For the sake of drama, SF stories sometimes overlook the boring practicalities of science. Blogger Stuart Hall discusses his top five niggles...

That Ain't Right!

If you are like me then there will be certain motifs in SF that really annoy you and seem to crop up time and time again.

I categorise my annoyances into three types: bad science, cliché and parochialism. Of course what annoys one person is perfectly acceptable to another, even most others. Pretty well every SF aficionado knows that explosions and spacecraft make no sound in a vacuum. Nevertheless, it is only the minority, of which I must profess to be a member, who would prefer the sound effects not to be there. At least Stanley Kubrick got it right when he filmed 2001. Also we must bear in mind that not every niggle is confined to SF; in Hollywood, if the hero falls for a woman in the group you know they will both survive to the end.

So here are my top five gripes:

1. The incredible density of asteroid fields and nebulae

Asteroids are, on average, much further apart than the Earth and the Moon. Of course, it wouldn’t be very dramatic when the brave pilot is dodging asteroids that far apart. Arthur C Clarke makes it a major event, in 2061: Odyssey Three, when a ship traversing the asteroid belt passes close enough to an asteroid for the crew to get a good look at it.

Interstellar space contains approximately 0.1 atoms per cubic centimetre. In a nebula this figure rises to 1 atom per cubic centimetre. Yet spaceships that can see each other clearly in interplanetary space, 5 atoms per cubic centimetre, can hide from each other in a nebula that is as nebulous as its name would suggest.

2. Aliens that are too human

I concede that budgetary constraints often limit the way aliens are depicted in film and television in terms of costume and make-up. However, the failures often extend beyond that.

Humans and aliens are depicted as falling for each other and even having children. This is simply ridiculous, a human would stand more chance of starting a family with a daffodil, at least they would have some DNA in common.

With modern CGI I would hope for more imaginative and different aliens. Sadly, CGI creatures seem, far too often, to still reflect the “man in a suit” pattern.

3. Decompression

The word “explosive” in the phrase “explosive decompression” is woefully misunderstood by script-writers. A small hole in a pressure dome will not cause the air to rush out in a gale and suck everything with it. A human being exposed to space will explode (Check this out - SFX).

In the Doctor Who story The Moonbase a small hole in the pressure dome is dealt with calmly, by temporarily sealing it with a tea tray; a remarkably accurate account. Robert Heinlein gives a similarly accurate, and amusing, description of the effects exposure to a vacuum has on the human body in his short story Gentlemen Be Seated.

4. An American future

The parochial viewpoint where the future is an extension of the society in which he writer lives is not uncommon. However, it does seem to afflict those who hail from the USA more than most. The three examples of this that crop up most often are the US judicial system, especially its more backward aspects such as the death penalty, the US political system and the one that really gets my back up: unthinkingly prefixing spaceship names with USS without consideration for what the letters mean.

5. Ignoring Newton

This is something found most frequently in superhero and cyborg type situations. It is the ignoring of the basic laws of mechanics (there is also a lot of ignoring of the laws of thermodynamics, but that’s gripe number six). The commonest incarnation of this is ignoring relative masses. For example, no matter how strong our hero is he will not be able to pull on a rope looped over a roof beam and lift a one tonne crate. Unless he is grossly overweight or has a hitherto unrevealed power of super sticky feet he will simply lift himself into the air.

Those are the things that annoy me most. Do you agree? Perhaps you have niggles of your own.

This is a personal article by Stuart Hall, one of our new bloggers - read more about our volunteer contributors on this dedicated page.

Are you equally annoyed about errors and oversights? Your thoughts welcome as always, in the comment thread below or on our forum.