[Dr. Sivana]

The “suspension of disbelief” will only stretch so far, and spaceships maneuvering like airplanes and asteroid fields acting like potato storms all add up into something that isn’t believable anymore, and ruins the immersion into the story. The audience of ten year old boys buy into it, and the stories get more and more fantastic.

I grew up on DC Superhero comics, and Superman, Flash and most of the Silver Age Heroes tried to place a veneer of "science" around the character. If you read the original one page Superman story, a real attempt is made to come up with a serious "scientific" explanation for his then quite limited powers (e.g. could jump far, but not yet fly). What happens with series is powers accrue, and both heroes and villains get stronger. Attempts to further explain Supes' powers falls into the realm of pseudo-science-silliness and before you know it, he's blowing out suns like birthday candles.



I know this is far afield from science fiction, but the genres are intertwined. "Realistic" science fiction set into the future can only guess at the outcomes of further study of physics. Even early masters like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne were pretty light on the science part, though they have to be considered foundational to modern science fiction.

[Telepathic Intruder]

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. That Arthur C. Clark quote has become a mantra for sci-fi. Meaning that you can never expect or explain what futuristic technology would look like or how it works, which gives the writer the freedom to do the seemingly impossible. But a complete misunderstanding of fundamental physical laws is another thing. So the best science fiction writers tend to be scientists themselves, or at least have a good understanding of it.