{"id":6414,"date":"2011-11-01T23:11:57","date_gmt":"2011-11-02T05:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=6414"},"modified":"2011-11-01T23:11:57","modified_gmt":"2011-11-02T05:11:57","slug":"trope-tuesday-recycled-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/trope-tuesday-recycled-in-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Trope Tuesday: Recycled IN SPACE!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or, as my friends at Leading Edge<\/em> would say, IN SPAAACE!!!<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The basic idea behind this trope is that setting a story in space makes it cool and different.\u00a0 The tvtropes article focuses mainly on how this trope is used in children’s cartoons, but it actually goes much wider.\u00a0 In fact, most space stories are actually based on stories from other genres, or even from history.<\/p>\n

For example, Asimov’s Federation series is based on Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire<\/em>, David Drake’s Lieutenant Leary series is based on Patrick Obrian’s Master and Commander series, and Frank Herbert’s Dune<\/em> is based on the rise of Islam.\u00a0 Westerns are especially prone to get the space treatment (Firefly, anyone?), which is where we get “wagon train to the stars<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

At its worst, this trope is nothing more than a pointless gimmick.\u00a0 At its best, however, it can produce some extremely good work.\u00a0 The key, as always, is to work within the limitations of the setting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of the best examples of this is Dune.<\/em>\u00a0 Frank Herbert didn’t merely lift 7th century Arabia into space and call it Arrakis; he created a distinctly alien world with its own history, culture, biology, and role within the galactic empire.\u00a0 For example, Herbert solved the FTL problem<\/a> by linking interstellar travel to the spice, tying his space-Arabs to the politics and economics of the rest of the galaxy.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, your space physics don’t have to be perfect for this trope to work; they just have to be believable.\u00a0 For things like artificial gravity and faster than light travel, most people will accept a little hand-waving, provided that you do it well.\u00a0 The important thing, as always, is the story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or, as my friends at Leading Edge would say, IN SPAAACE!!! The basic idea behind this trope is that setting a story in space makes it cool and different.\u00a0 The tvtropes article focuses mainly on how this trope is used in children’s cartoons, but it actually goes much wider.\u00a0 In fact, most space stories are… Continue reading Trope Tuesday: Recycled IN SPACE!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[377,648,76,649,629,166,184,149,641,565,626,621],"class_list":["post-6414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-david-drake","tag-frank-herbert","tag-ftl-technology","tag-isaac-asimov","tag-outer-space","tag-setting","tag-space-opera","tag-the-middle-east","tag-trope-tuesday","tag-tropes-and-cliches","tag-tvtropes","tag-westerns","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-1Fs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6414"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6418,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6414\/revisions\/6418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}