List of SFF Clichés

[Caretaker66]

Three words: "I'll be back."

 

[Cyril]

Space ships can only destroy things of their size or bigger; and their weakness is also proportional to their size: most imposing is the ship, easier destructible it is.

High tech laboratories in tv shows must have at least ten plasma screens by employee only devoted to display a geometrical logo screensaver.

 

[Marky Lazer]

Robots have feelings when you show them how to.

By the way, this is a great thread!

 

[Thunderchild]

There is an ancient weapon that was destroyed that the begining of time buy the good guys. The new villan has found a way to repair it and only you can stop him buy destroying/finding its parts/buying it of E-bay before they get their evil hands on it.

 

[Winters_Sorrow]

Fantasy
Fabulous jewel/object has incredible power which every ruler/person of importance good and evil desire. Is found by farmboy yokel, who against the odds (and boy, what odds!) manages to keep a hold of said object/jewel from powerful foes until it can be delivered to "nice" ruler.

With little or no training, said farmboy turns out to be a superior swordsman/magican due to his "natural gifts". It's be a bit more realistic if he attacked people with a shovel, if you want my opinion...

Sci-fi
Human beings are a match for any other alien race in terms of space-craft design, operation & engineering, in spite of having developed these technologies hundreds of years after them. Also nefarious aliens (usually insectoid or with slimy icky tentacles) hate us because we're so popular, but some "good" aliens (usually humanoid or otherwise 'attractive') help us against them until we earn galaxy-wide respect and love from all alien races.

Before achieving space flight & meeting other races, we cure all known disease, stop war and form a planet wide bureaucracy free of corruption.

Robots would never harm people unless reprogrammed by unscrupulous scientists/businessman (of course we would never design war robots for the army, would we?).

 

[Brian G Turner]

Humans are the most important species in the universe. Any sentient being that isn't human must be taught how superior being human is.

 

[Quokka]

Advanced Alien race feels the need to wipe out the human race basically just because their bullys.

Alien race with unimaginably advanced technology is unable to create a plan of attack that actually wipes out primative humans.

Luckily all alien technology is also easily understandable and preferably compatible with human technology.


five, six or(insert small number here) of the most talented, powerfull and lucky people ever to be born will either grow up in the same village or come together so quickly they virtually stumble into each other.

 

[Symbolt]

All the alien races in the universe speak English / intergalactic.

The story has the main hero being persecuted and in the end it turns out they are an android.

 

[jackokent]

Muddy, savage, wild, native woman, in fur bikini, with big hair, (who also happens to be stunningly attractive), saves hero, often from her own kind, miraculously picks up his language in form of grunts and cutsy phrases and flies off with him to his highly advance civilisation (where presumably she won't feel in the least out of her depth)

 

[Marky Lazer]

The kid outsmarts the nasty greedy guy that destroys the world or something else important.

 

[Elvendon]

The youngest child of a group that journeys to another world being the one who makes the most profound insights into the plot/goodness/makes the first overtures towards the goodies/adjusts to the new world most easily.

 

[Quokka]

Good and Evil.

 

[polymath]

The hero is a down-at-heel aristo in a thousand year old space empire, super-bright but socially a pariah due to family misdemeanour/lack of money/accent and must overcome idiotic stupid young brattish aristo opponents whilst earning their grudging respect/making them look really stupid during space-battle-practice/actual combat/high-society dinner parties.

Old family friends, old family retainers or old family bodyguards all pull together because of the warm memories of what the hero's family did for them during the hard times/the war/because they were really really good people and there's no way they would let down the son of their old warrior-friend/family-protectors-during-civil-war/ballet-partners.

The old family butler always gets killed helping him out.

 

[Winters_Sorrow]

Damn, you just summed up & ruined for me, Walter Jon Williams' "The Praxis" series...

 

[polymath]

Which, uncoincidentally, is what I've just started to read...literally just started it, not even sure what's going to happen yet, which prompted me to post the above because you can see it all over the place. It is a cliche though.

 

[Carolyn Hill]

Plot twist: The planet is sentient. (Usually "cleverly" signaled by a spaceship landing on the planet, followed moments later by an earthquake or storm, and nobody figures it out for hundreds of pages.)

Another plot twist: The computer is sentient. (Could also be signaled by an earthquake or a storm. Ditto the hundreds of pages.)

 

[Wolfeborn]

woods/forest are always filled with elves, haunted or have mystical properties/strange beasties they never contained normal everyday birds squirels tres and mud.

Desert planets with no sign of water whatsoever will almost always have water found on it/ice metled on it etc etc, same goes for normal deserts which will always have an oasis just in the nick of time (not necessarily sff but hey)

 

[Nokia]

Everyone always managed to keep everything they know to themselves when the villain's sidekick, who is renowned for his horrific torture, tortures someone.

 

[Thunderchild]

the weapon or experiment will alter one of the good guys in just the right way to fight the bad guys

 

[Paige Turner]

Every explosive device has a red digital countdown display. Which is very handy.