[gmfawcett]

> What very few SF writers understood

"Understood?" They were writing fiction, not instruction manuals.

[KineticLensman]

Well yes, of course, but I was trying to point out one of the reasons for their blind-spots with such predictions. Of course, some hard-SF authors (e.g. Arthur C Clarke) did try to make their stories technically plausible, which gives to some superb anachronisms nowadays, e.g. the classic combination of rocket ships whose crew used slide rules for astronavigation.

[Sakos]

Science fiction that took place in space weren't necessarily predictions. They were imagining what life in space could be like, whether human or not. I don't see how any of us would benefit if every SF author had "realized" that it was unfeasible and just wrote about earth. There was no blind spot, just it did nobody any good to hamper themselves by things like "well, it'll never happen, no point in imagining it". Fiction would be boring if we always only limited ourselves to being completely realistic and true to our current state of knowledge.

[saghm]

They were writing _science_ fiction. Not all of it has to be realistic, but presumably there's at least attempt to ground things in what would be recognizable to readers as science.