Thought: extreme realism and scientific/technical accuracy weakens science fiction. The implausible stuff is a stand-in for actual strangeness in the future we can’t predict but we know will be there. It’s like lorem ipsum future magic.
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In 1945 you couldn’t see Moore’s law coming but extrapolating space travel wildly via “hyperspace” gave you something at least as strange as the internet world Moore’s law actually dumped us in
Today, extrapolate internet wildly to get strangeness of say biohacked future
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I don’t need realism, I need plausibility. FFS it’s sci-fi, I want some thoughtful fiction in there, but I don’t want unexplainable magic. The Expanse was phenomenal until the Protomolecule’s effect was shown. Would have been better to tease it forever & keep focus on the people
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Agreed. I wouldn't even call it "realism"... there's no way the future will be some kind of projection of the present (with more 19th century Malthusian) but with spaceships.
But hey, given all that The Expanse is still entertaining.
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What weakens SF (we are taking hard SF, mind) is not the lack of realism or predictive accuracy but the lack of *internal consistency,* i.e. sloppy worldbuilding.
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That’s fine, but it’s still grating when SF writers don’t even try to get fairly basic science that we *do* know right. (Hollywood screenwriters are far worse about this than print authors.)
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Right. But I think there's probably a sweet spot between realism and imagination. Kinda like max (electrical) power transfer (when load resistance = source internal resistance).
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Myth=what never was, but always is. (Stephen of Byzantium)
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Science Fiction=modern myth.
.:.
Good SF tells us what will never be, yet's eternal, especially our anxiety about the future.
vs. bad SF substitutes precision for accuracy, e.g. "47.13948858 seconds is average.."
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