mr-wistan

So here's another thing that annoys me in sci-fi. A while back, sci-fi writers decided that the future should be all non-sexist. One way to achieve this was to use gender-equal forms of address. I've no idea when or where this started, but I first saw it in Star Trek II, where Kirk referred to the female Saavik as "Mister Saavik". Since then Trek pretty much routinely address female officers as Sir, Mister, etc. Although they don't go as far as calling them He or anything. Well this is a good thing, right? And yes, in a way it is. But over time I've noticed that the way of being "gender equal" adopted by Star Trek - and I've noticed it in s

So here's another thing that bothers me in science fiction. Your mile long spaceship comes hoving into view. Mile long spaceships are silly, but that's a different rant. Here it comes. It flies past, slowly, so big and impressive. And then it goes past, and we see something like this... https://images2.imgbox.com/89/fb/foGv2jyC_o.png See the problem here? That ship has, at least, three different sizes of engines on it. Why? What would possess any self-respecting engine designer to do this!!! First, what is the point? One can imagine that the two different sizes represent whole different types of engine. For example, one might see one eng