got something like a boneless smoked pork chop the size of my head. I don't give a damn what you call it, it was freaking awesome.
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