I'm a big fan of Jack Vance. Jack Vance has written a fair amount of fantasy. I once commented to Jack, that I preferred hard SF to fantasy (although some of my favorite works are Vance's picaresque fantasies, e.g. his Cugel Saga, "Rhialto the Marvellous", etc.). Jack responded that hyperdrive or FTL travel really has no physical basis and is pretty much on the same level as a magic sword. Most modern SF assumes some sort of FTL travel. It's an interesting observation that the requirement of interstellar travel really does knock SF down to the level of Swords and Sorcery. IMHO, unrestricted fantasy has been and still is killing Science Fiction (hasn't helped science a whole lot either). One could see the rot setting in during the 1980s when the Tolkien knockoffs were getting popular along with the D&D games. The drift away from hard SF towards Star Wars and Star Trek knock-offs has only accelerated the process of decay. Probably the only viable remedy to this process is some sort of clearly defined rule based SF. Mundane SF maybe the answer. One could counter-argue that the rules restricting Mundane SF would take the fun out of SF. My snappy come back is you can have both. I like J.S. Bach because he could produce such beautiful music within the strict rules of Baroque music. However I like Alanis Morissette and Led Zepplin almost as much as Johann Sebastian. It's following the rules for a particular style of music that makes music beautiful.

Gary