# 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:** 3
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2020, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/41 "2020-12-04T16:24:49Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Similarly, “Mote in God’s Eye” is also hard sci-fi because it’s centered around and focused on the unique physiology of the Moties and how it shapes their society and technology. > > Meanwhile, something like “Left Hand of Darkness” is soft sci-fi, as it centers almost entirely around interpersonal relationships and dealings of a Terran human in the face of a very science-fiction scenario. (the Gethenians have no fixed sex- they alternate male & female through time) I’m not seeing a difference here? ---
**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 4, 2020, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/42 "2020-12-04T16:53:06Z")
It’s a story about dealing with the surprising implications of a new technology, which renders people who were at the top of their profession with the old technology at risk of losing their status, and which also provides new opportunities for deception of the public. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2020, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/43 "2020-12-04T16:59:39Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > I’m not seeing a difference here? Especially since the info in the spoiler box applies equally to the Moties. Interestingly, the authors take that same starting point and go in quite different directions: hyper-competitiveness for the Moties, and a slowed-down pace for the Gethenians. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2020, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/44 "2020-12-04T17:55:32Z")
The difference has always been about attitude rather than content or execution. James Blish said it well, that it was a term: > in which a conscientious attempt to be faithful to already known facts (as of the date of writing) was the substrate on which the story was to be built, and if the story was also to contain a miracle, it ought at least not to contain a whole arsenal of them. “Hard” science fiction developed as a counter to “super-science” stories, like those of Doc Smith. Campbell wrote them as a kid and published a few more in _Astounding_, but he consciously moved the field toward more realistic storytelling. Stories based around engineering had few miracles in them, no more than needed to set a yarn in space. He wasn’t dogmatic about his bias - he published dozens of Henry Kuttner stories and Kuttner was incapable of hard sf, and after the war he championed major stories by women like Judith Merril and Wilmar Shiras that were the opposite of hard sf – and that’s not to mention his obsession with psionics - but he created a distinct attitude in his magazines that none of the other editors adopted. Horace Gold at _Galaxy_ and Anthony Boucher at _F&SF_ - remember that the first issue was _The Magazine of Fantasy_ until they realized that fantasy was a commercial in 1949 death trap and renamed it _The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction_ - encouraged a much wider range of attitude that encompassed “soft” science fiction by people like Theodore Sturgeon and Philip Jose Farmer and Philip K. Dick and Zenna Henderson. The boundaries between hard and soft were fairly weak until the 60s and 70s, where, as I wrote in the Puppies thread, the split between conservatives writing hard sf and liberals writing soft sf hardened into factions that were often at war with one another. [Ngrams](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hard+science+fiction%2Csoft+science+fiction&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Chard%20science%20fiction%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Csoft%20science%20fiction%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Chard%20science%20fiction%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Csoft%20science%20fiction%3B%2Cc0) shows that the terms hard sf and soft sf barely existed before the 1970s. There still isn’t a genre of soft sf. Only hard sf is used as a term, according to Ngrams, and that’s because it’s an ideology separating a minority from the soft (or to use their term, “squishy”) real world. ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2020, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/45 "2020-12-04T18:21:08Z")
> [@eburacum\_45](#): > > 3/ Methuselah ships - advanced in biological sciences mean that people might become effectively immortal at some point, so travelling on a trip that takes hundreds of years would be possible, if somewhat boring. > 4/ Seed ships - an idea by J D Bernal, which uses smallish craft to take life to other stars. Maybe we could use this system to grow humans at the destination; I suspect that if we ever do it, the end result would not be humans as we recognise them. > 5/ Data only ships - this is a kind of seed ship that takes only the information required to build competent minds at the far end. These competent minds may eventually include close analogs of human minds, but I’m not convinced that will be necessary or desirable. By the time we are ready to send spacecraft to the stars, I expect we will be up to our necks in various types of competent mind. The older I get, the more I think the most unrealistic part of Star Trek is that the ships are stupidly high-tech, but the humans still look like modern day humans and live conventional human lives. My imagining of any kind of “real” future space travel starts with humanity becoming so augmented/merged with AI that the “usual” problems of space travel no longer need to apply. E.g. just upload your brain to a computer and have it rebuild your body on the other side (kind of a combination of your 3/4/5 options). I think in future “hard” Sci Fi the idea of sending human bodies to extrasolar planets will seem as hokey as “kidnapping people from other planets to work in the mines” does now. ---
**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 4, 2020, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/46 "2020-12-04T18:29:49Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > Similarly, in Forever War, it turned out that if you accelerated towards a black hole, you jump someplace else immediately (in your reference frame). However, relativity still counted, so many years would pass on Earth. Bad example. Time dilation wasn’t nearly enough to account for the long spans of time Haldeman wanted to cover, and so he claimed that the jumps themselves took centuries. Despite also claiming that they were instantaneous, or so close to it as to be unmeasurable. Back on topic, I don’t actually think of “hard” vs. “soft” as being a dichotomy: How hard a story is is independent of how soft it is, and the best stories are both hard and soft. Take something like Niven’s “Inconstant Moon”, for example: The impetus behind the plot is a natural phenomenon, as plausible as he was able to make it, which the main characters can observe, measure, calculate, and understand. But the plot itself deals almost entirely with the way those human characters deal with the implications of that natural phenomenon. It works both as hard SF and as soft SF. ---
**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 4, 2020, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/47 "2020-12-04T18:53:05Z")
> [@leahcim](#): > > E.g. just upload your brain to a computer and have it rebuild your body on the other side (kind of a combination of your 3/4/5 options). I read a story, I think it was Stu Egan, who had something like that: 1. Send automated probes at top (tiny fraction of light) speeds to other solar systems. 2. Have them build self-replicating machines that then build receiving towers and robot factories. 3. Upload your brain on earth. 4. Send the signal to the receiving tower on another planet. 5. Download your brain into a robot and do a bunch of shit on that planet. 6. Upload the robot-brain and beam it back to earth. 7. Download the robot brain and integrate with your brain. 8. Repeat. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2020, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/48 "2020-12-04T19:01:24Z")
Maybe I’m not articulating it well, but to me, there was a fundamental difference in the stories- Mote was about the society, and the effects of the Motie physiology on their world, the MacArthur, and at a remove, the Empire of Man. It was NOT really about the relationship between the mediators and Blaine, Renner, or anyone else. LHoD was fundamentally about the relationship between Genly and Estraven, not about Karhide vs. Orgoreyn, or membership in the Ekumen. That’s the difference; in Mote, the story was about the physiology, while in LHoD, it was about the relationship. If they were movies, Mote would be a standard sci-fi movie, while LHoD would be produced by Lifetime or Hallmark. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2020, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/49 "2020-12-04T19:03:02Z")
> [@leahcim](#): > > The older I get, the more I think the most unrealistic part of Star Trek is that the ships are stupidly high-tech, but the humans still look like modern day humans and live conventional human lives. My imagining of any kind of “real” future space travel starts with humanity becoming so augmented/merged with AI that the “usual” problems of space travel no longer need to apply. E.g. just upload your brain to a computer and have it rebuild your body on the other side (kind of a combination of your 3/4/5 options). > > I think in future “hard” Sci Fi the idea of sending human bodies to extrasolar planets will seem as hokey as “kidnapping people from other planets to work in the mines” does now. Overall that’s an interesting take. As you say, stealing aliens (or humans) to work in the space mines sounds pretty quaint. Because we don’t mine with sweat and a pickaxe any more. The big enabling invention of Star Trek was the warp drive. At a time when perfecting space powerplants was the actual stuff of the current headlines. IOW, the Enterprise is culturally and behaviorally and mission-wise just a 1960s Navy ship with fancy engines exploring what the 1620s Earth full of exotic locales and uncharted frontiers would have been like. But with indoor plumbing. But I wonder how much your proposal about how AI / brain downloading is a big plot hole in your imagined Star Trek universe is an equally quaint (or at least anchored to a specific era) devotion to the bleeding edge of tech today in 2020. Which happens to be AI and also man-machine bio-interfaces. From the trivial Google Glass _et al_ to the more amazing various transcranial stimulators, artificial cochleas, etc., that are emerging from the labs now. Which is not to say your projections are wrong. Just that they, like you, are a product of your times. The esteemed @Exapno_Mapcase puts it well: > The Future is Never About the Future. It Is Always About Today. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2020, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/50 "2020-12-04T19:09:00Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Bad example. Time dilation wasn’t nearly enough to account for the long spans of time Haldeman wanted to cover, and so he claimed that the jumps themselves took centuries. Despite also claiming that they were instantaneous, or so close to it as to be unmeasurable. I thought he had it so that really long jumps took as many years in real time as it would take light to get there, so if you’re going a 100 light years, 100 years passes on Earth, even if it takes no time for you. In any case, it’s still a fantastic book. I should start a thread on recommendations for other books, if that’s just about my favorite. ---
**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 4, 2020, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/51 "2020-12-04T19:11:37Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I read a story, I think it was Stu Egan, who had something like that: Greg Egan? ---
**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 4, 2020, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/52 "2020-12-04T19:17:43Z")
🤦‍♂️ Duh, yes–Greg Egan. Stu Egan is a local blogger about NC education. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2020, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/53 "2020-12-04T22:27:56Z")
> [@Omniscient](#): > > I don’t quite follow what you’re trying to say here, but both the Time Machine and Time Ships are definitely fantasy. Calling them “sci-fi” fits with my description of the shifting language. I was referring to his hard sf books. I’m in the middle of reading “The Massacre of Mankind,” the sequel to War of the Worlds, and I wouldn’t call that hard sf either since he is writing the way someone in the time of Wells would write. Sci-fi is not fantasy, but I wouldn’t want to get into a what is fantasy, what is sf discussion. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2020, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/54 "2020-12-04T22:41:03Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Like anything, it’s not a simple binary hard or soft; it’s a continuum. Having an FTL drive makes a story less hard than a story without an FTL drive, all else being equal, but that all else might still be fairly hard. Here is a counterexample. I somehow acquired 100 Perry Rhodan books. (They were a nickel each, I’m a collector, don’t judge me.) In them FTL travel proceeds through kind of a different dimension, realizing FTL travel is impossible in ours, but the spaceships seem to be able to travel at or nearly at light speed with no time dilation and no excessive energy consumption. None of it is hard sf, but I’d say the FTL travel part is a bit harder than the other part, in being not in direct contravention to verified laws of physics. BTW they would definitely fall into my sci-fi category, with a bit of fantasy, and not just because Forrie Ackerman edited them. ---
**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 4, 2020, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/55 "2020-12-04T22:58:46Z")
Not original, if Greg Egan came before this, but I liked this [novella](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/fiction/monkey/), _Scratch Monkey_, from Charles Stross (shocking, I know) that played with the same idea. Dark, but that’s Stross for you. Have we mentioned the [Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness)? ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2020, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/56 "2020-12-04T23:37:31Z")
The quintessential hard science fiction story, IMHO, is [Dragon’s Egg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg) by Dr. Robert L. Forward, who had a Ph.D. in physics. It’s a great novel that is scientifically grounded about a species of intelligent life that evolved on the surface of a neutron star. > **[Dragon's Egg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg)** > > Pages for logged out editors learn more > > > Dragon's Egg is a 1980 hard science fiction novel by American writer Robert L. Forward. In the story, Dragon's Egg is a neutron star with a surface gravity 67 billion times that of Earth, and inhabited by cheela, intelligent creatures the size of a sesame seed who live, think and develop a million times faster than humans. Most of the novel, from May to June 2050, chronicles the cheela civilization beginning with its discovery of agriculture to ... I’ve reread the novel several times. In the appendices, the author expands on the details of the futuristic human technology discussed in the novel. We still haven’t caught up for the most part (such as the “monopole-catalyst fusion rocket”), with one exception: the section on information storage and transfer. Though most of the novel is set in 2050, we exceeded the computer/information technology hypothesized in the novel more than a decade ago. > **More details here (click arrow to expand)** > > For example, the ship’s library consisted of 25 “HoloMem crystals,” each of which held 0.4 trillion bits of data. Each crystal is therefore capable of storing 50 GB of data (for a total storage of 1.25 TB). Each crystal is further described as being cubes that are 5 cm on a side. I have thumb drives that hold far more data than that, and they are considerably smaller than a 5 cm cube. Still a remarkable novel, considering that it was written in 1980. ---
**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 5, 2020, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/57 "2020-12-05T00:41:27Z")
I’ve got that one on my shelf to read… ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2020, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/58 "2020-12-05T14:07:27Z")
> [@robby](#): > > Though most of the novel is set in 2050, we exceeded the computer/information technology hypothesized in the novel more than a decade ago. Here’s a similar thing from Heinlein in 1973. The [**Welton fine-gain memory cube**](http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1314). Treated in the novel as very dense and very expensive. Devices far more capable now are given away as freebie swag at IT conventions worldwide. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2020, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/59 "2020-12-05T15:01:22Z")
> [@robby](#): > > It’s a great novel that is scientifically grounded Eh. Great novel, yes. Scientificly grounded, not so sure. The premise of the nuclei of various elements interacting together in a manner similar to electron-based chemistry, allowing complex “molecules” and even life is way up there on the inprobability scale. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2020, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170/60 "2020-12-05T15:11:27Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > > [@robby](#): > > > > It’s a great novel that is scientifically grounded > > Eh. Great novel, yes. Scientificly grounded, not so sure. The premise of the nuclei of various elements interacting together in a manner similar to electron-based chemistry, allowing complex “molecules” and even life is way up there on the inprobability scale. Granted, though that’s why I said “scientifically grounded.” There’s a scientifically plausible explanation for (nearly) everything in the book. For example, the novel actually discusses in detail the issue with dealing with tidal forces in the vicinity of the neutron star. It doesn’t just ignore or hand wave the issue away (like in Star Trek). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-hard-science-fiction/927170.md?page=4)