[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

<chuckle>

The late L. Sprague de Camp decided part way through his career that FTL travel was impossible, and stopped using it in his stories, because he felt what was portrayed in SF should be possible, even if we didn't know how to do it now.

I personally agree: If it isn't credible, it shouldn't be part of an SF story. Of course, that just means that if you use it anyway (as I did in Berserker and Sol, for instance) that you just consider it "soft" SF, which is generally defined as SF with additional non-credible elements tied in... like Star Wars, Star Trek, etc.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

In the old days, SF writers felt they had to provide explanations of how such things worked (even if it was essentially handwavium) when they used such elements in a story.

That's why I was always tickled by Star Trek's incredibly transparent way of creating new, miraculously-advanced elements: duotronium... tritanium... quatrotriticale...