Non-Standard Starship Scuffles

(So there’s this trope which I missed when I originally put my list together (and which I will no doubt get to again in due course). It’s called Standard Starship Scuffle, and it pretty much encapsulates every TV-scifi cliche imaginable. So, y’know, since I now have various

Trope-a-Day: Gender Blender Name

Gender Blender Name: There weren’t all that many of these in historical times, but in the modern era, there are a great many – or at least, names adjusted such that you can change their gender with a tiny flip of the ending syllable(s).  After all, with gender changing

Trope-a-Day: Gender Bender

Gender Bender: Fairly trivial to achieve with Empire-level biotech, whether done by growing an opposite-sex bioshell (or, y’know, other sex; it’s not like hermaphrodite and neuter haven’t been invented, and not every species uses the same sexes anyway) and mindcasting into it, or if one is of

Trope-a-Day: Gattaca Babies

Designer Babies (formerly known as Gattaca Babies): Well, yes, absolutely, as seen everywhere in the Empire and in many places beyond.  Both the people who start out as biosapiences, and the empty vessels cloned for the benefit of minds in need of bodies.  (And, also, technically, nanocyborgs, because simple genetic

Trope-a-Day: Gate of Truth

Gate of Truth: The Transcendent Core may not know all knowledge in the universe, but it does know everything any part of the Transcend knows, and whatever a weakly godlike superintelligence can reasonably deduce from that that it’s had time and occasion to think about, including a small amount

Trope-a-Day: Gargle Blaster

Gargle Blaster: Several of them, indeed.  Most notable would be much vereldrae liquor (made from only fruit and sap, really, but distilled in ways designed by demented alchemists and with a kick that mules or moonshine would envy – and a lot of these are flammable), essentially everything brewed on Paltraeth

The Perils of Memetic Contamination

I have, so far, sat down on at least three to five occasions to attempt to wrap some firm-SF details around the group of technologies in my universe which go under the general name of ‘vector control’. Thus far, I have devised three to five different versions of the mass

Trope-a-Day: Military Moonshiner

Military Moonshiner: Played straight for some reason, despite the fact that neither the Imperial Navy nor the Imperial Legions is a dry organization. (Also in the Imperial Exploratory Service, which contains the expected number of people who consider “can we make booze out of it?” to be one of the

Trope-a-Day: Futuristic Superhighway

Futuristic Superhighway: Well, now.  They have lots of those.  Apart from a few changes in materials, most of them look much like roads everywhere; the differences come in the technology buried in the road, such as the built-in power grid that lets vehicles recharge as they drive, and warms the

Trope-a-Day: Futuristic Pyramid

Futuristic Pyramid: The pyramid is a popular shape – albeit sometimes adorned with side-decks, spires, bridges, etc. – for arcologies in particular, and also other large buildings, both for convenient load-bearing purposes, and inasmuch as it leaves plenty of room for gardens and balconies at all levels.

Trope-a-Day: Future Food is Artificial

Future Food is Artificial: Played straight in one area, but averted in two more, depending on which end of the food range you are sitting at.  Averted first because there still is plenty of natural food at the high to middle end of the range.  Sure, it’s expensive, because

Trope-a-Day: Functional Addict

Functional Addict: In the past, quite a few of these, inasmuch as the Empire never has had any particular laws – and really can’t – against one type of hedonic or pragmatic pharmaceutical or another.  Averted, however, in the modern era… via the unconventional answer that the best solution to addiction