SF stories have to pick and choose which tech they emphasize and which they gloss over. As a rule of thumb, tech shouldn't be explained much in detail unless it

SF stories have to pick and choose which tech they emphasize and which they gloss over. As a rule of thumb, tech shouldn't be explained much in detail unless it helps move the story along, or helps to describe the constraints in which the characters make decisions, making for a more interesting story. The most elegant SF stories IMO gloss over a lot of tech - Inception for example, never explains a single technical detail about the machines that power the dream world, instead focusing purely on the human interactions. A counterexample is Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, which focuses heavily on tech and makes a good attempt at keeping it within the realm of physics while still describing interesting ideas - however much of the theme of the book is how technology develops as a product of its environment and how it builds on existing tech in a collective way, so it contributes to the story. Even so, it was criticized for being too technical (even though I enjoyed that part of it immensely). Another example is 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson, which makes the mistake of focusing too much on the tech - in fact the whole plot is essentially a vehicle for the author to describe all the possible human habitats that could exist in space.