The most ridiculous thing you've seen in Sci Fi

[Corone]

Most rediculous thing I've seen in Sci-Fi?

Aliens Vs Predator, without a shadow of a doubt!

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

I'll one up that - the Darkhorse comic Alien vs Predator vs Terminator (and I think a Ripley clone appears as well...) Other match ups I've seen: AvPvRobocop, and the short movie Predator vs Batman.

Flying car in general (drivers currently have enough fatalities with only 2 dimensions to worry about) and jet-turbine powered ones specifically - such as the AV-4 ambulances in CyberPunk2020. There is a reason why you don't stand near those things and people complain about airport expansion.

[Starglim]

Don't know if this counts as science fiction:

Scroll down a couple of pages for Lenin as Yoda.

[Corone]

[Kinslayer]

Though I enjoyed Stranger in a Strange Land (the book, though the song totally rocks) I had to repeat a proto-version of the MST2K mantra to get through it. Specifically, I had a problem with the adult Martian's diet being entirely comprised of juvenile Martians. Absolutely no chemical energy source was added to this system, and it was still supposed to not only work, but thrive and grow. And that's not even considering that old Martian ghosts continue to haunt the living without any apparent source of energy whatsoever. Even as a pre-teen I thought that this was abysmally dumb non-science.

[SheikhJahbooty]

Of course the most horribly glaring example of "no chemical energy added to the system" was The Matrix. The Matrix's scheme for how to power the robots was so terribly bizarre and impractical that it actually lessened the entertainment value of the films for me. I had to shut off the part of my brain that would ask why. The movie did mention that the robots had some sort of fusion power as well, so I suppose it wasn't totally impossible for the robots to work that way. It would just have been impossible for the human farms to have been net energy producers.

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

I for one, welcome our new mechanical overlords...

I recall reading somewhere that the original intent of the script was to say the humans are somehow used as part of the computer system - parallel neural processing it seems. That still doesn't explain what the machines need to keep the humans around for in my observation. (it would seem the matrix itself is the major draw on the computer farm...)

More to the point, the producers/people funding the project felt the audience wouldn't understand that concept, so instead substituted an idea that insults their intelligence rather than flies above it.

Terminators don't make much sense when you could just bomb everything with poison gas, and how is skynet smart enough to design these things and who built an automated factory for it to control? For all intensive purposes, the Skynet should like the WOPR computer from "War Games" just with newer hardware so none of these capabilities would be in the code.

And then there are the thermodynamic considerations of ecumenipolis city planets like Coresaunt or Starwars or the Emperor's planet in Foundation.

[SheikhJahbooty]

Could you link to the "thermodynamic considerations of ecumenipolis city planets like Coresaunt". I would be interested to know. I think I'll start a new thread about examples of sci-fi where technobabble would have been helpful, you know writers being aware of something being ridiculous, but it's cool so we put it in, and spread some plotonium on it in hopes that plotonium will make it stick.

[Kinslayer]

The Matrix thing was so dumb, I think I'm actually stupider for having watched it. The logistical difficulties ruined the movie for me. It wasn't until much later when I realised that the backstory we as the audience--and the characters in the story--were given could be completely wrong. The robots are dutifully fulfilling their primary function as caretakers of humanity. The Matrix exists solely to keep most of the population pacified and safe from real harm. As the highly clever Persons of Industrial Descent that comprise the system realised that H. sapiens are a bunch of psychotic and violent apes, a segment of society would need something to harmlessly rail against. Thus, some humans are allowed to 'escape' the Matrix and enter Zion. Of course the machines know where Zion is, it's pretty hard to hide an entire city, especially as cities still need air, food, water, waste removal, electricity, and need to frequently move in and out.

But now I think I'm putting more work into the backstory than the creators...

[misterecho]

I know im resserecting a dead thread but no one mentioned inter species relationships (half klingon-half human) how the heck does that work. if there are aliens out there then we will not be able to breed with them, even if you are freaky enough to want to.

But it adds drama etc to science FICTION