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The Best Hard Science Fiction Novels to Read Right Now
- wrp 4y ago"Hard science fiction" doesn't seem to mean for this author what it has for me, "close adherence to known natural laws and plausible explanation." How you would characterize what "hard sci-fi" means to the younger generation?
- schwartzworld 4y agoI'm aware that hard science fiction is a no true Scotsman sort of thing. But some of these books have no place on this list. Enders Game is a lot of great things, but hard science fiction is not one of them. I've never heard anybody describe it as such. The sequels get pretty into metaphysical, religiousy weirdness. They are excellent reads, but not hard sf. And Three-Body Problem.... This one is interesting because it often gets billed as hard science fiction, but it's about as hard as unset Jell-O. That it's derivative, full of tired tropes and utterly devoid of character development is irrelevant to this conversation. The science presented in it make no sense, even at my intermediate layman's level of understanding. It made it impossible to suspend my disbelief, and the whole thing reads like a bad first draft. This is the first book I've ever finished just so I can decide how much I hated it. What's weirder is that TBP is mentioned in almost every thread on /r/printsf. It's constantly promoted in these sorts of articles.
- sinuhe69 4y agoSome are pretty old. I wonder why there is a “now” in the list. By the way, not all are hard science fiction. Some are merely fantasy.