The Tough Guide to SF

[owl]

Here is a site rec:

The Tough Guide to the Known Galaxy

It's a rip-off of homage to Diana Wynne Jones's The Tough Guide to Fantasyland; it's hilariously funny and very true.
A few examples:

2) Aliens with Forehead Ridges. Much more common - especially in HOLLYWOOD SCIFI - than Really Aliens, these are species that look almost exactly like Earth Humans, except for some distinguishing visible feature such as, well, forehead ridges, or odd-shaped ears, or whatever. Sometimes they look rather less like humans, in which case (if friendly) they often resemble large teddy bears. *coughEwokscoughWookieescough*...Aliens with Forehead Ridges have become much less common in written SF (save for media tie-ins) than they were some decades ago. In written SF, the KNOWN GALAXY seems increasingly to be inhabited only by Earth Humans. However, Aliens with Forehead Ridges continue to thrive in Hollywood Scifi. This is for an obvious reason: the audience wants aliens of some sort, and Aliens with Forehead Ridges are the only kind that can be played by members of the Screen Actors' Guild.

GRUNTS. Soldiers, especially infantry. These were relatively uncommon in the GOLDEN AGE, when WARFARE mainly took place in Space. However, with the increasing popularity of PLANET WARFARE, large numbers of Grunts have been recruited, trained, and sent into action. (As a nod to the Space environment, though, the NOMENCLATURE for them is often Marines.)

They may may wear POWER-ARMOR SUITS, but are still basically your Mark I Mod 0 Grunt. They yomp through lots of mud and kick a lot of ass. Though primarily used on HABITABLE Planets, the ones with Power-Armor Suits will sometimes show up elsewhere, occasionally even in Space. Don't laugh; the British Royal Navy carried an enemy ship by boarding in 1942 CE.

This one is priceless:

HANDWAVIUM. A substance with extraordinary properties, capable for example of withstanding a direct hit by a thermonuclear warhead. By extension, the term [which I stole from Chris Weuve's SFCONSIM-L discussion group] is applied to high-TECHLEVEL engineering of any sort, especially if it falls outside the constraints of HARD SF. A lot of people, me included, try to avoid arbitrary use of Handwavium, but the truth is that you can't travel the KNOWN GALAXY without it, because any FTL is pure Handwavium. So get used to it.


BATTLE STATION. The largest class of COMBAT SPACECRAFT, these may range from a few kilometers in diameter to the size of a small planet. TECHJARGON terms include Orbital Fort and Death Star. A few are in fixed parking orbits, as you would expect of such massive constructions, but most Battle Stations are remarkably mobile, and are liable to turn up anywhere. Their firepower is in line with their size; most can SLAG a planet with their secondary batteries, and the main armament must be intended to make stars go supernova.

Battle Stations also have multiple layers of defensive weapons and protection, and can easily hold off entire fleets of BATTLE CRUISERS. However, all Battle Stations have a critical design weakness. They can easily be blown up, but only when attacked by the smallest of all Combat Spacecraft, SPACE FIGHTERS. Indeed, the primary mission of Space Fighters seems to be to destroy any enemy Battle Station they happen upon.

Ahem. Yes.

BATTLE CRUISER. A large COMBAT SPACECRAFT; almost always a STARSHIP. As the name implies, it combines the firepower of a BATTLESHIP with the high speed, large cruising radius, and general dashing flavor of a Cruiser. Although larger space warships exist (TECHJARGON terms being Dreadnought, Annihilator, etc.), Battle Cruisers seem to do most of the work, and are the mainstay of most interstellar battle fleets.

Their type name is seldom hidden behind Techjargon; people in future centuries (and even wholly alternate universes) apparently find this First World War-era terminology irresistable. Battle Cruisers do have one important similarity to their prototypes at Jutland: they frequently blow up with spectacular explosions. [See also FRIGATES for more borrowed wet-navy terminology]

I do have a pet theory that the militarist SF subgenre is because the authors really want to write about a navy, but the historical one requires tedious research about Jutland or the Napoleonic wars or the Atlantic convoys in WWII, so you borrow the ranks and ship classes, move it into space and the future and voila, you can make up the rest. JMO, of course :D

I don't need to talk, as I read anything from space opera through Hornblower in space-type stuff to hard SF. The thing about the more "soft" end of the spectrum is that if the science is all hot air and handwavium anyway, it doesn't date so obviously (what ajhalluk (I think) calls the 'slide rule phenomenon'—1950s SF writers didn't foresee the advent of computers).

Comments

[leeflower.livejournal.com]

I do have a pet theory that the militarist SF subgenre is because the authors really want to write about a navy, but the historical one requires tedious research about Jutland or the Napoleonic wars or the Atlantic convoys in WWII, so you borrow the ranks and ship classes, move it into space and the future and voila, you can make up the rest. JMO, of course :D

I think there's a lot of truth to this, but I've certainly got no room to talk either. I'm really really bad at physics, but as I understand it, any of the spacefights we're used to seeing in scifi would be totally impossible in the real world anyway. But when you've got something like Star Wars, no one's going to question the science.

For me, the challenge with hard sf is that once an author has set up an intent not to fudge things, I expect them not to. So when they do, it completely pulls me out of the story. Hard-sf can be brilliant, but you have to do your homework to write it. If you don't, it shows. Which is why Hard SF is, for me, purely a spectator genre. I'm nowhere near science-minded enough to write it.

[owl]

I expect that the most one could do is throw missiles at each other. More Hornblower than Star Wars, really. The thing is, space is huge and ships are small, although you wouldn't think it from Hollywood.

The thing about hard SF, for me, is that the science is really the star, not any of the characters. So when the science goes out-of-date, it doesn't work so well. Of course Ancient Sf has a certain charm of its own.

You're writing a space opera type thing, aren't you? How's it going?

[leeflower.livejournal.com]

it's on the back-burner during nano, but I'm going to need to overhaul it significantly after. I don't think it'll ever be hard enough to make science the central point (or, for that matter, original enough, because heaven knows I'm not bringing any new ideas to the table with that one), but I'd like it to have enough care for physics to pass a "BS check."

I'm not actually sure it's going anywhere. In some ways, it smacks heavily of an 'age of sail' story with less research, but the characters and character relations I've got going could never actually exist during the napoleonic wars (race relations, not relationships). We'll see. I might just kidnap parts of it and come up with a setting concept that's more likely to fly (if you'll pardon the pun).

The thing about hard SF, for me, is that the science is really the star, not any of the characters. So when the science goes out-of-date, it doesn't work so well. Of course Ancient Sf has a certain charm of its own.

I really like going back and reading old Analogue magazines. They have this one Christmas story from sometime in the eighties about Christmas on mars... absolutely beautiful work (I think the science still holds up, too). For me, a part of it is definetely the 'speculative' aspect that this isn't only a galaxy far, far away, but *this* galaxy, bound by our laws. But a greater part is that I like watching the skill that goes into building a world with such rigid rules. I have every respect for people who can think that carefully about cause and effect rather than just saying "It's the future! of course it's possible!"

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link! I greatly enjoyed the original Tough Guide to Fantasyland, but the limited amount of fantasy I read meant the book may have reinforced my prejudices more than it gave me a new awareness of what I'd read too many times already. The guide to the "Known Galaxy" therefore cut closer to home... maybe close enough that I told myself that there's more to SF than the military SF/space opera/"Hollywood scifi" it dissects. (Just as, of course, not all fantasy is set in "Fantasyland.") Of course, I'm protesting too much, as I not only read the sort of stuff inspected in the Guide but also watch lots of mecha anime, deftly punctured in the "Giant War Robots" entry.

I'd say there's a kernel of truth in your speculation about space navies, although I would wonder if some of the authors see themselves more as reincarnating Jutland-esque big ships from the ambiguous fate they met in real life.

[owl]

Well, I don't see why one can't enjoy things even if they have been debunked or leg-pulled.