The Expanse novels & series and Hail Mary have ruined me for fantasy-science-fiction. I love the idea of having one big conceit and then building a universe that is as consistent as possible with everything from known physics to known sociology and psychology given that conceit.
For the expanse it was fusion drives and the protomolecule. For Hail Mary it was astrophage.
Just like the magical linguistic tools of Hail Mary, the Expanse broke this a bit too with things like spinning up the asteroids without ripping them apart. But, these are still two of the best hard science fiction out there. Sorry Cixin, Remembrance of Earth's Past was fantastic but it quickly devolved into fantasy.
One note, I always thought the spinning up asteroids part of The Expanse was particularly unfortunate because the plot would have worked just as well with giant spinning stations on the asteroid surfaces to let the belters live in limited gravity.
I think drivers are fine with causing a certain amount of risk to pedestrians. Strong, predictable penalties would lower the typical risk level drivers were willing to subject pedestrians to.
It’s not binary, it’s a distribution and I do believe you can alter that distribution.
- https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...