Quote:
Originally Posted by UKHaiku
Ahhh... But who decides what's credible...?  |
As your question suggests, it's not up to one person. Ultimately, it's up to the authors and their readers to decide what is credible, what is not, and whether or not to suspend your personal disbelief long enough to enjoy reading (or writing) the story anyway.
Personally, I'm not above writing "incredible" things. But I try to keep it to a minimum when writing something that is supposed to be "hard" SF.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pilotbob
Um... erm... isn't that the "fiction" part of science fiction?  |
Not at all... credibility indicates whether or not it
can happen. Fiction defines whether or not it
did happen (and therefore becomes fact). You can combine the two in four combinations: Could have happened, and did; could have happened, but didn't; couldn't have happened, and didn't; and sometimes the most interesting, couldn't have happened, but did anyway.