Overused characterizations/settings:
1. Aliens whose thinking is so different from ours that no communication
is possible
2. Alien races that find our women attractive, while we find theirs to
be repulsive
3. Alien races whose women differ from ours only in skin color and
facial features
4. Extra breasts on the alien women
5. The aliens are incomprehensible to humans, while the humans are
perfectly comprehensible to the aliens
6. Alien species depicted as having no ethnic, religious, cultural,
philosophical or political variance, especially:
a) Wise mystics
b) Stoic warriors
c) Pastoral innocents
d) Cowardly sneaks
7. Alien races whose names all have lots of hard consonants
8. Lots of apostrophes packed into alien words and phrases for no
apparent reason
9. Humans of future depicted as having no ethnic, religious, cultural,
philosophical or political variance
10. Cities of future depicted as though sanitation workers have been on
strike from now until then
11. Entire story setting dominated by huge impersonal business
conglomerates
12. Planets with the same exact climate planet-wide
13. Super-intelligent AI's that speak, behave, and act in a manner
indistinguishable from the human characters.
14. The incredibly competent man-of-action with more skills/degrees than
you can shake a blaster at.
15. The incredibly competent woman-of-action with large breasts, no
sexual inhibitions, and more skills/degrees than you can shake a blaster
at.
16. Shadowy malevolent Pentagon officials
17. Every single character has a tainted history
18. Society divided as follows:
a) A handful of ultra-powerful ultra-rich
b) Hordes of starving people living in the streets
c) Criminal lords who control everything not controlled by the
ultra-rich
d) Police whose only principle of operation is maintenance of the status
quo
19. Societies where all technology has been destroyed except automobiles
and their equivalents, which are still running yet there are no
mechanics, workshops, or gas stations
20. Heroes who are so emotionally stunted that they don't care about
close friends/relatives that die as long as they complete some mission
21. Any character with a perpetual two-day growth of beard
22. Futuristic societies where only the ultra-rich can afford quality
health care, and everyone else is reduced to selling their bodily organs
23. Beings of pure energy
24. A society in which everyone is required to die on his or her Nth
birthday
25. Creatures from our mythology (e.g., centaurs, dragons) occur among
the wildlife native to an alien planet
26. Aliens whose sociology, values and beliefs are indistinguishable
from those of an Oriental culture, e.g., feudal Japan.
27. Eccentric scientists
28. The assistant to the scientist who is either deformed or dating the
scientist's daughter
29. Future societies that have relapsed into feudalism
30. Alternative Earths where society is just like some society of the
past, with some technodoodads added
31. Palace guards who are ineffectual due to ineptitude or
inattentiveness
32. Fantastical but non-viable creatures (men with tortoiseshell backs,
gigantic insects) made possible by high levels of radiation
33. Aliens that speak human languages without error, having taken no
pains to learn how
34. Aliens whose vocal apparatus is just like ours, so that they can
speak human languages with only a slight accent
35. Omnipotent pacifist aliens who impose their philosophy on us without
bothering to protect us from the races they have left alone
36. Men and women live in separate societies (and I'm not talking Mars
and Venus, either)
37. Clones are inexplicably different from regular people in a
particular manner (mentally unstable, don't mind being used as cannon
fodder, etc.)
38. The vast majority of alien races consider 20ºC to be room
temperature
39. Societies that are utopian in every regard except for one serious
drawback that completely outweighs the utopian aspects, such as having
the death penalty for some really minor offense
40. Disembodied live brains living in tanks (with apologies to Gharlane
of Eddore)
41. Eyes that glow (sometimes accompanied by minor-key chords in TV and
film)
42. Sentient artificial intelligences that wish to eliminate the human
race
43. Sentient artificial intelligences that select a human figure to
holographically represent themselves
44. Computers with voice synthesizers either use a sensuous female
contralto or a threatening male baritone
45. Bad guys who miss everything they shoot at
46. Beginning warriors who hit everything they shoot at
47. Characters who are always ready for intimate relations
48. All genetically superior humans have an innate drive to rule,
conquer, or kill everyone else
49. Alien vampires that feed on brainwaves/life-force/exotic
biochemicals/psychic energies that can only obtain from sentient life
forms
50. Post-cataclysmic societies that treats items of the lost technology
as holy relics
51. Alien monsters that find humans edible, tasty, and non-toxic
52. The evil duplicate of the hero, sidekick, universe, etc.
53. The grammatical differences between the languages used by humans and
aliens are cited as conclusive proof of radically different ways of
thinking
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