Science Fiction

To your second point, I think the Universal Translator in Star Trek is the best explanation. Not only does it make for more convenient television, but it seems like such a well thought-out invention that would actually exist in the future. Like why make everyone learn one language and wipe out all the history/culture behind the others when you can just let everyone do their own thing.

Can't believe no one has mentioned this yet but my big one is physics in microgravity. There are some that do it well (like obv Apollo 13 given how they filmed it, and The Expanse is usually pretty good about it too) and plenty that it doesn't really matter but there's a bunch of movies and tv shows that hang major plot points on poorly thought out physics. The worst offender imo was ironically the movie Gravity, where a major character dies because apparently when two people are tethered to each other in zero-g and the line goes taut they don't just bounce back towards each other, oh no, because there's an extra special force that keeps pulling on the futher person so he has to make some dramatic self sacrifice. I was so sad because that movie looked really amazing from a cinematography perspective and obviously a lot of people loved it regardless but i just couldn't get past how dumb that and a few other scenes were.

Such a great topic, thanks for making this post!

I've heard a lot I agree with already (ditto on the Becky Chambers / Wayfarers rec for alien morphology and culture).

One thing I haven't heard yet (maybe it's not a perfect fit for the question) - poor characterization and an over reliance on world-building / technology. This is how later Neal Stephenson books (Reamde) have felt to me, where the characters feel like flat automotons but there will be pages and pages about some minute technological detail. Consider Phlebas is another offender, although I do think some of the latter Culture books do better. The final mention would be a number of Peter F Hamilton books.

Because this is all a matter of taste, I find this interesting on a more personal level. I've noticed my own preferences change as I get older, away from the neat tech aspects and more on the characters and their respective arcs. And even their arcs don't need to be tied to external plot beats, but can be intensely personal (e.g. Sissex's struggle to understand whether they want to be a parent in Wayfarers). I also really liked Amos's arc in the expanse where we get an idea of where he comes from, and is able to find companionship with Clarissa (who has a pretty good arc herself as well).

It's a very similar dynamic in my fantasy tastes these days as well - my favorite series is Realm of the Elderlings. Whether Sci-fi or Fantasy though, it has been relatively difficult to find books that better align with these tastes. Definitely open to any recs from others!

That women can only be scientists or whatever if their father was. They can have no other reason or backstory.

What annoys me is that science fiction is that some of the biggest writers don't seem to know any women IRL. If Robert Heinlin or Cixin Lu had to write a believable woman character to bring them food and water, they'd be dead in three days.

Artificial gravity not achieved through acceleration or rotation. That and people don’t explode or instantly freeze when exposed to vacuum.

My main gripe is a lot of plots have too much high stake events solved by improbable happenings?

Why save the earth when one can save a meadow? I would love to see a story about a group of people trying to prevent nano technology from entering a park, and the social backlash when they try.

Why do nearly impossible things within a certain time, when one can have more humble happenings?

Space battles are cool but does the main character have to save the ship, fleet or day? Isn’t it enough to save one’s squad?

Distance. Almost every SciFi completely fails to represent distance even remotely closely.

This isn't a gripe about FTL, it's a gripe about non-FTL! Fancy FTL avoids the problem.

Star trek does it quite well in most cases, it takes days at warp foo to get anywhere. Voyager took years.

New Star wars butchers it; e.g. The Mandalorian episode with the no lightspeed/hyperspace plot device: oh no it took hours/days to get between star systems. Days! Imagine taking days to travel unfathomable distances!

New Dune (KJA's books) inexcusably get it wrong. Claiming that "slow" travel between systems took months.

The mote in God's eye does it extremely well with its pairs of jump points (shoutout to Mass Effect here too). Sometimes it's quicker to use a jump point to another system, crawl to another (nearer) jump point and then jump back to the first sytem rather than crawl directly across the original system.

It takes light very long time to travel across our solar system, let alone interstellar distances. It's like these writers have never even considered how long a container ship on earth takes to travel and still be viable.

This is a common complaint, but it deserves to be mentioned frequently: exploding control panels. This is especially a problem in Star Trek. Are circuit breakers a lost technology?

Noisy space battles.

Yeah I will say it's fun to point out the plot holes whenever comparing it to the real world. But as you get older you realize. I don't want writers to care about this stuff unless it is in service to the story. That's the problem with a lot of new scifi. Is worrying about this stuff and always calling back to previous series is what bogs down storying telling. If your story is good I don't care about the holes.

In and of itself, I don't mind it, but I'm mildly annoyed by most having some form of FTL travel. That's why The Expanse was so refreshing for me.

Like, I get it. Having FTL drive (or comparable ways to go vast distances in short times) allows a larger universe for the characters. It's also, I would imagine, easier to write since the writers wouldn't have to deal with the vast scales, time dilation, and asynchronous events happening in different parts of the galaxy/story.

For comparison, The Expanse worked because it was all within our solar system. In the Revelation Space series (book), humans are doing interstellar travel, but they're in cryo the whole trip, and the journey takes years. The author formerly worked for the ESA and pretty much had to show his work every step of the way to get all the characters together on the same planets at the same time.

So yeah, I get why we don't see that more often (especially in TV series with less accredited writers), but it would be nice to see it once in a while nonetheless.

This is why Darmok is peak sci-fi. It discusses what happens when species can’t communicate with one another. It even works within the in-show explanation of the universal translator: the Tamarians don’t just use different vocabulary and syntax. They have an entirely different language model.

Star Trek also seems to lack any form of video surveillance.

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation series premier Encounter at Farpoint, Riker comes aboard later on after several plot-relevant events. To bring him up to speed, he's seated in front of a viewscreen and watches what has happened up to that point, basically the first part of the episode. Of course, this sort of thing is never used in the series again, but it's kind of interesting.

One of the funniest episodes of the Men In Black cartoon was J trying to adjust to MIB's 37 hour day.

But it shows a problem; in most sci-fi not only are all the aliens 1.8 meters tall with five fingers and a larynx that can mimic human speech, they all come from world's with a 24 hour day. Actually, to get nerdier, most cultures with a sun would probably have a 24 hour day based on them using circular sun dials. But the length of the hours would vary.

Another thing that annoys me is when an author comes up with a fantastic idea and uses it once. There's a Poul Anderson story I read in high school that I always wanted to see developed. A group of time travelers from 3854 AD go back to meet da Vinci. They get captured by a baron who tortures them into revealing all their secrets.

The baron and his family set up an estate in 20,000 BC and maraud through time.

This story could run six seasons, easily.

The camera thing drives me nuts, because we all know it's generally just going to be what's drives the plot for this story. Which is okay.

But as a privacy nerd, my brain immediately concocts some deeply weird privacy law to explain why main engineering is monitored 24/7 and the front door is somehow not. Then my brain starts trying to come up with the relevant moments in the fictional history why the laws are so broken...

Sounds and non-newtonian physics in space flight. You wouldn't hear rumbling engines or lasers shooting in space. You also wouldn't need to keep burning your thrusters after you've accelerated towards your destination.

I am mildly annoyed when an action scene essentially pauses so the heroes can have a small dialog scene.

I always find myself wondering: isn’t that bad guy, hull breach, detonation timer etc still there?