This is exactly wrong. You can bend the rules a little (almost every scifi franchise has FTL travel for example), but basic physics does not and should not change. For sand -- granular mineral particles -- to be something people can stand on without sinking into it, has to have certain mass and density, and that makes it too dense for a huge creature the size of an ocean going vessel, dwarfing something the size of a blue whale, to swim through as if it were water. It is a physics problem, and if you just throw out physics, literally nothing else in the universe works the way we understand matter and energy to work. Also, assuming the worm could somehow do this, the energy requirement to power something that size through solid material would be enormous. Where is it getting that energy? What does it eat? Sand isn't nourishing, and we see nothing else for it to eat, so where's the energy come from?
Get too far from what people know to be reality, and they will not be able to stretch their suspension of disbelief far enough to buy it. It's too far out, they say "this is silly" and they're done.
The very best speculative fiction, even that incorporating science and technology beyond what we know, or think is possible, still has to establish internally consistent rules that the characters and events absolutely must obey. This is what allows you to create tense, dramatic situations and problems for your protagonists to solve. It's how you back them into a tight corner and make the audience wonder "how the hell are they going to get out of this?" If you throw out physics, and anything goes, then you leave the characters able to essentially magic their way out of any situation with the appropriate technobabble incantation (Berman & Braga Star Trek was terrible about this). It's a kind of deus ex machina, and it's bad writing.
reply
share