Hard/strong arguments are always strange. Some of my childhood aesthetic favourites bridge the gap (Golden Witchbreed and the like). Some try to be hard sf, and

Hard/strong arguments are always strange. Some of my childhood aesthetic favourites bridge the gap (Golden Witchbreed and the like). Some try to be hard sf, and concentrate hugely on one aspect but miss others (Niven, the integral trees). Clarke has his own hand-wavy moments (Cradle?). I'm not sure it's a dichotomy that yields that much value. Le Guin, Pohl, others - often venture into very fantasy settings, and still tell such wonderful tales, that tell us something about the very real, very unscientific and utterly irreducible human nature. Which I think is the true point of SF at all. Fresh landscapes, same paint. New stories.