Tolkien accurately describes how I feel about science fiction (and I guess to a lesser extent, fantasy). I'm looking for an internally consistent rational universe, which behaves differently and follows a different set of rules than my own. The most satisfying part is the lead-up, slowly piecing together an understanding of this universe, and what rules it contains.

"Not all authors believe that suspension of the disbelief adequately characterizes the audience's relationship to imaginative works of art. J. R. R. Tolkien challenges this concept in his essay "On Fairy-Stories", choosing instead the paradigm of secondary belief based on inner consistency of reality. Tolkien says that, in order for the narrative to work, the reader must believe that what he reads is true within the secondary reality of the fictional world. By focusing on creating an internally consistent fictional world, the author makes secondary belief possible. Tolkien argues that suspension of disbelief is only necessary when the work has failed to create secondary belief. From that point the spell is broken, and the reader ceases to be immersed in the story and must make a conscious effort to suspend disbelief or else give up on it entirely."