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Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
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.  |
Sure, but what's credible varies by author and reader.
One of the basic rules that arose in the SF community was that you could postulate whatever you liked for future developments like FTL travel, but you had to get what we
currently knew right. Not getting the
existing science right was an automatic fail for a book calling itself SF.
Some folks liked fantasy because it lacked that particular requirement. But fantasy places its own demands. Your fantasy world may use magic, but the magic has rules governing it, and you better think them through and have things internally consistent if you hope to write a successful book.
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That's why I was always tickled by Star Trek's incredibly transparent way of creating new, miraculously-advanced elements: duotronium... tritanium... quatrotriticale...
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A friend used to be a moderator on one of the "official" ST web boards. She described time spent trying to explain to posters that much of Star Trek came about because a writer needed a way to get from point A to point B in a script, and blithely ignored the effects on continuity and the implications of the device they used. She talked about "Handwavium" and "McGyverite" as the most important scientific elements normally used.
See Scott (Dilbert) Adams'
essay on the matter.
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Dennis