Avoiding Cliche

[hardsciencefanagain]

fast forward to min.3.29 space opera,I call it

 

[hardsciencefanagain]

Troy and Abed satirizing Rap,Christmas
some cliches are trashed
enjoy

time travel and alternate realities
how simple events create more simple events

DAMN THOSE COMMERCIALS

 

[hardsciencefanagain]

playing games,listen to the music cliche when Chang(Blackface) dies

 

[ZombieWife]

I've learned that everyone will have some kind of "cliche" or overused trope in their story. I honestly don't think there's any way to logically avoid them.

All of that said, I feel like people saying, "omg that is so cliche," has become one of those overused phrases that folks use just to sound like they know a little somethin'-about-somethin'. I remember someone saying that American Horror Story was "cliche," and used "cliche horror tropes." Apparently they failed to understand that the POINT of the show was to use these popular, well-known tropes and do something a little new with them, or put a twist on them, or push them further than they'd been pushed before.

I'm okay with tropes that are familiar, as long as they haven't entered into laughable territory. For a while there, I expected to see the "mute kid" in almost every sci-fi movie or television series. The one who was traumatized by events and won't talk. Except at the end to the hero to yell, "LOOK OUT, BILL!" I swear, it was becoming so prevalent that I began laughing whenever I saw it.

Or, the female butt-kicking heroine who has to be given a child or a baby to care for because geesh. We can't have her killing people without showing that she can totally be nurturing, guys! (rage-barf)

But when it comes to a teenaged kid discovering he has abilities and he's an interesting kid to read about (or view in film/television), and he goes through a familiar process of denying, then accepting, then playing with those new talents? Hell, there are quite a few ways to show that process. There are ways to execute it without completely boring your audience or making people roll their eyes collectively.

There isn't a single television show, book or movie that exists where someone hasn't said, "OMG, something happened in that and it was so cliche. I'm butt-hurt now."

There's a spectrum here. Most people can handle a decent amount as long as it's executed in an interesting manner.

 

[Wanderlog]

OK, boys and girls, do you want a BIG bad cliché that, in fact, turns a significant chunk of SF into fairy tales?

This cliché is ALIENS. Or, to be more exact, self-sentient creatures staying on our level of development.

By different estimations, our Galaxy has 100 to 300 billion stars and has the diameter of approximately 100,000 light years. Age of its stars varies from 12 million to 13 billion years (our Sun and Earth are about 4,5 billion years old). The age of our civilization is about 10,000 years, and the modern technological civilization is less than 200 years old.

Now you can calculate the probability of existence of an alien civilization that (1) has the same type of consciousness as we have, so it can guess that we're self-sentient (and vice versa), (2) is on the approximately same stage of technological evolution so it can notice traces of our activity on Earth and around it, and vice versa, (3) is close enough to recognize us and reach us at all, and (4) is interested in us at all.

Examples:

(1) A purely electromagnetic form of life can hardly notice our satellites and buildings, and we simply can't notice it in the space.

(2) A caveman can't recognize a remote control device or a radio as a valid artifact, and we can't recognize a technology based on purely electromagnetic technologies or other principles unknown to us yet.

(3) An alien race living far away from us has no means to discover our existence at all. Electromagnetic signals our civilization emits are nothing comparing to electromagnetic emission of the Sun. In addition, our planet stays very close to the Sun, so Earth is indiscernible against it even at the distance of several light years. No aliens could fly to us on purpose, they can discover us (or we can discover them) only by accident.

(4) A modern nation with developed science and technology would hardly be interested in contacts with cavemen, and vice versa, especially if no party is interested in other's territory and resources (we don't need caves and pieces of stone to make stone axes, and savages don't need oil and molybdenum).

We're separated from roaming savages and nomads by less that 10,000 years of history, and yet we would have no reason to deal with them if they would be suddenly discovered on a far tiny island. Now look again at space and time separating stars in the same galaxy and compare 10 thousand years to 10 billion. What are chances we can find someone who is interested in stopping by and saying hello? They are not even slim. They're non-existent. So we have to put up with the fact that we're alone in the Universe...

Why I've remembered it out of a blue? A news: another man has decided to allocate 10 million USD for the purpose of searching for alien civilizations using radio telescopes. Great. Let's suppose he'll discover a signal coming from a star 10,000 light years away from us. And what's next?

Next bad cliché: planet colonization. We'll look into it later.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

searching for alien civilizations using radio telescopes

Pointless unless they are less than about 10 light years away and targeting us.

Spectroscopic analysis of atmospheres of planets is far more likely to succeed. But we need a new space based telescope to be able to do to that on likely planets in Goldilocks zone.

 

[hardsciencefanagain]

I do wonder about the phrase 'self-sentient'.
Reasonably evolved aliens might recognize habitable exoplanets,BTW.
Wanderlog,I take it you've read Fogg's article in ANALOG?("Interdict hypothesis")?

**Sorry Ray,for editing after you posted**

 

[Ray McCarthy]

wonder about the phrase 'self-sentient'.

Yes:
Self-Aware
OR
Sentient

I suppose something might be slightly sentient without being self-aware, but probably not vice-versa.

 

[hardsciencefanagain]

come to think of it,the aliens might be able to deconvolve the signature of a civilization out of the background noise.
BTW,I've just downloaded Horvat's review of the probability of detecting alien signals,using the Sagan-Drake equation.

 

[Wanderlog]

Spectroscopic analysis of atmospheres of planets is far more likely to succeed.

If we try to find life in the form it exists on our planet, we might be able to define the appropriate composition of the atmosphere, but we can't say whether biological life actually exists there. In the end, even tiny traces of specific chemical elements or variations of natural radioactivity level can be deadly.

I do wonder about the phrase 'self-sentient'.

Ah, just "sentient", of course.

I take it you've read Fogg's article in ANALOG?("Interdict hypothesis")?

No. This conclusion doesn't require anything besides common knowledge about the Universe and our evolution.

the aliens might be able to deconvolve the signature of a civilization out of the background noise

Maybe - providing there is something to deconvolve. I'm afraid, even at the distance of several light years all that remains in Earth's electromagnetic emissions is white noise that bears no sensible information at all.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

we might be able to define the appropriate composition of the atmosphere,

The assumption is that industrialisation has a "signature" that isn't natural. It's not making any assumption about biology or life per-se, but about use of technology. Obviously any life would be interesting, but that's rather harder to decide without a visit.

even at the distance of several light years all that remains in Earth's electromagnetic emissions is white noise that bears no sensible information at all

Yes. It's also less than it used to be for various complicated reasons, mostly related to methods of saving money.
About 10 light years at the very optimistic. It's not a matter of technology of the "Aliens" but limits set by physics and mathematics.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I think when writing fiction about Aliens there are several levels:

• Absolute fantasy / space opera that cares nothing about how realistic it might be.
• Stuff that easily lets your disbelieve be suspended as long as you don't look at it too closely.
• Serious attempt at suspending your disbelief even if you do look closely. Perhaps you argue that beyond a certain point, technically advanced civilisations don't look hugely different on the surface due to deliberate stagnation to avoid pollution and resource wastage (then the ecosystem might not change much in 500,000 years or more).

 

[Brian Rogers]

Even if we were to intercept undeniable proof of sentient life somewhere out there we have no way to reach them. At the current pace of development which is certainly exponential to some degree humans will not venture beyond our Solar System in hundreds of years. Until the laws of physics stating you cannot travel faster than C are still found to be valid, space exploration is a moot point. Local space development might be possible but Local being the key word. Development requires economy and a single ship venturing into deep space for one light year (which would take dozens of our years at speeds we cannot even come close to currently) would have no base to work with. Even if a base was established, it would have to be self sufficient, completely independent of its mother planet. Again, unless we can find ways to move faster than light or transmit data faster than light (quantum entanglement possibly) then exploration will remain within a few hundred million miles of Earth. Development of multiple space stations orbiting Earth and the moon would be a far more realistic topic for at least the next few hundred years.

If a book strives to go further then we're talking a LONG time from now and a writer would need to invent every sort of technology to make things seem possible or forsake believable concepts and highlight an exciting story. The worst cliche is when a writer attempts to make their technology similar to today's and still maintain interstellar space travel/development is possible. That displays a lack of intelligence or research to make a story believable. BUT at the same time reading a story of such travel - if the writer doesn't focus on the science and just says "it works because I say so" - is enjoyable since as a reader we're not forced to even try to think this might be possible.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Until the laws of physics stating you cannot travel faster than C are still found to be valid, space exploration is a moot point.

There are hints of a few sneaky ways around that, but we don't have any real idea how to make what ever it might be that can sneak around the C limit.

So at the minute there seems to be a natural Quarantine. Might be healthy for us or for some other crowd (the track record here of encounters between Civilisations at vastly different technological ability isn't good). "Moral" development isn't correlated with machine guns and long bows, gunpowder and atomic bombs.

Why have nuclear/atomic weapons not been used since Japan 1945?
The Mutual Assured Destruction philosophy.

EDIT:
OR there hasn't been a suitable situation or crazy enough leader?

 

[Piousflea84]

OK, boys and girls, do you want a BIG bad cliché that, in fact, turns a significant chunk of SF into fairy tales?

This cliché is ALIENS. Or, to be more exact, self-sentient creatures staying on our level of development.

By different estimations, our Galaxy has 100 to 300 billion stars and has the diameter of approximately 100,000 light years. Age of its stars varies from 12 million to 13 billion years (our Sun and Earth are about 4,5 billion years old). The age of our civilization is about 10,000 years, and the modern technological civilization is less than 200 years old.

Now you can calculate the probability of existence of an alien civilization that (1) has the same type of consciousness as we have, so it can guess that we're self-sentient (and vice versa), (2) is on the approximately same stage of technological evolution so it can notice traces of our activity on Earth and around it, and vice versa, (3) is close enough to recognize us and reach us at all, and (4) is interested in us at all.

Examples:

(1) A purely electromagnetic form of life can hardly notice our satellites and buildings, and we simply can't notice it in the space.

(2) A caveman can't recognize a remote control device or a radio as a valid artifact, and we can't recognize a technology based on purely electromagnetic technologies or other principles unknown to us yet.

(3) An alien race living far away from us has no means to discover our existence at all. Electromagnetic signals our civilization emits are nothing comparing to electromagnetic emission of the Sun. In addition, our planet stays very close to the Sun, so Earth is indiscernible against it even at the distance of several light years. No aliens could fly to us on purpose, they can discover us (or we can discover them) only by accident.

(4) A modern nation with developed science and technology would hardly be interested in contacts with cavemen, and vice versa, especially if no party is interested in other's territory and resources (we don't need caves and pieces of stone to make stone axes, and savages don't need oil and molybdenum).

We're separated from roaming savages and nomads by less that 10,000 years of history, and yet we would have no reason to deal with them if they would be suddenly discovered on a far tiny island. Now look again at space and time separating stars in the same galaxy and compare 10 thousand years to 10 billion. What are chances we can find someone who is interested in stopping by and saying hello? They are not even slim. They're non-existent. So we have to put up with the fact that we're alone in the Universe...

Why I've remembered it out of a blue? A news: another man has decided to allocate 10 million USD for the purpose of searching for alien civilizations using radio telescopes. Great. Let's suppose he'll discover a signal coming from a star 10,000 light years away from us. And what's next?

Next bad cliché: planet colonization. We'll look into it later.

Wanderlog, I won't argue with your #1 / #2 / #4, but I believe you are severely wrong about point #3.

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is entirely based on the principle of the "cosmic microwave window" (http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/project/details/seti-observations), also known as the "cosmic quiet band". In between the radio frequencies of 1 GHz - 10 GHz, the universe is very "quiet", meaning that stars and galaxies emit extremely little energy within that band. Microwave-radio SETI assumes that any alien civilization advanced enough to have telescopes would understand that the Universe has a quiet frequency band, so if they wanted someone else to find them they would transmit within those specific frequencies.

According to Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking's recent SETI proposal (source: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...dramatically-accelerate-search-for-alien-life), using existing radio telescope technology we could detect a 100 watt laser from "25 trillion miles away" (4.36 light-years, Alpha Centauri) and a laser with the power of a "common aircraft radar" (50kW?) could be detected from "any of the 1,000 nearest stars" (approx. 100 light-years).

Of course, microwave radio SETI depends on the idea that extraterrestrials would intentionally transmit 1-10GHz radio waves in an attempt to be found. There are two very good reasons why they wouldn't:
1) They don't want to be found. (The "dark forest" hypothesis - all sophonts must assume that all other sophonts are hostile)
2) Alien civilizations communicate with something other than radio waves, which we cannot yet detect. (It's probably supraluminal)

And of course #3, there are no aliens. But that's depressing.

& & &

If you look at modern-era sci-fi, there are plenty of semi-plausible explanations for how humanity could be in contact with multiple alien races at a similar level of techno-cultural advancement, instead of billions-of-years-advanced Star Children. For example:

* The Recurring Catastrophe Hypothesis: An ancient, malevolent Cosmic Horror repeatedly wipes out all technologically-advanced races in the galaxy, allowing a new crop of primitive races to develop. This trope is so common that it is almost cliche, but it does provide an explanation for why Humans, Turians, Salarians, Asari, Krogans etc are all at the same tech level.

* The Recurring Rapture Hypothesis (Same thing but friendly): A benevolent, godlike Transcendent Consciousness welcomes in any race that achieves a certain level of sophistication, causing them to transcend their physical forms. The only races that exist in the physical universe are those with an "ordinary" tech level.

* The Great Stagnation: Humanity reaches the maximum possible technological level in this universe, and every other race they run into has the maximum possible tech level. This may be as depressingly low-tech as "Einsteinian Physics" or as ludicrously advanced as "Iain Banks' The Culture", but at least this explains how a 10,000 year-old Human civ can have the same tech level as a 1,000,000-year-old alien civ.

* The Zones of Thought: Similar to the Great Stagnation but with the possibility for escape. Earth exists in a "Slow Zone" that suppresses advanced technology. All of the civilizations within the Slow Zone are stuck at a comparably crappy level of tech. Only if they get out of the Slow Zone can they advance any further.

 

[Brian Rogers]

Piousflea, I have to disagree with you here, but I admit I am not as educated about SETI transmission as you. The problem still lies in the assumed supraluminal transmission or even travel. Light SF can certainly utilize those explanations you provided to make their story fun, but in no way should an author attempt to be serious while disregarding the "Ensteinian" laws of physics. Adding in anything faster than light makes the SF a fantasy based in space, which is fine so long as the author realizes this and doesn't pretend its nothing more than that.

Back to #3 - even if we're broadcasting a signal and an alien race picks it up, they still need to make the journey to Earth. Perhaps they do it and a hundred thousand years from now we have visitors but its simply improbable as no intelligent race would send an emissary out of it's home base as that emissary would eventually become its own empire with no way to remain in contact with its home.

So at the minute there seems to be a natural Quarantine.

This is the only realistic or hard SF that is possible at least for now. I have nothing against aliens though, I just do not look for any SF book containing aliens to attempt to be taken seriously for their technology or physics.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

This is the only realistic or hard SF that is possible at least for now

There are speculative non-Fantasy ways to have interstellar travel:
1) Generation ships or Deep Sleep/Hibernation. It would have to coast most of the distance.
2) Near speed of light. Perhaps a few years pass for travellers while hundreds pass for people "at home". Again it actually "coasts" most of the distance once a certain velocity is reached.
3) Space folding techniques, including but not limited to instantaneous (extremely short lived) wormholes. The energy (more than in visible universe) and materials (exotic negative mass based matter) needed for a Deep Space Nine type wormhole are likely unavailable. Perhaps some Space Time fabric folding technique we don't know of.
4) Warp Bubble drive. This seems as unlikely as option (3). It would destroy anything in its path. So you would have to "drop out" of Warp well away from any destination.
5) Send lots of probes (see below). One-way information drop.

If (3) and (4) are possible at all they would also probably require months of powered flight to/from the edge of a system (perhaps 2x or much more than distance of Voyager crafts / New Horizons etc, but those are many years rather than months as they coasted most of the time. You'd want fission or fusion powered Ion Drive on 24x7. Solar sails or Solar panels are only good near a star and very limited in power (a Solar sail isn't any use to approach a star, only for in-system flights away from a star).

If you do sums assuming Fusion power* and the weight of fuel you find there is a limit to how long vs acceleration (and equal deceleration later) you can have. So at about 1G it's very approximately about half a year accelerate and half a year decelerate. Because as you carry more fuel, the cost of acceleration becomes higher. A sort of in space version of the "rocket equation" known since late 1920s for terrestrial launches (Liquid Hydrogen + Oxygen rocket motors were designed / tested from early 1930s). So without exotic Jump (3) or Warp (4) drives, which we don't know how to make and might not be possible you are limited to coasting most of the interstellar distance. Methods (1) and (2) depending on how fast the coasting is.

Based on nuclear Submarine recycling and power as well as ISS experience we know how to build a ship for (1) or (2) time duration. It would need a lot of shielding. Double skin with water between. We aren't likely to build anything like this any time soon, but it's possible.

An advanced civilisation might send out millions of physical probes, which can carry a huge amount of information. It's a one-way "mail shot" but has no real range limit unlike the 4 to 10 light years of radio, and the very slow speed of any Interstellar radio. Compared to "manned" spaceship such probes are easy. We have sort of done it, but not very seriously. The probe doesn't need to "land" at a destination, but can switch to solar power and local radio transmission has it passes through a system or is captured and orbits a system.

Of course if you could modulate a pulsar there is long range communication. But that has speed of light latency and would require a boggling amount of energy / mass. I can't imagine anyone doing it. But it's relatively easy to detect. So far all the rotating neutron stars appear quite regular, thus unmodulated. Pulsars are rotating neutron stars. Without the rotation they can be invisible, though some are in binary orbit with a visible star thus can be detected.

EDIT
[* I used to think Anti-matter power unit was daft. But it's a kind of "battery" technology. You have your horribly dangerous Fusion powered "factory" in orbit at a gas giant manufacturing Antimatter, perhaps anti protons or anti-hydrogen. This then is a fuel with massively higher power to weight ratio than hydrogen for fusion. So you can accelerate at 1G or more for very much longer to closer to speed of light. However one glitch on the magnetic containment field and your spacecraft is gone. I can't really imagine any civilisation putting resource into making Anti-matter on an industrial scale and deploying it ... weapon of mass destruction? We'd never be so daft? ]

 

[hardsciencefanagain]

Some Benfords think GCRT J17445-3009 might be an interstellar beacon

 

[Ray McCarthy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCRT_J1745-3009
http://www.astronomynow.com/news/n1006/08SETI/

Probably there is a natural explanation. The Benford and Kardashev postulates are extremely speculative. Kardashev's Civilisation classification particularly is likely a fairy tale, there is no evidence, it's not really logical or likely. Benford's beacon idea depends on pure fantasy level speculation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale This is presented wrongly as something serious. Anything other than Type I Civilisation is "god like". There is neither a reason nor any mechanism for so called Type II or Type III civilizations, they are typical ideas of Space Opera, E. E. "doc" Smith concepts. A Benford Beacon would need a Type II civilisation in reality.

We don't know what Galactic Centre Radio Transient GCRT_J1745-3009 was. It's not been detected more than a few times and not in the last 12 years I think. There are some theories as to what it might have been. Terrestrial interference is also possible.

 

[Wanderlog]

The assumption is that industrialisation has a "signature" that isn't natural.

Well, the problem is, such assumptions are too anthropocentric. Some people are too proud of current

This trope is so common that it is almost cliche, but it does provide an explanation for why Humans, Turians, Salarians, Asari, Krogans etc are all at the same tech level.

technological achievements of our civilization and believe that we can significantly influence the environment (including the atmosphere). However, in fact, a single erupting volcano can pollute the atmosphere with much bigger amount of interesting chemical compounds then the entire human industry can produce in a decade. So even if we notice chemical compounds typical for our civilization in the atmosphere of another planet, we have no way to find out whether it's natural or has been produced by a civilization.

I think when writing fiction about Aliens there are several levels:

Yes, exactly. There are very little books with really trustworthy explanations of aliens' existence. In fact, the only such explanation I know is an alien race that creates sentient life on purpose or uplifts existing biological species to the level of technological civilization - like it was done in the Uplift Universe by David Brin.

The probe doesn't need to "land" at a destination, but can switch to solar power and local radio transmission has it passes through a system or is captured and orbits a system.

It can be very problematic as it's hardly possible to send a probe along a ballistic trajectory with required precision. Such a probe can't carry too much fuel on board to perform complex maneuvers in space, so if it doesn't approach the star at exact distance, angle and speed, it can either completely miss the star and be dragged further to open space with its inertia or approach the star too closely and fall onto it. As the stars are extremely far away, any imperceptible mistake in defining the initial acceleration vector and mode can result in such outcome.

BUT at the same time reading a story of such travel - if the writer doesn't focus on the science and just says "it works because I say so" - is enjoyable since as a reader we're not forced to even try to think this might be possible.

Yes, that's exactly why we read books - to have the fun. However, I prefer books that contains as little real mistakes as possible.

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is entirely based on the principle of the "cosmic microwave window"

Has SETI been successful?

In fact, SETI is believed to have goals that differ from its declared purpose. How does this (and similar) projects work? You install a piece of software on your computer and run it. It downloads blocks of data, processes them in some way and uploads the result back to the server. No one knows where those blocks of data originate from, how they are processed and what is the final result. In fact, such systems can do anything from hacking encrypted files to bitcoin mining. I heard that SETI project was used by scientists to calculate the radio map of our galaxy and the rest of visible universe. While it's a perfectly valid scientific project with noble goals, it has little to do with search for alien civilizations. Aliens were invented to attract as much participants as possible. Few people are interested in sky radio maps, but many people would be excited by participation in an alien search project, something like this.

The Great Stagnation: Humanity reaches the maximum possible technological level in this universe, and every other race they run into has the maximum possible tech level.

I doubt that such thing as "the maximum possible level" exists at all. It would look pretty unnatural to me. From "material" civilization to energety-based one, then to the Great Void and to the space beyond the limits of our Universe... There always be place for new discoveries and new achievements.

This trope is so common that it is almost cliche, but it does provide an explanation for why Humans, Turians, Salarians, Asari, Krogans etc are all at the same tech level.

'Mass Effect' is a great game series, but alas, this explanation is absolutely unnatural. It's based on another ancient literature chicle. Two hundred years ago, there were islands in the ocean and pirates and savages who attacked merchant ships and caravans. Today, it's planets and aliens. If you live on an island, and this island along with the entire archipelago is conquered, you have nowhere to run. But the space is not a sea, and stars/planets aren't islands! Take a space ship, accelerate it, then turn off all its engines and emission sources, and no one can find you. You can live for years and even centuries in such isolated ships, and when the Great Evil moves away at last, you return and take back your planets. No civilization of the 'Mass Effect' level can be eliminated in such a way, especially long-living Asari and Krogans.