The Worst Line in Science Fiction... Ever

 

I've read a lot of science fiction books and seen a lot of science fiction movies over the years. And in all that content, one line sticks out to me as the worst line in science fiction. If there's a worse line, I don't know about it. 

It come in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (or as some call it, "The Slow-Motion Picture"). 

Star Trek: TMP has a lot of problems. It was directed by Robert Wise who direct The Day the Earth Stood Still in 1951. Which is a good movie, for a 1950s science fiction film.  However, he also directed The Sound of Music and West Side Story, two musicals. In The Sound of Music, he almost spends as much time on the Alps as he does on the Von Trapp children. 

The other science fiction movie he directed before ST:TMP was The Andromeda Strain in 1971. That movie was mostly confined to a laboratory. Not really suited for a big-screen adaptation of Star Trek. 

In ST: TMP, the story moves so slow and there's little action. I remember when I saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in the theater (opening night) and when the Klingon ships came on the screen, everyone cheered because finally there'd be some action.

According to the Internet Movie Database, the screenplay of ST:TMP was written by Harold Livingston (never heard of him) and the story was by Alan Dean Foster. I've read some books by Foster and I've never been impressed. So I don't know if Foster or Livingston are responsible for that awful line.

SPOILERS if you haven't seen ST:TMP.

Toward the end of the movie, they discover V'Ger is actually a Voyager spacecraft launched from Earth. And Commander Decker says, "It fell into what they used to call a black hole."

(Aside: How close was that black hole to Earth? Voyager 1, launched in 1977, 49 years ago, is now less than a light day away from Earth. It'll take it another 1,765 years to be one-tenth of a light year from the Sun. ST:TNG is set 246 years in the future. And how did he know it fell into a black hole if no information gets out of a black hole?)

The "what they used to call a black hole" just makes me crazy. You wouldn't say "He drove to town in what they used to call a horseless carriage." And why would the term for a black hole be changed? 

I don't know who wrote that line (Livingston or Foster), but it is, in my opinion, the worst line in science fiction history.

Do you know of a worse line in science fiction? Let me know in the comments below.

Original Ideas

Not long ago I posted this on X (formerly Twitter):

I thought it was a pretty original idea. (Plus only two people saw it when I have over 19,000 followers, what's up with that?)

Then someone posted this in response:

(I assume they mean the television show Person of Interest.)

I thought it was a pretty original idea. But I guess not.

As a writer, you try to come up with new, original stories. But it's hard or nearly impossible. You can't read all books (or even all science fiction books). You can't watch every television show and movies. How do you know the brilliant idea you came up with wasn't written about 80 years ago in Astounding Science Fiction magazine.

One time I was coming up with an idea for a story. And it was coming together nicely in my head. Then I realized it was the plot of the movie Forbidden Planet, which was based of Shakespeare's The Tempest. And The Tempest was written 400 years ago.

I thought my Adept series of books (First book Hammer of Thor) was pretty unique. Then someone said they reminded them of The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, first published in 2000. Hammer of Thor was published in 2011. 

The weapon my main character, Rick Bailey, carries in Treasure of the Black Hole (and subsequent novels) I think is pretty unique. It reacts to his thoughts and has a distinctive aiming system. So far, no one has told me that it reminds them of something else they've read or seen. (He first uses the weapon in his timeline in The Smugglers of Mars.)

I doubt any idea is 100% unique. But you can take a unique angle on it, maybe. 

Do you think there's any new ideas in the world? Let me know in the comments below.

Two Tutus to Tie Dye

A tutu

The power of the internet!

For about five decades I've had this phrase in my head: "Two tutus to tie dye."

I knew I'd heard it somewhere when I was a teenager (actually younger I found out) and found it hilarious. But I had no idea where it came from

So one day recently, I googled "Two tutus to tie dye." And I found it. 

Someone in this group said it's from 1972's "Rock and Roll Classroom" (So I was 11 or 12, not quite a teenager). I had a title. So I searched for "Rock and Roll Classroom" on YouTube. And I found it! Had to scroll through a lot of stuff but eventually I came to the whole thing. The part about tie dying starts at 3:22. "Two tutus to tie dye" is said at 4:13. The whole thing is 4:41 long.

I'm thinking it was played on the radio. How else would I have heard it in 1972?

I'm not sure how you would tie dye a tutu since they are made of tulle (usually) which is basically fine netting. But it's a joke about tie dyeing a tutu so that's okay. 

Have you had a phrase stuck in your head for years that you don't remember where it came from? Let me know in the comments below.

Temperature

I was watching The Fifth Element the other day. Don't ask me why. It's not a great film and the Chris Tucker part stops the narration dead. For more about that, see here.

There's a scene early in the movie when a military spaceship is confronting an object. And someone says their instruments are registering -5,000 degrees. I don't know what units of measure they are using, but in no existing temperature system can you get a reading of -5,000 degrees.

Anyone who knows much science knows that the lowest temperature something can be is 0 Kelvin (-273.15 C or -457.87 F) or absolute zero. While temperatures can go into the trillions of degrees (Quasar 3C 273, powered by feeding supermassive black holes, their intense gravitational pull and friction heat their surrounding accretion disks to an astounding 10 trillion degrees Celsius), cold can only go until there is no heat any more. 

Cold is simply the absence of heat (as dark is the absence of light). You can add heat all you want but you can only take away heat until there is no more. Reaching absolute zero (no heat) takes infinite energy. The coldest natural place is the Boomerang Nebula. It is roughly 5,000 light-years away in the Centaurus constellation. With a staggering temperature of 1 degree kelvin, it is colder then the 3 degree background radiation of the universe. Humans have made things colder.  A cloud of chilled rubidium atoms was cooled to 38 picokelvin (38 trillionths of a degree above absolute zero).

So, nothing can be -5,000 degrees. In defense of the movie, they didn't say the object was -5,000 degrees, they said their instruments were reading that temperature. So maybe it isn't that bad.