*Goes over to the corner with a pair of Budweisers*

Did you know that CSI:Crime Scene Investigation once recycled the same solution for catching serial killers? Maybe more than once. There's this little trick of statistics based upon the theory that criminals don't commit crimes close to home where they might be recognized, but also don't commit crimes in unfamiliar areas. So there's a Goldilocks zone around their residence where they'll commit crimes. Of course there's limitations, like if a criminal commutes to work and therefore is familiar with a narrow band of land far from his home, but CSI ignored this. They re-discovered the tactic in a later season, this time with an analogy to yard sprinklers.

Weird to bring up since CSI isn't really science fiction, but I think it's a perfect illustration of the gulf between technobabble and science fiction. Technobabble is tame. Safe. Take it out to resolve the plot, and it's back in the cage before the credits roll. It doesn't frame the plot, it's not a force the writer has to reckon with. Teleporters that beam people from one star system to the next will never endanger spaceship travel, or force navies to rethink warfare from the ground up.

A real science fiction writer would have taken that statistical trick and pushed it until it broke. The CSI team would have used it and used it and learned what the limitations are, maybe even realize that the algorithm is throwing suspicion upon innocent people because it's only as good as the investigative techniques that turn up the statistical data.

There's so many different flavors of science fiction, but only that which slavishly emulates Star Trek seems to make it through Hollywood. They keep sneering at the audience and saying that the plebs on the street will never understand what a Bussard Ramscoop is, will never go to see a movie that treats orbital mechanics seriously. And so the only movies and television shows we will see treat science as a different brand of fantasy, or they'll be beautiful to look at and absolutely incoherent to follow.
I saw Guardians of the Galaxy and it was the greatest space opera I'll ever see, but I saw Star Trek and I'll see the Star Wars sequels and I saw what they did to Ender's Game and I saw what they did to Mass Effect and I saw how they ignored Gravity and I saw how they butchered the concept of the Singularity and I... And... I...

Do you think Interstellar will be good?