The deconstruction of old tropes in science fiction and fantasy books.

[Ambereyes]

The most popular and least popular tropes in sci-fi and fantasy books have already been discussed here. What about the deconstruction of old and tired tropes in the sci-fi and fantasy books?
My favourite example of deconstruction is the prophecy story in Memory, Sorrow and Thorn by Tad Williams.
(view spoiler)[ The characters followed a false prophecy throughout the series. They collected magic swords and brought them to the castle at a certain time to destroy the main villain. But as it turned out at the end of the book, the villain himself needed those swords. (view spoiler)[
Another good example of deconstructing old tropes from the days of the chivalric novel is Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly. Starting with the scene where the lady rescues the knight from bandits, the whole book is one big (and wonderfully written, I might add) deconstruction of old tropes. (hide spoiler)] (hide spoiler)]

[Sue]

Hi, Ambereyes. Hmmm. I don't have anything to contribute, but I'd also love to see what others think on this topic.

[Michelle]

A good example of this is Fate of the Fallen. It stands the chosen one trope on it's, er, head.

[Ian]

David Weber's unfinished War God series was base on reversing old tropes.

It consists so far of the following books
Oath of Swords (also in a second edition with an introduction and a new story)
The War God's Own
Wind Rider's Oath
War Maid's Choice
The Sword of the South

(The last is set a good many decades after the earlier books, and the original protagonist, and some supporting characters of importance, have substantial but relatively secondary roles.)

Weber explains in the expanded edition of the first volume that he set out to take a new look at overly familiar fantasy cliches, mostly pale imitations of Tolkien (whose influence is the reason they became so widespread, of course).

(view spoiler)[So the primary heroes are from a race generally regarded by others as, essentially, rather tall orcs.

The equivalents of the Riders of Rohan (with the Heralds of Valdemar thrown in) turn out to be by-and-large bigots and sexists (although some of them aren't, or change their views, which of course puts them at odds with everyone else in the kingdom).

Half-Elves are even nastier bigots, greedy, and arrogant: and these are among their lesser faults.

The real political and military superpower is largely run by Dwarves (who are also busy inventing everything from heavy industry to bicycles).

Halflings have small ivory horns, and are also the subject of prejudice. (hide spoiler)]

By the way, Weber makes use of a lot of diacritical marks in names, giving a rather Tolkienian impression of philological precision, which Kindle editions completely, and inconsistently, garble.

[Colin]

Another good flip of the Chosen One trope is The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher by E. M. Anderson in which the Chosen One is a retiree living in a nursing home when we meet her.

[[deleted user]]

Creed wrote: "I don't like it when novels portray the human race 100,000 years in the future as not having warp technology. It's annoying. I know that FTP travel is supposed to be physically impossible, but still."

My actual question about Humanity in 100,000 years would be: how will we look like physically? Huminids went from Neanderthals to Homo Sapiens only 40-50,000 years ago. This would be even more pertinent as a question if you take account of what advanced genetic manipulations could do to us.

[[deleted user]]

I will venture a prediction for the Human race 100,000 years from now: we will be basically physically similar but with longer lives and more resistance to diseases, but may have developped mental powers, like telepathy and telekynesis. Do you know of books with this view?

[Michelle]

Michel wrote: "I will venture a prediction for the Human race 100,000 years from now: we will be basically physically similar but with longer lives and more resistance to diseases, but may have developped mental ..."

I have read something like this but the name escapes me at the moment. I'll post the title as soon as I remember the darned thing.

[Jan]

Michel wrote: "I will venture a prediction for the Human race 100,000 years from now: we will be basically physically similar but with longer lives and more resistance to diseases, but may have developped mental ..."

Not set 100,000 years in the future, but Greg Bear's books Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children are kind of along these lines, exploring the possible next steps in human evolution.

Marrow by Robert Reed is set in the very far future and humans are a little different from now. It's a while since I read it, but I think maybe longer lived due to genetic engineering?

[Michelle]

Michel wrote: "I will venture a prediction for the Human race 100,000 years from now: we will be basically physically similar but with longer lives and more resistance to diseases, but may have developped mental ..."

I don't recall if this checks all of your boxes, but the title is Psion by Joan D. Vinge.

[Leonie]

Michel wrote: "I will venture a prediction for the Human race 100,000 years from now: we will be basically physically similar but with longer lives and more resistance to diseases, but may have developped mental ..."

Well, these books are about 100 years or so in the future, and the past, but have all of the above requirements:

The Many-Coloured Land is the first book written by Julian May.

The first prequel is Intervention

[Anna]

Alastair Reynolds trilogy that starts with “Blue remembered Earth” explores the effects of advanced genetic science (it’s not the main story but part of the setting) and it’s a big part of how the world has developed. When you can live basically how long as you like and take any form you like… For example: There’s cities under the oceans and many who lives there has adapted their bodies to look like sea creatures; seals, mer people…so they can move around outside without driving gear. I read it some time ago so I don’t remember everything but that wasn’t set so far into the future. You can only guess what a race that can change into anything they like will look like a 100000 years into the future.

[Olga]

Michel wrote: "I will venture a prediction for the Human race 100,000 years from now: we will be basically physically similar but with longer lives and more resistance to diseases, but may have developped mental ..."

The City and the Stars comes to my mind. It’s definitely way into the future and humanity is both the same and very different at the same time.

[Ian]

The genetic transformations of humans to adjust to planetary environments, instead of changing the planets, is the theme of the 1950 collection of related stories by James Blish, “The Seedling Stars,” sometimes treated as a fix-up novel. In either case, it is seems to be out of print in any format, which is a shame. Some of the stories are very memorable (since I remember reading them in what must have been the 1960s).

The classic treatment of human evolution into the very distant future is Olaf Stapledon’s “Last and First Men,” which has a short companion volume, “Last Men in London,” in which the ultimate form of humanity ponders the First Men (ourselves). On an even vaster scale is Stapledon’s “Star Maker,” which applies the same approach to other planets, and eventually to entire galaxies.

[Catherine]

I've just finished Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Earth. I love sci fi but I found this hard going. The language was old fashoned but that was to be expected as it was written sometime ago. Generally it was about the entire galaxy being inhabited by humans - not an alien in sight - and one ambasador for the Galactic Federation being expected to decide whether to embrace a "everything included" attitude to the galaxy that existed on one planet called Gia. He'd decided to go with that but decided he wanted to know what made him decide this way, and thought that if he found the mythical Earth he would find the answers. So ensues a trip around the galaxy looking for Earth. A lot of the notions are rather outdated as well, as on one planet inhabited by Hermaphrodites the protagonist insisted on calling them "It" as if they were sub human or something, instead of he or she or they. So I consider the inclusion of friendly aliens in modern sci fi refreshing. I myself write sci fi -detective where the aliens are the galactic police.

[Ian]

The Foundation series was set in a humans-only galaxy because Asimov was tired of his editor, John W. Campbell, Jr., tampering with stories to make humans superior.

He did write one story of aliens being discovered by the Empire, which was not included in the book-form canon of the original Foundation hardcovers. It is also remarkable for being written in part in bureaucratic jargon he had to use while working at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in WW II. (Co-workers were Robert Heinlein and L. Sprague de Camp: the latter found a mistake in the jargon.)

For a science-fictional rationale for a human-only galaxy, see his novel The End of Eternity, which was retroactively absorbed into the background of the final Robot/Foundation novels, although you have to look sharp to recognize what he was doing if you don’t know the book firsthand.

[CBRetriever]

Catherine wrote: "A lot of the notions are rather outdated as well, as on one planet inhabited by Hermaphrodites the protagonist insisted on calling them "It" as if they were sub human or something, instead of he or she or they."

I think they/them is a rather recent invention as far as referring to one person. As it could also be used to refer to an Alien, I didn't see it as lessening the "its" to subhuman.

[Ambereyes]

Catherine wrote: "So I consider the inclusion of friendly aliens in modern sci fi refreshing. I myself write sci fi -detective where the aliens are the galactic police. "

Of course, Foundation or Dune with aliens would be much more interesting. I guess I'm a bit weird, but when I read science fiction with star empires without aliens (good or bad), I feel something like claustrophobia. It's as if the author is trying to close the reader (i. e. me) in a dull and monotonous space.
By the way, I would love to read your book. It sounds interesting!

Ian wrote: "The Foundation series was set in a humans-only galaxy because Asimov was tired of his editor, John W. Campbell, Jr., tampering with stories to make humans superior. "

What was he, an interstellar racist? :)
Wow, humanity has yet to encounter aliens and some genius publisher has already decided that humans would definitely be superior. That's just great.

[Ambereyes]

Catherine wrote: " A lot of the notions are rather outdated as well, as on one planet inhabited by Hermaphrodites the protagonist insisted on calling them "It" as if they were sub human or something, instead of he or she or they. "

As for Asimov referring to hermaphrodites as 'it', I just put that down to a certain old-fashionedness of his language. Incidentally, there was a nice young woman in the book called Bliss who adopted a little hermaphrodite and decided to call 'it' a girl because 'its'/her ability to produce offspring in the future seemed female to Bliss.
So Asimov gradually begins to write 'she' about this sweet child. I don't think he hated hermaphrodites or anything. He just lived a very long time ago.

[Ambereyes]

Michel wrote: "I will venture a prediction for the Human race 100,000 years from now: we will be basically physically similar but with longer lives and more resistance to diseases, but may have developped mental powers, like telepathy and telekynesis."

I'm not so sure about people developing telepathy or telekynesis, but people will probably live very long in the future. Life expectancy is already increasing, although in different ways in different countries, and it will certainly increase in the future.

[Ambereyes]

Ian wrote: "David Weber's unfinished War God series was base on reversing old tropes.

It consists so far of the following books
Oath of Swords (also in a second edition with an introduction and a..."

A while ago, I started this series, but for some reason I only read the first book. I probably should have read the others as well. Thank you!

[Ambereyes]

Michelle wrote: "A good example of this is Fate of the Fallen. It stands the chosen one trope on it's, er, head."

Sounds good. This is my least favourite trope in fantasy. :)
By the way, I remembered another pretty good book that deconstructed tropes that were already old and tired in the Middle Ages.
It's Barbara Hambly's Dragonsbane. This wonderful book starts with a lady rescuing a knight who was trying to save her from bandits. And then all the old tropes about dragons and noble knights are turned upside down on almost every page.

[Ian]

Campbell was probably the most influential editor of science fiction so far, period:: and certainly in the 1940s and into the 1950s. He was also a bundle of attitudes whose expression eventually caused many of the authors whose talents he developed and encouraged to stop writing for him. See his Wikipedia article for a rundown of his outrageous and offensive notions (and it may be incomplete).