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With scenes reminiscent of accounts of Krystalnacht in Nazi Germany, and Stalin's show trials, the latest Harry Potter film (Deathly Hallows Part 1) starts under a sense of siege and descends into a manhunt (actually a teenager hunt) with the three heroes barely able to keep a civil word for each other at times. Although the story lurched along with pace, I really enjoyed the scenery of the wild places they fled to, on the iMax screen. But the subtleties of the plot were, perforce, largely missing, as it is such a big, complex story, and it helps if you have read the book at least three times.

The acting suffers a bit, too, probably from the need to retain momentum, although it tries not to lose every bit of the detail that die hard Pottermanes live for. The shame is that most of the wit and charm inherent in the details in the book (and the early films) loses out, like the adapted Latin and Greek for the spells, and parallels between the wizarding and muggle worlds (for example, muggle is similar to what the Cornish call summer tourists - grockles) or, at least, get such a fleeting reference that they are tossed off and lost. And the intricate interweave between the destinies of Harry, Voldemort and the potential arch-baddie Snape are hinted at only obliquely.

A few new references are added. Did anyone else think of Harrison Ford in Witness dancing to What a Wonderful World with the Amish girl, when lonely Harry and Hermione did a twirl in their tent on a bleak Rannoch Muir?

Why did I watch it (and all the previous films and read the books)? I am not ashamed to say I enjoy some fantasy in literature and film. My wife dismisses it all with ' it's stupid, broomsticks can't fly!', to which my enquiry of why not, shouldn't we find out if there is a way that they could, leaves her tutting with disdain. I enjoy the invention, the creativity in visualization and holding our world up to a slyly satirical distorting mirror.

With my science background, and a general fondness for the technical in life and work, this might seem surprising. I would maintain, however, that scientists who don't use their imagination or cannot accept that there's a lot out there that we do not understand, phenomena that we can only view with incomprehension and stuff we do not yet even dream about, are actually only half-developed scientists.

To anyone who contends that, to be accepted as science, something has to be susceptible to logical analysis and capable of being measured is ignoring the core premises of quantum mechanics for a start, and would seem to be shutting their brains to recent cosmology. It's a bit like the reputed head of the US Patent office who, in 1902, resigned saying everything worthwhile had been invented. Einstein's Theory of Relativity hit the fan the next year!

In quantum theory - the physics of the incredibly small, which has the potential to take our lives into science fiction - it is very difficult to measure anything as the act of measurement profoundly affects the thing being measured. Yet out of this have come lasers, incredibly small silicon chips and nanotechnology as well as growing evidence for new energy sources and even time travel and teleportation. Also, in quantum mechanics, the observed phenomena often twist one's acceptance of what is real and 'fact'. Try the single photon effect or Schroedinger's Cat, if you want some brain-ache.

However, I don't enjoy all fantasy or science fiction, by any means. It has to be well written with an extra ingredient which sets it apart and can be difficult to pin down. The doyen, as far as I am concerned, is the SF author Ian M Banks, who writes equally good, disturbing, insightful, funny, sexy, well-characterised 'normal' fiction novels as Ian Banks. In his science fiction worlds, this classy writing is overlaid on some mind stretching technical and physics concepts, that are not just an ooh ah background to a romance or a gung-ho adventure, but whose effects and parameters have a specific bearing and influence on how the protagonists think and the story pans out.

His is a creative mind at work that uses imagination or fantasy to push the boundaries of thinking and explore situations that we may well come across in the future. That's the real job of science fiction, and one it has done very well for the last 50 years, successfully previewing many of the things we now accept as every day.