My definitions of “hard SF” and “soft SF” aren’t actually mutually exclusive, and the best books are often both. Hard SF adheres closely to known or reasonably extrapolated science and technology, and ideally, involves the author making calculations. Soft SF emphasizes human reaction to the scientific events, whether at a personal or sociological level. A story like, say, Niven’s “Inconstant Moon” (which I consider to be the best SF short story ever) excels at both: The story’s about two people’s reactions to discovering that the world is ending, and could have worked regardless of the precise details of how it’s ending, but Niven still did a good, accurate job on those details.
The worst, on the other hand, is a story that tries to be hard SF but fails, through poor understanding of the science on the author’s part (and a lack of realization of said lack of understanding).
Moon is pretty hard (except for the AI part). But hard SF has always been a small part of the SF community, and hasn’t gotten much smaller in recent years.
Heinlein certainly wrote some hard SF - but his future history has telepathy, magic aliens that can do anything, and a haphazard view of relativity
Asimov wrote some hard SF - but he’s best known for the series with mind-controlling mutants, and telepathic robots.
Clarke wrote some hard SF - but again, his most famous books have a mystical transformation of humankind and race-memory of the future, and a casual violation of conservation of momentum
Niven wrote some fairly hard SF (Inconstant Moon, as mentioned above), but he’s most famous for the books that have psychic luck and an origin of mankind that was pretty impossible even when the books were first written.
Vinge is an interesting case - “Deepness in the Sky” is pretty solidly hard-SF but it takes place in a universe whose premises are space-opera soft SF (different laws of the universe for different areas, possibly set up by godlike precursors).
Authors who took particular care to stay hard include people like Clement and Anderson - but today we have people like Egan and Watts (and even Stross, who stays pretty hard in some of his books).
I really went down the rabbit hole by bringing up 1960s Hugo awards. Sorry about that.
Back to topic: has anyone else read any of this year’s finalists? What are your thoughts?
There are also the movie/series Hugo finalists:
Of those, I’ve seen the first five (and want to see the sixth, so no spoilers). The only one that I thought was especially good was Russian Doll. The Marvel movies were Marvel movies and hit all the Marvel buttons but no more. I actively disliked Rise of Skywalker. Good Omens was a bunch of delightful conversations between Aziraphale and Crowley, too often interrupted by a mediocre everything else.
But Russian Doll was something I haven’t seen before. It genuinely surprised me, and was full of wonderful moments. Of those five, it would get my vote.
Here, I’m way more in the dark, having only seen The Good Place and The Mandalorian. Star Wars is doing it for me less and less these days, and I disliked most of the Mandalorian. That said, the first five minutes of “Redemption” are probably my favorite 5 minutes of any Star Wars I’ve ever seen, enough that it almost served as a, uh, redemption for the entire series.
But against The Good Place? No goddamned contest. And that was a brilliant episode. Not the episode that left me sobbing uncontrollably, but still brilliant.
Of course, having seen only two, I’m in no position to have an overall opinion. Those of you that have seen more, what do you think?
Ugh this reinforces how far behind on my reading I am. I have read zero books published in 2019. I’ve been on a soporific history book kick and my pages per week is much lower than usual.
How many of the current Hugo nominees for best novel you’ve read is a poor measure of how much of a science fiction fan you are. Andy L may be the best expert on science fiction here, but he hasn’t read any of the current novel nominees yet. I’ve read a lot of the nominees up to 1972. I’ve also read a lot of the Retro-Hugo novel nominees. I’ve read some of the nominees from 1973 on. This isn’t because I think the earlier books were that much greater or that I don’t read much science fiction anymore. It’s more a matter of my spending my teens and twenties reading the books that I was told were the classics of science fiction. Since then I have more slowly filled in the gaps in my reading, but there are many books and I have a limited amount of time.
To be fair, I was giving my highly biased take on all of them. I am 100% certain there will be people out there who like The Light Brigade a lot more than I did (it’ll probably appeal to Heinlein fans and maybe Phillip K. Dick fans), and I know Charlie Jane Anders is hugely respected by a lot of people whose taste otherwise aligns with my own. And A Memory Called Earth is right in the very middle of the mainstream of thoughtful, complex-culture planetary science fiction.
Gideon the Ninth was delightful in large part because it was so different from anything else I’ve read.
I don’t think anyone says otherwise, but how many of the current Hugo finalists you’ve read is a good measure of how much you have to say in a thread about the current Hugo finalists, one hopes.
I didn’t take it that way–I think it just means they’re “behind,” as they said. It’s totally legit to be more interested in stuff written a long time ago. For years, I’ve been the opposite, drawn almost pathologically to the New Arrivals section of the library, and so I rarely read anything older than the last couple of years.
Thanks Wendell. I think there are better experts on SF around on the SDMB than I am, but I do try.
It’s natural to be better read in older books than newer ones. I’ve had more time to read books from 1950 than from 2019 - I’ve even had more time to read books from 2018 than from 2019. Also earlier books have had more time to get into libraries, to become available in cheaper editions, and for people to have recommended them to me.
I’m always behind on my reading, but that’s mostly because I get most of my books used. So it’ll take however long it takes for the first owner to read it, then however long it takes for it to work its way through the used-book channels to me. And of course those used-book channels are running much slower right now than usual.
Yeah, that makes sense. But I can’t recommend the “New Arrivals” section at the library highly enough. There’s a lot of really interesting stuff happening in fantasy/science fiction these days, from the New Weird movement to fantasy that’s not Eurocentric to the sheer powerhouse creativity of folks like NK Jemisin and China Mieville. In addition, there are lots of great works that are very traditional, like the Expanse series.
Of course we’ve all had literally more time to read Heinlein than Jemisin. But I’m excited enough by what’s going on in modern sf/f that I don’t give much of my time these days to the classics.
Finished this one today. I’m hoping crossposting from the Khadaji thread is okay.
The Deep follows the lives of merfolk born from the wombs of pregnant women thrown overboard from slave ships. It deals with some heavy issues in an allegorical fashion, and as such is pretty interesting.
As literature, though, I wasn’t crazy about it: short as it was, it felt repetitive, humorless, and bound in modern cultural language that verged on New Age.
My vote (well, virtual vote, I’m not a member) still goes with To Be Taught, If Fortunate.
I was pleased to see that Minor Mage got nominated for the Lodestar, but sad that *Swordheart*didn’t get a nod. On the other hand, I’m a serious Ursula Vernon fan, so I’m very biased. Plus, I haven’t read any of the ones that did make the list, so how would I know if *Swordheart *is better?
Personally, I don’t see it as being behind, just that there’s a lot out there and no one has that much time.
I don’t think anyone says otherwise, but how many of the current Hugo finalists you’ve read is a good measure of how much you have to say in a thread about the current Hugo finalists, one hopes.