How is that a sci-fi trope? That was just people smoking in a movie in an era in which people smoked all the time.
Used by S.M. Stirling as recently as 2006. Although he was intentionally using it as a retro-theme.
The Gor novels were the last major SF series to use it … Gor was a counter-Earth, which is the term for what you’re describing. The whole problem with that trope is that it was out of date before it was invented … Kepler preceded science fiction, and Kepler of course developed the laws of planetary motion that allow us to predict the orbits of celestial bodies, and if there were a counter-Earth, even if unseen it would make itself evident through its effect on the orbits of Venus and Mars.
Norman also used an outdated trope in the form of birds that could carry human passengers, called tarns, a lot like the giant eagles in “Lord of the Rings.” Now Gor supposedly had a slightly lower gravity than Earth’s but only slightly, so the same rules of aerodynamics that make such things impossible on Earth make them impossible on Gor as well. (Not to mention that Gor says that there are passenger tarns that can carry six or eight humans at a time).
In fact I’d say Norman’s stuff is much more akin to fantasy than SF, he had no real interest in the scientific backdrop to his stories, just wanted to use the fantastical setting of planetary romances for his allegory about human nature.
And as mentioned upthread, “Another Earth” is a very recent movie that involves a counter-Earth. Frankly, I think many filmmakers are butt-ignorant people who do not read much, and any SF trope can and will be revived at any time just because they don’t know any better. This 10-20 year lag is ridiculous … filmmakers, with a few exceptions, are just not all that au courant with SF tropes.
Overpopulation is mentioned in 2009’s Pandorum.
Giant Insects: Starship Troopers?
Syfy channel also has “moster of the week” shows. 2007’s Ice Spiders.
Anybody know where I can get a virus-free screensaver of this effect?
Wall-E depicts a future where the earth is uninhabitable due to pollution, too much trash, etc., and all humans live in spaceships…and are fat.
Another forgotten trope: Ray Guns! I remember a perfect example from an anthology of “Before the Golden Age” stories, edited by Isaac Asimov. There were two stories by a Capt. S. P. Meek, entitled Submicroscopic and Awlo of Ulm. The human hero shrinks to microsopic size and discovers a whole world hiding between grains of sand. In those two stories, but especially in the second one, the people wear suits that have various types of power rays built in. There is even a ray gun duel where you have to use your various different-coloured rays to best effect (that guy is trying his yellow ray on me! But I can counteract with the purple ray!)
No robots that look like a gorilla suit and a diving helmet.
Marvel Comics (does that count?) first had stories involving a “Counter-Earth” on the other side of the sun years after various Gor novels had come out.
Barely. The Department of Mysteries, right?
Who in 2008 also had a Mars of ruined canals and dieing cities, a Martian Princess, and a sword wielding hero from Earth 
But as **Little Nemo **points out he was deliberately going for a retro-theme and used an alternative history to setting to allow him to do so.
Well, different medium, one long noted for using any damn trope it wanted to, whenever hand however. I mean, Green Lantern is basically a story of supermen with magical rays. (“My green ray does nothing against yellow rays!”) And Superman is powered by Earth’s yellow sun. Somehow. God knows SF has had its tropes-busters, but hardly on the scale of comics.
Mahaloth:
Correct.
One of my favorite bits in the Stargate: SG1 series was that you could very clearly see when their military advisor pointed out that Air Force officers don’t constantly wear full dress uniforms.
Making huge computers break down with logic problems, dilemmas and computing pi to the last decimal place.
Fantastic book. One of my all-time favorites.
Or all those books and short stories set on a Mercury which always keeps the same face towards the Sun, instantly rendered obsolete when we learned in 1965 that it doesn’t.
I’m re-reading Asimov’s I, Robot (1950) and it’s amazing how much smoking the characters do. They light up all the time - even in labs, on space stations and asteroid bases!
*“Acknowledged, Captain. Spawning low-priority subprocess to compute the last digit of pi. Will report when completed.”
“Now, back to killing everyone on the ship.”*
BZOP BZAP BZOTCH
Yes, so you can’t do stories like this one anymore.
A pity. That was a childhood favorite.
I just re-read Asimov’s original Foundation trilogy, 30 years after I read them the first time. Same thing there. 50,000 years from now, all of humanity is still smoking tobacco and using nuclear weapons and nuclear power for everything.
Watch It! The Terror from Beyond Space, a 1950s gem of a movie, written by Jerome Bixby (and ripped off by Alien years later). The people on board a space ship with limited air (a plot point, it later develops) smoke like chimneys – and have cartons of cigarettes in their lockers.
They also carry guns and grenades on their space ship, which seems a pretty stupid idea.
Notice also that it’s the women on board who due the table-waiting, and get the coffee. But at least there are women on board.
One of the (unintentionally) funnier moments of the original Day the Earth Stood Still had the doctors at the hospital talking about how advanced Klaatu’s medicine was, and how healthy he was – while they both smoke cigarettes.
A couple years ago I watched the pilot episode of Lost In Space on Hulu. I laughed out loud when, in the far future of 1997, the family set up shop on the planet where they’ve crashed, the father and son grabbed the guns and went exploring, while the wife and daughter stayed near the ship … and did laundry.