Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, wumpus said:

Probably the most extreme case of SF snobbery was Niven's first published work.  It relied on Mercury being tidally locked, but Niven wasn't aware that was already known to be false.  When he learned of this, he offered to withdraw the work (it wasn't accepted).

While he should realize that the book now requires a prequel: "How Did Mercury Get/Stop Rotating".
Experience comes with age.

Edited May 31, 2018 by kerbiloid

[mikegarrison]

3 hours ago, wumpus said:

Don't leave out Blake's Seven, it was Firefly at least a decade before Firefly.

There has been a movement to rename SF "speculative fiction", and it is probably a good idea.  Blake's Seven has basically no science whatsoever but simply posits an overwhelming galactic empire and explores the means required to control and the the means available to rebel, so great speculation and freedom to craft a story.  Link to probably the origin of *Science* fiction snobbery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ctpvd2VvukQ

Probably the most extreme case of SF snobbery was Niven's first published work.  It relied on Mercury being tidally locked, but Niven wasn't aware that was already known to be false.  When he learned of this, he offered to withdraw the work (it wasn't accepted).

Are you sure you are thinking of Niven? Asimov wrote a short story that relied on Mercury being tidally locked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dying_Night Maybe Niven did too.

Yeah, I liked the first season of Blake's Seven. I never saw the later seasons without Blake.

The thing is, Science Fiction originally consisted more of what we might call "visions of the future" than what we now think of as "hard science". Stuff like Doc Smith and AE Vogt and HG Wells and Hugo Gernsback. Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. It was more about the future than about science, although the common vision was that in the future the rational "man of science" (always a man) would end up dominating society instead of politicians or businessmen.

[p1t1o]

You know what really gets my goat?

Re: Infinity War

Oh, spoilers...I guess...maybe you've been on a submarine for the last 6 months?

Spoiler

Some people be saying Thanos "killed half the people in the universe" some people be saying "..in the galaxy"

ITS A BIG DIFFERENCE GUYS

(its the universe, right?)

 

[DAL59]

2 hours ago, p1t1o said:

its the universe, right?)

Yes.  Also, there was no need for a meelee battle with the Outriders.  A few predator drones could have done the the trick.  Also, since they have a forcefield, why not just bomb them?  They can't fly, and they have planes, so why have a land battle?  

Also, you can't violate conservation of mass with nanobots.  

[p1t1o]

28 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

Yes.  Also, there was no need for a meelee battle with the Outriders.  A few predator drones could have done the the trick.  Also, since they have a forcefield, why not just bomb them?  They can't fly, and they have planes, so why have a land battle?  

Also, you can't violate conservation of mass with nanobots.  

Agreed!

And they have like one guy with a machine gun who kills like 20 aliens.

Imagine this - give all your soldiers a machine gun.

Crazy right?

 

I'd like to see a scene where Cap, Black Panther, Black Widow and Hulk are charging the enemy, fists raised, a Viking Yawp on their lips and whenever they get within ten feet of an enemy and set up a supreme WWF wrestling takedown with 2 horizontal spins, the enemy they are charging gets 5-10 rounds from the line troops at the rear who are just methodically pumping thousands of rounds into the heaving enemy masses. 

 

Or Marvel movies with realistic head trauma - so any enemy that ever gets knocked unconscious either wakes up immediately after 3-4 seconds, or wakes up with severe brain deficits. End credits scene is just a huge ER wards with countless rows of faceless henchmen covered in bloodied sheets, bodies ruined, twisted and contorted, bleeding, gurgling and spluttering from awful crushing wounds caused by Caps shield and hulks fists.

I think Cap is supposed to be all like ethical and junk, "only" incapacitating enemies instead of killing them. Or is it that he just loves leaving people with permanent, life-changing disabilities? There's a lot of henchmen that can only eat through tubes now.

 

Spoiler

Im just joshin' I do love the marvel movie franchise. But you do have to turn a blind eye to  bunch of stuff. 

 

On another note, I'd like to see Game of Throne remade exactly the same except one guy has a machine gun. Just like pick one random character. See how that plays out.

Imma say it, a jeep with a .50 cal could take out a dragon.

 

 

 

Edited June 1, 2018 by p1t1o

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

a jeep with a .50 cal

We already have this in KSP.

1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

dragon

Somebody should make it
There is a lack of ornithopters on Kerbin.

Then we can play KSP GoThic.

[Fraston]

Some movies are idiocy.

[kerbiloid]

Some of them just use wrong timelapse and soundtrack.

The freak team of Prometheus should explore the planet and the alien ship at 2^x speed and with Benny Hill's famous music.

[p1t1o]

Some movies are idiocracy

[DAL59]

10 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Imagine this - give all your soldiers a machine gun.

Or have an automated laser turret.  Iron Man has lasers.  Put a laser turret.  Problems solved.  

[lugge]

On 6/1/2018 at 1:08 PM, p1t1o said:

Im just joshin' I do love the marvel movie franchise. But you do have to turn a blind eye to  bunch of stuff. 

Nope, you don't have to.
I love them too, but they are Hollywood comic movies after all.

They are no science fiction nor did they ever wanted to be science fiction, so, don't judge them like you judge bad scifi.

Edited June 4, 2018 by lugge

[roboslacker]

A while ago I saw Dunkirk, and one thing's been bothering me since: A submarine can't sink a destroyer. While a few were sunk by submarines in WW2, these were few and far between.

[kerbiloid]

Kerbal submarine can even intercept it in space.
 

Spoiler

 

[Bill Phil]

37 minutes ago, roboslacker said:

A while ago I saw Dunkirk, and one thing's been bothering me since: A submarine can't sink a destroyer. While a few were sunk by submarines in WW2, these were few and far between.

Sure they can. If it was done at all then that proves it. But it wasn't a good strategy.

[razark]

20 hours ago, roboslacker said:

A submarine can't sink a destroyer.

Followed immediately by stating the fact that yes, it can and has happened.

 

20 hours ago, roboslacker said:

While a few were sunk by submarines in WW2, these were few and far between.

My list shows 44 Allied Destroyers and Destroyer Escorts sunk by u-boats during WWII.  This far outstrips the 14 capital ships sunk.  And that's not even including the 35 corvettes and frigates sunk.

And then there's the ~40 IJN Destroyers sunk by the US submarines.

 

Edit:

I haven't seen the movie, so I don't know what happens on film, but the destroyer HMS Grafton was sunk by U-62 during the Dunkirk Evacuation.

Edited June 5, 2018 by razark

[magnemoe]

48 minutes ago, roboslacker said:

A while ago I saw Dunkirk, and one thing's been bothering me since: A submarine can't sink a destroyer. While a few were sunk by submarines in WW2, these were few and far between.

WW2 destroyers was pretty fast an nimble and the torpedoes was not acoustic until late in war they also left an bubble trial now add that one of the main purposes of destroyers was anti submarine work it was an hard and dangerous target for the sub. 

[DAL59]

9 hours ago, lugge said:

They are no science fiction nor did they ever wanted to be science fiction, so, don't judge them like you judge bad scifi.

Internal consistency though.

[mikegarrison]

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

Sure they can. If it was done at all then that proves it. But it wasn't a good strategy.

Yes, the point was to sink the cargo ships. They avoided the escorts because the escorts were dangerous and because it was the cargo that was important for the war effort.

[kerbiloid]

Humans.
Why do the androids watch TV?
Even when they are alone and don't need to cosplay real humans. Ssay, in that storehouse.
The can communicate without speech and can connect to the house equipment.
Why not just receive TV programs into brain?

This is like Terminator with his its HUD.

P.S.
Alien Prometheus Covenant.
Did they try to scratch under David's chin? Maybe he will switch off, too.

P.P.S.
David swallowed two alien embryo and then vomitted them back.
So, he can insert food and drinks into the hollow chest to imitate a human.
Does he also wear a plastic bag inside, to extract this?
It's easy to understand his humanophobia then, but why doesn't he use this inner pocket daily for his own purposes?

P.P.P.S.
Orange androids are better than green ones. As if we have not enough problems with real people.
While the orange ones are nice, calm, and there is always something to talk with them about, not just their phylosophical problems.

P.P.P.P.S.
Also why are the silly humans blacking out the androids' camp?
It's electric henge vice versa should be always in tension.

Edited June 5, 2018 by kerbiloid

[lugge]

22 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Humans.
Why do the androids watch TV?
Even when they are alone and don't need to cosplay real humans. Ssay, in that storehouse.
The can communicate without speech and can connect to the house equipment.
Why not just receive TV programs into brain?

This is like Terminator with his its HUD. 

Maybe the Terminator (and other androids in question) were quick&dirty products.

They evolved from 21th-century AIs which were used in cars or military drones and had cameras and radars/laserscanners, able to spot and identify traffics signs, other cars, enemey weddings bases and hideouts.

The Terminator body, without the controlling AI, was maybe used in areas were you needed ground troops but were too dangerous for human soldiers. Thus, the bodies were controlled like surrogates. An army operator could control the body with joystick from a save, nice office room. The operator would use monitors to get camera visions and status information.

Later, the machines just took the evolved military AI and combined it with the military machine-body, but they were in a hurry and could not afford to specify and create a nice and clean API, thus, they used what they had.

Now you have your military AI in a fighting machine body, but the AI controls the body like the former army operators did.

Hey, why should machines be better developers than humans? ;-)

Edited June 6, 2018 by lugge

[kerbiloid]

Got it. In three words: obsolete debugger GUI.

Edited June 6, 2018 by kerbiloid

[KerikBalm]

Sci-Fi in general is poorly defined, I would restrict it only to Hard-Sci Fi.

Science fiction should be fiction based around our current/best understanding of what is possible within the known or suspected laws of Physics.

Going beyond that into technologies that might as well be magic, I would instead call "Fictional Science", since its not real science, its fictional science in a fictional Universe.

I would grant some lee-way for storytelling purposes... like absurdly strong winds in the martian (the highest winds are at the poles, not where they landed, and even at those high windspeeds, the atmosphere is too thing to do what they showed), the Epstein drive of the expanse (the fusion reaction rate is absurdly high, it doesn't seem very compatible with known laws of physics, but for the most part the rest of the fictional universe uses real science... except for the protomolecule). I also have some willingness to allow 1 fictional alteration to science, like FTL or time travel, as long as the rest logically follows, and they don't get into the habit of basically throwing all of science out. I accept that our current understanding of the universe is imperfect, and we may be wrong about some things, but when one has to start throwing out a vast majority of real science to accommodate their fictional science, then its not Scientific Fiction, its Fictional Science.

And similar to Fictional Science, I'd also have the category "Future Fantasy" or "Fantasy in Sppaaaaccceeee!", which would just be Fantasy but in a futuristic setting rather than its more common pseudo-medieval setting.

To me star wars in Fantasy in SPAAAACCCCEEEEE!!!!! and Star Trek is Fictional Science/Future Fantasy

[RealKerbal3x]

On 6/4/2018 at 6:58 PM, roboslacker said:

A while ago I saw Dunkirk, and one thing's been bothering me since: A submarine can't sink a destroyer. While a few were sunk by submarines in WW2, these were few and far between.

I saw that film too. You know the bit where the Spitfire glides for ages? Wouldn't work. The aircraft would probably nosedive as soon as the engine cut out.

[p1t1o]

54 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

I saw that film too. You know the bit where the Spitfire glides for ages? Wouldn't work. The aircraft would probably nosedive as soon as the engine cut out.

Why on Earth would you assume that? 

Besides the fact that thats not really how aircraft work, the spitfire was known for its excellent glide characteristics.

http://www.spitfireperformance.com/spitfire-I.html

 

Edited June 7, 2018 by p1t1o

[DAL59]

1 hour ago, RealKerbal3x said:

I saw that film too. You know the bit where the Spitfire glides for ages? Wouldn't work. The aircraft would probably nosedive as soon as the engine cut out.

No... thats not how forces work.  

42 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Why on Earth would you assume that? 

Besides the fact that thats not really how aircraft work, the spitfire was known for its excellent glide characteristics.

http://www.spitfireperformance.com/spitfire-I.html

Exactly.