Fable & The Verbivore

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Episode 142: Science Fiction Tropes

Bethany Stedman

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Ep 142: Science Fiction Tropes Fable & The Verbivore

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Today, Fable and the Verbivore are delighted to wrap up our exploration of science fiction and share some of our favorite sci-fi tropes found in books, TV shows, and films.

One of the surprising things that came up very early in this conversation is how time travel stories can help remind us of the ripple effect that time has, how the things we choose to do today impact the future. We often stand in the present looking back with regret and wishing we’d done something differently in the past. But the truth is that we hold the power to change and to act in the here and now. We can give the gift of our action in the present to our future selves.

Here are some of the specific tropes that we touch on along with examples and subversions:

  • Powerful Computers - Joshua from War Games, HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Source in The Matrix, Deep Thought from Hitchciker’s Guide to the Galaxy

  • Time Travel - The Tardis in Doctor Who, Time Travel Rules in The Terminator and Back to the Future, The Butterfly Effect in A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury, Time resets in Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow, Time police in The Eyre Affair

  • Alien Languages and Miscommunication - Misunderstandings across languages and the word weapon in Arrival, The Babel Fish translation creature in Hitchciker’s Guide to the Galaxy

  • Kids and UFOs - Super 8, ET, and When the Sky Fell on Splendor

  • Faster-than-light (FTL) and Space Travel - Warp drives in Star Trek, Lightspeed in Star Wars, The Infinite Improbability drive in Hitchciker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Stargate in Stargate, Cryosleep

  • Sciency Jargon and Sciency Solutions - Timey wimey speech in Doctor Who, realigning the dish or ejecting the core in Star Trek, Whatever Han says when fixing the Millenium Falcon

  • Destruction of Art - Burning all books in Fahrenheit 451, Burning all art in Equilibrium, Banning and confiscating art in V for Vendetta

  • Escapism from the Real World - VR in Ready Player One, Computer/Video Games in Tron, Tron Legacy, and Free Guy

We hope you enjoy this episode! We both had a lot of fun walking through some of our favorite sci-fi stories and exploring many different aspects of them.

Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

This exploration of common tropes of science fiction isn’t meant to be exhaustive. It’s a brief overview of some of our favorites while acknowledging that there are many others to explore.

Here are some articles and videos that we found helpful in preparation for this conversation:

Fable and the Verbivore talk about the grandfather paradox as part of our time travel trope discussion. Here is a brief definition:

  • The grandfather paradox is a potential logical problem that would arise if a person were to travel to a past time. The name comes from the idea that if a person travels to a time before their grandfather had children, and kills him, it would make their own birth impossible. So, if time travel is possible, it somehow must avoid such a contradiction.

The Verbivore talks about a babel fish, it’s a creature from the book Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. It can be placed in the ear of anyone and translates whatever language is being spoken directly into the brain of the wearer. More information can be found at:

The Verbivore references the science jargon quote from The Avengers: Infinity War, where Shuri is assessing the mind stone’s connection to Vision’s mind. Bruce Banner (The Hulk) is explaining what he and Tony Stark did to create the connection. Here is that dialogue:

  • Shuri : The structure is polymorphic.

    Bruce Banner : Right. We... we had to attach each neuron non... non-sequentially.

    Shuri : Why didn't you just preprogram the synopsis to work collectively?

    Bruce Banner : [as Vision turns his attention to Banner with curiosity]  Because, we, didn't... think of it?

    Shuri : I'm sure you did your best.

As we talk about scientific jargon, both Fable and the Verbivore reference the phrase “Timey, Wimey”. This comes from Doctor Who Series 3, Episode 10 “Blink”, which we’d highly recommend. The full quote is:

  • “People assume time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.”

We touch on several of our previous podcast episodes. They are as follows:

Books, Movies, and TV Shows Mentioned:

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
‘Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)