Do science fiction films need to have realistic science?

[philmophlegm]

“An American physicist is calling for Hollywood producers to tone down the fanciful science in movies - and restrict themselves to just one scientific flaw per film.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8530405.stm

So – how real should the science in science fiction be?

Discuss.

Personally, as long as the fictional setting is internally consistent, I’m not overly bothered by fanciful ‘science’ in science fiction. I think science fiction should be more about the fiction than the science.

Comments

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

How about realistic social science? I ask this since someone is making a film of Foundation, and I remember you expressing strong views on psychohistory in the past.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

What were those views?

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Without wishing to put words into skordh's mouth (or indeed bunn's), they both felt that psychohistory was too far-fetched a concept for them to enjoy the fiction. I took the opposite view and felt that psychohistory worked as a high-tech evolution of modern economics in much the same way as say warp drive works as a high-tech evolution of modern rocketry.

[skordh.livejournal.com]

I may well have said that or given the impression of having that view some time ago, but I have always been a big fan of the Foundation books (well, up to and including "Second Foundation" anyway). Psychohistory seems to me a bit implausable but a very entertaining concept and some of the stories are great. (I like The Mule especially). Asimov himself seems to have wilted a bit under criticism and later wrote Prelude To Foundation where he addressed the criticisms of psychohistory from the perspective of chaos theory etc... and 'demonstrated' in the fictional future that psychohistory would work anyway (I believe - many years since I read that one).

I also really like Ursula Le Guin's 'Ekumen' SF books and they too arise from social sciences insofar as they come from anywhere. The 'hard' SF elements don't get much explanation and the characters, atmosphere, cultures and societies are to the fore.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I could cheerfully suspend disbelief for a better writer with a better story to tell, but I just don't find Asimov a compelling enough story teller and I think his characters are mostly just a bit too tedious and cardboardy.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that. I am with you on this one, but I can see the other point of view.