[chrispenycate]

Originally Posted by Atomika

yes, I know scientific publication can be dry and boring and all of that other stuff. What I mean by silly science is stuff like:

-all habitable planets have the same day length as Earth (+ or - 2 hrs).

while "within a couple of hours" is perhaps excessively limiting, if you go too far outside (Marky wanted a planet where his characters could travel round the equatot at the speed of night, so I tidally locked it, and then gave it a glancing shot with a comet. The meteology became slightly over the top; survivable, but requiring fast footwork, no permanent seas but lots of temporary ones; not a good place to bring up kids)

-all habitable planets look more or less like Earth, with the same species or related ones.

a habitable planet will look a lot like Earth(assuming you mean (habitable by non-modified human beings) The lifeforms, however, have no such constraints, and desriptions of many alien planets, while tending to assume the climatic variation of vegetation will parallel

-Being at the center of the Earth and have the same gravity as Earth's surface (I'm talking about Zion in the Matrix here).
-All intelligent species look exactly like humans except for one or two distinguishing facial features.

That's more a Hollywood (and Dr.Who) problem than Science fiction. We've had a wide range of physiologies for over a centory; it's just that the cinema/television had difficulties finding actorswith more than four arms.

-Lasers that have recoil or make noise

A sufficiently poweful laser does actually produce a pressure; I've got it down as one of my propulsion systems (though if you're only trying to burn bits off people its hardly worh going into the tens of thousands of terrawatts) And, if it's a pulsed laser, in atmosphere it makes a series of clicks as the air in front of it is heated by absorbed light. A linear accelerator (or railgun) has a lot of recoil, and the sound of its projectiles breaking the sound barrier is loud, and quite objectionable

-Evil aliens that look like savage beasts while good ones look like heavenly angels

wouldn't it be convenient if life were organised like that?

-The whole "Q" non-sense.
-Every single alien homeworld is suitible for humans, with corresponding atmospheric pressures and the correct amount of Oxygen/Nitrogen mix.

if I started listing the environments science fiction has explored as potential niches for lifeforms; The heart of stars, open space, gas giants and moons, neutron stars, computer networks, nebulae - thousands of possibilities. But again, the cinema doesn't want its stars to be bundled up and isolated, so exploration is "wild west" style, preferably in shirt sleeves.

-BS solutions to otherwise catastrophic problems.
-Weapon systems that have been borrowed and adapted from the colonial and industrial era, and work in pretty much the same way, with WWII battlefield tactics, strategies, and style of fighting for that matter.
-And other countless atrocities that are too numerous to list.

Why assume that democracy is the obvious ultimate step in social developement? I live in the oldest continuous democracy on this planet, and can see the limitations of the system, particularly as regards requiring an educated populace. The aristocratic sytem has a much longer pedigree, and has been proved to work (I didn't claim you had to like it; just that, as social evolution goes, it's a proven survivor. In a crisis situation strong men come forward, and frequently establish dynasties; kings or whatever are only names

Plant life is almost always depicted by Flowering Plants - which only developed on Earth very recently. Either that, or they are particularly barren rocky planets without plants at all, but still with an Oxygen atmosphere.

Anything to do with Aging or Cloning is never correct. Have you noticed how Clones are always the same age as the donor, with his/her memories and skills, even with very different upbringings and environmental factors?

I could cite several hundred books where cloning is handled realistically; Cherryh, Bujold, Varley, Clarke. I could keep going.The main "clones in batches" (for particular functions) seems to have started with Huxley's "brave new world", not that the word "clone" was yet in general use

De-evolution is possible!

very likely, if not at an individual level. "Throwbacks" to an earlier stage of developement occur from time to time in populations, and the tendency could quite possibly be accentuated artificially, though only to previous forms in that particular path; you'd never get a human embrio developing into a chimp (or a shark; maybe a jellyfish
All in all, I don't seem to have been reading the same science fiction as some of you; certainly, there are technical errors, and I take a malicious pleasure in finding them, but most of the authors I read expect readers like me. and make it as difficult as possible for us.