Educational: Charles Stross' list of space opera cliches

[tnjrp]

A bit different from what you might get from just cut-and-pasting from TV Tropes:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/03/towards-a-taxonomy-of-cliches-.html

Not much of it is necessary relevant in a miniature gaming context of course, unless you are writing fluff for a new game.

[rwwin]

I'd call it more a list of what distinguishes "space opera" from "science fiction".  Not that I think their's really any hard line between them, it's just that space opera tends to include more items from his list whereas what most people think of as "hard" sci-fi has less. 

The only thing that really struck me is the first sentence where he consider's writing a space opera because his publisher says they're "really hot right now".  Now there's a plug for your next dust jacket!

[The_Beast]

Pretty sure there are a few that, if you don't accept the simplistic cosmology, the planet's dead, and not much of a story there.

The only thing that really struck me is the first sentence where he consider's writing a space opera because his publisher says they're "really hot right now".  Now there's a plug for your next dust jacket!

Pretty sure he's complaining about simple-minded publishers. 

Cute list, and a bit exhaustive; will have to finish later.

Doug

[FramFramson]

Some of the complaints are a bit spurious, mainly the ones about things being too easy or reliable - Nothing wrong with a hyperfusioncrazywarp drive being decently reliable and maintainable by the far-flung future's equivalent of a drunken college dropout, or for it to use a power source that doesn't require huge volumes of fuel. I don't see how you'd have regular, frequent interstellar travel without that being the case.

That's one of the core attributes of technological progress, for complex machines that need to be used by a large number of people to become easier for the layman to use (meanwhile, we will invent something even more strange and complicated), or for us to obtain more energy from smaller volumes of physical objects.   

Just seems like a lot of very cranky grousing.

But the one that really had me flat out disagreeing was

Planetary natives are either Colonists or Indigenous

Uh. Either they were there to begin with or they came from somewhere else (even if "somewhere else" is another dimension or whatever). I'm not sure what other possible origins the population of an inhabited planet you could have.

[Elbows]

Just read like an annoying "I'm smarter than you" rant...without accounting for the "fiction" part of Science Fiction.

[Dezmond]

Just read like an annoying "I'm smarter than you" rant...without accounting for the "fiction" part of Science Fiction.

Sadly, Charles Stross is an asshole

[jon_1066]

It just seemed a list of reasons not to write a space opera.  If you are constrained by real world physics then any space opera is going to collapse under its own inability to leave the solar system.

[Conquistador]

Seems he should trade some of his excess ego for more brain cells so he can understand fiction versus non-fiction.

What an arrogant sounding jerk.

Why, yes, I am grumpy today.  Too much activity at the Abraham Lincoln Museum and the Lincoln Home sites with wife and adult child #3.  Brain and body are recovering from the output/input associated with all the walking and absorbing information.

Edit: And I won't be buying his book, should he write it.  I can be bored updating metadata instead.

[rwwin]

Pretty sure he's complaining about simple-minded publishers. 

That's not how it came acrross:

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?").

That reads to me like an author considering a new project on a subject he clearly doesn't seem to like or respect.  I know fiction is a business and he's got to put out product and pay the bills, but that's probably an attitude you want to keep to yourself not throw up on a blog.

[Maledrakh]

If he writes a "Space Opera" novel that avoids all of these cliches, will it still be Space Opera?

This reads more like he is making the basic notes for a SF version of the Tough Guide to Fantasyland.