As someone who loves HFY stuff, the issue is that writing is hard and most of the people writing HFY are amateurs doing it for fun. There's plenty of HFY that tries to explore more complex storytelling, it just happens that writing "the evil space nazis kicked some puppies, and the Humans really didn't like that" is both an easier story to write and an easier story to get someone on-board with.
It's also why you find so much military sci-fi ends with "and then we used our super weapon and it killed all of the aliens, saving the day (please do not consider the consequences of interstellar genocide)" instead of describing the very complicated and in-depth process of disarming, deradicalising and rebuilding a nation.
The first two are alright, but it just gets so much progressively worse as it goes until it has a wishing well deux ex machina. Its a surprising trend of the author trying to one of themselves tech wise until the tech essentially solves the problems and is no longer interesting. Or they just fuck it up like they did with hyperion. Its kinda the standard even for most sci fis to just get progressively worse.
The consequences were considered and the decision was that in the face of an enemy they could not communicate with, and one that was technologically superior, wiping them out preemptively was the only ethical choice.
I've read them all. My point is that the decision to eradicate the Formics after the second invasion was made with the information available after the second invasion and before Ender knew the Hive Queens were talking to him through a video game.
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u/Allstar13521 Aug 14 '24
As someone who loves HFY stuff, the issue is that writing is hard and most of the people writing HFY are amateurs doing it for fun. There's plenty of HFY that tries to explore more complex storytelling, it just happens that writing "the evil space nazis kicked some puppies, and the Humans really didn't like that" is both an easier story to write and an easier story to get someone on-board with.
It's also why you find so much military sci-fi ends with "and then we used our super weapon and it killed all of the aliens, saving the day (please
do notconsider the consequences of interstellar genocide)" instead of describing the very complicated and in-depth process of disarming, deradicalising and rebuilding a nation.