CLICHES

   Sf cliches have developed, perhaps, partly out of a need for identification of stories as genuine sf - readers know where they are with a time-space warp - but mainly out of the lazy and parsimonious recycling of ideas at every level. The most obvious are cliche gadgets (BLASTER, ANDROID, HYPERSPACE drive, CYBORG, TIME MACHINE, brain suspended in aquarium, FORCE FIELD, food pill, ANTIGRAVITY shield, translating machine, judiciary COMPUTER), but major sf cliche themes are also old friends (daring conquest of the Galaxy; scientist goes too far; witch-hunt for telepaths; post- HOLOCAUST barbarism; triumph of Yankee knowhow). A list of sf cliche characters might begin with mad SCIENTISTS (Frankenstein to Dr Strangelove), though scientists may also be either young, muscular and idealistic or else elderly, absentminded and eccentric. Cliche WOMEN AS PORTRAYED IN SF normally have no character above the neck (SEX). Some are sexy and helpless (often lab assistants or daughters of elderly scientists, rescued from danger by young scientists), break into hysterical laughter and need a slap, faint during critical fight scenes, and twist their fragile ankles during the flight through the jungle. Others are sexy and threatening (Amazon Queens from She to Wonder Woman) or sexy but ignorant tomboys (as in FORBIDDEN PLANET). Since the advent of FEMINISM, however, women are less commonly weak ("She flexed her mighty thews"). Cliche CHILDREN IN SF are hardly more variable: some are MUTANT geniuses, possess magical or PSI POWERS, or prove mankind's only link with alien invaders by virtue of their innocence. With "The Small Assassin" (1946), Ray BRADBURY began a new line of sf cliche kids who, after menacing mankind in many of his stories, turned up to menace again in John WYNDHAM's The Midwich Cuckoos (1957; vt Village of the Damned) and in the film IT'S ALIVE! Sf cliche MACHINE characters must be comic (in many Isaac ASIMOV stories), horrifying (from the GOLEM to the DALEKS) or sometimes both (from Nathaniel HAWTHORNE's dancing partner in "The Artist of the Beautiful" [1844] to HAL in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY [1968]); they are seldom allowed as much thought or emotion as even BEMS or other minatory extraterrestrials. Among MONSTERS, giantism, dwarfism, scales, hair, slime, claws and tentacles prevail. H.G. WELLS first used octopuses in "The Sea Raiders" (1897); other writers kept the loathsome tentacles waving for half a century, up to and beyond IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA [1955].Sf cliche plots and plot devices are so numerous that any list must be incomplete. We have the feeble old nightwatchman left to guard the smouldering meteorite crater overnight ("I'll be all right, yessirree"); the doomed society of lotus-eaters; civilization's future depending upon the outcome of a chess game, the answer to a riddle, or the discovery of a simple formula ("a one-in-a-million chance, but so crazy it just might work!"); shapeshifting aliens ("one of us aboard this ship is not human"); invincible aliens ("the billion-megaton blast had no more effect than the bite of a Sirian flea"); alien invaders finally stopped by ordinary water (as in films of both The DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS [1963] and The Wizard of Oz [1939]); the ANDROID spouse who cuts a finger and bleeds machine-oil; the spouse possessed or hypnotized by aliens ("darling, you've been acting so strangely since your trip to Ganymede"); the disguised alien sniffed out by "his" pet dog, who never acted this way before; destruction of giant computer brain by a simple paradox ("when is a door not a door?"); robot rebellion ("yes, 'Master'"); a Doppelganger in the corridors of time ("it was - himself!"); Montagues and Capulets living in PARALLEL WORLDS; evil Master of the World stopping to smirk before killing hero; everyone controlled by alien mind-rays except one man; Oedipus kills great-great-grandad; world is saved by instant technology ("it may have looked like just a hunk of breadboard, a few widgets and wires - but wow!"); a youth elixir - but at what terrible price?; thick-headed scientist tampers unwittingly with elemental forces better left in the hands of the Deity; IMMORTALITY tempts Nature to a terrible revenge; monster destroys its creator; dying alien race must breed with earthling models and actresses; superior aliens step in to save mankind from self-destruction (through H-bombs, POLLUTION, fluoridation, decadence); Dr X's laboratory (ISLAND, planet) goes up in flames ..Pulp can always be recycled.But, then again, it is always possible to add new pulp to old, as happened in the 1980s, when new cliches appeared while most of the old ones continued. They were mostly found in films, but some were in books, too: kids playing with computers start or wage actual wars without knowing it; Japanese advertising appears everywhere from posters to retinas; GENETIC ENGINEERING produces warring subcultures; expanding BLACK HOLES at the galactic centre are the legacy of wars between superbeings; kids TIME-TRAVEL into the past and invent rock'n'roll; alien cops buddy up with Earth cops to nab alien criminals; unemotional teachers and scientists turn out to be killer android/robots; vast alien artefacts prove to have extensions infinite in time and/or space or to lead somewhere else (BIG DUMB OBJECTS); future people obsessed with 1950s rock'n'roll (Stephen KING, Allen STEELE); God is an AI; an alien virus turns us all into cannibalistic zombies; transplant technology leads to sex orgies (severed heads have cunnilingus, penis grafts increase libido). An old cliche that returns more regularly than Halley's Comet, but especially at around the same time, has gigantic objects in space impacting with Earth. Two promising new cliches that could not have been predicted are spacefaring trees (Stephen BAXTER, Larry NIVEN, Dan SIMMONS) and romantic poets such as Keats, Byron and Shelley meeting either separately or together with monsters, AIs and so on (Brian W. ALDISS, William GIBSON, Tim POWERS, Dan Simmons and others).

   JS/PN