Science & Tech Quote by Sarah Zettel

Science fiction gets branded as the “serious” speculative genre because it borrows the costume of reality: lab coats, mission briefings, plausible timelines. Zettel punctures that prestige with a craft note that doubles as a quiet provocation. She admits she does more close research and fact-checking for science fiction not because SF is inherently smarter, but because its contract with the reader is stricter. If you’re going to invoke actual physics, medicine, or geopolitics, you’re inviting readers to audit you. The thrill of SF is often the feeling that the impossible is only one grant proposal away, so a sloppy detail doesn’t just read as an error; it collapses the illusion.

Then comes the real point: fantasy isn’t a research-free playground. Zettel’s subtext is aimed at a lazy hierarchy that treats dragons as an excuse to wing it. “Good research” in fantasy just looks different. It’s anthropology, ecology, linguistics, logistics, power dynamics - the hidden math of how a world hangs together. You may invent the magic, but you can’t invent your way out of consequences: what people eat, how wars are financed, what institutions protect (or crush) belief.

Context matters here: Zettel is writing in an era when fandoms and online communities make fact-checkers out of readers, and when genre boundaries blur. Her line is a reminder that worldbuilding isn’t decoration; it’s credibility. The best speculative fiction, whether it cites NASA or a made-up pantheon, earns trust by doing its homework.