Which is one of the things that the OP seemed to be referring to: use of SF mumbo-jumbo (ISTM more than mere technobabble) that leaves the reader/audience going “huh, I guess that in-universe that must mean something…” and trying to fill it in is a fool’s errand because it would be distracting from the point – for instance, what’s the Tannhauser Gate is not what’s important, it’s that Roy values his memories and it pains him that with his death they will pass into oblivion.
That’s what’s so awesome about Tolkien. It’s as if the authors of Ghostbusters spent 40 years making notes about Zuuls and the Rectification of the Vuldruni, just so they could have something behind that throwaway line referenced on page 1.
Funny you should say that. Dan Aykroyd worked out a fairly sophisticated spirit classification system when he was writing Ghostbusters. All that “class five free-roaming vapor” stuff wasn’t just tossed off for effect. Aykroyd knew exactly what that meant, even if it was gibberish to the audience.
Of course, given Aykroyd’s general woo-woo nuttiness, he might not have meant it as fiction…
“Look, we all go way back and uh, I owe you from the thing with the guy in the place and I’ll never forget it.”
“That was our pleasure.”
“I’d never been to Belize.”
I have a collection of supremely Bad Science Fiction quotes that I keep adding to. I know that this thread isn’t supposed to be about Bad Mumbo Jumbo, but some of these are irresistable.
I will limit myself to one book by someone who is arguably the all-time winner for Bad SF Writing, Lionel Fanthorpe. He was evidently paid by the word, and sometimes used what I call the Thesaurus Technique.
These examples are from Galaxy 666, written under the pen name (I have a list of two dozen pen names he used) of Pel Torro:
To start, a little – well, a lot – of techno-babble
Well put - that’s exactly what I was going for. In a way, I’m looking for textual MacGuffins. What they are and what they do isn’t important; how the characters react to them, is.
Switching over from sci-fi to fantasy, there’s the bit in DRAGONLANCE where a book contains a time-travel spell complete with a number of notes handwritten in the margin; the most interesting one: “It is not possible to prevent the Cataclysm. So we have learned, to our great sorrow and at a great cost. May his soul rest with Paladine.” This immediately prompts a low whistle of surprise: “So that’s what happened to him … That was a well-kept secret.”
(Another character then mentions that they were fools even to try it, but, hey, they were desperate. “As are we,” says a third, bitterly.)
Not a science fiction film, but great science Mumbo-Jumbo: “The last bone we need to complete the brontosaurus – the very last bone – the intercostal clavicle – is arriving tomorrow, after four years hard work.”
I can grab a class that isn’t listening just by dropping in a “Kessel Run” or “Han shot first” reference (gives you hope, seeing 20-somethings that have Star Wars memorized).
And I often promise that we’ll have treats on Monday… “This I swear… By Grabthar’s Hammer!”
Two of 'em, not quotes, but “concepts” type mumbo-jumbo.
Larry Niven’s Protector stuff. We (humans) are the mutated remnants of a lost Pak colony. Paks have three stages in their lifestyle: children, breeders, protectors. When a breeder gets past child-bearing/producing age, they’re genetically compelled to eat a plant that has a symbiotic virus in it that mutates them. Their hair falls out, their teeth fall out but their upper lip gets harder and more beak-like, they grow a second heart, and their intelligence increases dramatically. Because we (the decendants of a lost Pak colony ship) don’t have access to the plant that has the virus, we just grow old as our bodies try to make the change from breeder to protector on it’s own.
I don’t care how impossible the biology or archaeology is, it was the first science fiction “concept” that literally stunned me.
2) Greg Egan’s Quarantine. It’s an sf mystery and this is the big reveal, so I’m putting the concept in spoilers.
One day we wake up to find the whole solar system surrounded by a mirror-like sphere–NO visible light gets out, it’s a perfect reflective surface (he handwaves away heat issues, stuff like that). So we can’t see anything beyond, say, the Oort cloud.
Remember Schrodinger’s cat? The idea that until you open the box, the cat is “smeared” across all possible outcomes between alive and dead? Turns out, that of all the races in the universe, we’re the only ones who don’t live that way–every other individual in every other race across the galaxy lives smeared across all possible outcomes. Or they did, until we came along. When we look at them, we “open Schrodinger’s box” and nail them to one existance…killing billions of varients. And our telescopes are getting better…
They put up the mirror to stop us from unwitting galactic genocide.
Which blew me away.
Weirdly, I don’t remember the actual story all that much–a detective searching for a missing girl or something–but the concept has stuck with me for years.
Reminds me of a sf short story I once read in which astronauts from Earth reach another habitable world and are sitting around a campfire. A humanoid alien shows up out of the dark, surprising them. It sits down and begins talking in a friendly way to them. It explains [spoiler]that the galaxy was once ruled by a terribly cruel, dictatorial master race. After millenia, the other races were able to overthrow their tyranny and hunt down virtually all of them. Some members of the master race went into hiding, though, in remote star systems. From time to time, having long forgotten their lineage, they relearn starflight and emerge back into the galaxy… and it just happened again. As the Earth astronauts realize what this means, the alien kills them all, and checks their ship’s computer to learn their point of origin.
Not really mumbo-jmbo, but standard sci-fi monster movie stuff. After the Army has killed the monsters that have ravaged the country, the white coated scientist usually says something like: “maybe mankind is not ready for contact with superior races from the stars”…or something like that.:o
Either Alan Dean Foster borrowed that idea from the story you list or vice versa. Except for the downer ending, it’s almost exactly the same as Foster’s “With Friends Like These…”
