Quote:
Originally Posted by David Munch
This. I think many people have a heard time imagining how things will develop, since science has reached a level where most people can't keep up, unless they actively work or study in the field.
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It's been this way with science, ever since about 10 minutes after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. 40 years ago, people thought they'd just reached the point at which we could no longer keep up with technology... they called it "future shock." Around the turn of the (20th) century, a patent clerk proclaimed that everything that could be invented had been invented.
Science is always two steps ahead of the public consciousness, and the public has always had a hard time envisioning what the future would be like. But that's okay, because we had SF to show them what it might be like, or what about the future would be most important (or troubling) to them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by David Munch
For authors, you need to do quite a big amount of research, if you want something that is explained properly and sounds feasible. With fantasy, the setting is already "Well, elves and dragons are here, so I might as well do anything", and thus easier to write.
If you settle for a random story IN SPACE, then it doesn't really matter if it takes place a long long time ago, or 10.000 years from now, as long as your plot device is working.
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This may be
too simple a comparison. Fantasy has a logic to it, even if it involves elves and dragons; and inconsistency can be as bad for a fantasy story as it is for an SF story. It's easy to say fantasy authors can just make it up as they go, but to an extent, so do many SF authors for the simple reason of expediting storylines (and just as Gene Roddenberry invented the Transporter for
Star Trek, not out of an understanding of technology, but out of a need to save his production and SFX budget by removing landing craft).[/QUOTE]