I've always wondered why physics is given primacy here - what is the point if your space travel is plausible but your biology is full of magical thinking? Beyo

I've always wondered why physics is given primacy here - what is the point if your space travel is plausible but your biology is full of magical thinking? Beyond that lots of 'hard SF' is full very unsophisticated thinking about economies, social constructs, politics, etc. I think this doesn't reflect poorly on the authors so much as on how difficult it is to get all of this stuff right, even with a ton of research. One advantage mainstream fiction has in this regard is that by relying on a backdrop of "real world" events they will at least pass a sniff test even if you as the author haven't put much thought into it. Not that spec. fiction. authors don't crib extensively from history etc., also - but the desire to demonstrate the alien nature of things often unravels quickly as an author reaches the limits of their expertise/time/research abilities. I think it is one of the weaknesses of novel (let alone series) length work in this area that you can't help but expose the holes in the artifice. It's ok, readers have suspension of disbelief, but a strength of short fiction here is that you don't end up building in implausible or contradictory content in background material. It is interesting when a SF author chooses to try and get some other part of the world "right": e.g. Vinge, Butler, Stross, etc.