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The argument is that, although Science Fiction and Science are related, they are very different things - and they have the flavours of "good" and "bad".
The "good" tends to be scrupulous in understanding the surrounding existing, science, terms and logic of the condition it is attempting to speculate on - not much of value comes of a poor foundation.

So, none of our technology started as an idea in a "ridiculous" book or play. I might accept that some of it started in a "good" book or play - that obeyed the criteria of "good" above - but even that might be arguable.

Yes, of course, in the name of creativity, you can position anything you please; but it all depends what you want to achieve - a genuine flight of fancy, or properly constructed, rationally plausible prediction - that has some basis in science?

Isn't a decision there one of the reasons we now find a DaVinci sketch of a helicopter so astonishing? I'm sure there were others of the time who drew their wild dreams of things that could fly - but, from a scientific perspective, who now cares?

My argument is that plausibility, based on a clear understanding of principles, (and, yes; educated speculation), is what separates what may be possible from the clearly impossible, regardless of the probability of the speculation - and it is that which ignites further investigation and brings Fiction into Reality, therefore it is that we should seek to apply.

I've no doubt that the two examples you give may have been declared insane, impossible or improbable at some point, yet they were plausible.
Fiction predicted space-flight, but it didn't declare that the rockets would be powered by faeries - the prediction was plausible.
And let's not forget; it wasn't the mere saying of it that made them so, it was the iterative application of scientific principles to the ideas, by scientists, not writers, that brought speculation into reality.

I really didn't mean to rain on your parade, stifle your creativity; or appear rude - and if I did, I apologise.

As I said, creativity is valid - absolutely necessary actually - but I am the one in slightly the wrong place. I was just looking for "what-if's" where the creativity and speculation are balanced by some kind of regard to what we know of principles.
Personally, speculation that is not supported that way drives me insane because, otherwise, in my view, that really is pure science fiction - and we could just sit here and say anything at all about this idea or anything else, none of it arguable beyond "OK" - and where that's the case, I'd have to ask myself where's the value in it?
And, bizarrely enough, now I stop to think of it - it's discussions on *science fiction* sites that are far more concerned with remaining in the bounds of scientific plausibility than appears on this particular discussion - in the Science Blog. Go figure...