I'm not sure that I'd be a good SF writer. I know a bit TOO much. I'm a scientist (Ph.D. in Nutritional Biochemistry) turned Science writer. A lot of times I read SF and sit there going - that would never work because... Really ruins the story for me because I can't help but nit-pick. Do the same thing with stories with horses in them. Read a fantasy novel where the hero's rode 200 miles in one day on the same (supposedly normal mortal) horses! I've done competitive trail and endurance riding and know that even with a horse in top condition doing more than 125 miles in a day is damn near impossible and even 100 miles is really pushing it for anything but a superb endurance horse. While some horses can run at 35 miles an hour they can't keep it up for more than 1-5 minutes. A more reasonable speed is 8-12 miles/hour and even then to ask even a well-conditioned horse to do more than about 8-12 hours of that is unreasonable. Push them too hard and they'll drop dead from exhaustion. Oops sorry, I've started ranting and raving but that's one of my sore spots.

"Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer." -- Bruce Graham