h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There are two schools of writers of SF, The first one puts a (usually) naff story in the future, doesn't check anything, and then calls the book a SF novel. These are usually drivel.
The other sort write "hard science fiction", are usually scientists, and whatever they try and write, they try and check that they have got all of the things that they can check write. These writers tend to write very good books, due to the amount of checking to get rid of the avaidable mistakes.
There is also a third school of SF writers, who are usually unjustly derided. These are authors of hard science fiction who happen to have writen stuff twenty or thirty years ago, before the info that they checked was found to be wrong. As long as you read these books in light of when they were writen, they are usually as good and as enjoyable as any modern hard science fiction.

The danger, though, in hard sci-fi, is to put the focus on the machines and not on the people. As Ted Sturgeon said, after all, all good stories involve passionate human relationships.

True, and I wouln'd contradict theodore sturgeon for anything on that point. The problem comes with those who forget that point, put the story in the future, and then call it sci-fi, without making it consistent with either the genre, or with itself, or with current and forseeable technology. The two best authors that I can think of of hand, who knew the technology in their stories so well, that they could seemlessly integrate it into the plot, are arthur c clarke, and robert heinlein. clarke has been so often right in his technological predictions that have been made just for the sake of the story, that he once said "that I was under the impression that I was a writer of fiction", whereas heinlein, in his predictions of genetic technology, pedicted things that are only now starting to become possible, and then routine (like pre-implantation diagnosis), and geneticaly based computer dating (which the jews are using to help eradicate an epidemic level genetic disease, by making the pairings of people on the database not include any pair who both have the recesive gene).
These authors, and most of the other "hard sci-fi" writers are so interested in the technology, that they also are key players in the fields in question, and thus don't have to think about how the technology will fit into the story, they just write a good story, and if it uses any technology, they already know what the consequences, advantages and disadvantages are. it then integrates seemlessly.