Just popping in because I couldn't resist... (warning, this is going to be long) I'm an engineer working in defence, so I do get a fair bit of aerospace stuff passing my way--and I also have a pretty good scientific culture by dint of my training. (In my spare time, however, I moonlight as a fantasy writer, but that's largely irrelevant to my post).
My feeling about the whole "fantasy in space" thing is that it's really hard to draw a line between "plausible" and "cool, but wildly out there". As an engineer, I tend to draw that line rather close to today's science. I don't consider much of SF plausible: with the possible exception of Kim Stanley Robinson, most of the stuff I've read has involved stuff that we don't know how to do because of very serious technological hurdles. That's why I get bored by hard SF: there's no point in explaining to me how you'd put together a space station in orbit around the sun, because it involves lots of things we can't do--and that we very possibly won't ever know how to do. To me, hard SF tends to read much like fantasy: it's impossible, and I don't believe it will be possible. The main thing, I think, about scientific breakthroughs is that they're seldom predictable. Oh sure, you'll get plenty of people who'll argue about how everything fell neatly into place, but how many people predicted the rise of the Net twenty years ago? How many people could foresee the discovery of penicillin? SF has a bad record at accuracy: just read the Golden Age stuff and you'll see that they're wildly off the mark. I'm not asking it to be a plausible future in the sense that it could come to pass (I don't think we can do that; unless we have some kind of psychic talents). I'm just asking the writer to be good enough to handwave it past me. My point of view on the matter is just that if I'm taken for a ride into the future, I'd rather have fun and a good plot (and if possible, not horribly wrong science), than something "plausible" and not "fantasy in space".
That said, I do have a certain amount of knowledge I bet most people don't have, which makes SF a very different reading experience for me. I don't pretend to hold the gospel, but that's the way I see the whole question of plausibility in SF. At some level, all of SF is implausible anyway--or it's just boring because it's too much like what we have now. (there is actually very little innovation in the engineering jobs I'm doing, because it's better to be safe than wildly creative).
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-05-21 02:33 pm (UTC)(warning, this is going to be long)
I'm an engineer working in defence, so I do get a fair bit of aerospace stuff passing my way--and I also have a pretty good scientific culture by dint of my training. (In my spare time, however, I moonlight as a fantasy writer, but that's largely irrelevant to my post).
My feeling about the whole "fantasy in space" thing is that it's really hard to draw a line between "plausible" and "cool, but wildly out there". As an engineer, I tend to draw that line rather close to today's science.
I don't consider much of SF plausible: with the possible exception of Kim Stanley Robinson, most of the stuff I've read has involved stuff that we don't know how to do because of very serious technological hurdles. That's why I get bored by hard SF: there's no point in explaining to me how you'd put together a space station in orbit around the sun, because it involves lots of things we can't do--and that we very possibly won't ever know how to do.
To me, hard SF tends to read much like fantasy: it's impossible, and I don't believe it will be possible. The main thing, I think, about scientific breakthroughs is that they're seldom predictable. Oh sure, you'll get plenty of people who'll argue about how everything fell neatly into place, but how many people predicted the rise of the Net twenty years ago? How many people could foresee the discovery of penicillin? SF has a bad record at accuracy: just read the Golden Age stuff and you'll see that they're wildly off the mark.
I'm not asking it to be a plausible future in the sense that it could come to pass (I don't think we can do that; unless we have some kind of psychic talents). I'm just asking the writer to be good enough to handwave it past me.
My point of view on the matter is just that if I'm taken for a ride into the future, I'd rather have fun and a good plot (and if possible, not horribly wrong science), than something "plausible" and not "fantasy in space".
That said, I do have a certain amount of knowledge I bet most people don't have, which makes SF a very different reading experience for me. I don't pretend to hold the gospel, but that's the way I see the whole question of plausibility in SF. At some level, all of SF is implausible anyway--or it's just boring because it's too much like what we have now.
(there is actually very little innovation in the engineering jobs I'm doing, because it's better to be safe than wildly creative).