I like speculation about the future as much as anybody. I enjoyed Edward Lerner's description nanobots in Small Miracles and I regularly read web sites such as Next Big Future. However, imagined technologies are not as fun as engaging characters and interesting situations. I have been reading John Scalzi's Old Man's War with a great deal of interest even though it contains technological absurdities such as FTL.
Why is Old Man's War interesting to me even though I don't go out of my way to read about military combat? Simply because the protagonist is an interesting, sympathetic, guy thrown into strange, horrible, and wonderful situations as he engages in combat with various alien enemies. Though I like futuristic speculations about resource depletion and transhumanism, character is at least as important as setting in making genre fiction fun for me.
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