Stealth in Space: There ain’t no stealth in space. This applies especially to lighthuggers, inasmuch as an antimatter torch at high burn can be detected for light years even if you’re not the star system that it’s pointed at. If you are, all the more so. Much
Neglectful Precursors: Often played straight: see Black Box, Living Relic, Sealed Evil in a Can, etc. Of course, in fairness to them, most weren’t planning on going extinct or otherwise disappearing from the galactic scene.
The Singularity: Happens all the time. In the historical sense, of course, this is unsurprising, and generally no-one involved notices until afterwards, at which point historians looking back can say “ah, yes, that’s what that was”. There are, of course, investment opportunities here for offworld investors who’ve been
Space Is An Ocean: Partially played straight, partially (and in all the scientific ways) averted. In rough order of examples: The Imperial Navy does use some wet-naval terminology and protocol – but then, that’s only logical, because it was the wet navy that had all the experience in running small-town-sized
Space Whale: Not naturally, at least – so far, no-one’s found naturally evolved space-native life – but, y’know, once they’d got around to uplifting cetaceans it was close to inevitable that some of them would take an interest in that other endless three-dimensional environment (not to mention being better
Portal Network: The stargate plexus, which is the collection of all the stargate pairs in the Associated Worlds. Pretty much every civilized system, except for really newly discovered ones, which may not, has at least one stargate in it. Overall, the network vaguely resembles a spiderweb – the nodes being clusters
Standard Sci-Fi Setting: Taking this collective trope point-by-point, and marking off positive matches and negative differences: Technology: + Easy FTL: Check. (Although the Portal Network is contemporary, and still being expanded – and getting to places that aren’t yet connected to it, including to connect them to it, is neither easy
Behold, my first snippet – plucked from my deep internal slush/ideas pile – for Science Fiction & Fantasy Saturday, an authorial web-ring I’ve seen here and there in the past, and thought I might contribute something to from time to time. Welcome to all new visitors from thereabouts, and do
Heads-Up Display: Mostly replaced by Augmented Reality, although they still fit them to vehicles (from individual flitters through starships) as a backup system just in case the AR – or, more likely, the underlying networking – is out for some reason. These days they use smartglass rather than reflection, though.
Hate Plague: Variants on the theme have been invented several times, mostly for the use of particularly nihilistic terrorist groups and other people for whom atrocity value is more important than anything resembling military efficiency; also, given the usual response, for whom surviving the use of it isn’t all
Homosexual Reproduction: This is a trivial matter of routine bioengineering. (Says it all, really.) …actually, since this is so short and so is the one that linked to it, here, have that one too… Has Two Mommies: See Homosexual Reproduction. Obviously, this happens a lot, as does its Spear Counterpart.
Harmony Versus Discipline: Discipline, all the way. The essential thesis of the (Imperial mainstream) Church of the Flame, after all – and that of several related secular schools of ethics – is that the universe is fundamentally broken, and the job of sophoncy is, essentially, to learn to emulate the abstract incarnations