Zompist Bboard Again

Justin Rye has an amusing page where he does various sorts of textual analysis on his digitsed sf collection. He says:

if I take the most‐reused elements and assemble them into what ought to be the averagest story title possible then what I end up with is The Time Man, which has nonetheless never been used

which throws up the intriguing question: what would the averagest sf story be? Anyone care to do a putative plot outline?

tvtropes.org says:

A typical plot involves the humans fighting the Proud Warrior Race Guys until one or the other stumbles upon the ruins of the Neglectful Precursor civilization and unleashes the evil third race. Then a bunch of people die, there are lots of cool explosions, and the first two races team up to take out the genocidal aliens. Usually they have to track down some Lost Superweapon and use it to destroy the alien queen/mothership/homeworld, thereby saving the galaxy... for now.

I'm glad that Justin is a) still writing things, and b) still devoted to the web aesthetics of 1994. (No snark please— I'm devoted to the web aesthetics of 1998.)

Tvtropes's attempt seems based on movies or maybe 1920s space opera. For classic sf I'd suggest something like this:

A brilliant male scientist is among the first of a small crew to visit an unknown planet. They run into a thing, or a species, that at first seems comic and innocuous. However, he finds out, just in time to save the more pleasant members of the crew, that it is extremely dangerous. The thing threatens to destroy the spaceship and, if we're in a more rollicking satirical mode, the earth. But the scientist cobbles together a solution that requires both science knowledge and gunplay. The scientist reflects ruefully that the universe is dangerous, but humans are dangerouser.

How would this tie in with the title "The Time Man"? What would be the gender balance of the crew?

For the average SF story, from the early 80s to the early 2000s, I suggest the following:

Baffle, a brilliant but lazy computer programmer designs virtual environments thatfor some reason look just like the Chicago skyline. He lives in a sprawling metropolis that also looks like the Chicago Skyline, but with a perpetual cloud cover and an atmosphere saturated with toxic particles the size of small pebbles. For unspecified reasons, he's caught in a three way war between the Japanese mega-zaibatsu he works for and the two main factions that humanity neatly sorts themselves into -- those who splice alien DNA downloaded from Alpha Centauri transmissions and those who elect to replace their body parts with electronic gear. He unravels the plot with the help of his genetically-and-mechanically augmented on-again, off-again girlfriend. Baffle stumbles across clues while his girlfriend fights increasingly preposterous transhuman goons.
A plot hole leads them to Omaewa-Moshindeiru, a decaying space station overrun by toxic waste and alien plants. They will confront there the Time Man, an omnipotent AI also downloaded from Alpha Centauri. Together, all three will reflect ruefully that humans are dangerous, but the universe is dangerouser.

For the 60s/70s, I suggest the following:

Our not-too-bright male protagonists crosses a post apocalyptic landscape, accompanied by Spot, his brilliant scientist dog. The pair of them are looking for a fix of the ultimate drug (some brand of alien lichen). They run into a very young (creepily so) and underdressed psychic / alien girl. The boy has sex with her while the dog quips sarcastically. They run across a tribe of survivors that worships it. The boy takes a beating, than has some more sex.
He finally scores a bit of alien lichen, then has a scary cosmic vision of the Time Man, who is perhaps god, perhaps a malignant Soviet computer and quite possibly both.
While the boy has a threesome with the Time Man and the girl, The dog reflects ruefully that the universe is dangerous and that humanity is hopelessly doomed.


(^The above is really a labor of love. I grew up on these stories.)

@Ares: Something makes me think that you have watched this film.

Close enough; I read the original short story