Love them or hate them there are a lot of common tropes across the science fiction genre. What are some of your favorite and least favorite tropes?
I think it goes without saying that one of the least favorite tropes is Deux ex Machina. I couldn't quite put my finger on it at first, but after watching the German TV show "Dark" I was utterly dissatisfied with it. The entire series up until the very last episode is about this inescapable time loop and alternative universes which is pretty cool while watching it, but then you get closer and closer to the end wondering how they are going to solve this impossible problem. Then surprise they just do it instantly in the last episode.
Another trope I am not very fond of is nanotechnology where there are trillions of tiny robots that can effectively act as magic. It just feels like a lazy way to write science fiction because you really want a fantasy.
A trope I do actually like despite how overdone it is, is the idea of a precursor or forerunner. It often brings to light the absolutely massive scale of the universe which I find fun to think about.
I fell in love with an book series called Expeditionary Force, the first book Columbus day hooked me. It's fun, it's interesting, and the writer does an amazing job making the technology being discuss sound realistic and not too far fetched.
With that being said, ExFor has ruined space battles for me in Sci-Fi and made me realize a trope we all just took for granted - The Dog Fighting type of close combat you see in ship to ship battles in Sci-Fi. There just isn't any way that would ever play out that way, instead combat would happen at ultra far ranges, so far apart, that railguns could be dodged, even lasers and other high energy beam weapons could be evaded just by moving out of the way as light crawls along. Combat would be about bracketing your target with fire, and ultra fast, high g smart missiles.
Space is so insanely large, that you'd never see dog fighting like in Star Wars.
An attempt to explore how space combat would actually work at relativistic speeds is one of the few things I actually remember about the Lost Fleet series. The writing is wooden, the characters are one-dimensional and the plot is obvious, but it might be worth reading one just for the space battles.
The Three Body Problem also shows this in quite a dramatic fashion.