[throw4847285]

I have the inverse perspective. I am uninterested in the mechanics because to me, all science fiction stories are actually stories about the present. The more mechanical a story is, the more I feel it is obscuring that truth. The author can never erase the fact that they are living in the present and that their work is ultimately about the present. They can only obscure it under layers of verisimilitude that, definitionally, is only an appearance.

[sonofhans]

I remember reading a golden age science fiction story where an engineer is angry because he dropped his slide rule as he was getting into his backyard moon rocket. We’ve not always been good at predicting the future, that’s for sure.