SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Hi lovely people on the internet!

I'd love to see some lists of your *favorite* trope in science fiction and fantasy and please feel free to also link to a book that you thought did them very well.

This is not the place to talk about the tropes you hate, so please create a separate thread for those discussions.

Here are some of my favorite tropes:

- eternal winter
- ruins of an ancient civilization
- a mystery/puzzle that needs to be solved (e.g. Elantris, House of Suns)
- unwanted companionship/marriage/having to work together even though they hate each other. Always creates such fun banter, interactions and character growth.
- bringing something broken and abandoned back to glorious life
- gruff loner has to take care of an orphaned child and grows in the process (The Mandalorian proves yet again how great this one is.)
- an unclear prophecy open to different interpretations, it's up to the characters to figure out how it can be fulfilled/prevented Rick Riordan)
- shocking twists and reveals (Brent Weeks)
- long sieges (David Gemmell)
- tactical space battles reliant on deception, math and calculating the perfect course David Weber)
- inns

What are yours? Which books or authors did them best? Do you agree on mine and can recommend other books that did them well?

We already have a thread for least favorite tropes:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I’ll have to think about this one some more, but apparently one of my favorite tropes is:

-genius uses brilliance to commit unspeakable acts of murder and is maybe looking for redemption : as seen in (view spoiler)[Too Like The Lightning And Ninefox Gambit (hide spoiler)]

I love suicide missions. True suicide missions (actual fatalities of named characters). The stakes are always highest, and I prefer reading with the question "WILL the heroes win?" vs "HOW will the heroes win?"

@Philip: What's your favorite book with a suicide mission?

@Sarah: Both of those are on my TBR, so I'm looking forward to it. Speaker for the Dead has the same trope, but takes place after the atrocity and its hero is very definitely looking for redemption (it takes place after Ender's Game but can be read without knowing it).

@Anna: thank you, that's helpful!

Is there an official lidt of tropes or are we just mentioning things we like? I don’t mean to be obtuse but I don’t know every trope ever, I know maybe 5-6, most of which are tropes I dislike, so I’m not sure where to find a full list :D

There is no list! I was inspired by this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zywir...

I'm using trope here to mean a significant or recurrent theme, a motif.

A motif you've seen used a few times in books and always really love, something that gives you chills, or makes you want to read something right away.

Hopepunk

What in the world is that?

Dawn wrote: "Is there an official lidt of tropes or are we just mentioning things we like? I don’t mean to be obtuse but I don’t know every trope ever, I know maybe 5-6, most of which are tropes I dislike, so I..."

There’s no way to remember all the tropes, because there are hundreds.

If you want to go exploring, try TV Tropes: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph.... Fair warning: once you start clicking on links you’ll suddenly discover five hours has passed.

For instance, that effect might be Missing Time (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...), or perhaps Time Dissonance (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...), or maybe Narnia Time (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...) if you’re lucky.

Oh dear, I've fallen down the rabbit hole! I had no idea!

One trope I really like when done well is Secret History. Everything is as we know it, except that there are unknown things happening behind the scenes all the time. This is useful for any genre, making it the Swiss Army knife of tropes. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

You have to know history in order to plausibly explain how it could have been altered by aliens/fairies/demons/inventions without anyone noticing.

Eva wrote: "What in the world is that?"

It's sort of the opposite-ish of grimdark. Usually features a really (or at least moderately) shitty world, but populated by people willing to work together and be reasonable and solve problems.

Think of say- The Goblin Emperor or The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.

There is no hole so deep as the tvtropes hole. *stares into the distance* I have been a veteran of many spelunkings.

Oh I also really like social comedies in SFF worlds, like Tooth and Claw (victorian-ish comedy of manners ft. dragons in hats) or A Civil Campaign (I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH IT IS BALM TO MY SOUL).

And I know it's an old, tired cliche but I cannot help it I still like Fairytale Retellings. Especially if they are Fractured retellings like Fables, Vol. 1: Legends in Exile.

LOL Sha!

Sarah, I'm with you! Adorable sociopath who wants to do better is one of my weaknesses.

I also really love retellings in general, particularly if they focus on a part of the story that I hadn't thought much about. This is especially true if there's a conceit where the book we're reading is told sort of like an oral history.

Although I guess hopepunk is not very clearly defined? I think I just like the way it was described, what I really love are stories about people who could be angry assholes and have every reason and every excuse to be angry assholes but they just lol and keep taking beatings and yelling at themselves while they are inexplicably drawn to doing ~helpful and kind~ things.

Allison wrote: "I also really love retellings in general, particularly if they focus on a part of the story that I hadn't thought much about."

Seconded. Stories from a different perspective is such a good trope.

Yes, I know of TV Tropes, usually if I look up a film or a movie, and there are hundreds of them, so many that I feel like every sentence is a trope even though I’ve literally only seen that specific thing in that one movie, and is it really a trope, then?

Anyway, I’m aware of, for example, born sexy yesterday, but since this thread is for tropes I love I’ll mention enemies to lovers, though I have no idea if that’s what it’s called. I just know I enjoy it immensely XD

I also enjoy any gay subtext, and have since I was 10 and definitely didn’t know what subtext was but apparently still picked up on gay coded writing in film and tv shows. For me it was just a language I knew how to decode second nature. It may be a trope but it was also a way to get writing past censorship for decades.

Books about social revolutions. (Again, A Civil Campaign, The Goblin Emperor.)

Brothers at arms gets me all the time. I still well up when the Rohirrim come to the rescue, and Bridge Four is one of my all time favorite groups, I'd say.

Allison wrote: "LOL Sha!

Sarah, I'm with you! Adorable sociopath who wants to do better is one of my weaknesses.

I also really love retellings in general, particularly if they focus on a part of the story that I..."

I definitely agree on the bad guy wanting to be good!

I also love fairytale retellings but is that a trope? I thought the word was used to mean cliches, and I don’t know that retellings are cliches.

You could say that an overused trope is a cliche? The tvtropes page explains it better than I do, but essentially a trope is a re-occuring motif in storytelling.

Personally, I think that pretty much any trope (or cliche) can be done well, depending on how it's executed. But I realize that's not a universal sentiment.

The Magic Comes Back narratives. One of the many reasons I love The Way of Kings.

Oh yes, the magic comes back is one of my favorites, too!

Now that I've looked up what hopepunk is: absolutely, love it so much.

Dawn wrote: "Yes, I know of TV Tropes, usually if I look up a film or a movie, and there are hundreds of them, so many that I feel like every sentence is a trope even though I’ve literally only seen that specif..."

Well, it is a wiki, and also to some extent a wiki about opinions. I have definitely seen tropes listed in places I definitely don't agree with. I tend to deal with it by treating the site more like an occasionally wrong set of guidelines than an absolute authority.

Dawn i'm using retellings to capture all the fairy tale tropes like 2 part stories, child as payment, talking animals etc. you're right, retelling isn't really a trope

2 part stories?

like Snow White where you follow her story, then the Woodsman

But aren't those effectively PoV switches? It's not really a fairytale trope? Unless there is an added element of specificity in the fairytale versions?

I see, Allison, thanks for elaborating! I don’t think my brain is wired to pick out themes like that. From what I’m reading here, “cop solving crime” is also a trope if anything that appears in fiction can be a trope. That’s just too broad or watered down a term for me to truly understand I guess.

I'm always a sucker for a first contact story. The mystery of who/when/how/why the aliens are discovered or make contact in that time and place. The range of human reactions. The implications.

Oh, Robin Hood-ish narratives.

I love retellings too, especially, as Allison said, if they offer a new perspective on the original and/or are told like a spoken story. One of my favorite is Snow Queen stories.

I also really like "fish out of water" stories, like Maia in Goblin Emperor, Cheris in Ninefox Gambit, or Moon in the Raksura books.

My genius preference (which overlaps with Sarah and Allison's) is the morally ambiguous, terrifyingly clever manipulator/plotter who is still at least a little bit fallible - for instance (view spoiler)[Jedao and Cheris in the Heptarchate books, Diane in Tremontaine, or Breq in Ancillary Justice. (hide spoiler)]. A lot of them are trying to make up for their pasts, but it's not required for me. (I'm also a big fan of heist movies, for similar reasons.)

The "I just realized my society is not so awesome/outright evil and I have to destroy everything to make it better" ((view spoiler)[again, Heptarchate and Ancillary Justice, also the Broken Earth trilogy (hide spoiler)])

@Eva: Ooh, I love the "unwanted companionship/marriage/having to work together even though they hate each other" one, too. Any favorites for that trope?

I don’t know if this is really a trope, but anything post-apocalyptic usually makes it on my list. Station Eleven was a good post-apocalyptic story, but I’m assuming many have already read it.

I also like when we actually get to see the fall of man kind like in The Stand (although that really wasn’t my favorite example) and Chuck Wendig’s Wanderers (which I did enjoy).

Or if we see characters attempting to rebuild some semblance of society, or a band of survivors just trying to survive together.

Sha wrote: "Eva wrote: "What in the world is that?"

It's sort of the opposite-ish of grimdark. Usually features a really (or at least moderately) shitty world, but populated by people willing to work together..."

My favorite, too.
I also like First Contact.
And robots/cyborgs/uplifted apes or dogs or... .
And Time Travel in the sense of trained teams trying to fix or protect the past, the kind that is in To Say Nothing of the Dog. (That is to say, not so much Time And Again.)

And there's a whole thread that I started for Optimistic Post-Apoc.

My favorite trope has to be LitRPG, that being said, more and more are not so original anymore, with little to make them stand out from the crowd. Usually the dichotomy experienced by the MC of being in-game vs real world is the hardest part to convey in these novels and many tend towards stats and levels without any baring on the story. When the MC experiences real 'stakes' it makes it far more interesting.

Kaa wrote: "@Eva: Ooh, I love the "unwanted companionship/marriage/having to work together even though they hate each other" one, too. Any favorites for that trope?"

In movies and tv series, e.g. Buffy The Vampire Slayer (e.g. I loved the period when Spike was still super evil but joins the team). Or Jaime Lannister teaming up with Brienne. Or whenever Thor and Loki have to work together.
In books: the Honor Harrington series has a lot of examples of this. In the first book, (view spoiler)[her first officer (she's the captain) hates her guts and they have to learn to work together (there's no banter though, just a slow, subtle warming up and growing respect and a swallowing of ego (hide spoiler)] and it's also used a lot in later books of the series (never in a romantic or humorous way, though, just enemies working together and sometimes becoming friends), but it would spoil the earlier books too much to tell you how and who teams up. I also really liked this trope in Much Ado About Nothing (arch-enemies find themselves spending a lot of time together and fall in love through the machinations of their friends).

Oh, and done so so beautifully in Cordelia's Honor in which two enemies from extremely different cultures have to survive on an alien planet together and the rest I won't spoil. Or that part in The Princess Bride, when hero and heroine are fleeing together and fight rodents of unusual size together while both being very resentful of and distrusting the other. Crowley and Aziraphale in Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch are also a wonderful enemies-teaming-up example, although they do team up willingly - after a few millenia of refusing to do so.

Oh so many:

*Group works together to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds (as mentioned above, basically hopepunk)
* Creepy abandoned spaceships
*Hopeful first contact (as opposed to "scary alien invades Earth")
*Frontier-type space stations (or fantasy-type villages) where all kinds of cultures mix and political shenanigans happen
* Androids are People, Too
* Enemies trapped in a dangerous situation so they have to work together and achieve greater understanding (Enemy Mine)
* Person wakes up (from cryonic storage, etc.) and finds themselves hundreds of years in the future
* King Incognito

I’ll go with the opposite and say: I’m happy to have scary aliens invade earth.

Cue apocalypse.

Favorited - can’t think of a book really, but the first Independence Day.

Lol.

Sha wrote: "The Magic Comes Back narratives. One of the many reasons I love The Way of Kings."

That's a good one. I love that trope.

I like retelling of Shakespeare's works. The Lost in space TV series was one. Caliban's Hour by Tad Williams tells The Tempest from Caliban's point of view.

And I've just started a non-SFFF version of Macbeth by Jo Nesbø that's part of the Hogarth Shakespeare project.

Sarah wrote: "I don’t know if this is really a trope, but anything post-apocalyptic usually makes it on my list. Station Eleven was a good post-apocalyptic story, but I’m assuming many have already read it.

I also like when we actually get to see the fall of man kind like in The Stand (although that really wasn’t my favorite example) and Chuck Wendig’s Wanderers (which I did enjoy).

Or if we see characters attempting to rebuild some semblance of society, or a band of survivors just trying to survive together. "

I enjoy a decent post-apocalyptic too, Sarah, although they can be a tad depressing. Have you read the classic Alas, Babylon? If not, it's well worth a read.

I also enjoyed The Stand and The Passage, of which some sections are clearly homage to The Stand. But I didn't mind that.

I also liked Aurora Terminus, Seveneves (although it was rather loonnggg), Wool. I've got a few other favs in the genre too. I feel as if it's more a sub-genre than a 'trope', but *shrugs* .....

The Road, while compelling, was a tad too confronting for moi.

I’ve got a lot of these on my list! I have read The Stand and The Road.

Post apocalyptic can be depressing, but I think what I find most compelling is the potential to reveal a person’s (character’s) truest nature.

Are they the sort of character who lends a hand to those around them? Or are they the sort of person who survives by whatever means necessary? I think both options are totally valid responses and the extreme conditions sort of let us peel back the layers really quickly.

But I’d agree, it’s probably more of a sub-genre than a trope. Tropes are something I know when I see but am not good at articulating.

Some post apocalyptic tropes:

A group turns to cannibalism.
Government breaks down.
A protagonist with military training saves the day. The
Usually, no one knows what caused the catastrophe.
People flee to the country.
Rural people have survival skills and urban people are usually useless.
A criminal figure builds an evil empire.
The military are usually wiped out or not helpful.
Like “The Road” and “On the Beach” things are not only bad but getting worse.
Sometimes, everything collapses then there is a re-birth like “Earth Abides” or
“A Canticle for Leibowitz”.
Sometimes the protagonists are the only survivors like “Day of the Triffids”.
Some are environmental warnings like “The Sheep Look Up”, “Cats Cradle”
“The Burning World”, “The Drowned World”, “The Death of Grass”, “The Day After Tomorrow.”
Creation of an intelligence that takes over such as “I have no mouth and I must scream”, the “Terminator” series, and the “Matrix” series.

Some thoughts.

All good ones!

I guess I like most when there are two factions: good vs evil.

I also like when there are no clear cut good guys: just two different ways of thinking.

Or man vs. nature. Is that a trope or a conflict?

1a. I agree with Sarah (#47) about no clear cut good guys, just two different ways of thinking. I'll go to my grave defending Gul Dukat's actions in ST: DS9 (not counting the occupation of Bajor before that) as being antagonistic, but not evil.

1b. More generallly, conflicts that go beyond two-sided this vs. that.

2. Competence porn. I like seeing people be really, really good at their jobs, where the challenge comes because (a) they're thrown into a situation that's *not* their usual area of expertise (but then they use transferrable skills and are awesome), or (b) they need all their competence because the challenge would defeat a lesser expert. Much of Star Trek features this, which may be part of why I like it so much. Also the Machineries of Empire series, The Martian, etc.

2a. Smart scientists figuring things out. E.g., Arrival (the movie), and actually many of Ted Chiang's short stories (Exhalation in particular).

3. Narratives that *aren't* driven by Chosen Ones, but just good people trying their best, and sometimes that's enough. Fawn in Bujold's Sharing Knife quartet is a lovely example of this.

4. Platonic I-would-die-for-you friendships. Smooching is fine, but I do appreciate a good non-romantic devotion.

Ergative wrote: "Narratives that *aren't* driven by Chosen Ones, but just good people trying their best, and sometimes that's enough."

I find 'give-it-all' heroes better than chosen ones/predestination/fate.

Oh, competence porn! It can be so nice - I love it in Honor Harrington and Sherlock Holmes. I haven't read Machineries of the Empire yet, so I clearly need to do that soon! Do you have more examples?