What movies/TV shows qualify as "hard" science fiction?

Cafe Society
1

I’ve been getting the sense lately that there is very little consensus on what this term means.

By the definition I’d use, I find very few movies or TV shows qualify. (Novels and short stories are a whole other matter, but they are also so vast in number and reach such a relatively niche audience, I think we should leave them out of this discussion.) Maybe the easiest way to explain my standards would be to point out some examples that don’t qualify, IMO (although a lot of the content excluded is stuff I nevertheless greatly enjoy):

(1) Anything with “warp”, “hyperdrive”, or “FTL” travel. That knocks out Star Wars (which has no chance anyway for so many other reasons), Star Trek, BSG, Stargate, Andromeda, and Interstellar.

(2) Portrayal of “artificial gravity” that does not involve acceleration or rotation. Now we also lose Firefly/Serenity.

(3) Instant communications, with no lag. I’m not sure if there’s anything that escaped the above two but gets knocked out here, but it’s another strike against Firefly/Serenity.

(4) Probably the most arguable category: anything where the science gets a little hazy/mystical and slides over into woo. After a promising beginning, this was how Arrival fell apart for me. 2001’s middle act is truly excellent hard sci-fi, but everything involving the monolith gets very “woo”. And it’s another strike against Interstellar (thinking here about the sappy ending, although there are some other lesser issues earlier).

So what survives these cuts? It’s a lot easier for near-future type stories, stuff we could imagine happening in our lifetimes: Gattaca, The Martian, Gravity, Deep Impact. Sunshine probably fits in this category, too: although its last act jumps the shark badly (whereas its first half might be the best hard sci fi movie ever made), it does so in a way that doesn’t necessarily disqualify it as hard SF. And quite a few of the Black Mirror stories would qualify, I think (there might be some disagreement as to how many and which ones).

When the setting is further in the future, 22nd century and beyond, there is very very little I can think of that doesn’t run afoul of one of the rules I laid out. In fact, I can think of only one movie and one TV show. The movie is for my money one of the most underrated releases in recent memory: Passengers, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt. And the TV show is SyFy’s The Expanse, although I caution that I’ve only seen the pilot of that show.

So what others am I missing? Or do you think I’ve unfairly disqualified some worthy contenders?

2

Babylon 5 does not qualify, but it comes close. They have hyperspace travel, though.

And while some races use rotation to create gravity(Even B5 spins), there are races that have artificial gravity.

The attempt to be “somewhat hard sci-fi” was made, though.

3

The Time Machine (and probably most early science fiction that doesn’t leave the planet).
Logan’s Run.
Blade Runner.
The Andromeda Strain.
A lot of post-apocalyptic fiction probably qualifies–Mad Max et al., I am Legend…

4

I like most of your examples, but you are reminding me that I should have added: no time travel. And certainly no zombies (not even pseudo-scientific ones like in 28 Days Later).

5

Primer deals with a lot of the technical issues other time-travel movies hand-wave away.

On preview: oops, oh well.

6

I’ll nominate the Alien films (the first two, at a minimum). Sleeper ships (suggesting no FTL travel), and, IIRC, no instantaneous interplanetary communication.

7

Doesn’t Blade Runner have some sort of FTL travel though? It’s not explicitly mentioned, but having far-away off-world colonies to which you can travel within the lifespan of those older model replicants seems to implicate it.

8

I do agree that it’s an excellent entry in that genre though! And I actually really like time travel stories (if they are done well); I just don’t think they are totally “hard”. (TWSS)

One thing I think would be really cool in the case of *Primer *is if someone watched it without even knowing going in that it’s a time travel story. It seems designed to provide a real “whoa” moment for such a viewer, but I’m not sure how many people have seen it that unspoiled.

ETA:

Maybe they are on Mars, or moons of Saturn or something?

Oh, you might be right. But do they follow through with there being a whole different generation of people on Earth when they get back? I wish I could remember about the communication, but you might be right there too.

9

I’m going to veto The Time Machine and any other time travel movie. Any movie where you can hop in a machine and travel to the past is as least as preposterous as warp drives.

Andromeda Strain is also pushing it. An extra-terrestrial virus that turns energy into matter? Plus from what I’ve read, an extra-terrestrial pathogen would no more be able to infect a human or other Earth creature than an extra-terrestrial would speak English.

Also Babylon 5 not even close.

Some “hard science” films:
Moon
The Martian
Ex Machina
Gravity
Children of Men
Sunshine
Her

TV Shows:
Westworld
The Expanse (I think…never seen it)

10

At the beginning of Aliens, when Ripley is brought out of hypersleep, she learns that it’s been 57 years since the events of the first film. However, IIRC, she was adrift, and I don’t know how long the flight “home” should have been.

11

Star Cops. It was a short British TV series. No artificial gravity (early episodes in orbit showed the people in Zero G). No warp drive. No aliens. No violations of the laws of physics (one episode, “Conversations with the Dead”, got its title from a spaceship whose engines fired too long, so that it was impossible to reach them before they ran out of air: they were as good as dead). There was a delay in communication due to distance.

The one fantastic element of the time was a computer that fit in your pocket and was voice activated. That was pretty speculative at the time, but it was basically an iPhone.

Bonus: theme song performed by Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues.

12

Artificial gravity.

13

The Expanse is pretty good. At least the physics of space travel seem to be relatively realistic. There is some weird alien shit going on that the characters don’t understand yet and it’s not fully explained to the audience.

14

Oooh, good point, I’d forgotten about that part.

15

Why would Earth send the Sulaco to LV-426 on a rescue mission if it took years or decades to get there? Who are they going to rescue? Their great grandchildren?

Remember that Ripley also told Hudson that the little girl, Newt, survived a lot longer than the 17 days it would take for the Sulaco to be declared “overdue”. I don’t think she meant “years longer”. So we can assume that while travel and communications in the Alien universe is much slower than Star Wars or Star Trek, it is still much faster than the speed of light.

Also killer space cockroaches.
And does anyone besides me think that “nuking from orbit” or driving a 2 mile long spaceship into Africa as a response to getting overrun by what are essentially dangerous wild animals a bit of an over-reaction?

16

Yep. Military ships get to go fast; spaceborne refineries, not so much.

Ain’t nothing wrong with space cockroaches according to the OP.

If I recall correctly, this was literally the first actual alien their improvised survey craft had come across, and they wanted to militarize it.

17

Nice list!

Ah, good point. Nice catch. So that, and the artificial gravity, disqualifies it. They do make it seem “hard-ish” with some of the other touches though.

That’s actually a really good point. They are so creepy and gross that it seemed totally reasonable at the time, but I can’t think of any real rebuttal to your point that they are essentially “dangerous wild animals”. It’s not like they are something like the copycat aliens of The Thing, or something similar like Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, where letting them get a foothold can mean human extinction before long.

What about those two movies, BTW? We aren’t explicitly shown any violation of the first three rules AFAICR; the question would be whether the ability to nearly perfectly imitate someone crosses the line from speculative science to woo. For me, the stuff the Monolith did in *2001 * does cross that rubicon, while those two movies do not; but I’m not sure how solidly I can defend this position. :dubious:

Oh, and what about The Matrix? (The Terminator franchise, with its similar premise, is nixed due to the time travel element.) My initial impulse was to defend the bonafides of the first movie, since the “mystical” abilities shown are only within a computer simulation. But then I remembered that the ostensible reason the machines keep humans around (as batteries) makes no sense scientifically. Oh well.

This sounds very cool! Unfortunately, there’s no sign of it anywhere on Netflix (and we have a disc plan as well as a streaming one). :frowning:

18

I just watch the directors cut for the first time in probably 10 yrs this past weekend. There is a deleted scene where they say it takes two weeks for communication between Earth/LV426. The little girl is shown to be the same before the Aliensing happens as after, so it probably didn’t take too long to actually travel there.

19

To snip your criteria for exclusion:

And you later add time travel.

I completely agree with (4). But I don’t agree that featuring (1)-(3) or time travel necessarily excludes something, although it certainly makes it much more challenging. I think the overarching principle is that the scientific issues and principles behind the technology that’s portrayed must be explored in a convincing way. It’s not necessary that every last detail must be explained, or that everything must be within reach of current technology; but you can’t just handwave (say) time travel or FTL travel for plot convenience. There are good reasons why these things are probably impossible, and you must address those issues in a convincing way in order for your science to be remotely plausible.

So, yeah - I think Primer is hard sci fi, or at least it has a semi, because it actually tries to get to grips with difficult questions surrounding the idea.

20

The Expanse pretty well violates rule 4 as well, though I think it’s useful to make a distinction. All the human stuff in The Expanse is pretty believable, with only a few stretches beyond current tech. However, the alien stuff is… alien. It does stuff that isn’t understood and is generally dangerous. From the human perspective, it violates physical law.

I’m ok with this type of “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” stuff as long as it’s kept at arm’s reach and there’s some thought put into the consequences.

As for other shows, Planetes is a great hard sci-fi anime.