GRAND LIST OF SCIENCE FICTION CLICHES. Ouch. I may or may not be guilty of the following (almost exclusively from my upcoming short story, “Better At It”):

The rag-tag rebel army/fleet struggles valiantly to overthrow the Evil Empire.

Death from old age turns out to be due to some simple, single cause, leading to an easy immortality treatment, with consequent catastrophic social implications.

Aliens with completely incomprehensible motivations make war on the human race/invade earth.

Aliens whose thinking is so different from ours that no communication is possible.

Aliens that are incomprehensible to humans but understand humans perfectly.

Alien species depicted as having no ethnic, religious, cultural, philosophical or political variance….

Alien species with personality traits or cultural mores that are treated as invariable laws of nature.

In the future, everyone either supports their government fully, or is engaged in a terrorist campaign to overthrow it.

Although humans still have multiple languages, each alien race has only one language.

Alien contact perceived or regarded as a spiritual/quasi-religious experience.

Someone gets healed by contact with aliens (often by a laying on of hands).

I can only hope that the good points of “Better At It” are worth the sci-fi cliches that I am–I admit this!–exploiting in order to get my effects as fast as possible. Only time will tell, I suppose.

I will note that “What You Can Do for Your Country” (starts here, continues here) effectively reverses this series of cliches:

A young researcher:

Gets a job at a Mega-huge Corporation or Ultra-secret Government Agency;

Learns that the employer’s latest discovery has a Nasty Side Effect or involves some obvious human rights abuses;

Confronts the employer, who casually dismisses the researcher’s concerns and chides her/him for not being a “team player”;

Tries to blow the whistle to avert disaster;

Gets hounded by Shadowy Malevolent Goons;

Attempts to meet with inside sources, and finds them either dead or with just enough life left to utter a cryptic clue;

Watches the disaster overtake the CEO;

Testifies before Congress;

Enters the Witness Protection Program;

in roughly the order given above.

So perhaps I’m redeemed.