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Comment by philipov | Hacker News Reader

Once you accept that premise, throw rationalizations out the window. There's no point theorycrafting, just make up anything you like. Whether or not something is possible is a function of what is needed for the story. The answer to any such question is, "Do you want it to be?"

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The best science fiction and fantasy begins by taking a few specific assumptions, which may be fantastical, but then exploring the consequences of those assumptions in a disciplined way. For example having one form of FTL travel with known limitations in an SF setting and exploring the possibilities within those rules.

Writers that take your approach - it’s all made up so I’ll just make up new rules whenever so feel like it - are rarely satisfying because the reader can’t trust anything or reason about the setting or the characters choices.

This is the problem with J.J. Abrams approach Star Trek and Star Wars. He seemed to take a special glee in arbitrarily violating established conventions in the settings with respect to things like how Warp Drive and Transporter technology work in Star Trek.

There is "hard" and "soft" magic in fantasy, just as there's "hard" and "soft" science in SF. A story with magic in the premise still needs that magic to have rules and limitations, even if they're not communicated to the reader - even the soft magic of myth and fairy tales needs to have some sense of internal logic.

I enjoy Dune a lot, but what you describe is absolutely the basis for any science in the story. It’s less science fiction and more high fantasy.

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