If you write a science fiction book, would you make up a town, or would you use a real one? Im using a real one, but is this good to do?

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Of course this is okay! For me, it makes it a lot more realistic because I can picture it better if it's a place I know or have heard of. Not that making one up doesn't have it's upsides, too! It's also really fun to imagine what a society would be like.

of course! using a real place makes it more realistic and easier to relate to many authors use actual locations. just mention that the book is purely fiction and none of the events happened in some part of the book

If you are using a real one, then the reader can relate to the place a lot easier. However, you must make sure that the situation doesn't get too out of hand for that place, otherwise it'll just confuse the reader. For example, we'd understand if there are aliens and what-nots under Area 51, but we'd be very surprised if they are in the White House's Oval Office. If you are creating one, then the first and foremost thing is to create a definite image. By that I mean strong details and pictures. It would be preferable if you can create one that's not too hostile, so we don't feel too detached from our current world.

The more you know about the area, the better. While it's fun to make up a town/city/planet, the majority of writers I know will write about places they live/have lived, or will take a town they know well and modify pieces of it for there story. So yes.

real places are good, but please do your research. It's all fine and dandy for there to be martians in berkeley, but if it starts snowing in march, i'm gonna be upset. you know? i'd probably make up a town, really. i might have the characters visit real places, but in fictional towns you can decide everything.

If you use a real one, make sure it's one you know; I can't tell you how many shoddy attempts people have made to try to write about New York City, even though the most they've seen is (maybe) a few days at the Big Apple's biggest tourist attractions. Their stories, original and innovative on their own, are strangled to death and laid to rest by the author's clear lack of knowledge about their own setting, and the reader gets bored as he's unable to take the writer seriously - the story then gets discarded. True, you can extrapolate the experiences of one major city to another, but that works better for developing your own original setting - every environment on Earth, particularly cities like New York, Chicago, or San Francisco, have so many unique details, big and small, that to gloss over them is to lose the place entirely.

It's much better to use a real town - you don't get tripped up on silly little details that way, because you can look at a map and know what the streets are named and which way they run. You can see exactly where the parks are, and the malls, and the schools, and the business section, etc.etc.etc. When you try to make it all up, it's far too easy to forget what you said two chapters back and change a street from north/south to east/west.