Towards a taxonomy of cliches in Space Opera
Towards a taxonomy of cliches in Space Opera


        
            So I'm chewing over the idea of eventually returning to writing far future SF-in-spaaaace, because that's what my editors tell me is hot right now (subtext: "Charlie, won't you write us a space opera?"). A secondary requirement is that it has to be all new—no sequels to earlier work need apply. But I have a headache, because the new space opera turns 30 this year, with the anniversary of the publication of "Consider Phlebas" (or maybe "Schismatrix")—or even 40 (with the anniversary of the original "Star Wars"). There's a lot of prior art, much of it not very good, and the field has accumulated a huge and hoary body of cliches. 

Some of you might remember the Evil Overlord's List, a list of all the generic cliche mistakes that Evil Overlords tend to make in fiction (16:  I will never utter the sentence "But before I kill you, there's just one thing I want to know."). I think that it might be a good idea to begin bolting together a similar list of the cliches to which Space Opera is prone, purely as an exercise in making sure that once I get under way I only make new and original mistakes, rather than recycling the same-old same-old.

This is not an exhaustive list—it's merely a start, the tip of a very large iceberg glimpsed on the horizon. And note that I'm specifically excluding the big media franchise products—Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, and similar—from consideration: any one of them could provide a huge cliche list in its own right, but I'm interested in the substance of the literary genre rather than in what TV and film have built using the borrowed furniture of the field. 

List follows, below the cut. 

        


        
            
Planetary civilizations

This subheading covers common cliches/mistakes made in discussing inhabited (Earthlike) planets and the people who live on them.


Planets are small and easily explored
All the land masses on a planet are easily accessible
You can fly anywhere on a planet in a short time without leaving the atmosphere
You can fly anywhere at Mach 2.2+ without experiencing hull heating due to atmospheric friction
You can fly anywhere at Mach 2.2+ without worrying about Air Traffic Control and NOTAMs
Everywhere on a planet shares a common climate and the same weather patterns
The same plants and animals can be found everywhere on a given planet 
Coriolis force, trade winds, cyclones, what are those? 
Oceans are small, land-locked, and mainly useful for fishing
Plate tectonics is easily ignored, unless the plot requires a Volcano/Earthquake
Deep carbon cycle, subduction, ionosphere UV splitting of water, long-term terraforming stability: why worry about little things like that?
Ice ages are inevitably global
Some planets have a breathable atmosphere but no water

Space and cosmology

Common blunders in cosmology, planetography, orbital mechanics, and related.


Moons are good, the more the better!
Suns are good, too, the more the better!
... Especially if one of them is a giant. (Those never explode or flare messily.)
Planetary ring systems are picturesque, not dangerous
Planets have a diurnal period precisely 86,400 Earth seconds long
Planets rotate east-to-west
Planets have magnetic poles that approximate their rotational axis
Planetary gravity can be approximated to a point source for purposes of calculating orbital dynamics
All satellites orbit the equator
You can change orbital inclination easily
Stuff in orbit doesn't change orbital inclination spontaneously
Geosynchronous orbit is easy to get to
If you are in geosynchronous orbit away from the equator you still hover over the same spot on the planetary surface all the time
Planets are close together
Concentric planets orbit the same distance apart
The flight time between planets in an inner star system is the same as between planets in the outer system
Asteroids are so close together that you can hide between them
... but they never clump into planets
Asteroidal dust makes an irritating ping as it bounces off a ship's hull
... for some reason you never run into it at multiple km/sec
Actually, hitting a space rock or other spaceship is no big deal, a bit like being in a minor car accident
... Even though the kinetic energy released by an impact increases with the square of the velocity, and you're travelling hundreds to millions of time faster
Gas giants are good for mining volatiles
... Because dealing with Mach 6 wind shear, 10,000 Bar pressure, and a lethally deep gravity well is trivial
... Because we need volatiles such as 3He, to fuel our aneutronic fusion reactors (hint: Boron is cheaper and much less scarce)
All comets have tails
... they're sort of hairless and scaly, like a [sarcasm limit exceeded - Ed.]
Rocky planets are either airless or shirt-sleeves worlds with breathable air
Pay no attention to Venus, runaway greenhouse worlds are imaginary
Big stars are as long-lived and likely to have planets as dwarf stars
Supernovae happen routinely and are no big deal
Interstellar space is totally empty
... You can fly as fast as you like without worrying about dust particles
You don't have to worry about interstellar gas, either
... Except when there's not enough of it to keep your ramscoop accelerating
Incidentally? Ramscoops totally work! (Larry Niven said so in 1968.)
You can go fast enough to experience relativistic time dilation without worrying about the pesky cosmic background radiation blue-shifting into hard X-rays and frying you
You can forget all about hitting the occasional interstellar 4He nucleus with some multiple of the energy of an alpha particle, several million times a second
... Don't worry about hitting the electrons bound to the neutral hydrogen either, gamma photons totally aren't a thing
You can use handy black holes and neutron stars to make handbrake turns in space
You an also use gas giants to make handbrake turns, at high relativistic speeds
Don't let the fact the space is full of exciting high energy physics put you off going there, squishy meatsack-persons!

Biology

Biology is complicated—so much so that many SF authors suffer from Dunning-Kruger syndrome in approaching the design of life-supporting planets.


All planets harbour a single apex predator that eats people
All planets harbour is a single venomous insect/reptile analog that poisons people
The native flora and fauna use a biochemistry that we can derive sustenance from
... This includes weird-ass micronutrients
Pay no attention to the native microbiota, they're harmless
... You won't even suffer from hay fever! Much less systemic anaphylaxis.
Ecosystems are robust; why not let your ship's cat stretch her legs whenever you land?
... This goes for your ship's rats, too
Planets only have one class of plant-analog and one class of animal-analog
... Only Earth has reptiles, amphibia, fish, birds, insects, mammals, fungi, etc.
Terraforming is really simple; you can do it with algae capsules delivered from orbit
There are no native parasites that might eat Maize, so we can turn the entire largest continent into a robot-run plantation
... Soil exhaustion isn't a thing
... Terrestrial constraints on agriculture don't apply on other planets
You can keep a starship crew healthy and sane indefinitely using a life support system running on blue-green algae, tilapia, and maybe the odd soy bean plant
Life support systems are simple, stable, and self-managing
It is safe to put bleach down the toilet on a starship; your algae/tilapia/soy will totally deal with it it when it comes out of the recycler
Vitamins? Naah, we'll just genetically modify the crew to make their own
If you implant humans with the gene for chlorophyl they can magically become photosynthetic
... Okay, if you add the genes for RuBiSCO and the C3 pathway they can magically become photosynthetic
... Because of course two square meters of skin is enough surface area to photosynthetically capture enough energy for a high-metabolic-rate mammal to live off
Humans can too hibernate/deep sleep between star systems! All you need is a cold enough chest freezer
... Just as long as their intestinal flora go into cold sleep at the same time
... and so do the low metabolic rate arctic pseudofungi spores they picked up at the last planetary stop

Economics

*Fingernails-on-blackboard time for me. (See also: Neptune's Brood)*


New Colonies may be either agricultural or mining colonies; rarely, resort colonies
Everyone uses Money to mediate exchanges of value
Money is always denominated in uniform ratios divisible by 10
Money is made out of shiny bits of metal, OR pieces of green paper, OR credit stored in a computer network
There is only one kind of Money on any given planet, or one credit network
The same kind of Money is accepted everywhere as payment for all debts
Visitors are always equipped to interface with the planet-wide credit network
Planetary credit networks are incredibly secure except when the visitor needs to hack into someone else's bank account
Barter is a sign of primitive people who haven't invented money
People who rely on Barter are simple, trusting folks (and a bit stupid on the side)
Inflation? What is this, I don't even ...
Deflation? What will they think of next?
Sales tax? What's that?
Income tax? What's that?
Import duty? What's ... (rinse, spin, repeat)
You can get a loan from your friendly bank manager whenever you need one
Bank loans accrue interest
If you fail to replay a bank loan you may be arrested and held in debtor's prison
... Or sold into slavery
... Or your organs can be seized
... Because your body is just one of your fungible assets, right?
... And harvesting organs for transplant surgery is a universal practice
People on planets have not heard of Ponzi Schemes
People on planets have not heard of Credit Default Swaps or the Black-Scholes equation
If money is made of shiny bits of metal or green paper, banks have vaults where they store lots of money
Money sitting in a bank vault is worth something
Visitors to a Colony can print fake currency without fear of consequences
Visitors to a Colony can leave their money with a bank between infrequent visits without fear of consequences
Banks are stable, because ...
... The planetary government will never let a bank go bust, because ...
... The galactic emperor will never let a planetary government go bust, because ...
Traders on starships land on planets to load and unload cargo
... Or they carry their own orbit-to-surface shuttle
... Which is as easy and safe to operate as a fork-lift truck
Cargo is bought and sold in starports
It is profitable to ship crude break-bulk cargo like timber or foodstuffs between star systems because starships are cheap and easy to repair and operate
Break-bulk shipping in open cargo holds has never been improved upon
Multimodal freight containers, EDI/EDIFACT standards for commerce, bar codes, bourses, and RFID technologies are just inferior and unnecessarily complicated alternatives to a bazaar or indoor market
Insurance underwriting? Arbitrage? What's that? (rinse, spin, repeat)
All cargo starships need plenty of unskilled deck hands to help load and unload cargo
All cargo starships need gun turrets to fight off swarms of space pirates
... Cargo starships with guns can fight off space pirates
Cargo starship crews can fix battle damage
... All it takes is enough duct tape and determination
... Because space pirate weapons are as deadly as shotguns, not H-bombs
... And starships cost no more to build and operate than a 1920s tramp steamer
Space pirates will happily open fire on a cargo ship to damage it before boarding
Space pirates need to board cargo ships in order to steal their cargo
... And impress/conscript/enslave their crew
Piracy is a huge problem for space traders
You can tell the difference between a pirate and a space trader with a glance
A cargo captain in a hole might easily turn to smuggling to improve their bottom line
Navies are a lesser threat to smugglers than random encounters with pirates
Nobody has ever heard of end-user certificates or bonded cargo
Nobody ever thinks to ship their high-tax cargo via a free port or use complex financial arrangements to avoid customs duty without having to hire a dodgy armed ship with a poor credit rating

Politics


Planets have a single unitary government (or none at all)
Planetary governance is no more complex than running a village or small township
... This is because the planetary capital is a village or small township, not, say, Beijing or Mexico City
If there are two or more ethnicities represented on a planet their collective politics are simple and easily understood by analogy to 20th century US race relations
All planetary natives everywhere speak Galactic Standard English, or Trade Pidgin
New Colonies can't afford police, detectives, customs inspectors, or the FBI
New Colonies don't require visting spacers to conform to local dress codes or laws
New Colonies don't have gun control laws
New Colonies don't have laws, or if they do they were written by a mad libertarian
Despite the lack of laws, nobody underage drinks in the saloon
... Nobody underage works in the saloon rooms you rent by the hour, either
... Nor is there an extensive school truancy problem or much illiteracy
On reaching pensionable age, all colonists are forced to retire and deported to the Planet of the Pensioners
There is no unemployment because happy smiley frontier needs cowboys or something
If the planetary government is a democracy, the new Mayor will be elected by a town meeting
If the planetary government is an oligarchy, the new Patrician will be elected by a town meeting (of oligarchs, in the back room of the saloon)
If the planetary government is a theocracy, there will be only one sect of the planetary religion and no awkward long-standing heresies that are too strong/embedded to suppress
... And there will be direct rule by Clergy, along the lines of an oligarchy: no Committees of Guardians of the Faith, no separation of executive and legislature, none of the complexity and internal rivalries of Terrestrial theocracies (e.g. Iran, Saudi Arabia)
If the planet is a colony of the Galactic Empire, the new Planetary Governor will be appointed by the local Sector Governor
... It's Governors all the way up (until you hit the Emperor)
Monarchy is the natural and perfectly ideal form of government
Only an Imperial Monarchy can ensure the good local governance of a myriad of inhabited planets scattered across the vast reaches of deep space
Monarchies are never a Single Point Of [Galactic] Failure
Monarchs are never stupid, mad, ill, or distracted by a secret ambition to be a house painter instead
Viziers are Always (a) Grand and (b) Evil. (At this point, let's just #include the regular Evil Overlord list, m'kay?)
Democracies are always corrupt
You can always bribe your way out of sticky situation if you're from off-world
All planetary legal systems work the same way (some remix of Common Law, constitutional governance, and trial by jury). 
The standard punishments for a crime range from a small fine, to slavery in the uranium mines for life (about 18 months), to an excruciating death
Trials are swift and punishments are simple and easy to understand
Justice is always punitive/retributive/exemplary, never compensatory/preventative/rehabilitative, much less poetic/cryptic/incomprehensible
... If the Author disapproves of the death penalty, substitute mind-wipe for the death penalty (like, there's a difference?)

Culture


There is usually only one culture per planet
... Sometimes there are two, to provide for an oppositional plot dynamic
... Pay no attention to the blank spots on the map
... And especially don't go looking for the unmarked mass graves
Planetary natives are either Colonists or Indigenous
Indigenous peoples are either Primitive or Advanced (and Decadent)
Advanced Indigines either don't have space travel or gave it up (see: Decadent)
Primitive Indigines are either Tribal or Mediaeval
Mediaeval Indigines invariably recapitulate the politics of the Hundred Years War
Visits to Mediaeval Indigenous Colonies can be approximated to a side-quest into Fantasyland
If the planet is a Colony it is either a Lost Colony or a New Colony
Lost Colonies may resemble Primitive Indigines but never Advanced
New Colonies resemble Tombstone, AZ, circa 1880
New Colonists live in log cabins, ride mules/horses and carry ~six-guns~ blasters 
... You can find logs (cabins, for the construction of) everywhere on planets
... They're like abandoned crates in first-person shooters
Psychologically speaking, everybody is either WEIRD or Primitive
Primitive (non-WEIRD) people are stupid and unimaginative
WEIRD people accept and embrace change and innovation; non-WEIRD people reject both
Colonies are usually modelled on WEIRD 1950s cultural norms
Colony People come in two genders
The Women on New Colonies are either:
... Barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen (because colonies need babies) 
... Dungaree-wearing two-fisted starship-engineering-obsessed lesbians desperate to get off-world
The Men on New Colonies are either:
... Manly plaid-shirt-wearing heterosexual farmers breaking sod in the ~west~ new world
... Dastardly drunken muggers waiting behind the spaceport saloon for an unwary spacer
QUILTBAG: huh? Who are those people and why doesn't somebody cure them? 
... (Alternatively: everybody is QUILTBAG, pale patriarchal heterosexual penis people are extinct)
Clothing invariably obeys some regional dress code that has been observed on Earth in the past thousand years; in extreme cases 1950s business attire will serve to avoid attracting undue attention
You can recognize someone's gender on any planet because:
... Women wear dresses or skirts with make-up and long hair
... Men wear pants (or occasionally suits of armour)
... Hijra? Hermaphrodites? Transgender? Asexual? What are those?
On some planets people go naked, except for body paint
... This causes no problems, whether social or practical
Colony Planets are invariably a Crapsack World that people are desperate to escape from, unless they're the planetary governor or some species of NPC
The only place worse than a Colony World is Old Earth
Old Earth is 
... An over-crowded overpopulated hell-hole
... An over-regulated bureaucratic hell-hole
... A poverty-stricken backwater and hell-hole
... Destroyed
... Lost (because everyone in the galaxy somehow forgot the way home)
... Mythical (and many people think it never existed)
... Somewhere to run away from
... (Rarely) Somewhere to run to
Slavery is
... Ubiquitous
... No big deal
... Illegal but all the bad guys do it
"the best thing we ever did for them; they're much happier now"
Humans are free; aliens are slaves
Humans are slaves; aliens are free

Technology - space travel


Running a nuclear power plant is kid's business; even a drunken college drop-out can be a ship's engineer
Rocket motors are simple to maintain and operate, too—they never break
Reaction mass is incredibly dense, cheap, and easy to stash away in a spare corner
... It never runs out
... It doesn't require special handling procedures
... It's never toxic, cryogenic, teratogenic, radioactive, or corrosive
Oxygen is freely available in space
You can go as fast as you like if you just accelerate in a straight line
Spaceships accelerate at right angles to the direction the occupants experience gravity in
Spaceships are:
... bilaterally symmetrical
... rugged and able to survive impacts with other objects
... easily maintained by semi-skilled labour/shade tree mechanics
... about as complex as a 1920s tramp steamer, or maybe a deep-sea fishing trawler
... easily piloted
... can stop on a dime
... available second-hand in good working order from scrapyards
... have wings and an undercarriage, like a biplane
... You can hear them coming a parsec away
Generating electricity aboard a spaceship without solar panels is easy
... So is getting rid of waste heat
... The bigger the spaceship, the easier it gets (because the square-cube law doesn't exist)
... The Death Star would totally not melt itself with its waste heat whenever it fired its planet-zapper!
Faster than light travel is easy
... But the jump drive is fuelled by unobtanium
Causality violation: what's that?
There are no regulatory frameworks or licensing regimes for starships
Nobody would ever think to run a starship up to 50% of light-speed and ram a planet
... Even if they did that, the effect wouldn't be significantly worse than a 1940s atom bomb
There's no regulatory framework for shuttlecraft, either
... Because nobody has heard of Kessler syndrome
... Also, a space shuttle in-falling from low earth orbit totally doesn't arrive at ground level with kinetic energy equal to about ten times it's own mass in TNT, because if it did it would be a field-expedient weapon of mass destruction
Flying a spaceship is not only easy, it's easier than flying a Cessna
Spaceship life support systems are simple to maintain and repair and very forgiving
Spaceships communicate across interplanetary or interstellar distances by radio
... Interplanetary radio works instantaneously
... Interplanetary radio communications are as easy to operate as tuning your car stereo to a new AM channel
GPS works in space beyond low earth orbit: who needs navigation skills these days?

Technology - Pew! Pew! Pew!


Radar gives us an instantaneously updated map of everything in a star system
... But stealth technology is totally a thing!
We can't detect spaceships by looking for their infrared emissions against the 2.7 kelvin cosmic background temperature
Also, spaceships can hide behind planets or asteroids indefinitely without using their engines or knowing the bearing of the enemy they're hiding from  
Laser beams are instantaneous, don't spread or disperse, and can melt anything
... Except a force field that somehow refracts/bends/absorbs the confused photons
Missiles, with a constrained (small) propulsion system, can overhaul a much bigger/less constrained spaceship at great range
Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties don't bother to count Free Trader Beowulf's point-defense nuclear missile battery for treaty purposes—only naval nukes count
Gun turrets have to have a glassed-in canopy and a gunner inside or they won't work
Also, human gunners can totally draw a bead on a hostile pirate ship maneuvering a few light seconds away. Fire control computers, not so much
Boarding actions have mysteriously made a come-back from the 1850s.
Guns are still bang-sticks that require a human to point them at a target
Stun-guns have no unpleasant after-effects
Bullets are brainless
You can dodge laser beams
Fisticuffs are universally considered to be the optimal way to resolve a sincere difference of opinion over complex commercial interactions
All starships need to carry armed guards, or at least a gun locker full of blasters for the crew when they're visiting a Colony planet
Knife missiles—who ordered that?

Aliens


Aliens are multicellular organisms with nervous systems and musculoskeletal systems
Aliens communicate in language
... Using noises
... Emitted by their mouths
... At frequency ranges we can perceive
Aliens are individuals
Aliens are eusocial hive organisms
Spacefaring aliens are conscious
Aliens are WEIRD people with latex face paint or funny haircuts
... Because primates are a universal deterministic outcome of evolution on all worlds
Wittgenstein was wrong about talking lions. (If they could speak we'd find what they can say fascinating—mostly because we'd be waiting for them to mutter, "I wonder what those bipeds taste like?")
Aliens build starships sort-of like humans, but with wonky furniture
Aliens are interested in us (see Wittgenstein above)
Aliens want to trade with us
Aliens want to exchange bodily fluids with us (ewww ...)
Aliens want to induct us into their civilizational-level fraternity/sorority and make contact in order to teach us the house rules
Alien species only have one dominant culture
Alien species are noteworthy for their universally applicable stereotypy, utterly unlike us complicated and divergent human beings
Aliens have a much longer history of spaceflight than humans, but unaccountably failed to stumble upon and domesticate us during the 11th century
Aliens have religious beliefs because they have the same theory of mind as human beings and attribute intentionality to natural phenomena (see also: Daniel Dennett)
Alien religion resembles those of a human culture that thrived prior to 1000 CE and is now considered quaintly obsolescent by most humans
Aliens can't control themselves
Aliens are unconditionally hostile
Aliens are robots
... Robot-aliens are just like alien-aliens, only more alien, because robots
Aliens are incomprehensible
Aliens have no sense of humor
Aliens have a human sense of humor
Aliens have been extinct for millions of years, but:
... have left treasures behind in their death-trap-riddled tombs
... their ephemeral technologies still work flawlessly
... If humans trip the burglar alarm, they're coming back—and they'll be mad
... they're extinct because they Sublimed
... they're extinct because they became Decadent
... they're extinct because they suicided
... (robot-alien remix): they're extinct because they tripped over the Halting Problem
... they're extinct because (insert dodgy social darwinist argument here)



What do you think I'm missing from the list?

        


    