Some shows love playing genre conventions, a
Fantasy Kitchen Sink will have everything in the mythological handbook and then some,
Trope Overdosed works will keep adding tropes so long as they run, and then there are even shows
that make new tropes.
These are not those shows. (Or can they be?)
A
Sci-Fi Kitchen Sink is for all intents and purposes the playground of Science Fiction Tropes and everything associated with them. Have an
Artificial Intelligence construct able to run the
Cool Starship? It makes you coffee in the morning.
Humongous Mecha? You walked by several on the way to work.
Faster-than-Light Travel?
Totally mastered to the point where even Joe Penniless can get a ride to the stars. Laser and particle beams as weapons? Everybody and their dog has one. The list of possible areas seems to be endless.
A good way to tell if a work is a
Sci-Fi Kitchen Sink, is ask three questions. Is it in the
Sci Fi genre?
Is it softer than reality by a wide margin according to the scale? Does it use all or much of the stuff in the genre of
Sci Fi and not
Hang A Lampshade on it? Answer yes to all three and you likely are dealing with a
Sci-Fi Kitchen Sink.
Popular in
Space Opera. Also popular in
Mega Crossover fanfic. Naturally compare
Fantasy Kitchen Sink; when both sinks are combined, it becomes
Science Fantasy. See also
Standard Sci Fi Setting, a particularly popular instance of
Sci-Fi Kitchen Sink.
Examples
- The Halo series including its Expanded Universe. It has Humongous Mecha, Faster-than-Light Travel, Artificial Intelligence, Space Marines, Precursors, and about the only thing it doesn't have is the weirder aspects of Sci Fi like Psychic Powers or various Negative Space Wedgies, although the Flood Hive Mind and Slipspace anomalies come close, respectively.
- Starcraft: Everything can travel faster than light via Psychic Powers, science or biological creatures able to do so on their own! AI exists but is lower key, Starfighters abound as do Humongous Mecha and Tanks and more.
- Warhammer40K - sometimes it is like each army is there to be a representative of a different sort of science fiction. Your Space Marines are your, unsurprisingly, post-Heinleinian Space Marines, Tyranids are books are about Bug War, Tau are animesque mecha and firepower and The Federation, Eldar are Clark's Third Law Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, spaceship battles feel like they come out of the Honor Harrington universe, Necrons are The Terminator and so on. If anybody want to write about or parody a certain type of science fiction, then they can.
- Mass Effect: Combines most of the Sci Fi genre together in a single package.
- Futurama: Everything that exists in the Sci Fi Writer's Handbook exists here plus a heaping helping of Rule of Funny and It Runs on Nonsensoleum. If it hasn't found some way of being incorporated well it likely will be.
- Doctor Who: there are two sorts of episodes. One type is the Doctor going back in time to some famous historical situation and finding aliens mucking about, the other type, and the type that makes the show a Sci-Fi Kitchen Sink is the sort where the Doctor takes his companion to the future to basically show off a particular sort of sci fi idea. After 31 years, that's a lot of sci fi ideas.
- In the Universe of IainBanks' hyper-advanced people, The Culture, there's everything from dystopian ultra-capitalist planets, small debauched backwaters, "Sublimed" civilisations living in entire other dimensions, neglectful precursors, ProudWarriorRaces, post-singularity communist civs...well, you get the idea. The fact that this is just a very incomplete list of some of the civilisation types should tip you off to the fact that this series mixes-and-matches an awful lot of sci-fi tropes. Tech levels vary right alongside the civilisations, although we rarely see a world a great deal less developed than present day Earth. Expect to see Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale stunningly averted, in both range and size of ships, drones, space battles, androids, sentient space-suits, conspiracies and counter-conspiracies.
- The Matrix. Robot War. Lotus-Eater Machine. Superpower Lottery. Journey to the Center of the Mind . Humongous Mecha.
- Traveller. Artificial Intelligence is almost non-existent though, and Cyber Punk, if it exists, is localized as are most transformations that threaten to render human society unrecognizable.
- Star Wars is a kitchen sink of Military Science Fiction and High Fantasy tropes.
- Trinity was launched as one of these as well. You want cyberpunk? America's corporate-owned and full of technopaths. You want wasteland? Paris and a huge chunk of the surrounding land got nuked. You want space opera? Mankind's made first contact and is currently involved in political dealings with at least three different species. You want Psychic Powers? What flavor do you want them in?
