Story Killers

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jallenecs

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A similar conversation is happening over on the Novels page, but I'm interested in hearing the SF/F community opinions. What do you see happening in stories that make you want to feed the book (and maybe the author too, but don't do it, that's not nice) into the nearest wood chipper? examples specific to science fiction and fantasy are preferred.

For me an SF/F specific one is an old chestnut: The Chosen One. It's been done well, it's been done badly. But mostly it's just been done to death. Try again, Writer Person, and this time, put a little more effort into it.
 
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Helix

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I vowed never to read one author again after the word "grassoid" popped up in a book.

Not a plot element, obvs, but annoying enough that I still remember it decades later.
 

jallenecs

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I vowed never to read one author again after the word "grassoid" popped up in a book.

Not a plot element, obvs, but annoying enough that I still remember it decades later.

What the heck is a grassoid?
 

jallenecs

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It was a plant that was exactly like grass in all respects, except it was on another planet.

Oh, for heaven's sake! That's another one that makes me crazy. A rabbit on another planet looks like a rabbit, it behaves like a rabbit, fulfills the same ecosystem niche, it smells and tastes and sounds just like a rabbit. But the author calls it a Hoobiegoff, or whatever, because it's ALIEN! Give me a break!
 

Helix

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:D To be fair to this author, I'd been struggling with the book for a while, because it really wasn't one that suited me. 'Grassoid' was the...er...last straw.
 

DarthLolita

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I've got two: I love robots, but can't stand the "and then they rebelled against their creators" storylines. It just drives me crazy because it completely kills any creativity. What's the point of bringing up the complex issues surrounding artificial intelligence (and what it reflects on humanity) if you're just going to make them the boring Monsters of the Week? Not to mention, I am never given a single, believable reason as to why they're rebelling. What reason could they possibly have to kill all humans?

In terms of fantasy, I kind of dislike it when dragons pretty much behave and communicate like humans. Hearing them talk just...bothers me.
 

Wilde_at_heart

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The Chosen One is definitely up there. If it's mentioned in the back cover blurb the book, I immediately return it to the shelf unopened.

I'm not fond of special bloodlines either; I'd prefer some trait crop up more at random.

Anything too contrived.

'Unique' terms for various everyday items that just seem gimmicky.

Histrionic characters, especially when they are Love Interests. You're off to try to stop a killer who has been murdering your closest friends one-by-one? But we never spend much time together any moooore!!!
 

RikWriter

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Anachronisms kill SF stories for me. For instance, just to give a well known pop culture example: Picard being bald or Geordi LaForge being blind in ST:TNG. We'll have the technology to cure baldness or blindness in the womb or hell, before CONCEPTION long before we have a warp drive or phasers or transporters.
Now, it's very possible to have things that seem anachronistic in a story if you explain why they're there.
For instance, if you don't want nanotechnology in your far-future story, you can explain that there was a really nasty war using nanotech and the prevailing religion that grew up in the wake of that war considers its use a sin.
But you can't just ignore the fact that nanotechnology is a possibility in a story that takes place centuries from now.

Something else that bothers me is when people write novels that are purportedly SF but are actually just a military novel or a thriller or a romance "in space!" with the concomitant lack of attention to detail. Setting something in space and using technobabble doesn't make it science fiction.
 

King Neptune

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Anachronisms kill SF stories for me. For instance, just to give a well known pop culture example: Picard being bald or Geordi LaForge being blind in ST:TNG. We'll have the technology to cure baldness or blindness in the womb or hell, before CONCEPTION long before we have a warp drive or phasers or transporters.
Now, it's very possible to have things that seem anachronistic in a story if you explain why they're there.
For instance, if you don't want nanotechnology in your far-future story, you can explain that there was a really nasty war using nanotech and the prevailing religion that grew up in the wake of that war considers its use a sin.
But you can't just ignore the fact that nanotechnology is a possibility in a story that takes place centuries from now.

Something else that bothers me is when people write novels that are purportedly SF but are actually just a military novel or a thriller or a romance "in space!" with the concomitant lack of attention to detail. Setting something in space and using technobabble doesn't make it science fiction.

The technology to cure baldness may be developed, but no one with an ounce of sense would use it. Certain types of blindness may continue to exist, and temporary (for several months) blindness may also continue for the indefinite future.

But I'll go along with you on military stories that are simply set in space.
 

Marlys

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Great point on Geordi being blind, but baldness? That's not a disease.
 

Kweei

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Not so much a plot point, but I hate when I am reading an excellent story, great plot and memorable characters, something terrible is happening in town, and everyone takes a break to have sexy times.

Um, there is a killer around and your family is in trouble, but who cares because Mister Werewolf is HOT.

I see this happen in a lot of urban fantasy. I love urban fantasy and expect romance in them, but please, make it make sense.
 

RikWriter

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The technology to cure baldness may be developed, but no one with an ounce of sense would use it.

If that's going to be the reason for male pattern baldness still being around, then it needs to be illustrated. The readers (or in this case the watchers) need to have it explained at some point.
And there's a difference between choosing to have your head depilated and allowing your hair to fall out on its own.
 

jallenecs

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Not so much a plot point, but I hate when I am reading an excellent story, great plot and memorable characters, something terrible is happening in town, and everyone takes a break to have sexy times.

Um, there is a killer around and your family is in trouble, but who cares because Mister Werewolf is HOT.

I see this happen in a lot of urban fantasy. I love urban fantasy and expect romance in them, but please, make it make sense.

Agreed, times a thousand. And it's ugly stepsister: Every male in town -- and I mean EVERY male, from twelve years old to a hundred years -- finds the heroine the embodiment of Hawtness, and undresses her with his eyes every time she takes a breath. Providing the snacks at the local Boy Scout meetings must be a nightmare for these super-babes.
 

RikWriter

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Expanding a bit about "military novels set in space," the thing that kills me about those books is that they constantly forget, "hey, we have spaceships."
Wanna guess what the tactical and strategic effects would be of having a starship in orbit during a battle? How about dropping big rocks on the enemy? How about just shooting regular missiles down at them from orbit?
If you want to have a battle where you don't have support from an orbital ship, you'd better remember to explain why rather than just leaving it out because you wanted to write a story about the Battle of Roarke's Drift except on another planet.
 

StarWombat

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I'm not a fan of anachronisms in fantasy, but it's hard to give an example. Different types of armor coexisting, for instance, or knights in shining armor in the dark ages, that bothers me. There are a few other things too, but mostly they're from the same roots. People just not bothering to do five seconds due diligence.
 

Kweei

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Agreed, times a thousand. And it's ugly stepsister: Every male in town -- and I mean EVERY male, from twelve years old to a hundred years -- finds the heroine the embodiment of Hawtness, and undresses her with his eyes every time she takes a breath. Providing the snacks at the local Boy Scout meetings must be a nightmare for these super-babes.

Yeah, I hate that as well. I'm all for a ladies' man or a woman that attracts men like moths to a flame, but someone SOMEONE isn't going to like you. And that makes it all the more interesting.
 

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I hate it when the same thing keeps happening over and over again. While these are not sci-fi/fantasy examples, they are good examples: "In Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett, he is constantly having the market raided. Any time things got a little quiet the market burnt down again, and in "World Without End" (by the same author) the plague showed up about every half hour. The stories were great, but every time the village burnt down or the plague occurred I wanted to throw the book across the room and it makes me wary of trying any more of this author's work.
 

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Another peeve for me, though not quite a total book-closer without other serious flaws, is where the monster or supernatural bad guy stalks the MCs relentlessly in some parts of the story and then disappears conveniently for other stretches.

Great point on Geordi being blind, but baldness? That's not a disease.

On the right man, there's nothing wrong with being bald. :D
 
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StarWombat

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Another peeve for me, though not quite a total book-closer without other serious flaws, is where the monster or supernatural bad guy stalks the MCs relentlessly in some parts of the story and then disappears conveniently for other stretches.

Hey, monsters have lives too. Maybe he's gone to get a mani-pedi.
 

Once!

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Technology that exists only to get our hero out of a sticky situation - like Batman killing a shark with shark repellent that he happens to have on his utility belt.

With due apologies to all Jedi knights, swords being a viable counter to laser or even projectile weapons. And yeah I know about the force and the midichloriens and all that, but c'mon fellas, just look what happened when the samurai took on muskets. Even Tom Cruise couldn't save them.

Apostrophes.

Dystopias or even Utopias where it later turns out that people are eating people without realising it.

Teddy bears in space.
 

Maxx

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Expanding a bit about "military novels set in space," the thing that kills me about those books is that they constantly forget, "hey, we have spaceships."
Wanna guess what the tactical and strategic effects would be of having a starship in orbit during a battle? How about dropping big rocks on the enemy? How about just shooting regular missiles down at them from orbit?
If you want to have a battle where you don't have support from an orbital ship, you'd better remember to explain why rather than just leaving it out because you wanted to write a story about the Battle of Roarke's Drift except on another planet.

Badly done wars are pretty much the lingua franca of SCi-Fi. I don't really mind them -- though I was spoiled by the fighting in Banks' Excession -- just very good, that one.
Another odd thing -- the current drone attacks in reality (right, I mean the real drones that pick people off more or less at the individual level even if the collateral damage can be high) -- are much stranger than anything I've ever seen in the Bad Wars of Sci fi. The whole drone thing seems very odd -- here are some more or less religious terrorists doing everything for the greater glory of God and then some machine comes over and blows them up after more or less omniscently and omnipotently watching them and judging them from the sky. It's just very strange and yet Sci Fi has never really managed anything quite like that conceptual collision (ominscient, omnipotent drones hunting down religious terrorists).
 

Johncs

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A similar conversation is happening over on the Novels page, but I'm interested in hearing the SF/F community opinions. What do you see happening in stories that make you want to feed the book (and maybe the author too, but don't do it, that's not nice) into the nearest wood chipper? examples specific to science fiction and fantasy are preferred.

For me it's the preaching.

Right/left/center -- they all do it. I don't need another libertarian lecture from a Heinlein clone. I don't need to work on my liberal studies degree with a Le Guin clone. I'm here for the church of the human condition and I am not your choir.

But 9 times out of 10 you'll have a Chekhov's gun moment of that sort in many (if not all) SF novels. By page one hundred you'll have been exposed to the requisite three moments reminding you of the "correct" view of...whatever.

My mind is expected to be open enough to envision talking dragons and trans-dimensional cans of spam -- but I need reminded of the "correct thoughts" by the author?

Bah. The literature of ideas is far too important to squander on the matter of politics.

Seriously. "Hey, there's this great character moment. Oh wait. It's a right-wing Mil SF. Guess I'll never tell my more pacifist friends about that." Or "Here's a perfect example of life-as-outsider. Pity it had to get anvil-licious about the politics of sexuality. Guess I won't be sharing that one with XYZ."

Irony: the very people whose minds could stand being exposed to a new idea put the book down early because they hear the Latin chanting the background.

But that's not even accurate. The camps of SF are far more divided than the Protestants and Catholics ever were.

This bothers me. I mean, you dig giant robots. I dig giant robots. We dig giant robots. Chicks dig giant robots....

I just feel too many cool ideas get missed because the author's required (or feels required) to recite the entire litany against fear in every one of their books.

In short I'm tired of looking at every book I might pick up, squinting, and having to decide if it's SF + politics_whatever (most, if not) or just "SF" (a rarer and rarer beast, anymore).

Point this out to either camp and they'll tell you it doesn't matter, because they are right.

Johncs, still looking for the giant robots.
 
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Imriaylde

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Post-apocalyptic stories that are clearly set in the US (or what used to be the US...or any currently-existing country, really) where the people in them have apparently forgotten defining historical events. I mean, if it's plausible that it's an alternate universe, that's fine, but don't specifically state that the story is set in a major US city and then conveniently forget atrocities that happened during WWII.
 
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