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> "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 large

> "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.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    Thanks to you too; both Egan and Banks are at the top of my to-read list (sci-fi section); I'll get to them once I'm done with Asimov (currently going through full Foundation series).

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.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Thanks to you too; both Egan and Banks are at the top of my to-read list (sci-fi section); I'll get to them once I'm done with Asimov (currently going through full Foundation series).