The example you gave to explain "suspension of disbelief" has an internal inconsistency.
Exactly. The author or scriptwriter of any SFF work can create a new set of rules for how their universe works. As long as they are presented plausibly, that's fine by me. What they can't then do without destroying the credibility of their work is to break their own rules without any explanation (if a moderately plausible explanation is provided, that's OK).
You admit to having foreknowledge of the technical aspects you cite as "unbelievable."
I've heard a fifth degree black belt say the same thing about action scenes in a martial arts movie. The problem seems less with the credibility of what's being filmed and more with the very concrete foreknowledge present in the viewer.
Yes, that's true, as I said in my previous post - this depends on the knowledge of the viewer. It also depends on the attitude of the film-maker or author. As I also said, if all they are concerned about is targeting an audience of young teens, they can get away with a lot more.
I also said that the reasons for a loss of credibility can be very mundane, and can require no specialist knowledge. For instance, I once started to read a novel in which the wreck of an alien spaceship was found drifting in the Solar System. The first alarm bell sounded when one of the discoverers left his craft and jumped "down" onto the spaceship (there are no ups and downs where there is no gravity). Then the explorers entered a huge interior hall, so damaged that it was open to space - a complete vacuum. But the author describes their torch beams crossing the hall (you can only see torch beams when they hit something on the way - like dust, smoke or clouds - you wouldn't see them in a vacuum). If the author couldn't be bothered to get such basic science right, I couldn't be bothered to carry on reading....
"Suspension of disbelief" sounds like a euphemism constructed in a marketing meeting to me. What you're really talking about (the uncomfortable subject the euphemism is hiding) is "Belief."
If you believe people will one day master faster-than-light travel, that gets you in the door, but trying to hold every aspect of the work under a microscope doesn't sound to me like you even want to believe. It is more likely in my mind that such a person is presupposing unbelievability prior to viewing the work, which by its very nature would work counter to acceptance of the work.
I disagree entirely. You seem to have misunderstood my post.
For me to have "belief" in a story would mean that I believe it to be true, which obviously no-one does when it comes to SFF (apart from a few deluded souls).
SFF fans (and I have been one for over half a century) need two different mindsets: the "everyday" way of thinking, in which we are automatically sceptical about anything which doesn't sound likely in our experience (we tend to get more sceptical as we become more experienced); and the "fiction" mindset, it which we temporarily switch-off our normal scepticism in order to enjoy whatever fantastical ideas the author or scriptwriter has decided to present.
As I said, I happily read and watch fiction which includes such impossibilities as FTL travel, time travel, alternate universes, super-powers, magic and so on. I have no problems suspending my normal disbelief - that is, switching off my usual scepticism - to accept the author's world and enjoy such fiction. But the world created in such fiction needs to be internally consistent, and the author needs to avoid making basic mistakes where logic or simple science are concerned. If these rules are broken, so is my suspension of disbelief.
