What elements and things do you like to have included when you experience a science-fiction story (movie/book/etc.)??

What makes a good sci-fi story??

War. Particularly, war involving multiple Species.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNy-ipksLUM.

Actual science and mechanics. Shows like Cowboy Bebop and Firefly are popular partly because of the amount of thought put into things like ship designs, how inter-galactic travel works, and all that other stuff.

Ray Bradbury, not Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke is boring as hell. I want character driven stories with great ideas, not a dissertation on how the sun heats the galaxy.

I find that the thing I like most about sci-fi is those ones that show you a whole new world. Alien cultures, technology, politics, societies, history, basically everything that gives insight on a completely alien lifestyle. Avatar is one of my favourite movies because of this; I just loved seeing a wonderful place with beautifully strange landscapes, where a way of living developed in a much different way than for humans, and a human sense of logic is often incongruent with the logic of this new world.

In my opinion, there needs to be more movies, TV shows, video games, books, etc. like Avatar.

Robust Engineers.