After forty years of designing actual spacecraft and reading science fiction that imagined futures I was trying to help build, I’ve got some strong opinions about what makes sci-fi criticism worth reading. Most of it isn’t, frankly. Too many critics focus on the wrong things – they praise stories for “scientific accuracy” when the science is completely wrong, or they dismiss solid hard sci-fi as boring because it takes physics seriously.
I started writing about science fiction after I retired, partly because I finally had time, but mostly because I was tired of reading criticism from people who clearly didn’t understand basic physics. You know what I mean – reviewers gushing over movies where spaceships bank and turn like fighter jets, or praising novels for their “realistic” faster-than-light travel. It drives me nuts.
Growing up in the 1960s during the space race, I was absolutely obsessed with everything NASA was doing. Watched the moon landing as a kid and decided right then I wanted to work in space exploration. My dad was a mechanical engineer, mom was a math teacher, so I had the support to actually pursue that dream. Read every sci-fi novel I could find, especially the hard sci-fi that took science seriously – Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, the writers who understood that the best speculation comes from understanding real constraints.
What I learned over decades of actual aerospace work is that science fiction’s real power isn’t in the flashy stuff – the explosions, alien invasions, or noisy space battles. Those have their place, sure, but the genre’s true strength lies in exploring “what if” scenarios with genuine scientific rigor. When a story respects physics, chemistry, and biology, it creates a foundation where the speculative elements feel earned, believable.
Take Andy Weir’s The Martian – his portrayal of Mars survival is rooted in practical science and engineering. When he asks “what if an astronaut gets stranded on Mars,” he actually follows through with realistic solutions. The story works because Weir did his homework. He understands orbital mechanics, atmospheric pressure, how solar panels work in Martian conditions. That attention to detail creates genuine narrative tension because we know these challenges could actually happen.
Compare that to most modern sci-fi, which treats science like window dressing. I’ll watch something like the recent Star Trek films and just… sigh. Transporters, warp drive, fine – those are established fantasy elements. But when they show starships falling through a planet’s atmosphere like dropped rocks, completely ignoring how spacecraft actually work, it breaks my immersion entirely. If you’re going to ignore physics, why set your story in space at all?
The Expanse, though – now that’s a series that gets it right. I’m consistently impressed by their attention to detail, from gravity’s effects on the human body to maintaining the silent vacuum of space. They understand that space travel is dangerous, that human bodies can only adapt so much to non-Earth conditions. When they create tension around asteroid belt mining or zero-gravity combat, it feels genuine because the writers respect real constraints.
But here’s the thing – scientific accuracy is just one piece of great sci-fi. A story can have perfect physics and still be terrible if the characters are cardboard or the plot makes no sense. I’ve read plenty of hard sci-fi that was technically sound but emotionally dead. Good science fiction needs to work on multiple levels – the science has to be plausible, the story structure has to be solid, and it needs to explore meaningful themes about what it means to be human.
That’s where most critics fall short, I think. They either focus entirely on the science and ignore everything else, or they dismiss the science as unimportant and miss how it serves the story. When I analyze a work, I’m looking at how all the pieces fit together. Does the scientific speculation support the themes? Do the technical details enhance the narrative tension? Is the author using real science as a springboard for meaningful exploration of bigger questions?
Take Arrival – the 2016 film based on Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life.” The linguistic concepts aren’t just clever background details; they’re central to the story’s exploration of time, causality, and human communication. Chiang understands both the science and the philosophy well enough to use one to illuminate the other. That’s what separates good sci-fi from mere technobabble.
I get frustrated with movies and shows that sacrifice science for spectacle – they might be entertaining, but I finish feeling like I can’t take them seriously beyond wish fulfillment. The recent Star Wars sequels, for example… look, I understand Star Wars was always more space fantasy than science fiction, but at least the original films had internal consistency. The newer ones just throw around sciency-sounding terms without any concern for whether they make sense within their own universe.
Ex Machina is another example of sci-fi done right. It explores AI consciousness and the ethical questions around creating artificial intelligence, but it grounds those concepts in real computer science and cognitive theory. The philosophical questions feel urgent because the technology feels plausible. We’re not that far from having to grapple with these issues in reality, and the film respects that by taking the science seriously.
The philosophical dimension is what really sets great science fiction apart from other genres. At its best, sci-fi works as thought experiments, letting us explore concepts like consciousness, identity, free will, and human nature through speculative scenarios. Blade Runner 2049 uses replicants to question what constitutes authentic experience – is K’s identity struggle really different from a human’s? What makes a memory “real”? These aren’t idle academic questions when they’re grounded in believable technology.
This is what I try to bring to my criticism – an understanding that the best science fiction operates on multiple levels simultaneously. It needs scientific plausibility to create believable worlds, solid storytelling craft to engage readers emotionally, and philosophical depth to explore meaningful questions about human nature and our future.
Most sci-fi criticism I read focuses on just one of these elements, usually poorly. You get reviewers who nitpick scientific details without understanding the larger story, or critics who treat sci-fi like literary fiction and completely ignore the scientific speculation that makes the genre unique. Both approaches miss the point.
What really annoys me is when critics praise obviously unscientific stories for their “realism” or dismiss hard sci-fi as cold and unemotional. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, for example – incredibly detailed, scientifically rigorous exploration of terraforming Mars, but also deeply human stories about politics, relationships, and what it means to build a new society. Yet I’ve seen critics call it dry because it takes the science seriously.
The narrative complexity in the best sci-fi serves the themes, not the other way around. Christopher Nolan’s Tenet has an impressively complex structure, but I question whether all that temporal mechanics actually supports the story’s emotional core or just gets lost in its own cleverness. Compare that to something like Dark, where the time travel complexities directly reflect the characters’ struggles with determinism and fate. The structure serves the story.
When I write about science fiction, I’m trying to show readers how these different elements work together in the best examples of the genre. Science fiction gives us a unique way to examine our own world – our societies, values, and possible futures. But only if we take both the science and the fiction seriously.
My goal is simple: raise the level of discussion about science fiction. I want people to look past the visual effects and recognize the concepts that make this such a rich genre. Too much modern sci-fi has become space fantasy with sciency aesthetics but no real concern for plausibility. That’s fine for entertainment, I guess, but it’s not what drew me to science fiction as a kid watching the moon landing.
The best sci-fi respects both scientific knowledge and storytelling craft while using both to explore profound questions about humanity’s place in the universe. That’s worth taking seriously, even if it makes me seem like a grumpy old engineer. Which I am, and I’m okay with that.
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