The vast majority of high-concept science fiction has very little to do with science, and much more to do with an audience that (a) would like for magic to exist and (b) wants to be taken seriously as members of a modern society who future improves over its past.
This insecurity is most profound in people who insist that they like science fiction but dislike "fantasy."
The thing about "hard" science fiction is not that there's anything wrong with making a book about plausible future tech, but that the audience which judges science fiction by its hardness as a metric of value is largely coterminous with obnoxious tech bros. Also, it's fairly trivial to observe how frequently the term is misapplied by its advocates. Overall that crowd has a very elon musk-ass way of engaging with the idea of the future that is deeply tedious.
Also: the "science" in science fiction can be social science rather, and science fiction is generally better when it embraces anthropology, sociology, politics, linguistics, etc. This is one of the reasons new wave SF was one of the high points of the genre.
To the extent that it's coherent to draw a line between science fiction and fantasy, I think actually the more useful distinction is between works that have thought experiments at their core (which actually makes them philosophical more than "scientific") and works that are about indulging the freedom to build a story with no regard to mundane realism. (This is not a value distinction; the former isn't inherently better than the latter or vice versa. Also, obviously much speculative fiction partakes of both, and the subgenre trappings (spaceships vs. dragons etc.) are largely irrelevant.)
oh, but as for my hot takes
- Cyberpunk mostly sucks. (Read The Fortunate Fall though!)
- White people should mostly not write dystopias because they keep just doing "what if what happens to people who aren't white, were to start happening to people who are white"
- Sarah Connor Chronicles is better than virtually all other time travel stories and robot stories in tv and cinema.
Even the shows like Babylon 5 and The Expanse which are genuinely entertaining and well made are really mangled in their messaging.
Not Planetes though. Holy shit watch Planetes.
