13 ms·

Growing up I read a lot of “golden age” science fiction, and I remember realizing how many classic “hard” sci-fi novels and short stories feature super mental p

• Apocryphon 2y ago
  I also noticed that Starship Troopers threw in hypnosis among its many military technologies, for some reason, which feels like a related sci-fi concept. I don't think teleportation counts. Feels like either Star Trek-type super-science or outright mysticism.
  • mwigdahl 2y ago
    Starship Troopers also had "special talents" -- "sensers" capable of detecting and mapping Bug tunnels underground, "memory men", "lucky men", and telepaths. Heinlein at least nods to the possibility that the sensers' abilities were the product of very powerful hearing, but telepathy would be tougher to explain that way.
• BarryMilo 2y ago
  I know it's not your main point, but I think most of us big sci-fi fans agree that "soft" vs "hard" sci-fi is a false dichotomy. Who knows what is and what will be possible? Just because the technology is wrong doesn't mean the idea is not interesting.
  • shrimp_emoji 2y ago
    Hard means it's kept within tasteful range of today's sense of technoplausibility. Usually it also implies that it grapples with the nitty gritty details to "earn" the tech. Hohmann transfers vs. brachistochrone trajectories omg squee https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/torchships.php https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/torchships.php
    • 7thaccount 2y ago
      I tried to say this, but not nearly as eloquently as you.
  • doctoboggan 2y ago
    I am a big sci-fi fan and I disagree here. I think there is a difference between soft and hard sci-fi, but that difference is more about how consistency with the rules is treated. Soft sci-fi can be thought of as fantasy with a future setting, while hard scifi sticks to it's own world rules tightly, and often explores the consequences of these rules and the characters are just a means for that. (Relatedly, I think there can be hard and soft fantasy as well) Greg Egan is often cited as one of the current greats when it comes to hard sci-fi. His novels explore some very far out ideas in terms of how the world may work, but he sticks to the consistency and really explores the politics and consequences of that universe. Clarke also does this, but to a somewhat lesser extent. In many of his stories, the world and its rules are the main character, and the actual beings are the supporting characters.
    • tshaddox 2y ago
      Your understanding of the terminology sounds a lot different than mine. I always interpreted "hard" and "soft" to simply be references to "hard science" and "soft science." In other words, I thought "hard sci-fi" means fiction that deals mostly with fictional facts in fields like physics, astronomy, geology, and biology, while "soft sci-fi" means fiction that deals mostly with fictional facts in fields like psychology, economics, and political science.
      • anbende 2y ago
        Yes this is a reasonable way to misunderstand given the way we refer to “hard sciences” and “soft sciences”, but it does not map to the terms “hard scifi” and “soft scifi” in common usage. It’s not exactly about rules consistency either as stated by the GP, though that’s part of it. It’s more about strong consistent application of scientific principles even theoretical or untested principles. This is in contrast to futuristic fantasy with no real focus on the science. But futuristic or space fantasy can be very consistent just like magical systems in fantasy can be very consistent. Hard scifi has to be constrained by plausible consistent science and that science is typically a main character in the story, or even THE main character.
        • 2y ago
  • nathan_compton 2y ago
    > Who knows what is and what will be possible? I think this is a vast oversimplification of how knowledge works. Like yes, no one knows with perfect certainty what the laws of physics or whatever else are, but that hardly means _anything_ is plausible or worth entertaining. I amuse myself with the foundations of physics and I'm so sure that FTL is impossible that I find science fiction that uses the idea almost tragically silly, simply unwilling to grapple with the limitations imposed on us by the vastness of space.
    • mminer237 2y ago
      I agree, but also, it's really hard to have sci-fi without FTL. I feel that necessitates it being somewhat soft, but having every other character die when someone travels to another planet means you're basically tied to a space story without space travel.
      • nathan_compton 2y ago
        Read some Greg Egan. It isn't really that hard.
      • bluGill 2y ago
        > when someone travels to another planet I think you mean solar system. While nobody has traveled to Mars, it is reasonable to suggest that is only because we haven't tried hard enough yet. There are problems in the way, but they seem like engineering things that we will figure out if we try. It is debatable if we can make a self supporting colony on Mars, but it getting there seems perfectly possible in reach. Venus is harder (getting there is easier, but reaching the surface is questionable), but we could probably do it. Getting just the farthest planet in our solar system though is getting close to a lifetime. The nearest star to earth is 4 light years away, we have no hope of reaching it in a lifetime with any technology we know works (there are nuclear options that seem promising but we don't know if they work) The milky way is 100k lightyears. Not possible to cross without FTL.
      • itishappy 2y ago
        That's an incredibly compelling hook for a sci-fi story!
  • rtkwe 2y ago
    A major part of the hard soft dichotomy is how the tech is treated and talked about in the story too though, not just the level of the tech. You could make a hard-scifi version of Star Wars, you'd just be expected to provide more justification and narrative around hyperdrives than you get in the current soft scifi version.
  • snowwrestler 2y ago
    When I was making the list above, I actually went and looked at my bookshelf of ancient sci-fi paperbacks. C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy is a nominally “science fiction” work that I excluded and would consider soft sci-fi. It’s set in space with aliens, but is really a fantastic story (in this case an allegory) that makes basically no attempt to extrapolate or connect with hard science as we understand it today. A funny one is the Pern series, which starts out as a sword and dragon fantasy series, but then like 10 books in we find out it is actually hard sci-fi (!) with space ships, orbits, genetic engineering, computers, etc. But there is still that telepathic connection with the dragons…
  • WalterBright 2y ago
    "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes is the best hard scifi book ever written. https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp/1451677618 https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes/dp/...
  • jhbadger 2y ago
    >I think most of us big sci-fi fans agree that "soft" vs "hard" sci-fi is a false dichotomy. Who knows what is and what will be possible? It isn't about whether a technology is possible. "Soft SF" is SF where the actual scientific details don't matter. It is about people, their cultures, and their emotions. And really, just a metaphor for our own society. For example a story about how a future VR technology is addictive and causes people to interact less in real life could be just a metaphor for real life smartphone/Internet addiction. The story doesn't need to (and probably doesn't) explain how the VR tech works because it doesn't matter. "Hard SF" actually is based on actual science, and that is the focus of the story. It isn't that one is better than another, but they are different.
• pfdietz 2y ago
  A lot of that was due to the influence of John W. Campbell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Campbell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Campbell
  • card_zero 2y ago
    That article links it back Joseph Rhine, and then to Arthur Conan Doyle and spiritualism. Ultimately maybe the blame lies with Emanuel Swedenborg for inspiring every kind of woo-woo.
    • jhbadger 2y ago
      True, the idea wasn't new. But Campbell made it part of classic SF rather than fantasy or "new age" mysticism as it was earlier.
  • mcswell 2y ago
    You can read a lot of the stories from Analog, the magazine that Campbell edited for many years, here: https://www.freesfonline.net/Magazines2.html https://www.freesfonline.net/Magazines2.html. I was a fan back in the day, but going back now I see a lot not to like. And certainly many of the stories involved ESP.
• antisthenes 2y ago
  Dune is not hard sci-fi. The whole series is filled with inexplicable "magic" and "just so" scenarios.
  • paradox460 2y ago
    Dune is barely scifi, far more fantasy.
  • shrimp_emoji 2y ago
    Akshually, spice, combined with genetic engineering like Paul's, is merely a nootropic which allows an overclocking of brainpower to the point where one knows how to shine light on the holographic universe's underlying 2D plane, changing qubits so as to effect 3D spacetime curvature allowing FTL travel (navigators) as well as how to code inject brains by adding certain inflections to your words (the voice) as well as calculate the branching paths of reality and probabilities thereof (seeing the future). No magic involved. Shields though? No fucking idea. Okay, nevermind; it's soft sci-fi.
• throwanem 2y ago
  "Stranger in a Strange Land", not "...from...".
• bell-cot 2y ago
  From a working author's PoV, super mental powers were great stuff. The "hard" SF audiences really liked the idea - I'm sure it helped that many of them imagined or fantasized themselves being somewhat "super" in the mental dept. Such powers add a bunch of (conveniently arbitrary) rules, which puzzle stories could be built around. Unlike (say) FTL drives, there was no expectation that the author should devise a detailed "how it works" backstory. Nor explain how the protagonist could manage to afford or invent it. And most mental powers are an easy short-cut to the character's emotional states. (Not to assert that sophisticated and nuanced character portrayal seemed a priority of most "hard" SF authors, back in the day.)
  • teraflop 2y ago
    An interesting counterpoint to this is the use of telepathy in Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish cycle, which is generally considered as more "soft" sci-fi. Several of the early books in the series revolve around "mindspeech", which is a form of telepathy in which it's impossible to knowingly lie: > Mindspeech between two intelligences could be incoherent or insane, and could of course involve error, misbelief; but it could not be misused. Between thought and spoken word is a gap where intention can enter, the symbol be twisted aside, and the lie come to be. Between thought and sent-thought is no gap; they are one act. There is no room for the lie. (City of Illusions) In her later works in the same setting, Le Guin backed off from this, although she never explicitly retconned it out of existence: > I couldn’t use it in a story any more, because when I began to think seriously about the incalculable effects mutual telepathy would have on a society, I could no longer, as it were, believe in it. I’d have to fake it. https://reactormag.com/introduction-from-ursula-k-le-guin-the-hainish-novels-stories-volume-one/ https://reactormag.com/introduction-from-ursula-k-le-guin-th...
    • ElFitz 2y ago
      I really enjoyed Peter F. Hamilton’s take on this in the Night Dawn Trilogy, with his Edenists. A bit hopeful, but intriguing.
• thaumasiotes 2y ago
  > I’m sure there are more that I forgot to mention. It's a primary theme in the Darkover books. Those were kind of frustrating for me because I enjoyed the fantasy setting, but the author was very clear that what interested her was the conflict that occurred as it was contacted by spacefaring magicless future Earthlings. Such powers are of course also major themes in traditional mythology. I like to note that modern time travel stories split over whether it's possible to alter the timeline, but time travel also features really prominently in traditional mythology and the message there is always that the timeline can never be altered by any means.
  • prewett 2y ago
    I'm curious what mythology has time travel? I can't think of any in Greek and Roman mythology. Celtic mythology doesn't seem to have time travel either, unless you count going forwards at different perceived speeds.
    • JohnFen 2y ago
      Time travel is found in several mythologies. Some examples include the Hindu Mahabharata, the Greek tales around Chronos and Kairos, and the Irish tale of Naimh. I know there are more, those are just the ones I thought of immediately.
    • thaumasiotes 2y ago
      It's all over Greek mythology. When Althaea has a vision that tells her that her son's life will end at the point when the log in her fireplace burns away, that's time travel. When Laius learns he will be killed by his own son, that's time travel. When Agamemnon learns he will die with one foot on land and one in the water, that's time travel.
      • krapp 2y ago
        That's prophecy, not time travel. Where in Greek or any mythology does anyone travel back in time or otherwise alter causality? It doesn't happen because the concept of time as variable, a "dimension" that can be "traveled in" like space, didn't even exist until modern science came along. Prophecy doesn't derive from the principle of time being variable but of fate being absolute and unavoidable by mortal cunning, sometimes (as in Norse mythology wrt Ragnarok) even by the gods themselves. Myths were meant to teach stories about reality as people understood it, and in reality, you don't get a do-over. Within that framework, "time travel" as it exists in any modern science fiction story is nonsensical.
• therobots927 2y ago
  Actually the mind control aspect of the Foundation series was my least favorite part. I know it was a big part of the storyline but I would’ve preferred a heavier emphasis on “psychohistory” and chaos theory. The telepathic element, especially in books 4 and 5 was left unexplained. The only thing that would make sense to me is if anyone with mind control powers was actually a robot.
  • thriftwy 2y ago
    Asimov actually invented the Black Swan Event half a century before Taleb. Mind control was such an event that psychohistory could not account for. Sometimes things just happen and spoil our plans.
    • therobots927 2y ago
      That’s a fair point. I just wish there was a clear cause and effect behind the black swan event. Part of what makes the big short so interesting to me is seeing exactly how the black swan event transpired in the 2008 housing crisis.
      • thriftwy 2y ago
        I don't think that 2008 housing crisis had any serious black swans around it, instead of bad planning caused by chasing the dollar. The point of a black swan that there doesn't have to be a cause.
        • ben_w 2y ago
          > The point of a black swan that there doesn't have to be a cause. That's the first I've heard that suggested. It's a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight; based on a Latin expression which presumed that black swans did not exist which stopped being used that way in 1697 when people found actual black swans.
        • 2y ago
• JohnFen 2y ago
  I always just thought of telepathy in science fiction as being like faster-than-light travel: clear nonsense, but a very convenient and interesting method of avoiding physical realities that interfere with telling certain types of stories. It's an aspect of the "fiction" part of science fiction. But, relatedly, I think that a certain kind of category error happens that can play into this as well: a lot of science fiction is actually fantasy, just in a technological setting. Star Wars, for instance, is not science fiction so much as it's fantasy.
  • pixl97 2y ago
    I mean how much of telepathy is in reach of science now? Think of two individuals with some kind of neurolink style device. Could they be able to communicate with just thought?
    • WorldMaker 2y ago
      For a related but flipped perspective: imagine you were describing modern society and the ubiquity of texting. The speed and non-verbal aspects of it, coupled with some people's ability to multi-task texting in the middle of other conversation would be hard to describe to an audience in the 1950s or 1960s, but if you were going to describe it a lot of scifi descriptions of telepathy come close. Maybe we already invented "telepathy" in the future we are living in, it's just so ubiquitous and "dull" and "everyday" we underestimate how fantastic and weird it is from past perspectives?
  • WalterBright 2y ago
    A lot of scifi is just westerns, with blasters replacing guns. See "The Mandalorean".
    • fl0ki 2y ago
      A lot of westerns are just samurai movies, with guns replacing swords.
    • pyuser583 2y ago
• nitwit005 2y ago
  If you want to portray some sort of "next step in human evolution", it's an easy thing to portray that audiences would have some understanding of from other media. The more obvious choice of just portraying people as having extremely high intelligence, is unfortunately a bit of a trap. Authors generally fail at creating characters smarter than themselves, for perhaps obvious reasons.
  • WalterBright 2y ago
    > Authors generally fail at creating characters smarter than themselves, for perhaps obvious reasons. Hah, I've noticed that for years. Anderson's "Brain Wave", however, is a decent attempt at what more intelligent people would be like.
  • jamiek88 2y ago
    This makes me wonder about AGI and super intelligences. Why would our brains be able to engineer something more intelligent than our brains? The only room seems to be in emergence from incredible amounts of processing power and data or perhaps many brains working together can overcome the limitations of one brain.
    • pixl97 2y ago
      I mean, people working together quite often overcome the limitations of one brain, especially when those working together are driven towards that goal.
    • NiloCK 2y ago
      This is a reasonable angle, but recall that some sunlight, dirt, and water managed (with a lot of compute) to emit something smarter than the sum of its parst.
    • barfbagginus 2y ago
      Let's generalize the question. Why are our brains able to engineer machines that produce forces greater than a human body? Because they understand the forces, and set them into motion with tiny efforts to build mechanisms that eventually unleash and reform large amounts of energy, creating the force. And what if intelligence is another kind of force that can be created by taking tiny, human efforts, building a machine, then pumping huge amounts of energy into it, outputting the intelligent force? Or let's consider evolution. How could it create intelligent brains from single celled organisms? Incrementally, as the organisms randomly accumulated mechanisms of adaptability and eventually sensing and cognition. In the first view we see ourselves as engineers, building a vast engine that, through its sheer size and energy, and our basic understanding of fundamental laws of intelligence , produces an intelligent force greater than a human mind. In the second view, we see ourselves as blind watchmakers, jamming AI components together at random, until, by accident, we get something smarter.
• staplers 2y ago
  But it never panned out with actual results, and mental powers faded from hard sci-fi stories. .. and yet here I am reading everyone's thoughts about how telepathy isn't possible. Just because it doesn't look like us holding our fingers to our temples, doesn't change the effect. With neuralink it'll look even more like what you imagine.. wild to see the dismissal when its closer than ever.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• WalterBright 2y ago
  The trouble with most mental powers is they violate physical laws like Conservation of Energy, and rely on unknown forces like anti-gravity.
• zozbot234 2y ago
  Aren't mental super powers pretty much ubiquitous in folk tradition in the form of magic, the working of miracles, or perhaps spiritually derived "powers" such as the siddhi of Indian tradition? (The traditional description of siddhi - i.e. 'attainments' or 'accomplishments' - may be the closest thing to a purported 'science' of such super powers within existing traditions. At least, it's a lot harder to find this kind of analysis in other plausible sources, such as from the Western esoteric tradition which is also a lot more obscure.) It seems weird to link these things so closely to 20th-c. hard sci-fi, when they are far from typical to that genre.
• irrational 2y ago
  Also, using your mind to move space ships. Again in Dune, but also other fare like We Are Not of Earth.
• touisteur 2y ago
  Thought Slans by AE Van Voigt was one of the classics there. Non-A/Gilbert Gosseyn stuff was also up there in terms of mental powers SF.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• barfbagginus 2y ago
  I think cyberpunk made it a cheap trope, so we don't notice it anymore, it's just a depressing constant in stories, with grubby, real world consequences like having to live on a toxic cocktail of anti rejection drugs so your outdated Neuralink V implants don't go septic. You don't need high concept telepathy. You just need an implant. Then you can hear your mission handler in your ear, feel the traumatizing sensorium of your attack drones as they get crippled by an ICE strike, or send your consciousness on a one last valiant cyber dive that inevitably leaves your body in a vegetable state. Telepathy has become as cheap and lowdown as human life in this setting, so it no longer gives us wonder, but a self reproaching dread of, "are we really going to do this to our Bodies and Minds? I guess we are...."