There are two types of mystery stories. In one, the focus is just on the people, the story, the setting, etc., and the reader is just along for the ride. There

There are two types of mystery stories. In one, the focus is just on the people, the story, the setting, etc., and the reader is just along for the ride. There is a second type, which is technically a subset of this set, where the author gives the reader enough information to participate in the investigation, and gives them enough information to technically finger who the perpetrator is and exactly why before the characters in the story do. (To date myself a bit, this is Encyclopedia Brown-type stories.) They have all the features of the previous type of story, but also have this feature. However, since a well-written story is on the Pareto optimality frontier of the combination of story, plot, character, etc., to add this to the story usually requires some room to be made somewhere else. Hard vs. soft science fiction is a very similar relationship, I think. In addition, I'd at least pick a nit that while a story is welcome to "explore the relationship between humanity and technology" as much as it likes, it is seriously weakened when the technology itself is soft and ill-defined. Such stories are limited to exploring the author's personal opinions, if not outright neuroses. While there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, it's not anything special either; many genres have that. Where hard science fiction becomes interesting is when taking the tech and science seriously produces results that surprise even the author, and aren't just a reflection of the personal attitudes of the author. This is a high bar, rarely met, but it's one soft science fiction can't even try for.