re: #499 LudwigVanQuixote

As a crazy physicist, I will say that there is just enough room for “loopholes” in the physics that I can’t rule out deep space travel completely. For certain, we have no way of doing it now or in the foreseeable future, but things like wormholes do exist as solutions to Einstein’s Field equations and the existence and nature of dark energy leaves room for speculation.

As to what is realistic, the science fiction IMHO takes what is always true about people and sets up conditions that allow the author to explore it.

In many ways, the best science fiction is vastly more real than any other fiction because it is free to go into all sorts of other corners that other fiction can not. And yes, that is sometimes very depressing. Other times, it is beautiful.

I thought Michael Crichton’s novels had good science in them, but then he wrote that awful anti-AGW screed “State of Fear”