Author John Scalzi’s Epic Sci-Fi Design Fail Guide

John Scalzi is a noted and excellent Sci-Fi author (Old Man’s War) who also writes a rather brilliant and often hilarious column for AMC’s Sci-Fi Scanner blog.

In this week’s edition, John examines Star Trek films and the design mistakes in plot and logic that make the films as wonderful and campy as Sci-Fi should mostly be. Humourless Science Fiction sucks.

Here’s a taste:

The Alien Probe of Star Trek IV
The programming of this probe is even more simple than that of V’Ger, and could be written in four lines in the BASIC programming language:

10. GOTO Earth
20. INPUT “I can has humpback whalez?” A$
30. IF A$=”no” THEN GOTO 40
40. DESTROY EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING

I’m pretty sure this is not optimal design.

Brilliant. I need to buy more of John’s books. Go read the rest of the goodness to be found in John’s column and then get thee to Amazon oh faithful Sci-Fi reader.