The Foreigner series isn’t set in the Alliance-Union universe, it’s set in its own.
What is set in Alliance-Union, yet in no way comes across as hard SF, is theMorgaine stories.
All the important terms in the OP are vague - “hard”, “depressing”, and “modern”. I think we should not waste our time discussing them. Just answer the OP’s question as best you can.
I can’t see how that is possible. All Asimov’s Foundation stories, including the Galactic Empire and later Robot stories, completely ignore the relativistic implications of FTL travel. So does most space opera, including Star Trek, Star Wars and Iain Bank’s Culture series as examples.
There are much harder forms of SF which do consider the implications of FTL, including Stephen Baxter’s Xeelee sequence, so much so that it becomes a major plot point; but even the Xeelee universe is relatively soft compared to Baxter’s NASA trilogy, which includes a vanishingly small quantity of handwavium.
(some might argue that Moonseed is significantly softer than the other two).
Curiously enough, some late C19th/early 20th ‘future history’ novels describing the wars to come are significantly harder SF than most Golden Age and modern space opera, since they use plausible extrapolations of then-current technology. The most famous of these works being The Shape of Things to Come by Wells. Some of these were depressing, though, at least until the ultimate ‘triumph of rationality’ that sometimes comes at the end.
And, of course, these works are far from ‘modern’. I do think that there are a number of new authors that are writing hardish SF, far harder than the Foundation books and the Lensman/Skylark space opera genre. Alaistair Reynolds, Stephen Baxter, James Corey, Greg Egan, Gregory Benford; much modern space opera includes a lot more semi-realistic tech than the Golden Age stuff ever did.
Charles Stross and Charles Pellegrino are two authors who try really hard to get the science right, although the results are sometimes devastating. Here’s a list of hard SF that attempts to do the same trick, with varying amounts of success. I’m pleased to see Schlock Mercenary in there.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/sealofapproval.php
Dang. My print copy of Analog just arrived and the guest editorial covered just this. Unfortunately, it it not yet available on line. I hope this thread stays alive for a while
Having recently read Clarke’s Childhood End I don’t know if I would put it in either the upbeat or hard science fiction categories.
the changes the humans go through doesn’t go well for any living adult and it strays way too far into Clarke’s fascination with the occult/psy/mind control for my tastes
For hard science fiction I like Niven’s early short stories. I read Neutron Star as a young teenager and had to get my dad to help me figure out the conclusion.
Niven is what I term quasi-hard science fiction. His stories are ostensibly written using real physics (for instance, the teleport booths are affected by change in energy by adding or removing thermal energy and can only adjust for a certain differnece in momentum) but many of the technologies in the Known Space universe fundamentally violate known physics (stasis fields, reactionless drives, scrith) with no explanation or apparent consequences, and he often gets the physics wrong in subtle but definite ways (instability of the Ringworld is most prominant, but there are numerous other errors throughout the stories like Bussard ramjets, stanle quantum singularities) and introduces pseudoscientific and mystical elements like telepathy, precognition, and the Pak protectors as the alien predecessors to humanity rather than being evolved from catarrhines, which is genetically impossible. Niven is a good short story writer and does delve into the implications of some technologies as with organlegging, antisenescence treatments, and flash mobs, but the technology of his universe is not strongly rooted in science.
Arthur C. Clarke is more a hard science fiction writer; he is interested in the technology and its fundamental implications on society, and when he invokes a technology that is without solid scientific basis (e.g. the Quantum Drive of The Songs of Distant Earth) he tacitly acknowledges that it is a technical conceit to serve the story. When he introduces aliens or their devices, they are not funny shaped humanoids with essentially human cognition and intelligible grammar but are truly alien and generally inscrutable. Of current writers, Stephen Baxter is often (although not always) hard if speculative science as is James S. A. Corey (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) as authors of The Expanse series even though they do assume some technologies that are without basis.
Stranger
I don’t know if there’s an audiobook version or not, but I recently read a novel called The Empress of Mars by Kage Baker that is, not too surprisingly, set on Mars that you might enjoy. It’s a bit softer SF than The Martian but still in the “hard” range.
There is also the “Retrieval Artist” series by Kristine Kathryn Rusch is relatively hard SF (there is FTL) in a detective/police/private eye sub-genre sort of place, mostly set on the Moon, particularly for the first few books of the series.
I would like to point out that trying to dismiss from the category of “hard” science fiction any SF that utilizes an ftl technology simply means that you want your “hard” science fiction to be science FACT. The Martian is an example: while it hasn’t happened yet, it doesn’t rely upon the existence of anything not already able to be done now, really. But let’s face it: for the most part, if you’re going to tell anything interesting about a mankind that gets out of our solar system, you’re going to have to use the as yet undiscovered how it can be done concept of ftl travel.
Vernor Vinge gets good interstellar adventure in Deepness in the Sky without FTL - and while suspended animation and other life extension might turn out to be impossible, they seem more likely than FTL, which breaks physics in ways that suspended animation does not break biology.
Actually, this reminds me that I ought to read Karl Schroeder’s Lockstep which is another interstellar, non-FTL story I’ve heard good things about The Worldbuilding in Lockstep Is So Good It Will Make You Giddy
Which is the “mundane SF” subcategory of hard SF that I mentioned in post #3.
The problem isn’t using a conceit like superluminal transportation that makes science fiction not ‘hard’–virtually all science fiction references some future innovation which may or may not be workable in practice–but that it treats that conceit trivially rather than using it as a means to realistically examine the impact upon humanity in some salient way.
For instance, most story using some kind of faster than light travel end up using it in an “Age of Sail” fashion; that is, you see galactic empires trading dohickys manufactured on Beta Lyra 2A for unobtainium ore mined on Plotnius IV, as if it would ever make sense to move masses of materials between two distant star systems rather than find those materials natively in-system or have the technology to synthesize a substitute. The reality is that really inexpensive superluminal travel would introduce all kinds of novel possibilities that would make normal trade of materials pointless, and trade that requires extreme energies or slow subluminal transit just isn’t economically workable.
‘Hard’ science fiction is less about the technologies per se than it is about a realistic approach to how those technologies would change society. Most scifi is actually space opera, which is a science-y facade over fantasy or military tropes. Star Wars is a prime example of this–it is literally drawn from the Hero’s Journey of classic mythology with none of the technology really given a plausible basis–but nearly all cinematic science fiction falls into this category, as does much of literature. Frederick Pohl is actually ‘hard SF’ even though he rarely delves into the science of the technology in his books; ditto with Stephen Baxter, who invokes a lot of extremely speculative physics but in a way that uses it to explore the impact it would have on society rather than to simply allow it to create and resolve plot complications.
Stranger
The best “hard scifi” I’ve read in a long time is Saturn Run, by John Sandford.
I’m not giving away anything that isn’t in the summaries and reviews (and the book’s forward, IIRC).
Sandford worked with a physicist while writing this, who took current technology and extrapolated it 50 years ahead. No warp drives, no transporters, no FTL. Just current tech with better efficiency and believable improvements. He limited himself only to this level of technological advance and concocted a really good story about humanity’s reaction when telescopes reveal something decelerating into orbit around Saturn.
For hard, believable, technically accurate science fiction, it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. I did not expect this from that author.
Quibble: it is by John Sanford and Cten. (I don’t share your enthusiasm for the book, and skimmed over large chunks of it. I thought the writing style was pretty pedestrian.)
Le Guin’s Hainish novels only use FTL comms, not travel - are they science FACT?
Did you read my wording carefully? :rolleyes:
People use FTL ambiguously, which was why I asked for clarification.
Also, of course, some of the novels are set before the invention of the ansible, so are they more FACTful than the rest of the Cycle?
MrDibble, I think you’re still misunderstanding.
Some people say, “FTL? That’s not hard science!”
Those people want SF to be Science Fact.
DSYoung ain’t one of those people.
Some people, including DSYoung, don’t say, “FTL? That’s not hard science!”
DSYoung hasn’t expressed an opinion on those people.
Fair summary, DSYoung?
In any case, the debate over what’s hard SF or not seems at best tangential to the thread.