Someone is watching you. Their eyes are everywhere. Everything you do, everything you say … it’s all being recorded in a giant database. But don’t worry–you can trust the ones watching you. They have your best interests at heart. They’re only after the bad guys. You won’t even know that they’re there. Sinister Surveillance is… Continue reading Trope Tuesday: Sinister Surveillance
Tag: tropes and cliches
Trope Tuesday: The Last DJ
In any vast bureaucracy, you’re bound to find obstructive bureaucrats and professional butt-kissers. But if you look long and hard enough, usually somewhere towards the bottom, you may be lucky enough to find one of the Last DJs. The Last DJ is a man with integrity, who often puts honor before reason and cannot be… Continue reading Trope Tuesday: The Last DJ
Trope Tuesday: Worthy Opponent
Sometimes, it’s not the Big Bad the heroes are fighting against, so much as an almost friendly opponent who is not so different from them after all. That’s what this trope is all about. The Worthy Opponent is no mere redshirt or mook–quite often, in fact, he’s the Dragon of the opposing side–but unlike the… Continue reading Trope Tuesday: Worthy Opponent
Trope Tuesday: Schrödinger’s Gun
The world of a fictional universe isn’t fixed beyond what the author has revealed to the reader. This is what happens when Schrödinger’s cat gets hold of Chekhov’s gun. There are a whole lot of interesting and potentially useful plot points lying around, but the writers are pantsing it as they go, playing a game… Continue reading Trope Tuesday: Schrödinger’s Gun
Sorry, no Trope Tuesday (again)
Yeah, sorry, no Trope Tuesday this week. Third week missed in a row! Not so good. Thing is, I’m really focused on finishing Star Wanderers: Reproach (Part VII) right now, with a self-imposed deadline of May 31st. I figure that’s more important, and I really don’t want to break my momentum. I’ve been vacillating a… Continue reading Sorry, no Trope Tuesday (again)
Trope Tuesday: After the End
It’s the end of the world as we know it … so why do we feel fine? On the apocalyptic scale of world destruction, when the thing that wipes out civilization doesn’t quite kill everyone, we’re left with an After the End type setting. Depending on where the writers fall on the sliding scale of… Continue reading Trope Tuesday: After the End
X is for Xenocide
This post isn’t just about the third book in the Ender’s Game series–it’s about the genocide of an entire alien race, which is actually a fairly important trope in science fiction. Of all the evils of our modern era, perhaps the most heinous is the systematic extermination of an entire race or ethnicity. These acts… Continue reading X is for Xenocide
W is for Wagon Train to the Stars
When Gene Roddenberry pitched the original Star Trek series back in the 60s, Westerns were all the rage. Consequently, he pitched his show as a “wagon train to the stars,” where a bunch of quirky characters on an awesome starship travel from adventure town to interstellar adventure town, exploring and pioneering the final frontier. Sound… Continue reading W is for Wagon Train to the Stars
U is for Universal Translator
In science fiction, whenever two characters from different planets or different alien races have to interact with each other, they almost always speak the same language or have some sort of universal translator that magically makes them able to communicate with minimal misunderstandings. This is especially common in Star Trek, though it happens in just… Continue reading U is for Universal Translator
T is for Terraforming
[NOTE: this post is a reprint of an earlier post from the Trope Tuesday series, which you can find here.] One of the problems with interplanetary colonization is that Earth-like worlds are fairly rare (though possibly not as rare as we once thought). In our own solar system, the only other world that comes anywhere… Continue reading T is for Terraforming