Walking on a cube-shaped planet
There are all sorts of rules for drama and character development.  What are the rules for incorporating neat scientific/sci-fi ideas into a story?  In lots of Larry Niven's stories, the ideas are necessary to solve the central mystery, but not always.<p>EDIT: In a mashup of The Culture and Dilbert, a godlike nanotech Dogbert forces the hapless Homo Sapiens Dilbert to work on a "cubical".