# Is there really such a thing as "hard science" fiction? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [December 4, 2020, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170 "2020-12-04T03:25:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/201 "2020-12-11T07:31:44Z")
Hard sci-fi and space opera are orthogonal concepts. The _Revelation Space_ universe is usually said to be both space opera and hard sci-fi, or at least harder than usual. If the tech available to the humans is mostly plausible, with the real out there stuff being either mysterious and alien or too dangerous to use, then I’d at least put it on the hard spectrum. There’s something to be said for acknowledging that, for example, if you’re going to try FTL, then you’re going to run into causality problems, and the universe may bite back–hard. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/202 "2020-12-11T13:43:41Z")
> [@echoreply](#): > > Star Wars is sci-fi because it takes place in space, has space ships, and the monsters are space aliens. Even the fantasy elements are sci-fi. The wizard-knights fight with swords, but they’re laser swords. Sure, thematically it follows very traditional story and hero themes, but that doesn’t make it fantasy. I mean, _Battle Beyond the Stars_ isn’t a samurai or western, even though it follows the same story. Again, though, I’m genuinely curious: spoilers ahead for the last two AVENGERS movies, where inventor Tony Stark says to physicist Bruce Banner, _“dude, you’re embarrassing me in front of the wizards.”_ One of those wizards promptly uses a magic portal to lop an arm off an alien, and a spaceship takes the other wizard to another solar system — just like how Banner later uses a time machine built by Stark to chat with a Celtic sorceress — and at some point a Viking god shows up to aid King T’Challa in Wakanda, where the Scarlet Witch’s android lover is getting repaired. (Said android was named after a vision from water spirits, but that’s overkill; there’s also everything from a shield-wielding Captain America with supersoldier serum in his veins to a sword-wielding Valkyrie who rides around on a pegasus.) So: fantasy, or scifi, or both, or neither? (Does the math hinge on a Soul Stone that, in its wisdom, demands blood sacrifices?) ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/203 "2020-12-11T13:53:33Z")
It’s “Comic Book” , a separate genre. Comic Book take elements from any and every other genre, asks “Can I use this to tell a good story” and “Is it cool?”, and if the answer is “Yes!”, incorporates them. ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/204 "2020-12-11T15:31:06Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > So: fantasy, or scifi, or both, or neither? As @Alessan says, comic book is comic book. This gets back to the concept that categories are artificial. There are lots of publishing industry reasons that books are slotted into one category or another, but the ideas in the story are only limited by the author’s imagination. Categories can be useful, though. If I go out looking for a hard sci-fi story, I’m going to be pretty happy if I find _Deepness in the Sky_ or Expanse. Sure there are elements of both that don’t conform to known physics (or even possible physics), but a hard sci-fi label is still appropriate. Contrast that to the Locked Tomb series, which is about space necromancers, and is definitely not hard sci-fi. Then there are things like _The Three-body Problem_ where even revealing too many details of the genre category are spoilers. Where do the Culture books fit? To me they seem like hard sci-fi, probably because the plots often turn on in-story technology, but it is way beyond the bounds of known physics. ---
**Author:** ![Reno\_Nevada\_Jr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecc23a/32.png) [@Reno\_Nevada\_Jr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reno_Nevada_Jr)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/205 "2020-12-11T17:48:50Z")
> [@echoreply](#): > > There are lots of publishing industry reasons that books are slotted into one category or another… Not really. Publishers have one reason for slotting a book into a category–whoever is responsible thinks that it will sell better in that category than in another category. Your new book about a werewolf and a witch who meet cute and team up to solve a murder–SF? Romance? Mystery? General Fiction? The publisher will put it where they think it will sell. ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/206 "2020-12-11T19:05:57Z")
> [@Reno\_Nevada\_Jr](#): > > The publisher will put it where they think it will sell. Yes, exactly. That’s where readers expect to see the author, that’s where previous stories in the series landed, that’s the hot genre at the moment, etc., which all are just that’s where they think it will sell. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/207 "2020-12-11T19:07:37Z")
> [@echoreply](#): > > Where do the Culture books fit? To me they seem like hard sci-fi, probably because the plots often turn on in-story technology Did we read the same Culture stories? I would never consider them hard - fundamentally, they’re _about_ people, not tech. And yes, Minds are people too. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/208 "2020-12-11T19:49:50Z")
Yeah. I think of the Culture as “thr new Space Opera” - stories that take some of the tropes of classic space opera (technology on the edge of magic, easy travel to the stars, and stories about the fate of worlds depending on the actions of relatively few) and put them into stories with complex characters and deeper ethical issues) - Banks, Reynolds, Hamilton, Brin, Nagata do that sort of thing in at least some of their works. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/209 "2020-12-11T19:52:45Z")
> [@echoreply](#): > > Yes, exactly. That’s where readers expect to see the author, that’s where previous stories in the series landed, that’s the hot genre at the moment, etc., which all are just that’s where they think it will sell. And things like “that’s the hot genre at the moment” lead to things like spaceships being shoehorned into fantasy stories, just to say “This is technically sci-fi!”. I’m sure that, if fantasy had been more respected when McCaffery was writing, Pern would have just been called fantasy. ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/210 "2020-12-11T20:15:49Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Did we read the same Culture stories? I would never consider them hard - fundamentally, they’re _about_ people, not tech. I think a lot of it is what we get out of the stories. I’ve always very much liked hard sci-fi. So that tends to be what I take away. _Moby Dick_ (not sci-fi) was a long treatise on what we knew about fish in the 19th century, _Seveneves_ was about orbital mechanics, _Surface Detail_ is about mind uploading, etc. The technology in the Culture is magical to us, but in the books it is never presented as magical, though often too complicated for a merely human brain to understand. It also follows rules that are broadly understood by the characters. That to me is one of the signs of hard sci-fi. Except of course _Excession_, which is about when some technology is not following the rules. Which makes me realize, the whole Expanse is just another outside context problem story. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/211 "2020-12-11T20:32:49Z")
Where I disagree with several people on this thread is the idea that ‘hard = tech, soft = characters’. To me those are unrelated. I think this similar to what @Dr.Strangelove meant by ‘Hard sci-fi and space opera are orthogonal concepts.’ Hard SF means good science and believable tech, with some future innovations. Soft SF means things just happen without any logical or reasonable explanation of how. - You can have hard SF with good characters and an emphasis on the effect of tech on individuals and society. - You can have hard SF with flat characters, and an emphasis on the tech itself. - You can have soft SF with good characters and an interesting society, and magical tech. - You can have soft SF with flat characters, space opera, and magical tech. To me hard and soft has to do with the _approach to tech_. It has nothing to do with whether the book is about people or not, and whether it’s space opera or not. ---
**Author:** ![Pavelb1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/439d5e/32.png) [@Pavelb1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pavelb1)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/212 "2020-12-11T20:33:03Z")
I have not gone through every post…but Forever War is pretty hard don’t you all think? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/213 "2020-12-11T20:38:32Z")
> [@echoreply](#): > > _Surface Detail_ is about mind uploading Only in the most superficial way. What it’s _about_ is death and revenge and suffering and mercy (and the lack thereof), and how if we don’t have hell, many of us are all too happy to invent it (for others, of course) ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/214 "2020-12-11T20:41:54Z")
> [@Pavelb1](#): > > I have not gone through every post…but Forever War is pretty hard don’t you all think? I would say so. It’s also a great book, with strong character development and themes. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/215 "2020-12-11T20:52:29Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > To me hard and soft has to do with the _approach to tech_ . It has nothing to do with whether the book is about people or not, and whether it’s space opera or not. Agreed. I’m still playing around with this idea, but I think the _direction_ of how the technology is chosen by the author helps put things on the hard/soft spectrum. On the harder side, the author picks an advancement over current technology, and does some world-building to see how it plays out, trying to keep things as consistent as possible, and finally plucking a story from that universe. On the softer end, the author starts with a story and picks the tech needed to make it work. So, _The Expanse_ is hard because the authors took a significant advance in drive technology and played out what would happen. It’s fast enough to colonize the solar system, but too slow for interstellar travel (aside from generation ships), and trips are long enough that the colonies don’t stay in close contact (leading to political friction). Also, the physical conditions lead to a mild divergence in human biology. That doesn’t directly lead to a story, but does give a rich environment to pick stories from. In _Star Trek_, the authors wanted the Enterprise to regularly visit different star systems, like a wagon train visiting different towns in the old west. Ok, so you give them a warp drive. Done. Or you need to get them to the planet’s surface easily, so they get a teleporter. Or some weapons reminiscent of naval weapons, so instead of a torpedo they get a photon torpedo. The technology is there, but it’s always a secondary effect. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/216 "2020-12-11T20:52:41Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > Hard SF means good science and believable tech, with some future innovations. > Soft SF means things just happen without any logical or reasonable explanation of how. I don’t like this because of the value judgment inherent in it; it’s gonna lead nobody to consider their work “soft sf.” If instead you talk about which gets foregrounded more, the science or the characters, some folks will be fine being hard sf. I cannot imagine that Asimov and Le Guin would have disagreed on which of them spent more time on the tech and which spent more time on the characters. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/217 "2020-12-11T20:54:21Z")
> [@echoreply](#): > > Then there are things like _The Three-body Problem_ where even revealing too many details of the genre category are spoilers. Do you mind, maybe in spoilers, saying what you mean? I know which category I’d put this novel in, based on my thinking about the terms, but it may be different from yours. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/218 "2020-12-11T20:57:35Z")
Yeah, I was thinking of bring up Pern. Chronologically, it starts out as pretty hard science fiction. They don’t even have FTL for their colony ship. Then they introduce telepathic dragons that can teleport and time travel. Waving your hand and saying “Genetic Engineering” doesn’t really fix that. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/219 "2020-12-11T20:58:59Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I don’t like this because of the value judgment inherent in it; I don’t see any value judgement inherent in it. I’m certainly not saying that hard is good and soft is bad. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/220 "2020-12-11T21:02:10Z")
I think of it as soft SF - but it’s a great book. Haldeman invented technology and situations to create a fictional context for a story that reflected his Vietnam experience, but the technology was not intended to be realistic. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170.md?page=12)