Fair, but don't you think that this might depend on the audience a work is trying to reach? If a work is going for the Star Wars audience, it can say that the "technology" is created by exotic crystals from the Big Bang, and the viewers or readers will accept that it can do anything. If the work is going for the The Martian audience, it could give the equations of motion and the audience might still complain.

@Obie2.0, your comment falls under time. The first man on Mars is maybe a few decades away.... Star Wars isn't relatable to our time at all – aside from being a fairy tale with anachronistic elements, the "technology" is (maybe) thousands of years off (if not tens of thousands).

I'm not sure what you're saying. Some of the technology in Star Wars is thousands of years off, some is decades off, some is impossible. Although the series is actually set in the past. But I wasn't talking about that: I was saying that perhaps there are actually differences between audiences in how much deviation from the established principles of science they're willing to accept. I could have mentioned the MCU (extremely loose "science" set in the present) vs. Ancillary Justice (more solid science set in the far future) to illustrate the point about different audience expectations.

LOL! Do you believe MCU fans would reject the franchise and stage a boycott if those scripts made an attempt to be more than magic people chasing magic candy crystals? No one considers those movies "sci-fi", anymore than Scooby-Doo is "sci-fi" for having a talking dog. Harry Potter is closer to sci-fi than the MCU.

It seems like we're talking past each other. I wasn't calling the MCU good science, quite the opposite. I don't think there would be a boycott, but don't you think that fans of the MCU and fans of "hard sci-fi" might have different preferences or expectations for scientific plausibility, independent from that time factor you mention? That's why I mentioned Leckie as someone whose work is set in the far future but is still (fairly) hard sci-fi. I could also mention the Culture novels or whatnot.

I'm speaking as someone who actually doesn't like hard sci-fi much, in the present or thousands of years in the future. I only watched a few MCU movies after they tossed out the science veneer with Doctor Strange. I guess I would "boycott" (not watch) an MCU film that tried to be like the The Martian.

MCU falls under leave it unexplained (I specifically used an MCU example: distraction dance from Guardians1). Those stories are not sci-fi, not even "bad" sci-fi. Genre is defined by a lot more than just "at some point someone says a pseudo-science explanation". Genres have inherent themes, stock characters, archetypes, specific universal rules…. The OP is about breaking one of those rules within a specific genre…. We approach the questions here as writers, not as fans debating the validity of summer blockbusters. "As Seen on TV" is not an excuse for poor writing.

@wetcircuit Writers often must respond to fans, though. Particularly if they intend to sell books. And as such surely knowing whether one's audience wants a scientific (or pseudo-scientific) explanation is useful to keep in mind?

I don't really agree with the "some fans". I think the real issue is "some stories". No amount of infodump and technobabble is going to make me think the MCU or Tranformers are less dumb. Fanboys gushed on and on how "realistic" The Expanse was, all I could see was telepathic mushroom zombies and another White Savior farmboy.

Over at Worldbuilding they pretend to have a hierarchy of physics realism, but that's also relative. Fairytales like "Alcubierre drive" are allowed because they sound science-y to pseudo-intellectuals. It's really just posturing and gatekeeping.

My answer isn't some philosophical debate. The OP wanted to know how to get away with not describing his tech. Whether or not he has any fans to please is kind of irrelevant – if they exist, they don't factor into the answer at all.

It wasn't clear what his story was about, so I can't answer in a story specific way. I had to give the standard options, plus a few ex-worldbuilding options, which it seemed like maybe that was what he wanted to do, but it wasn't really clear.

In reality, the OP probably just doesn't want to do any research to work out the science plausibility of his MacGuffin. That's fine, it's kind of like asking what his "fans" would prefer. Is there really a story? Are there any fans? Do we give the benefit of the doubt? How much should we assume is "true" in any question...

Do his fans deserve a real explanation…? Well they don't exist, so I'd ask: Does his story deserve real science? No, not if it belongs in the MCU or Star Wars.

If he's done some research and the science is somewhat based on reality, great! But that doesn't seem like the question he asked. I'm not trying to be insulting, there are all kinds of stories. Some don't really need science, not when it's about having a pure heart or being born magical, those stories don't deserve science, no matter who the fans might be.