Sci-Fi/Fantasy Pet Peeves (can include cliches)

Authors who think women come in two varieties: weak and to be protected, or ball-breaking bitches.

The fact that apparently no SF author ever has heard of Gerard O'Neill.

Authors touring me around their magic system/world, eating up an entire chapter in the process with little to no plot value.
(Not info-dumping, but spacing it out through a scene)

I can't stand an overabundance of politics or religion in SF. It just bores me silly. Dune did this to me when what I wanted to see was more adventure and info about the strange environment.

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Dark fantasy that seems to wallow in how horrible and unjust the world is. Purely an execution thing, since I generally find crapsack worlds to be compelling. I think it's ultimately the depth of the characterization that makes the difference between "Wow! Everything sucks!" and "I get it...everything sucks."

A sci-fi book where a character gets onto a keyboard and types out an email. I mean, aren't we past keyboards in the 24th century?!?
On Star Trek 4, They went back in time to the 1980's, and Scotty automatically knew how to use a Mac keyboard, after he picked up the mouse and tried to speak into it.

The wise and enigmatic mentor that refuses to tell the hero all the information he/she needs, doling it out "for their own good" or being so cryptic as to be essentially useless, rather than laying it all out plainly like a sensible person... they can go die in a fire, and not before time. With-holding critical information should get the hero killed. Just once I'd like to see that story. ("I could have helped her save the world, but I had to be a mysterious old bastard instead and now she's dead and we're all doomed...")

CrastersBabies said:

I'm wondering what your pet peeves are for sci-fi/fantasy.

For me, it's the "mute kid who was traumatized and doesn't speak until he/she has to yell and save the day."

I can't tell you how many times I've seen this.

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Oh yeah. Mutism in general is waaaay overused. Dialogue is fun! Why would you deliberately exclude your characters from it?

Prophecies.

Prophecies - as plot driver. They are great for foreshadowing only.
Elemental Magic. (Fire/Air/Earth/Water. really? Those are not the fundamental building blocks of the universe like ancient man thought.)
Certainty of the existance of a soul. (It feels like most magic systems uses a soul as plot spackle to explain why the magic exists. It's lazy, and it reduces the massive amount of uncertainy that most people feel on the topic.)
Horses - in a world where no other earth animals exist.
Fantasy Gun Control / Permanant Middle Ages - as though technology and the march of progress can truley be suprseed for the centuries that it would take for some stories to exist as they do.
"Meet In a Bar" syndrome - really anything that makes it sound like someone wrote their role-playing session, rather then came up with a real plot on their own.

Unacknowledged mental illness/disability that is just treated as f'ing hilarious and adorable by the rest of the cast. I think I have seen this mostly in manga/anime, but it really bugs me.

Evil goblins.

Actually, any race that's supposed to be evil. What? How can an entire sentient or semi-sentient race or species be evil?

Dumbledore.

Characters freaking out over common fantasy tropes. (The converse to this is that people complain that my characters don't freak out enough. I don't know. If I found a dragon in my kitchen, I'd be more concerned about it lighting something on fire than freaking out.)

Treating the past like it's all one giant amorphous blob.

Characters who don't use guns for no discernible reason.

Starting in a tavern.

Vampires with AIDS.

Two folks from the waring magical factions fall in love and make a super-magic-baby.

Hidden special/noble heritage and inherited/genetic powers. I think we should've moved beyond the "noble blood is awesome" tropes, and genetically-based magic/superpowers gives me a bad taste in my mouth.

You're going to hate me, then, Lhipenwhe - sort of.

For me, gooder-than-good vs. badder-than-bad. I can't stand the always-perfect always-right always-good types, while characters doing evil purely for evil's sake is just irritating. No-one is objectively always perfect and objectively always right, and it irritates me when characters are presented as such by the author while clearly being anything but. Equally, people who do things agreed upon as 'evil' generally have a reason, even if that reason is 'I can't help it'.

This tends to be more in films than books, but what really bugs me is when they feel the need to open, usually with a news broadcast, that always goes something like "In 2034 Professor Whatever of the Wankydoodle Corporation invented Robot Ghost Dinosaurs (or whatever it may be) and our lives have never been the same since.........", or narration that says something like "Since the beginning of time, a secret underground war has been fought between *insert name of goodies* and *insert name of baddies* while humanity remained unaware........"

Suspend my disbelief by all means, but don't crucify it. This is one great thing about Philip K Dick - he would mention a technology, or show it, and just assume you knew what it was. I like that, crediting the reader with a bit of intelligence, and helps you stay "in world".

Stevewritesbooks said:

Elemental Magic. (Fire/Air/Earth/Water. really? Those are not the fundamental building blocks of the universe like ancient man thought.)

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It just occurred to me to write a story where magic and its effects are based on the Periodic Table.

Magnesium Wizards vs. the evil Sorcerers of Argon!

Okay, so both OJCade and Lhip are going to hate my book...although actually the 'mentor' figure has good reasons to keep quiet, and *does* nearly get the protag killed.

In Fantasy, it's definitely the 'every single thing can change except the status of women' thing. In SF, it's the 'every single thing can change except the status of women' thing. I'm looking at you, AC Clarke!

Buffysquirrel said:

In SF, it's the 'every single thing can change except the status of women' thing. I'm looking at you, AC Clarke!

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Have you read any of the 'Rendez-vous with Rama' series, co-written by AC Clarke and another chap? In one of the later books there was a fairly major female character who was a prostitute, and a sex scene, and a description of a sexual practice, that was so unnecessary that it really creeped me out. It wasn't particularly "out there" as a sex scene, but it was just so gratuitous, I remember thinking that the only possible reason for it to have been written was to get the author off.

Sex scenes in general. I don't want to know how attractive the protagonist is, I want to know what happens next in the main plot!

It's okay if the romance is the main plot. But often, it isn't. There isn't even romance, there is just meaningless sex, and that's just as meaningless as eating and going to the bathroom, which means that I don't want to know about it.

@clee984: There are people who complain if a major character is a prostitute and never has sex. Maybe it was written because of that.
On the other hand, most novels don't really need a prostitute character anyway.

I think I have managed to weave through many of these, but definitely not cleanly with all of them.

I hate dialogue that sounds like its spoke by people of earth circa 2000 when its an otherworldly fantasy.

I hate when a character is morally ambiguous, yet still happens to do all the right things to save the day. Goes through hell and high water to achieve his goals--when by nature he should just grab his stuff and skip town.

I hate any time the hero has the villain at his mercy and doesn't try to kill him right then and there. Your moral compass is going to get the people you love killed when then this guy gets back on his feet again.

clee984 said:

Have you read any of the 'Rendez-vous with Rama' series, co-written by AC Clarke and another chap? In one of the later books there was a fairly major female character who was a prostitute, and a sex scene, and a description of a sexual practice, that was so unnecessary that it really creeped me out. It wasn't particularly "out there" as a sex scene, but it was just so gratuitous, I remember thinking that the only possible reason for it to have been written was to get the author off.

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I read the first Rama book. I don't think I can have read the one with that scene, though. The book that really turned me off Clarke's work was...hmmm, what was the title again? Oh, Childhood's End.

Rheinman and Crasterbabies,


A story where magic and its effects is dependent on the periodic table already exists: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. Only metals though, pretty good series.

On the "this bugs me" theme: AIs that always want to take over, conquer or kill humanity.

Well done Mr. Banks for subverting that trope.

child main characters that are smarter, and wiser, than all of the combined adults surrounding them.