> But you have to try and explain the magic. You don't always have to. Vernor Vinge explains it as, you are allowed one central conceit which frees you to deep

> But you have to try and explain the magic. You don't always have to. Vernor Vinge explains it as, you are allowed one central conceit which frees you to deeply explore some core theme. That single wild assumption has the interesting property of being both inconsequential to the themes you wish to explore and the single thing that makes it all work. A lot of good hard science fiction has this property: there is internal consistency and broad agreement with real world physics but with at most a single unexamined wild assumption from which the consistently handled deviations flow from. The Zones in his Zones of thought or the Bobbles in Across Real-time are examples of this principle applied for excellent effect. Orthogonal by Egan is an interesting one when viewed in this lens, what with it being physically unrealistic but mathematically driven. A lot of would be hard scifi authors, in the hopes of increased realism, mistakenly add too much unnecessary detail to the detriment of their story or core big idea. On the other hand, if you manage your central conceit well, you might sometimes be able to enlist the imagination of your readers (some of whom will have more technical expertise in the relevant area) to fill in the blanks.