6 ms·

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

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.
    - tshaddox 2y ago
      I don't know if it's a misunderstanding, or if usage is just very mixed and inconsistent. Both Wikipedia articles provide both definitions, and both claim that usage is sometimes contradictory and not at all rigorous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction > The complementary term soft science fiction, formed by analogy to the popular distinction between the "hard" (natural) and "soft" (social) sciences,[6] first appeared in the late 1970s. Though there are examples generally considered as "hard" science fiction such as Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, built on mathematical sociology,[7] science fiction critic Gary Westfahl argues that while neither term is part of a rigorous taxonomy, they are approximate ways of characterizing stories that reviewers and commentators have found useful.[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_science_fiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_science_fiction > The term soft science fiction was formed as the complement of the earlier term hard science fiction. > The earliest known citation for the term is in "1975: The Year in Science Fiction" by Peter Nicholls, in Nebula Award Stories 11 (1976). He wrote "The same list reveals that an already established shift from hard sf (chemistry, physics, astronomy, technology) to soft sf (psychology, biology, anthropology, sociology, and even [...] linguistics) is continuing more strongly than ever."
- 7thaccount 2y ago
  I share a similar view to you on what is hard or soft science fiction, but it can be tricky to pin down. Star Trek to me is somewhat firm (in between) as the technology may as well be magic (Heisenberg compensators), but it tries to be consistent with the scientific rules within the show for the most part. Revelation Space more or less feels like a universe operating off the same principles as ours with a more reasonable assumption about the future (hard). Then you have things like Star Wars that are fun, but so ridiculous as to very much be on the soft side.
  - nox101 2y ago
    ST:TOS and ST:TNG era seemed to deal with some hard sci-fi ideas. Nothing I've watched in the last 20 years seemed hard sci-fi. Most of them seem to be "how can we work some action sequence into this story". Admittedly I haven't watched them all and I'm sure there are moments of hard sci-fi but my impression is it's devolved into space opera.
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      "Primer" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384 "The Man from Earth" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683
      - nox101 2y ago
        sorry I meant episodes of modern star trek. there are plenty of hard sci-fi movies. those two are great. I'd add "Her" and "Ex Machina"
      - 7thaccount 2y ago
        I really enjoyed both
    - krapp 2y ago
      Star Trek was always meant to be space opera, but yes... ironically TOS, considered the campy black sheep of the franchise now, is the one series that at least attempted to be harder than others would, with input from actual engineers and science fiction writers of the time. The episode with the introduction of the Romulan cloaking device, for instance, hinged on the actual laws of thermodynamics (a perfect cloak is impossible - it must be radiating something somewhere.) In modern Trek, they'd just something something subspace some bullshit. It helped that Gene Roddenberry was in the Navy and that Trek was basically The Cold War In Space which is actually more of an interesting dynamic to me than Starfleet being basically invincible and everything running on space magic.
- shagie 2y ago
  > Greg Egan is often cited as one of the current greats when it comes to hard sci-fi. I'd also suggest a good look at Baxter's books and Robert L Forward's too. I've jokingly called Forward's books science papers with a plot. Timemaster starts out with: > There exist semieducated but obstinate people who have raised the concept of strict local causality to godhead, and attempt to use such words as "obviously" and "it only makes sense that ..." in an attempt to "prove" that their version of causality cannot be violated, and that any sort of time machine is logically impossible. From my reading of the scientific literature, they are wrong. If I receive a letter from this sort of person complaining about the "impossibility" of the time machines in this novel, I will throw the letter in the nearest wastebasket... unless the letter is accompanied by a reprint of a scientific paper published in Physical Review (or any other reputable, refereed scientific journal), written by the person writing the letter, which proves that the paper "Cauchy Problem in Spacetimes with Closed Timelike Curves" by Friedman, Morris, Novikov, Echeverria, Klinkhammer, Thorne, and Yurtsever, is erroneous. My take on it is more of a "what is the focus of the story?" Is it the soft sciences? Psychology and sociology and politics ... and the Foundation. Or is it one more of challenges met with the STEM disciplines of physics and astronomy and biology? It's also not a "it is either a this or that." Some books can be both and I think that Clarke is a prime example of this. 2001 is as much of a story of psychology as it is about astronomical distances and the ship needed to accomplish that goal. The Songs of Distant Earth is about two cultures clashing ... with the real problems of engineering a ship to travel (it's a softer story than it is hard). Protector by Niven likewise scores high on both the soft and hard scales. Foster tends to higher on the 'soft' side of the scale, though sometimes it edges up there with some real biology and the limits of technology are sometimes real limits. And so, it is "are the challenges that the characters surmount solved with tools developed from the soft or hard sciences?" "Use the Force Luke" is not a hard science solution.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
    > I've jokingly called Forward's books science papers with a plot. All the biggest scientific achievements always occur in Canada. His stuff's solidly in the fantasy category.
- cmiller1 2y ago
  How does hard fantasy which also sticks to it's own world rules tightly factor into this?
- JohnFen 2y ago
  I agree that there's a clear difference between hard and soft science fiction. But in my mind, it's "hard" science fiction if the world is entirely consistent with physical reality as we know it.
  - neaden 2y ago
    There's basically little to no truly hard sci fi under that definition. Even the Martian fudges things to make the storm happen as the plot needs it to. I can't think of any other recent movies or books that fit your criteria, though I'm sure there are some books at least.
    - JohnFen 2y ago
      There has always been a lot less hard sci-fi than soft, true, and it used to be more common than it is now. But the real dividing line in my mind isn't quite as stark as I made it sound. There's still a gray area. Unusual events that exist purely for plot purposes don't disqualify anything, for instance. The differentiator I have in mind is more basic: if the story involves things that are simply not possible, it's not hard sci-fi. If it involves things that are very unlikely, but still within the realm of possibility, it can certainly still be "hard". Same if it involves things/effects that don't (as far as we know) exist, but wouldn't break the laws of physics if they did.
      - neaden 2y ago
        Can you give examples of works you consider to be hard sci-fi?
        zajio1am 2y ago
        Most Asimov's short stories about robots?
        krapp 2y ago
        Those are literally just morality plays with no scientific grounding whatsoever. The "positronic brains" behind the robots only exist because Asimov thought it sounded cool and futuristic.
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.

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.
  - tshaddox 2y ago
    I don't know if it's a misunderstanding, or if usage is just very mixed and inconsistent. Both Wikipedia articles provide both definitions, and both claim that usage is sometimes contradictory and not at all rigorous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction > The complementary term soft science fiction, formed by analogy to the popular distinction between the "hard" (natural) and "soft" (social) sciences,[6] first appeared in the late 1970s. Though there are examples generally considered as "hard" science fiction such as Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, built on mathematical sociology,[7] science fiction critic Gary Westfahl argues that while neither term is part of a rigorous taxonomy, they are approximate ways of characterizing stories that reviewers and commentators have found useful.[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_science_fiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_science_fiction > The term soft science fiction was formed as the complement of the earlier term hard science fiction. > The earliest known citation for the term is in "1975: The Year in Science Fiction" by Peter Nicholls, in Nebula Award Stories 11 (1976). He wrote "The same list reveals that an already established shift from hard sf (chemistry, physics, astronomy, technology) to soft sf (psychology, biology, anthropology, sociology, and even [...] linguistics) is continuing more strongly than ever."
7thaccount 2y ago
I share a similar view to you on what is hard or soft science fiction, but it can be tricky to pin down. Star Trek to me is somewhat firm (in between) as the technology may as well be magic (Heisenberg compensators), but it tries to be consistent with the scientific rules within the show for the most part. Revelation Space more or less feels like a universe operating off the same principles as ours with a more reasonable assumption about the future (hard). Then you have things like Star Wars that are fun, but so ridiculous as to very much be on the soft side.
- nox101 2y ago
  ST:TOS and ST:TNG era seemed to deal with some hard sci-fi ideas. Nothing I've watched in the last 20 years seemed hard sci-fi. Most of them seem to be "how can we work some action sequence into this story". Admittedly I haven't watched them all and I'm sure there are moments of hard sci-fi but my impression is it's devolved into space opera.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    "Primer" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384 "The Man from Earth" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683
    - nox101 2y ago
      sorry I meant episodes of modern star trek. there are plenty of hard sci-fi movies. those two are great. I'd add "Her" and "Ex Machina"
    - 7thaccount 2y ago
      I really enjoyed both
  - krapp 2y ago
    Star Trek was always meant to be space opera, but yes... ironically TOS, considered the campy black sheep of the franchise now, is the one series that at least attempted to be harder than others would, with input from actual engineers and science fiction writers of the time. The episode with the introduction of the Romulan cloaking device, for instance, hinged on the actual laws of thermodynamics (a perfect cloak is impossible - it must be radiating something somewhere.) In modern Trek, they'd just something something subspace some bullshit. It helped that Gene Roddenberry was in the Navy and that Trek was basically The Cold War In Space which is actually more of an interesting dynamic to me than Starfleet being basically invincible and everything running on space magic.
shagie 2y ago
> Greg Egan is often cited as one of the current greats when it comes to hard sci-fi. I'd also suggest a good look at Baxter's books and Robert L Forward's too. I've jokingly called Forward's books science papers with a plot. Timemaster starts out with: > There exist semieducated but obstinate people who have raised the concept of strict local causality to godhead, and attempt to use such words as "obviously" and "it only makes sense that ..." in an attempt to "prove" that their version of causality cannot be violated, and that any sort of time machine is logically impossible. From my reading of the scientific literature, they are wrong. If I receive a letter from this sort of person complaining about the "impossibility" of the time machines in this novel, I will throw the letter in the nearest wastebasket... unless the letter is accompanied by a reprint of a scientific paper published in Physical Review (or any other reputable, refereed scientific journal), written by the person writing the letter, which proves that the paper "Cauchy Problem in Spacetimes with Closed Timelike Curves" by Friedman, Morris, Novikov, Echeverria, Klinkhammer, Thorne, and Yurtsever, is erroneous. My take on it is more of a "what is the focus of the story?" Is it the soft sciences? Psychology and sociology and politics ... and the Foundation. Or is it one more of challenges met with the STEM disciplines of physics and astronomy and biology? It's also not a "it is either a this or that." Some books can be both and I think that Clarke is a prime example of this. 2001 is as much of a story of psychology as it is about astronomical distances and the ship needed to accomplish that goal. The Songs of Distant Earth is about two cultures clashing ... with the real problems of engineering a ship to travel (it's a softer story than it is hard). Protector by Niven likewise scores high on both the soft and hard scales. Foster tends to higher on the 'soft' side of the scale, though sometimes it edges up there with some real biology and the limits of technology are sometimes real limits. And so, it is "are the challenges that the characters surmount solved with tools developed from the soft or hard sciences?" "Use the Force Luke" is not a hard science solution.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  > I've jokingly called Forward's books science papers with a plot. All the biggest scientific achievements always occur in Canada. His stuff's solidly in the fantasy category.
cmiller1 2y ago
How does hard fantasy which also sticks to it's own world rules tightly factor into this?
JohnFen 2y ago
I agree that there's a clear difference between hard and soft science fiction. But in my mind, it's "hard" science fiction if the world is entirely consistent with physical reality as we know it.
- neaden 2y ago
  There's basically little to no truly hard sci fi under that definition. Even the Martian fudges things to make the storm happen as the plot needs it to. I can't think of any other recent movies or books that fit your criteria, though I'm sure there are some books at least.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    There has always been a lot less hard sci-fi than soft, true, and it used to be more common than it is now. But the real dividing line in my mind isn't quite as stark as I made it sound. There's still a gray area. Unusual events that exist purely for plot purposes don't disqualify anything, for instance. The differentiator I have in mind is more basic: if the story involves things that are simply not possible, it's not hard sci-fi. If it involves things that are very unlikely, but still within the realm of possibility, it can certainly still be "hard". Same if it involves things/effects that don't (as far as we know) exist, but wouldn't break the laws of physics if they did.
    - neaden 2y ago
      Can you give examples of works you consider to be hard sci-fi?
      - zajio1am 2y ago
        Most Asimov's short stories about robots?
        krapp 2y ago
        Those are literally just morality plays with no scientific grounding whatsoever. The "positronic brains" behind the robots only exist because Asimov thought it sounded cool and futuristic.

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.