Jim Henderson wrote:
> I personally tend towards that as well - pushing the boundaries of 
> science is what it's about; Jurassic Park was science fiction, even 
> though that technology doesn't exist today.  It's something that's 
> possible.

To me, it doesn't matter if it's actually possible or not. It's whether 
you can tell the story without the science. Saying "Imagine a movie just 
like Jurassic park, but without dinosaurs" makes no sense. There is no 
story there but for the dinosaurs. Or "Imagine back to the future, 
without a time machine."

Could you tell the Terminator story without the science? Yeah, almost 
kinda. All you need is someone who is really, really hard to kill. You 
could imagine it as some super-strong dude in the centuries where 
weapons that killed effortlessly weren't around, or a really smart 
gunslinger in the old west who took a dislike to somebody. Sort of like 
the Black Knight kind of story, or Beowulf.

I certainly prefer "hard" science, myself.

> I think one of the hallmarks of good Science Fiction is that the author 
> does some research into the field he's writing about.

Yep. Depends, of course, on what they're trying to express, tho.

I'm reading a novel right now called "star farers", basically about the 
people who get on close-to-lightspeed ships, and how it affects them, 
and how the societies react to them as they show up hundreds of years 
apart. It's 95% talking between characters, and 0.3% science, just 
enough in the beginning to let you know there's science, with lots of 
quantum mumbo-jumbo about the new inertia free drive that lets you get 
up to high tau.  But it's still science fiction, because it's about the 
time dialation, and it wouldn't make sense to tell the story without that.

> I actually haven't read Ringworld.  Need to do that one of these days.

I quite enjoyed it. The ones after were much less interesting, IMO.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
  Helpful housekeeping hints:
   Check your feather pillows for holes
    before putting them in the washing machine.

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