> > New Colonies may be either agricultural or mining colonies; rarely, resort colonies > Maybe resort colonies are not fun to write about. Actually... Star Tr

> > New Colonies may be either agricultural or mining colonies; rarely, resort colonies > Maybe resort colonies are not fun to write about. Actually... Star Trek TNG has a bunch of episodes about Risa, which is a whole fricking fully climate-controlled resort planet. I think one was more about the fact that entire planets are "just" colonies: farming, mining, or resort. It's far more likely that it's a planet with lots of different things going on. ---- More generally, I think each item can be categorised by what type of shortcut is being taken by authors of huge universes. - This physical problem will be easily solved by technology - Yes this system is complex, let's not worry about the details - It's easier to treat an entire planet like a single town, as our protaginist's journey becomes easily relatable to other story forms we are familiar with I think audiences are ok with shortcuts a lot of the time, and often the really glaring holes in a world aren't even obvious unless pointed out (like his example where there is no law enforcement, but also no one underage in the bar). Some things are just not believeable at all, and by reaching for a shortcut to make the story relatable introduces huge conceptual issues. So for example, it's fine to think that there may be some technological advancement that means spaceships don't have to worry about orbital mechanics, but if there is then that technology would be used everywhere as it's essentially vast amounts of energy or gravity generation. Scifi in the near future gets to borrow the complexity of our world. So things like black mirror can ask "what would happen if we had a social credit score" and explore that in a very complex environment that it gets mostly for free. The more alien your setting the less you can borrow from your audience's own experience. If you introduce some 'magic' (cryosleep, faster than light travel, fast travel between planets, etc) it is your responsibility to explain why it is only used for the one specific plot device you want it used for. This is one of the reasons why world building is hard, and even worse when you have hundreds of worlds to build. It's easier to just pretend the universe is made up of little towns that correspond directly to stereotypes from whatever culture you are from.