Evening all. I've been lurking awhiles, checking out the Cantina crowd (Cylons in the far corner, I'm watching you) and now I think I'll pull up a bar stool and ask for a shot of that Ol' Janx Spirit (leave the bottle, barkeep, leave the bottle).
My tuppence worth, for what it's worth (about 3 US cents, according to google converter) is the observation that a lot of the science in science fiction is basically 'Abracadabra!' with - sometimes - a couple of equations thrown in for good measure. All you're looking for - unless you're a sci-fi author in the mould of AC Clarke or Larry Niven - is a superficial gloss of feasibility.
An example from my own work (go on, indulge me). I write about military spacecraft. The primary close-range [because the inverse square law holds true in space too] antiship weapons are lasers. Some ships employ 'refractory shielding' as a defence. Others use an armour of 'contiguous microspines', which are capable of 'bending' impacting laser-fire by diverting the photons along planes of zero reflectivity. The practical upshot of this is that a laser will bounce off at right angles.
Now, I am not a scientist. There are huge problems with the systems I just described. But the problems aren't obvious - at least on a superficial level - and so the systems sound feasible enough to be getting on with. They won't convince a scientist who knows even the basics of high-energy physics, but they sound damn impressive to a layperson like me. Since my books are written for laypeople, not specialists (because I don't know enough to fool them for long, and they're a smaller audience [read: 'potential market'] anyway) I'm quite happy with that.
The function of research is to enable you to lie convincingly. Anything beyond that is a bonus.
Ol' Janx Spirit, anyone?
BM