Fixing the Planet of Hats Trope

How to Explain Your Alien Planet’s Single Culture

While Earth has around two hundred countries and thousands of languages and cultures, in science fiction and space opera, alien worlds often have just one. Or at least, only one that we ever see. This is often called the “planet of hats” trope, or an alien monoculture.

Many science fiction fans view single-culture planets as lazy writing. If everyone on an alien world has the same language, beliefs, and fashion sense, the aliens may feel like the same character with a different name, instead of unique people in their own right. Limiting a planet to a single culture can make a setting feel as poorly developed as the characters, just like our world’s many biomes can make a desert planet or jungle planet seem simplistic and uninspired.

Despite the criticism, it’s important to note that the planet of hats trope developed for a reason. Writers can’t exactly show every detail of every country on every planet in their galaxy. They can only write so many pages, after all.

More importantly, when a writer is making a point about a particular aspect of Human culture, it makes sense to focus on that aspect in their story. That’s just how literary themes work. If they want to criticize Human greed, creating an avarice-filled CEO Planet is an efficient way to do that. If they spend too much time on world building and mentioning all the exceptions to the rule, they risk the theme of the story being lost. Instead of a tightly-written critique of “quarterly profits above all,” they have a story about nothing.

It’s perfectly fine to focus on a single country or culture in your alien world. But to avoid your story coming across as a hacky planet of hats, you should do one of two things:

1. Explain why the planet is dominated by a single culture in a believable way that fits with your story’s plot.
2. Explain why your Intergalactic Space Opera Government focuses one culture out of the many on that world.

If you don’t want your readers wondering why all your Reptilians speak Lizardish and wear the same color jumpsuit, build it into your story. Depending on the explanation, it might be the focus of your plot, or just a throwaway line of dialogue. Here are some ideas to explain why your main characters might only ever meet one culture from an alien planet.

(Please note: These ideas are only presented here as ways to make an alien monoculture work better in a story. In real life, a planet dominated by a single, globe-spanning culture would be a tragedy.)

Reasons Why Your Story’s Alien Planet Might Only Have a Single Culture:

• The planet was settled by explorers from a single country on a distant planet. The colony quickly expanded into a globe-spanning, monolingual culture.
• Science Planet was empty only a few years earlier, but an alien mad scientist filled it with his self-replicating clones.
• The richest and most powerful country created a super weapon so terrible that it won every war it fought, or even a single, global war, with the other countries surrendering unconditionally. Its single government became dominant and enforced its culture and language across the globe.
• The wealthiest country produced the best entertainment, so most people emulated them, hoping to become just as rich and famous as the celebrities from Stardom Island.
• The entire planet is obsessed with a popular pop singer and emulates everything she does, from the way she dresses to the way she talks. This planet of hats is the Groupie Planet. This obsessive fandom becomes the dominant global culture, or at least until she puts out an “experimental” album that nobody likes.
• The aliens are a hive mind or shared consciousness. There is only one culture on the planet because there is only one person on the planet, just in many bodies.
• A pandemic killed off most of the planet, except for the one culture lucky enough to have a tradition of ceremonial hand washing. As a result, this planet of hats is the Planet of the Germophobes.
• The world only seems to be a planet of hats because the story is told through an unreliable narrator who has a distorted view of the aliens. The narrator may be prejudiced, lying, exaggerating, or just plain ignorant.
• A country’s wealthy merchants carried its culture everywhere. Wherever they went, the locals were eager to share in their wealth, and intermarried. As the planet became more interconnected, the merchants’ language was adopted for ease of trade and communication.
• The planet is dominated by a globe-spanning mega corporation. Its products and employees spread the company’s culture everywhere, dominating the globe through superior marketing. Instead of a planet of hats, it’s a planet of ads.
• The planet used to have thousands of individual cultures, until the common cold mutated and achieved intelligence. It affected the aliens’ minds, until the planet was dominated by Rhinitis culture.
• The aliens only appear to be a planet of hats to Humans who are unable to appreciate their differences. The aliens’ artwork only appears identical to Humans who can’t see in ultraviolet or detect the pheromones the artworks give off. The aliens’ music all sounds the same to Human ears that can’t appreciate low frequency infrasound. 

Reasons Why Your Characters Focus on One of the Planet’s Many Cultures:

• Most of the aliens are terrified of Humans, believing Earth to be a dangerous and warlike planet. Because of this prejudice, the aliens from Humans and refuse to meet with them. Only one community is foolhardy enough to meet with the Earth ambassador: an island run by violent, bloodthirsty pirates.
• The majority of the aliens are vulnerable to the viruses and bacteria carried by Humans, and is would be incredibly unsafe to meet with the visitors from Earth. Only the country with the most advanced healthcare is willing to risk Humans landing at their spaceport.
• The majority of the aliens believe the “beings from the sky” are really demons and hide whenever they see starships in their skies. As a result, Humans only have the chance to meet a single culture of “heretics” who refuse to believe in evil spirits.  
• The Humans are attempting to start a war on the planet, hoping to build a colony on top of the ruins. The Humans only interact with warlords, supplying them with money and weapons until they destroy each other.
• The aliens are from a planet in the middle of a dark nebula. Their night sky is completely black, with no stars or other planets visible. None of the countries ever developed a space program, as they were completely unaware that space even existed. Only an eccentric alien scientist and her brother ever attempted to travel beyond the dark sky.
• Due to its unsafe, shoddy products, most of the galaxy is involved in a class action lawsuit against Earth. As a result, Humans only associate with the handful of aliens who aren’t suing them.
• When Humans began exploring distant space, they expected the aliens to look roughly like them: a head, eyes, arms and legs, skin, etc. However, most of the galaxy is just plain weird. Aliens are far more likely to have tentacles, eye stalks, scales, and strange features Humans don’t even have words for. Whether due to fear, prejudice, or just looking for common ground, Human explorers prefer to associate with humanoid aliens.

However you explain your alien planet’s single culture, you can make your story more interesting with a “cantina scene” to show off the galaxy’s diversity. While focusing on a single culture might work best for a particular story, it’s the endless possibilities that make space opera so exciting. If your Noble Warrior Reptilians story has a silver-skinned ambassador from another world walk by or a purple ball of tentacles running a food truck, it will hint at something larger, something beyond this world of lizard people. Showing the diversity that lies beyond your story’s planet will make your fictional galaxy feel larger, and your story feel like one part of a sprawling, endless universe.

How do you feel about the planet of hats trope? Do you love it or hate it? Have a favorite planet of hats? Leave a comment below!

If you enjoyed this article, please link to it and share it with your friends. Getting noticed online is harder than ever, so links and shares make a huge difference. If you’re interested in science fiction tropes like the planet of hats, you might also enjoy my article on the used future trope.