History Main / MundaneDogmatic

* While the space colony management simulator ''VideoGame/RimWorld'' is set in a far-future setting, technology is restricted to the plausible (if obviously very advanced). FasterThanLightTravel and [[AbsentAliens true aliens]] are noticeably absent.

Thanks to ScienceMarchesOn, there is also growing acceptance of ''very'' limited FTL based on the AlcubierreDrive and [[OurWormholesAreDifferent wormholes]] in more recent works, but it will ''not'' be a method of CasualInterstellarTravel, with the former being prohibitively expensive and dangerous - effectively operating as a form of LudicrousSpeed - and the latter being incredibly difficult if not outright impossible to create with human tech, thus often being scavanged from {{Precursor|s}} ruins.

Thanks to ScienceMarchesOn, there is also growing acceptance of ''very'' limited FTL based on the AlcubierreDrive in more recent works, but it will ''not'' be a method of CasualInterstellarTravel, and it ''will'' be prohibitively expensive and dangerous, effectively operating as a form of LudicrousSpeed.

* The late-1970s BBC series ''Series/MoonbaseThree'' was very determinedly mundane in its depiction of a Moon colony. The creators subsequently blamed this for the show's failure, saying that the realistic depiction of the stresses and dangers of space living made the show darker than intended, to the point that it was [[DarknessInducedAudienceApathy downright depressing to watch]].

The setting adheres to the precepts of the Mundane Manifesto, a system of self-imposed restraints similar in spirit to the constraints of UsefulNotes/Dogme95 in film. Such settings usually fall rather high on the MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness, but there are exceptions.

%%* ''Manga/FutatsuNoSpica''

* [[TeleportersAndTransporters Teleportation]]

* ''Manga/UchuuKyoudai'' is about as hard as it gets, being about two Japanese astronauts who participate in UsefulNotes/{{NASA}}'s Project Constellation (which was canceled in the real world).

* ''Literature/Voyage'', by Creator/StephenBaxter, that describes an alternate timeline in which NASA's efforts after the Apollo program were dedicated to a manned Mars mission [[spoiler: at the cost of almost no unmanned space exploration (probes and the like)]]. The only piece of space technology that pops up there not fully developed in RealLife is a nuclear rocket [[spoiler: that suffers a meltdown in orbit]] based on the real-world NERVA program of the '60s.

* FasterThanLightTravel: space travel is limited to sub-light speeds and is difficult, time consuming, and expensive.
* [[AbsentAliens Space aliens]], unless the connection is distant, difficult, tenuous and expensive -- and they have no FTL travel either.
* [[AlternateUniverse Alternative Universes]] interacting with the universe the characters are in.

* ''Franchise/TheMatrix'' series sidesteps a lot of Manifesto-prohibited tropes by setting the action on Earth AfterTheEnd with human-created ArtificialIntelligence as the villains, and by framing most the spectacular physics violations as happening in simulations in an enormous VirtualReality system. Unfortunately, the realism of the setting takes a big hit for using humans as "batteries," although the [[ExecutiveMeddling original concept]] of [[WetwareCPU humans-as-distributed-processors]] was relatively plausible
** The series skirts FunctionalMagic in later film's when [[TheChosenOne Neo's]] powers work in "reality," although this may be explainable as a result of cyborg technology in his spine.

* ''Film/MoonZeroTwo,'' a space adventure movie Hammer made in the 70s. It's meticulously realistic, the only thing it has that is a little iffy scientifically is ArtificialGravity, which they only inserted because they didn't have enough money to do moon gravity effects for the entire movie.

** ''Literature/HouseOfSuns'' has much more fantastic technology than his previous works, but still adheres to the laws of physics [[spoiler: even with its faster-than-light travel]].
* ''Literature/{{Existence}}'' is Creator/DavidBrin's take on this trope. Unlike his more famous ''Literature/{{Uplift}}'' series there's no supertech FTL or psionics, and aliens only appear as [[BrainUploading uploaded]] "Emissaries" in crystalline Artifacts hurled at STL speeds over countless millions of years [[spoiler: and they're all extinct as far as one can tell.]]

** ''Literature/SisterAlice''. Bar possibly the presence of SubspaceAnsible tech - it's never made clear if communication is FTL as characters operate in the span of centuries and millenia - and the [[spoiler: climax involving the creation of a new pocket universe]], the technology is fantastic - stellar-sized dark matter machinery - but mundane and ground in known physics.

* ''Literature/TheExpanse'' largely qualifies. All of the human technology is largely within what is possible. A notable element is that it even lacks inertial dampners of any sort. Every G of maneuver that their ships pull is passed directly to the crew. Which makes combat maneuvers difficult at best. [[spoiler: Though something in the setting is truly alien and there is little idea what it really is.]]

* ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' is arguably on the dividing line: most of the setting is quite mundane - no FTL, no aliens, no teleportation or time travel...and it is one of very few TV series examples to get the properties of space (e.g. no propagation of sounds in vacuum) right. However, there are several instances preventing it from truly fitting the trope:
** At least one notable instance involving psionic powers (which may or may not qualify as FunctionalMagic)
** Ubiquitous artificial gravity which is ''not'' achieved via rotation and ensuing centrifugal force and whose mechanism is unexplained (the rotation variant is seen on stations, such as Neeska's station, but not on ships)
** Too casual interplanetary travel: while FTL is not possible, so that interstellar travel has to be done with generation ships (that is how the system the series takes place in was originally colonized), and all the space travel is intra-system, it doesn't come off as particularly costly or difficult - which even "mere" interplanetary travel should be.
** While the series is generally quite realistic and plausible as far as tech levels go (KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter, no AIs etc.), some tech items/weapons, like the laser pistol in Heart of Gold, are not very plausible: weapons-grade lasers intended to do more than blind someone should be much larger due to the cooling system required and have an external power supply - they should not look like small handguns (unless materials that are superconductive at room temperature and cigarette-pack sized, but high-capacity power cells have been developed in the verse).

* ''Videogame/KerbalSpaceProgram'' uses only modern or near-future / in-development rocket technology, plus a few abandoned rocket programs like the NERVA nuclear rocket. Aside from some rocket performance skewing [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality for the sake of fun]], the game relies on real physics. The only break from the mundane dogma are the Kerbals themselves, who appear as [[BigHeadMode cartoonishly proportioned]] LittleGreenMen. Various {{Game Mod}}s deviate from the dogma, such as the ''Interstellar'' mod introducing an AlcubierreDrive
* ''Videogame/ArmoredCore'' Most of the games before the introduction of "primal armor" and related technologies - while the rest of the technologies shown may not be remotely practical or cost effective today, the first few entries in the series are hard science fiction with none of the technologies present requiring the laws of physics to be altered, and most of them currently possible given sufficient funding. The only fantastic elements are the fact that the technologies showcased are commonplace and treated as cost effective. Needless to say, giant robots are unlikely to be used as the mainstays of armed forces, ESPECIALLY not by non-state private military contractors that don't have the luxury of a large tax base. The mechs and energy weapons shown are all possible with technology currently available or on the drawing board, and realistically have heat issues and have weight limits dictated by the square cube law. The entires in the series that have primal armor and other fantastic elements are softer science fiction that falls more in the applied phlebotinum category.
* ''Videogame/ChildrenOfADeadEarth'' takes place during an interplanetary war in the ColonizedSolarSystem. As one of the [[MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness hardest]] science fiction games, there's no aliens, no teleporters, travel takes literal months, and every bit of technology shown has [[ShownTheirWork significant real-world mathematics behind it]] - which one can play with using the DesignItYourselfEquipment system - and has either been produced or the theory behind it is known and is in testing, such as nuclear rockets, gigawatt lasers, and railguns.

* ''Franchise/TheMatrix'' series sidesteps a lot of Manifesto-prohibited tropes by setting the action on Earth AfterTheEnd with human-created ArtificialIntelligence as the villains, and by framing most the spectacular physics violations as happening in simulations in an enormous VirtualReality system. Unfortunately, the realism of the setting takes a big hit for using humans as "batteries", although the [[ExecutiveMeddling original concept]] of [[WetwareCPU humans-as-distributed-processors]] was relatively plausible
** The series skirts FunctionalMagic in later film's when [[TheChosenOne Neo's]] powers work in "reality", although this may be explainable as a result of cyborg technology in his spine.

** ''Literature/HouseOfSuns'' has much more fantastic technology than his previous works, but still adheres to the laws of physics [[spoiler: even with its faster-than-light travel]]

* Creator/KevinJAnderson's ''Literature/{{Blindfold}}'' largely follows the dogma, the biggest violation would be the presence of a bacterium that, when ingested, temporarily allows for a form of PsychicPowers, although the author tries to explain it in a plausible way (it supposedly boosts a person's electrical perception sense to allow for touch telepathy, since our thoughts are little more than electrical impulses). FTLTravel is absent, and the colony of Atlas is completely on its own, being far enough away from Earth that it takes several decades for a ship to reach it. In fact, there have only been four ships arriving to the planet in the history of the colony, including the original colony ship, a prison transport (the prisoners integrated fairly well into the main population), a warship (sent by a militant Earth government, but the invasion was thwarted), and a missionary vessel. Another ship is expected to arrive within a decade. It's heavily implied that Atlas is humanity's only extrasolar colony due to the massive effort it takes to put together an interstellar mission. Additionally, despite the fact that the colony is several centuries old, it still only covers a fraction of the planet's surface. The colony uses both the FeudalFuture and WeWillUseManualLaborInTheFuture tropes. The only means of getting to space involves the use of a SpaceElevator that connects the hub of the colony to a ship that has been converted into a SpaceStation ([[spoiler:both are destroyed at the end of the novel, meaning this capability is also lost]]).

* The ''{{Tintin}}'' comic-books ''[[Recap/TintinDestinationMoon Destination Moon]]'' and ''[[Recap/TintinExplorersOnTheMoon Explorers on the Moon]]'' feature a deliberately scientifically-realistic (minus some ScienceMarchesOn) depiction of a manned moon mission that preceded NASA's by several years but anticipated several details of it. (Yes, really!). Hergé described his vision for the story as "No moonmen, no monsters, no incredible surprises".

* FasterThanLightTravel; space travel is limited to sub-light speeds and is difficult, time consuming, and expensive.
* [[AbsentAliens Space aliens]], unless the connection is distant, difficult, tenuous and expensive -- and they have no FTL travel either

%%* ''Moonbase 3''. (You've probably never heard of this series, have you? Well it aired on Creator/TheBBC in the early '70's.)

* The late-1970s BBC series ''Series/MoonbaseThree'' was very determinedly mundane in its depiction of a Moon colony. The creators subsequently blamed this for the show's failure, saying that the realistic depiction of the stresses and dangers of space living made the show darker than intended.

%% ZeroContextExample entries are not allowed on wiki pages. All such entries have been commented out. Add context to the entries before uncommenting them.

Thanks to ScienceMarchesOn, there is also growing acceptance of ''very'' limited FTL based on the AlcubierreDrive in more recent works, but it will ''not'' be a method of CasualInterstellarTravel, and it ''will'' be prohibitively expensive and dangerous- effectively operating as a form of LudicrousSpeed.

* ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'': For instance, it averts SpaceIsNoisy and space stations use CentrifugalGravity rather than ArtificialGravity. Aliens are never seen, and it is left ambiguous whether the events following David Bowman's encounter with the monolith (which would require FTL travel) are literally happening or are all just in his head. (Interestingly, this ambiguity allows the film adaptation to meet the Manifesto while the book by ArthurCClarke did not.)

* ''Paradises Lost'', a GenerationShip story by UrsulaKLeGuin. No aliens, no faster-than-light travel, just a slow ship full of humans traveling (mostly out of scientific curiosity) towards a distant, possibly habitable planet.

%%** ''Literature/RevoltIn2100''

%%* Any of Creator/WilliamGibson's novels.

%%* Any of WilliamGibson's novels.

* The ''{{Tintin}}'' comic-books ''Recap/TintinDestinationMoon'' and ''Recap/TintinExplorersOnTheMoon'', feature a deliberately scientifically-realistic (minus some ScienceMarchesOn) depiction of a manned moon mission that preceded NASA's by several years but anticipated several details of it. (Yes, really!). Hergé described his vision for the story as "No moonmen, no monsters, no incredible surprises".

%%* The first couple of seasons of ''Series/RedDwarf'', before anything much started happening outside the ship.