I’m curious what users feel makes a great sci-fi story. What elements do you feel “make or break” the story specifically where sci-fi is concerned? For me, I really enjoyed the Expanse series, as it feels like there’s a sort of “believability” to it all. The authors make everything seem very realistic, even if some of the descriptions and physics are made up.
What is it about your favorite sci-fi books and shows that make them your favorites?
Starting with a world and rules for that world and allowing the various entities to intelligently work with those rules. As opposed to starting with a story and plot and then ignoring things that would complicate or defeat that plot.
Star wars ep 8 is an example of that second one. If you could destroy ships by just ramming them with another one at light speed, then there would be a ton of weaponry based on that, probably even being a great equalizer that prevented any kind of empire from growing too powerful because any concentrated power would get hit by asteroids with light speed propulsion and navigation systems strapped on. Not to mention the numerous tactical errors made and them somehow immediately guessing the weakness of a brand new tech they had only heard rumors about prior to it being deployed against them.
I think part of what made the Expanse so great was that they followed this. Those rules happened to be similar to the ones we have (ignoring the alien advanced tech stuff).
Star Trek is another example of world first, then plot within that world.
Even more comedy style stuff like Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett do well with that, where they have rules thrown in for humour but then still figure out how to make the plot remain consistent with those and allow propagandists and antagonists to play intelligently by those rules.
I hate it when the question “why didn’t they just do instead?” is answered with “it’s just a story, don’t think about it too much”. It’s just lazy/shitty writing and producers that don’t really care and just want their paycheck IMO.