[Telepathic Intruder]

Good science fiction is real science combined with fictional stories. But what you find with a lot of science fiction is fake science and fictional stories, especially in TV shows and movies. What you find in really, really bad science fiction is authors trying to use science to disprove God, which doesn’t work. Science and religion do not mix on the level that you’re using one to prove or disprove the other.

[Dr. Sivana]

Good science fiction is real science combined with fictional stories.

It sounds like you want to subdivide into sci-fi and science fantasy.

Anything with time travel (especially into the past), or zipping through galaxies in the time it might take Lewis and Clark to get to Oregon is too much of a staple of great stories that everyone regards as Science Fiction to say it isn't real science fiction, or that it is "bad" science fiction.

To me, Science Fiction and Science Fantasy (many pseudo-scientific superheroes like the Flash fall into that category) is a way to come up with stories that people can relate to, while tickling the imagination, but also to have as givens things that are impossible to have in real life, so that we could think through the consequences of the imaginary version. The Twilight Zone was mostly straight-up fantasy that never tried to explain the MacGuffin (Bill Mumy as an omnipotent youngster, store mannequins becoming beautiful human women for a day). You just suspend disbelief and enjoy the story.

I am afraid "Star Trek" would fail your test almost as badly as "Lost in Space".

[31R1O]

Michael Crichton was a master of this.