# 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:** 11\ **Page:** 12
**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, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/221 "2020-12-11T21:08:59Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > I don’t see any value judgement inherent in it. I’m certainly not saying that hard is good and soft is bad. The bit about “without any logical or reasonable explanation” looks a little judgy, but if that’s not how you mean it, okay. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/222 "2020-12-11T21:29:54Z")
> [@Reno\_Nevada\_Jr](#): > > Your new book about a werewolf and a witch who meet cute and team up to solve a murder–SF? Romance? Mystery? General Fiction? Teenage Paranormal Romance. I swear to God, that is an actual section at my local B&N. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2020, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/223 "2020-12-12T00:11:19Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > > [@Reno\_Nevada\_Jr](#): > > > > Your new book about a werewolf and a witch who meet cute and team up to solve a murder–SF? Romance? Mystery? General Fiction? > > Teenage Paranormal Romance. I swear to God, that is an actual section at my local B&N For which you can thank J.K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer, and the dump trucks loads o’ cash that they brought their respective publishers. ---
**Author:** ![Gray\_Ghost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c0e974/32.png) [@Gray\_Ghost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gray_Ghost)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2020, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/224 "2020-12-12T02:42:04Z")
> [@echoreply](#): > > > [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > > > So: fantasy, or scifi, or both, or neither? > > …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. Soft as Jello, IMHO. Everything operates via “fields”, and with an SI units gloss. I read them to learn how a hypothetical post-scarcity society: 1, avoids boredom and 2, finds dramatic conflict. Tremendously fun all the same. _Revelation Space_ got mentioned, and IIRC, Reynolds himself called it ‘space opera,’ but he was trying to color within the lines of hard SF, again IMHO. Where I find him interesting is, alone among other hard SF writers, Reynolds in that series actually seemed to care about the aesthetics of the world he was building. And consequently, because the tech was often so in advance of our own—reversible calculations lowering local entropy and acting as a refrigerator, being one of the more unusual ones—and he cared about describing it in a way that sounded, ‘real’, he ended up with a lot of fantasy and Gothic horror elements in the descriptions. In one novella, someone’s _jewelry_ takes flight and ends up killing people. Many of the Conjoiner-era stories read more like equal parts fantasy and horror, accordingly. ---
**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 12, 2020, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/225 "2020-12-12T02:50:46Z")
> [@Gray\_Ghost](#): > > Many of the Conjoiner-era stories read more like equal parts fantasy and horror, accordingly. Lots of body horror, specifically. When nanotech gets way out of hand, or you push the limits of what surgical modification can accomplish. ---
**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 12, 2020, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/226 "2020-12-12T03:27:22Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > 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. I think The Dark Forest trilogy is apocalyptic fiction–the end of the whole universe. It was recommended to me, but I knew nothing about it, other than the general category of sci-fi, which as we’ve seen can cover a lot. I tremendously enjoyed the reveals throughout the story. Even at the beginning, is it a story that’s about women in science, an MMO game (my original guess, probably reading it near _REAMDE_ or _Ready Player One_)? Then comes the reveal of the space aliens. So saying _The Three Body Problem_ is a first contact story spoils the initial question of what is going on in the first part of the book. I know those are sub-genres or sub-sub-genres. Possibly because it’s not from a Western literary tradition, the pacing and beats of the story seemed a bit off to me. The plot then twists around and goes down lots of dead ends. I know that sounds like criticism, but I really liked all of it and how those things affected me as reader. I don’t want to spoil that enjoyment for anybody else who likes the discovery process. ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2020, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/227 "2020-12-12T03:48:54Z")
Speaking of stuff categorized as “science fiction”, alternate history books are often classified as “science fiction” as well even if they lack any sci-fi or fantasy elements. ---
**Author:** ![Gray\_Ghost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c0e974/32.png) [@Gray\_Ghost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gray_Ghost)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2020, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/228 "2020-12-12T03:50:35Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > > [@Gray\_Ghost](#): > > > > Many of the Conjoiner-era stories read more like equal parts fantasy and horror, accordingly. > > Lots of body horror, specifically. When nanotech gets way out of hand, or you push the limits of what surgical modification can accomplish. The “Peace monument” hospital ship short story was pretty memorable in that regard… Or the mods the Ultras got up to. It wasn’t a future I thought was likely, but Reynolds added enough details that it felt _real_. Like some parallel universe, a few decisions away on the branching. I rarely got that feeling from, e.g., reading a Known Space story. ---
**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 12, 2020, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/229 "2020-12-12T07:45:54Z")
While I agree, you could make an argument that they _all_ explore the implications of a scientific theory in fiction (in this case, Many Worlds) - which actually seems pretty hard. And some of them (Drakka, Worldwar) definitely mix that in with other sci-fi elements. Others (Temeraire, Alvin Maker, Anno Dracula) are clearly mixing in fantasy (or horror). ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2020, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/230 "2020-12-12T17:11:09Z")
One of my favorite hard SF novels is Arthur C Clarke’s **A Fall of Moondust**. I don’t know if anything described in the book is impossible given what was known about the lunar surface at the time. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum\_45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum_45/32/3385_2.png) [@eburacum\_45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum_45)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2020, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/231 "2020-12-14T17:42:26Z")
Hard science fiction and horror can definitely be mixed. Almost every horror trope could be replicated using sufficiently advanced technology. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170.md?page=11)