Claire
Claire asked R. James Stevens:

When writing sci fi/future stories - do you think, as a writer, you need to know all the mechanics of your world beforehand? Like ship design & how individual technologies work etc or do you just make it up - sorry, develop it - as you need it?

R. James Stevens There's a lot of gray areas there, and I would say it depends on what you are writing, and into which portion of SciFi it falls. Hard SciFi - you most definitely have to have a handle on things technology-wise. Those fans are expecting the real deal, and straying too far from what has already been established in other SciFi material is a killer as far as gaining/maintaining fans is concerned.

However, farther down the spectrum, when you create your own worlds its a little more forgiving to create things how you want them without regard to how it "should" be in real life. After all, this is Science FICTION, right?

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