Quote:This got me thinking about the way that most SF (and Fantasy and to a lesser extent Drama) treats human beings (or the story protagonists in general) in conflict with various aliens, AI, magical forces, etc. and why they win so much that a lot of the SF community seems to take it as a given that of course humans must always win. Note that the below primarily applies to TV and film rather than literature (although it's in play a lot there as well).
You won't get funds for long if you get your whole audience depressed, realism or not
IMHO hard sci-fi is less prone on this one, with even example where mankind is more or less wiped out, like in the novel "The Killing Star", which revolves around the concept that having neighborhood capable to reach relativistic velocities is a danger too great to be left growing. Or the Matrix universe. Or the Xeelee series (until the next time travel
)Overall I think the tropes is mostly used because it resonates with what we want, nothing too special after all. And perhaps because we like a party prevail on another, one with we easily identify, but not the whole species losing to someone else completely alien.
Same reason as most of the stories are on baselines and very rarely on transapients as main protagonists.
I don't think that even OA is immune to this trope: when things turn really bad is always more or less local (system or star cluster, like the Surreal Rash) or far far away (whole galaxy span civilization succumbing to apparent Technocalypse or war) or never terminal (Technocalypse, Da'at getting mad and then vanishing, all the blight and perversion, GAIA, etc...).
Having one of the AI gods breaching the S7 and turning homicidal is something we could expect from OA without any problem, considering its past. But having a depopulated Terragen Sphere where there are only a few scattered survival hiding in the void among the star and those who escaped in basament universe forever sound like a pretty boring setting to me.
Semi-professional threads diverter.