"Paul Schlyter" wrote in message
.. .

On Fri, 1 Feb 2013 08:11:49 -0800 (PST), RichA
wrote:
I dream of the day when a good scifi is produced (in this century,
that is) that does not stray from science fact or possibility and is
still entertaining.

In any kind of fiction, including science fiction, you ARE allowed to
stray from fact. That's the very purpose of fiction....
==========================================
Asimov's "positronic brain" for his robots was an unnecessary fantasy
for an artificially intelligent computer, his real fiction was about the
sociological changes that a new technology can bring about. "Beam me up,
Scotty" is about a cell phone before there were cell phones, aliens like
Klingons are merely human beings with funny heads.
Michael Crighton's Jurassic dinosaurs have to be a danger to human beings
or there is no story, the sci part is the extraction of DNA from the gut of
flies in amber that has ingested the animal's blood. In all fiction human
beings and sociological change are the subject, only thinly disguised by
anthropomorphic animals in "Watership Down" or "Animal Farm".
Heinlein's rolling roads are feasible and his "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is
about rebellion, throwing rocks at the Earth is merely the weapon. Bad
fiction is the physically impossible, such as the hero outrunning the
fireball from the explosion or a geostationary satellite positioned over the
North Pole, or people firing beams of light at each other at subsonic speeds
and then, for heavens sake, missing the target.
I agree with RichA's assessment, sci-fi has to be plausible without
violating known laws or else it is fantasy. On the other hand a well written
fantasy can be entertaining and/or instructive if it demonstrates a paradox,
such as time travel.

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