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Hard sci-fi is No Real Scotsman: The Genre. The hardest sci-fi is just called fiction, because there is no room in hard sci-fi for speculation about science. At

Hard sci-fi is No Real Scotsman: The Genre. The hardest sci-fi is just called fiction, because there is no room in hard sci-fi for speculation about science. At best you could call it fiction where technology figures heavily, like The Martian, which while great is hardly sci-fi at all in my opinion. Any testable scientific theory is generally either so esoteric as to be impossible to work into a story in a significant way or so likely to be false that it gets labeled soft sci-fi. Theories that can’t be tested are just metaphysics or magic. So the more Fi, the less Sci. Criticizing something for not being hard sci-fi is easy, but I would say largely meaningless unless the piece plays so loose with the science that it could have achieved the same effect with harder science, but I certainly don’t think you could say that of TBP.

rendall 5y ago
> "The hardest sci-fi is just called fiction, because there is no room in hard sci-fi for speculation about science." That's a really good insight, and I largely agree. I think of successful hard sci-fi as "reasonably extrapolates what we currently know about science and technology into the future", but, as you pointed out, that leads to an unlikely, or worse, boring future. > "...but I would say largely meaningless unless the piece plays so loose with the science that it could have achieved the same effect with harder science, but I certainly don’t think you could say that of TBP." I strongly disagree. The alien powers were so unlikely and all-powerful that they may well have been called instead "Witch Demons from The Horror Dimension!"
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > I think of successful hard sci-fi as "reasonably extrapolates what we currently know about science and technology into the future", but, as you pointed out, that leads to an unlikely, or worse, boring future. Check out Blindsight and Echopraxia for where the author extrapolated a bunch of physics and neuroscience research into a vision of an interesting, and quite disturbing future. Well, there were also (in-universe explained, and quite ingeniously at that) vampires, so this part would make it soft sci-fi, but the story/universe would work without them too.
  - rendall 5y ago
    Thanks for the tip! Blindsight: bought. I consider Greg Egan and Ian M. Banks as hard sci-fi authors, even though their work is wildly creative. If you haven't read their work, I highly recommend it.
    - telchar 5y ago
      I don’t see how anyone could call Banks hard sci-fi. (Possible spoilers?) The culture is so extremely powerful that they’re scarcely less magical than the dimension-bending aliens in TBP, which I agree are pretty fantastical, though I’m happy to accept them in exchange for a vastly ambitious plot. Banks is alright, certainly creative, but I wouldn’t call his work hard sci-fi. Player of Games maybe more so than the others I read, if you ignore the Mind Ships. My issue with his books is that I feel the plots tend to meander and he seems a bit over enthusiastic with the gore. Can I ask what you like about Egan’s work? I’m not familiar.
      - rendall 5y ago
        > "I don’t see how anyone could call Banks hard sci-fi." You know what? You're right. I'm not even going to defend it. In writing a response, I came across this section on The Culture Wikipedia page, and: Yes, not hard sci-fi. More like Star Trek. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture#Science_and_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture#Science_and_techno... > Can I ask what you like about Egan’s work? I’m not familiar. Read this description of Diaspora: https://www.gregegan.net/DIASPORA/DIASPORA.html https://www.gregegan.net/DIASPORA/DIASPORA.html If that sounds intriguing, you might like his work. He starts with a what-if physics theory informed by his mathematics background. It's heady, positing the universe is a 4-dimensional sphere embedded in a 12-dimensional torus, which allows wormholes to exist and for the protagonists to move through them. From that he extrapolates about what that would mean. So, maybe not hard sci-fi. Is there such a thing as "math" sci-fi? There's a scene at the end of the novel. It's short, and not narratively important, so I'm ok with telling you, but it might be a spoiler. If you read the description above and you plan to read it, skip the next paragraph, but it's what really hooked me. The protagonists discover an artifact that changes slightly as they move from universe to universe. They decide to 'follow' it across the universes, hoping to find the civilization that built it. Tens, hundreds, thousands, billions of universes pass by, and in so doing, they lose connection to their home: "more than seven million broken links, and over ninety billion years of identified [time] slippage". And so they decide to continue, because even if they find their way home again, their home (our, Earth) Universe would be unrecognizable, perhaps dying. At last, when analyzed, the artifact turns out to be (among other things) a massive sculpture "spanning more than a quadrillion dimensions". Collapsing it down to 5 dimensions, so they can get an approximation of what it looks like, "it was a four-legged, four-armed creature, with one arm stretched high above its head... reaching up. To the infinite number of levels above. To all the worlds it would never see, never touch, never understand." That precis does not do it justice, but. Just, astonishing.
jandrese 5y ago
IMHO Sci-Fi is just Fantasy that did the math. You can add magic, but it should be grounded in some form of reality and be internally consistent. Hard SF is stuff that is theoretically possible but we just lack the tech for it, and especially how that might affect society. Cheap access to space is an easy example, thinking about a society with a working space elevator that enables people to live outside of traditional political systems. The similar story might be written about people stranded on an otherwise deserted island.
dnautics 5y ago
> The hardest sci-fi is just called fiction I believe the hardest sci-fi is called "non-fiction". There is a "scale" for this, anyway: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScien... I'd say something like "For all mankind" also lands in the Sci-Fi genre, and there REALLY has been nothing physically impossible (yet), though the nuclear engine is borderline It's hard to imagine "The Martian" or "For all mankind" to NOT be in the category of "science fiction"; they're certainly not fantasies. Maybe "For all mankind" belongs in "historical fiction" but it's edging towards being too recent for that. I don't think they're "just fiction" because grouping them in with, say "100 years of solitude" or "ulysses", or even "the client" doesn't seem quite right either.
- telchar 5y ago
  Admittedly calling the Martian not sci-fi is a bit of a hot take, but I’ll defend it. To me sci-fi is speculative fiction. That is, take a counter factual or hypothetical and run with it, explore the consequences of the idea. The Martian supposes we send some human missions to Mars like we probably will in a decade or two, and lays out the steps a crewman takes to survive being left behind. There’s not really an idea there to explore other than what might be done in an engineering planning meeting. I might call it eng-fi instead of sci-fi.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    You're running on a very narrow difference between science and engineering: > That is, take a ... hypothetical and run with it, explore the consequences of the idea. How is The Martian not: - hypothetical: Astronaut gets stranded on Mars - consequences: Steps to survive, survivor and rescue crew decisions and emotions.
    - telchar 5y ago
      You're right, it's a fine line. I think it falls on the engineering side of the line because the hypothetical and the consequences in the Martian are pretty mundane when you remove the setting and price tags. Imagine the same story but about a character abandoned at McMurdo Station in the present day. It would be a largely similar story with largely similar consequences. I think you might agree that it wouldn't be sci-fi. The world isn't really any different for the hypothetical of Watney getting stranded on mars. It's just an event that happens. A hypothetical like -what if Mars were already inhabited by aliens or -what if we could launch items to space for less than $.10/kg using X technology would be more on the sci-fi side of hypotheticals to me. The latter because it would open up the question of how the world would develop differently, even though it's just a simple question of technology. Edit: I should make it clear I loved The Martian, I'm just making the argument it could be called not sci-fi.

rendall 5y ago

> "The hardest sci-fi is just called fiction, because there is no room in hard sci-fi for speculation about science." That's a really good insight, and I largely agree. I think of successful hard sci-fi as "reasonably extrapolates what we currently know about science and technology into the future", but, as you pointed out, that leads to an unlikely, or worse, boring future. > "...but I would say largely meaningless unless the piece plays so loose with the science that it could have achieved the same effect with harder science, but I certainly don’t think you could say that of TBP." I strongly disagree. The alien powers were so unlikely and all-powerful that they may well have been called instead "Witch Demons from The Horror Dimension!"

TeMPOraL 5y ago
> I think of successful hard sci-fi as "reasonably extrapolates what we currently know about science and technology into the future", but, as you pointed out, that leads to an unlikely, or worse, boring future. Check out Blindsight and Echopraxia for where the author extrapolated a bunch of physics and neuroscience research into a vision of an interesting, and quite disturbing future. Well, there were also (in-universe explained, and quite ingeniously at that) vampires, so this part would make it soft sci-fi, but the story/universe would work without them too.
- rendall 5y ago
  Thanks for the tip! Blindsight: bought. I consider Greg Egan and Ian M. Banks as hard sci-fi authors, even though their work is wildly creative. If you haven't read their work, I highly recommend it.
  - telchar 5y ago
    I don’t see how anyone could call Banks hard sci-fi. (Possible spoilers?) The culture is so extremely powerful that they’re scarcely less magical than the dimension-bending aliens in TBP, which I agree are pretty fantastical, though I’m happy to accept them in exchange for a vastly ambitious plot. Banks is alright, certainly creative, but I wouldn’t call his work hard sci-fi. Player of Games maybe more so than the others I read, if you ignore the Mind Ships. My issue with his books is that I feel the plots tend to meander and he seems a bit over enthusiastic with the gore. Can I ask what you like about Egan’s work? I’m not familiar.
    - rendall 5y ago
      > "I don’t see how anyone could call Banks hard sci-fi." You know what? You're right. I'm not even going to defend it. In writing a response, I came across this section on The Culture Wikipedia page, and: Yes, not hard sci-fi. More like Star Trek. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture#Science_and_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture#Science_and_techno... > Can I ask what you like about Egan’s work? I’m not familiar. Read this description of Diaspora: https://www.gregegan.net/DIASPORA/DIASPORA.html https://www.gregegan.net/DIASPORA/DIASPORA.html If that sounds intriguing, you might like his work. He starts with a what-if physics theory informed by his mathematics background. It's heady, positing the universe is a 4-dimensional sphere embedded in a 12-dimensional torus, which allows wormholes to exist and for the protagonists to move through them. From that he extrapolates about what that would mean. So, maybe not hard sci-fi. Is there such a thing as "math" sci-fi? There's a scene at the end of the novel. It's short, and not narratively important, so I'm ok with telling you, but it might be a spoiler. If you read the description above and you plan to read it, skip the next paragraph, but it's what really hooked me. The protagonists discover an artifact that changes slightly as they move from universe to universe. They decide to 'follow' it across the universes, hoping to find the civilization that built it. Tens, hundreds, thousands, billions of universes pass by, and in so doing, they lose connection to their home: "more than seven million broken links, and over ninety billion years of identified [time] slippage". And so they decide to continue, because even if they find their way home again, their home (our, Earth) Universe would be unrecognizable, perhaps dying. At last, when analyzed, the artifact turns out to be (among other things) a massive sculpture "spanning more than a quadrillion dimensions". Collapsing it down to 5 dimensions, so they can get an approximation of what it looks like, "it was a four-legged, four-armed creature, with one arm stretched high above its head... reaching up. To the infinite number of levels above. To all the worlds it would never see, never touch, never understand." That precis does not do it justice, but. Just, astonishing.

jandrese 5y ago

IMHO Sci-Fi is just Fantasy that did the math. You can add magic, but it should be grounded in some form of reality and be internally consistent. Hard SF is stuff that is theoretically possible but we just lack the tech for it, and especially how that might affect society. Cheap access to space is an easy example, thinking about a society with a working space elevator that enables people to live outside of traditional political systems. The similar story might be written about people stranded on an otherwise deserted island.

dnautics 5y ago

> The hardest sci-fi is just called fiction I believe the hardest sci-fi is called "non-fiction". There is a "scale" for this, anyway: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScien... I'd say something like "For all mankind" also lands in the Sci-Fi genre, and there REALLY has been nothing physically impossible (yet), though the nuclear engine is borderline It's hard to imagine "The Martian" or "For all mankind" to NOT be in the category of "science fiction"; they're certainly not fantasies. Maybe "For all mankind" belongs in "historical fiction" but it's edging towards being too recent for that. I don't think they're "just fiction" because grouping them in with, say "100 years of solitude" or "ulysses", or even "the client" doesn't seem quite right either.

telchar 5y ago
Admittedly calling the Martian not sci-fi is a bit of a hot take, but I’ll defend it. To me sci-fi is speculative fiction. That is, take a counter factual or hypothetical and run with it, explore the consequences of the idea. The Martian supposes we send some human missions to Mars like we probably will in a decade or two, and lays out the steps a crewman takes to survive being left behind. There’s not really an idea there to explore other than what might be done in an engineering planning meeting. I might call it eng-fi instead of sci-fi.
- dnautics 5y ago
  You're running on a very narrow difference between science and engineering: > That is, take a ... hypothetical and run with it, explore the consequences of the idea. How is The Martian not: - hypothetical: Astronaut gets stranded on Mars - consequences: Steps to survive, survivor and rescue crew decisions and emotions.
  - telchar 5y ago
    You're right, it's a fine line. I think it falls on the engineering side of the line because the hypothetical and the consequences in the Martian are pretty mundane when you remove the setting and price tags. Imagine the same story but about a character abandoned at McMurdo Station in the present day. It would be a largely similar story with largely similar consequences. I think you might agree that it wouldn't be sci-fi. The world isn't really any different for the hypothetical of Watney getting stranded on mars. It's just an event that happens. A hypothetical like -what if Mars were already inhabited by aliens or -what if we could launch items to space for less than $.10/kg using X technology would be more on the sci-fi side of hypotheticals to me. The latter because it would open up the question of how the world would develop differently, even though it's just a simple question of technology. Edit: I should make it clear I loved The Martian, I'm just making the argument it could be called not sci-fi.