Ten Plotlines You’ll Find in Science Fiction — Over and Over Again
December 28th, 2011This topic needs a far weirder treatment than the khaki-clad nine-to-fivers at io9 are capable of providing. Maybe Brainsturbator will do this properly someday. For an unabridged version, see Secret Sun.
Via: io9:
Science fiction is a genre of limitless possibilities, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few ideas writers keep coming back to as trusty old standbys. Here are ten of science fiction’s most common tropes…and how they’ve evolved.
Obviously, no list like this can ever be considered comprehensive, and we could probably do dozens of sequels to this post. But what we want to examine here are some of the most common building blocks of science fiction stories. For each trope, we explain where it came from, what cemented it as an iconic part of science fiction, and some of the things modern storytellers are doing to keep it and interesting. So, let’s take a look…
