What’s your least favorite trope of this genre? I used to read a lot of these while bored at work and by far the worst one to me is stuff like:
“Humans evolved on a death world with crushing gravity that blablablabla”; “There are thousands of predators there yet humans prey on them!”
my author in Christ if our gravity was notably smaller we would not have an atmosphere and the idea to have a planet with a biosphere but without any predators is stupid on it’s face unless you explain why that is, which you never do!
Honorable mention of aliens that have figured out interstellar space travel but still use their natural weapons to fight, who somehow are seen as scary by their peers.
Ha, yes. The infamous “deathworld” trope. They absolutely love this one but can never do it well.
I’m sure there is a way to make Earth the most dangerous planet or whatever for plot reasons in a way that work, but this aint it. The way “deathworld” is defined in these stories is always so hollow, lazy and vibe based it’s just not believable at all.
HFY, as far as my experience goes is like 70% lowest common denominator cookie cutter sf trope, 29% cryptofash genocide fantasy about how the aliens deserved to be genocided, and once in a blue moon you find some of the 1% stories that aren’t too bad.
I’m not too familiar with 40k so I don’t know. I’m talking about HFY stories on I’ve read on the internet, so stuff not written by professional writers.
The challenge of finding a story in the HFY genre that isn’t a bad Warhammer 40k fanfic
Huh… nice one, Joe…
I wish i could upvote this at least twice
