What Sci-Fi Got Wrong: Alcohol in Space

I am always noticing small and major details in science fiction movies that are either wrong, or I think will be wrong. :)

One I've noticed often is the idea that in 400 years or a galaxy far, far away, people in space ships will be pouring brandy. There is an obsession with booze in much of sci fi. While I doubt the use of drugs will disappear, I don't think people and aliens will forever be pouring a glass.

Ivan Seeking said:

I am always noticing small and major details in science fiction movies that are either wrong, or I think will be wrong. :)

One I've noticed often is the idea that in 400 years or a galaxy far, far away, people in space ships will be pouring brandy. There is an obsession with booze in much of sci fi. While I doubt the use of drugs will disappear, I don't think people and aliens will forever be pouring a glass.

In movies and TV I suspect it's less about predicting a future society than it's about putting a plot into another social context and making the characters believable / relatable. . Take Star Wars for instance, the science fictiony setting does nothing for the plot. It might as well have been set in medieval Japan (and I think it actually was in the story they plagiated).

TVTROPES:https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DrinkBasedCharacterization
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HealItWithBooze

I have always hated the ending to Micheal Crichton's Andromeda Strain book.
Microbes from space were causing all kinds of havoc on earth, then the whole population suddenly mutates to a less destructive form.
Things don't work that way.

Some would remain unmutated.
There was no (selective or otherwise) reason for the highly successful, more destructive form to not persist.
This was transparently stupid to me, even when I was in high school.

Otherwise, I enjoy a lot of Crichton's books, but that just seemed too blatantly stupid to me.

What "really grinds my gears" though are things like "light sabres", "laser rifles" and the like. Guns that go "click" when you point them at people, etc. Like an ornithologist is likely annoyed by a twittering bird that doesn't live where a scene is taking place. :)

My favorite beef is with most sci-fi movies that has absolutely no idea what rotation does to people and other loose objects in the the interior of a rotational or linearly accelerating spaceship. Notable exceptions here are the Martian (probably influenced by Andy Wier's drive to depict science right) and The Expanse (as far as I recall).

Another beef I have with most sci-fi movies is that technological advanced aliens often are depicted as monster-like (naked and growling) and/or which makes the most silly tactical blunders when facing humans on the battlefield, or has some mind-blowing simple weaknesses in their armor, so to speak (thinking Independence Day and Oblivion here).

And speaking of aliens in sci-fi, while I understand its entertaining it still irks me a lot how often (but luckily not always) the story leads into or revolves around armed conflicts instead of "exploring" possible ways for symbiotic interaction (e.g. trade or sharing knowledge). A recent notable exception to this is again Andy Wier with his Hail Mary Project.

When people use time machines or otherwise to slow down time around them, it never gets dark.

In the movies we are almost always able to put up a fight against invading aliens. There is almost no chance that we would be anywhere close to evenly matched. It would likely be like ants rising up against humans.

And any invading aliens probably have antivirus software in the mother ship. Don't expect Jeff Goldblum to save you.

Just about everything is wrong in this one.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/cosmic_sin

The funniest (sad) thing about the film is that it's set in 2521 and onward, yet folks are driving 1980s Ford pickups and listening to 1990s alterno-rock.

The thing that always gets me is where the alien is a monster that constantly drools acid or some other fluid and you never see them off-screen chugging gatorade to replenish their bodily fluids.

One idea that I think could be wrong is the idea that we will lose many of our traits that no longer become useful, like a sense of humor, sexual attraction, emotion, creativity, art, music, athleticism etc. I think that the principle that whatever we don't need would eventually go away is valid in nature.

However, before that has a chance to take effect, we will likely start to self engineer ourselves and merge ourselves with technology. And what types of things do you think people will aim for when they do that? Probably better sense of humor, attractiveness, creativity, talents in art and music, athleticism, ability to drink lots of brandy. etc. And I think that once that starts happening, people will start going crazy with it, trying to outdo each other. In the end, those human traits we thought would evolve away would end up being hyper exaggerated through genetic engineering and augmentation. The drawbacks will be the neglect for things we didn't think of, and the mistakes we make along the way.

Well, humans happen to have these trait and value them. Humans are also a certain type of creature. We're social creatures, omnivores, and no fangs.

But we have no idea what aliens would be like at the point they start self engineering. Maybe they were carnivores with sharp teeth. Maybe they valued mouths full of teeth, scary looks, and growls. Maybe the more teeth they have the more attractive they are. Maybe they never really needed clothes much before, and don't like them. And maybe these traits hadn't drifted away too much after losing their evolutionary advantages. So now they have crispr and every alien parent wants their kid to have the scariest mouth full of teeth and the loudest most intimidating growl in town and they're competing with each other. By the time they've become interstellar, their technological and biological augmentation will have made them practically immune to biological threats, air pressure differences, thermal differences, or air composition differences. So then why shouldn't they be scary monster looking creatures who jump out of the spaceship naked and tool-less and go on rampages?

Well, then. My rant: what many Sci-Fi work gets wrong is, that Sci-Fi is just a theme, not an excuse for poor literature/script. All the mumbo-jumbo and special effects you can use to pepper up things does not makes it 'art' or anything: if done right it should still be at least passable without any of that

Most science fiction essentially reflects the time it was written, rather than any radical imagining of a future time.

For example, the development of female and non white roles in Star Trek reflects the changes in US society and perceptions at the time the series and films were made.

I feel the lack of imagination. So we are a thousand years into the future, the government is essentially the British Empire, and a war is going on. I find it depressing that mankind makes no social progress. Combat is generally World War Two in disguise or even swords and cannon era. Ho hum.

Its understandable though. Come up with something radically new and you will lose 99% of your audience. They won't understand what you are talking about. It is better to stick with familiar things. It's entertainment. So "aliens" are thinly disguised octopi, trees, bees, lions, spiders, ants, moray eels, but mostly just people.

I went to reading real history because much wilder things happen in real life. It is not constrained by plausibility. Who would believe that people would burn up the planet while pretending it wasn't happening? Ridiculous. Though Isaac Asimov predicted such a thing in 1970 as unsuspected side effects of a free energy device. People found out it would destroy the Earth then just kept doing it. Gotta be impressed.

Other exceptions include The Forever War, some of Iain Banks Culture books, Kurt Vonnegut (who was careful that his work was never labeled SF), Stanislaus Lem, and Brave New World. So that proves it can be done. But I can't be bothered to sort through the new stuff. I think I gave up when I bought a Nebula award winner that was written so badly.

So.. what did they get wrong? I don't think anyone ever suspected that state propaganda would become a profit center.

PeroK said:

Most science fiction essentially reflects the time it was written, rather than any radical imagining of a future time.

For example, the deviopment of female and non white roles in Star Trek reflects the changes in US society and perceptions at the time the series and films were made.

I remember being very disappointed when in Star Trek TNG, for an exercise scene, they put Deanna Troi and Beverly Crusher in popular clothing for women at that time. It was what virtually every woman at a gym was wearing then...and doing the same exercises and stretching. Oddly they didn't even try to imagine a future workout. It was just a gym in 1987.

Ivan Seeking said:

I remember being very disappointed when in Star Trek TNG, for an exercise scene, they put Deanna Troi and Beverly Crusher in popular clothing for women at that time. It was what virtually every woman at a gym was wearing then...and doing the same exercises and stretching. Oddly they didn't even try to imagine a future workout. It was just a gym in 1987.

I don't see the problem.

nsaspook said:

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I don't see the problem.

They were clearly appealing to our inner Klingon

Sticking to books, which are proper SF, movies and TV shows mostly are all crap

- intelligent aliens modeled after the analog of some Earth animal (Kzin or the stupid crabs in Neil Asher’s books)

-timelines in 70s SF that has interstellar travel discovered before today

- characters speaking weird made-up dialects - i get that people in the future space empire might have different languages and dialects, but don't try to make them up and inflict them on the reader

-nukes and slugthrowers make great weapons, why does anyone need laser guns?

-slide rules in space pilot school ( Robert Heinlein‘s Starship Troopers)

PeroK said:

Most science fiction essentially reflects the time it was written, rather than any radical imagining of a future time.

For example, the deviopment of female and non white roles in Star Trek reflects the changes in US society and perceptions at the time the series and films were made.

I'm so old I watched the premier of Star Trek in 1965. I dare say that it remains ahead of its time. How many Russians are employed in the US military?

Hornbein said:

How many Russians are employed in the US military?

Russians would like to know that too

Joke aside, I don't think this is actually a problem. The reader/viewer should understand the environment and should feel it kind of novel. Reflecting the actual trends suffices. If the work itself is anything good it should work like that.

Far worse problem when it's written to be so novel that not even the author understands the environment, like that so often happens with quantum-based word salads so popular these times.

Star Trek got some futuristic salt shakers as props. But viewers wouldn't know what they were on there on the table. So they gave them to Doctor McCoy to use as medical instruments.

My parents bought that same model of salt shaker so I saw them every day.

Rive said:

Russians would like to know that too

Joke aside, I don't think this is actually a problem. The reader/viewer should understand the environment and should feel it kind of novel. Reflecting the actual trends suffices. If the work itself is anything good it should work like that.

Far worse problem when it's written to be so novel that not even the author understands the environment, like that so often happens with quantum-based word salads so popular these times.

Yes and no. In the movie 2001, the original cut included a brief panel discussion with people like Carl Sagan, that helped to put events in the movie into context. But that was cut. By not explaining things, it made the movie mysterious, intellectually challenging, and strange enough to claim a cult following to this day.

Arguably, it was as successful as it was because no one knew what was going on! LOL! Stanley Kubrick knew what he was doing.

Space ships DO NOT fly aerodynamically, with banking turns and whooshing sounds.

In space, no one can hear you scream.

Also, as a corollay to the lets-depict-spaceships-as-airplanes-and-boats, spaceships about to dock don't keep accelerating towards their docking port only to turn of the engine at the last moment to magically slow down.

Filip Larsen said:

Also, as a corollay to the lets-depict-spaceships-as-airplanes-and-boats, spaceships about to dock don't keep accelerating towards their docking port only to turn of the engine at the last moment to magically slow down.

Ooh that's bad. Who did that?

Hornbein said:

Ooh that's bad. Who did that?

I think I have seen this many times, maybe not in hard sci-fi movies, but certainly in many others, probably those movies that by purpose or ignorance choose to follow the lets-depict-spaceships-as-airplanes-and-boats falsehood. Pretty sure I have seen it in Final Fantasy and Starship Troopers (OK, this has much other physics wrong too), and perhaps also in Space Cowboys.

Ships don''t stop immediately either. They have a lot of mass and therefore a lot of inertia.
They reverse their engines and sometimes use spring lines.

Generally it was assumed that technology would advance far more quickly than it did. Consider that in 2001 we were flying Pan Am to the moon. The big exception is the advances in electronics, which in real life often exceeded expectations in science fiction. Of course that too has its under performers, like AI.

In the sequel to 2001, 2010, we went to Europa. And we got a second sun. :)

Also, I wonder how many times the world was destroyed by now. How many apocalyptic scenarios preceded 2021?

Ivan Seeking said:

Generally it was assumed that technology would advance far more quickly than it did. Consider that in 2001 we were flying Pan Am to the moon. The big exception is the advances in electronics, which in real life often exceeded expectations in science fiction. Of course that too has its under performers, like AI.

When 2001 was written, one could look back to 50 years between the Wright brothers and commercial jet travel, easy to project that timeline onto space travel

also think authors know audiences like to believe they might see these advances within their lifetimes

Ivan Seeking said:

Also, I wonder how many times the world was destroyed by now. How many apocalyptic scenarios preceded 2021?

Good question.

.
Lol, you will never get bored. . . if you can watch. . . DUST !
.

Ivan Seeking said:

Generally it was assumed that technology would advance far more quickly than it did. Consider that in 2001 we were flying Pan Am to the moon. The big exception is the advances in electronics, which in real life often exceeded expectations in science fiction. Of course that too has its under performers, like AI.

In the sequel to 2001, 2010, we went to Europa. And we got a second sun. :)

I actually think 2010 is a much better film (or at least has a more plausible plot) than 2001. Specifically, it captures the paranoia of the cold war well.

I know it's entirely because of the technology at the time, but seeing older movies set in the future where all the screens are CRT instead of flatscreens makes me smile a little (EG alien). The old models for warhammer 40k space marines also had curved CRT style screens on them, despite being set in the year 40,000!

It saddens me that the aspirations of technology have gone from optimistic to gritty in so short a time. Films used to predict flying cars, hoverboards, teleportation, space travel, and so on. Total recall was set on mars, then the remake was set in australia, because Mars isn't realistic.

Most sci-fi now is about AI and robots more than technological breakthroughs which make life easier or cooler for people! More gritty, but less optimistic. It might even be being driven by the desire to "get it right", rather than create a cool narrative. "I said there's be robots in 2050, and I was right! rather than "I said faster than light travel by 2050, and I was wrong!".

The Distress Call


You receive a distress signal from an unknown source. Do you A) Investigate or B) Run the hell away!
C) Can we talk about the bonus check first.

Science fiction books, at least the ones I've read, tend to get known science right, and whatever hypothetical science is needed for the story, well, it doesn't matter, that's up to the author.

Science fiction television and most movies, however, are replete with errors. A specific example would be an episode in Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Data says the surface temperature of a planet is something ridiculous below -273°C.

More general examples of consistent errors I have posted elsewhere and reproduce here. I call these my Rules of Hollywood Science, which movies and television shows seem to follow religiously:

• Sounds must always be present in the vacuum of space.
• Lasers must make interesting noises.
• The light of a laser beam must be brightly visible even in a vacuum, and it must travel slower than the speed of light, so that viewers can get a sense of the beam's trajectory over a couple frames of film.
• Ships maneuvering in a weightless vacuum shall bank when they turn, as if they are flying through an atmosphere in a gravitational field.
• Camera shots of an actor's face in front of a video display should show what's being displayed projected onto the actor's face, in focus, as if the display were projecting through a lens. It is not necessary for the projection to be reversed.
• Control panels must have high-current power running through them, so that when disaster strikes, the control panel emits showers of sparks.
• Two or more ships in space must always orient themselves as if there is a universal "up" direction agreed upon by all.
• When a ship flies by the camera while orbiting a planet, the viewer must see the ship fly along a curved path, as if the planet is small enough for an observer to notice the curvature before the receding ship becomes too small to see.
• Actors should wear helmets with bright internal lights that illuminate their faces, thereby preventing them from seeing anything in low-light environments. They have directors to tell them what to do; they don't really need to see.
• Aliens are always humanoid.
• A person escaping from an underwater confined space must be able to hold breath during extreme physical exertion longer than is humanly possible.
• Langauge barriers usually don't exist.
• Sound travels at infinite velocity. The sound from events (such as explosions) visible far away in the distance must be heard simultaneously with the event.
• Computers must always make cute little noises when keys are pressed or when characters or images appear on the display.
• Text communication via computer must appear on a display at average human reading speed, as if being transmitted by a 1970s-era 300 baud modem.
• Real space-time communication delays due to astronomical distances can be safely ignored.
• During any countdown sequence (such as with a bomb on a timer), it is permissible for each one-second time interval to contain dialog and action that far exceeds one second in duration.
• the list goes on...