From: Dana Shilling dshilling@worldnet.att.net
I think for me, a story works to the degree that the author really believes in...space battles, or Travis' bleak internal landscape, or how to set up a rebel
base,
or her favorite smarm pairing or...well, whatever.
However, I'd say that research is less important than imaginative consistency. As Neil says, there are plenty of things that you'd never believe even though they really did happen--I think that a story works better if it's about things you believe even though they couldn't really happen.
A necessary precondition for writing any kind of space opera, I'd say. But I think research is important, because it can lend substance and credibility to the overall tone of a story. I wouldn't particularly advocate nicking real-life incidents wholesale and sticking them in a story, though. It's more a case of getting a feel for particular elements that you might not be familiar with from real life. For space battles, for example, reading either some naval military history or autobiographies of fighter pilots (depending on how you envisage said battles taking place) might make it easier for you to write a space battle scene, whereas if you rely entirely on imagination then you can end up floundering. And if a writer is floundering, it almost always shows in the writing.
What you should emphatically not do is place a whole load of factual stuff in a story just because you know it. I think Judith P made this point in reference to all the stuff she learned about sheep diseases while researching 'Morgan'. Only a tiny proportion of your research will make it into the final story, but that tiny proportion might make or break a crucial scene.
Of course, anyone who claims to be a writer should be researching all the time, just by keeping his/er eyes and ears open. Anything might end up in a story if you can find the right place for it.
Neil