Quote:
Originally Posted by jason taylor
That's fine as far as it goes. But it seems to go against the traditional space story which almost always has FtL and artificial gravity making a minimum of two implausibilities and two is rather more then one.
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FTL and artificial gravity have become genre conventions. FTL is not counted against suspension of disbelief because it lets you
more plausibly have stories with people on habitable planets, since RL space exploration has made SF readers very familiar with the inhabitability of our local solar system. Artificial gravity is likewise a very familiar staging convention of SF TV for budget reasons.
Of course, if you concentrate on these issues, making them plot devices rather than genre conventions, then they count again.
Quote:
Originally Posted by robkelk
Science fiction and fantasy both, yes. It's often called the "Unicorn in the Garden" rule, after the short story of the same name.
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I've never heard it called this or particularly associated with fantasy when hanging with authors and critics. H.G. Wells wrote that he made a point of limiting himself to a single improbability in his more fanciful stories, and Thurber spoofed Wells at least one other time.