# What movies/TV shows qualify as "hard" science fiction? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 17, 2018, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795 "2018-01-17T03:11:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/61 "2018-01-17T16:40:04Z")
I haven’t seen it, but I suspect the 1935 film **Transatlantic Tunnel** would qualify, as well > **[Transatlantic Tunnel (1935) - IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027131/)** > > Transatlantic Tunnel: Directed by Maurice Elvey. With Richard Dix, Leslie Banks, Madge Evans, Helen Vinson. A team of international scientists and engineers attempts to build a tunnel under the ocean. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/62 "2018-01-17T16:42:34Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > 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). ☹ I’m not sure there even was a DVD. I see there are some episodes on Youtube, cut into ten-minute chunks. About the only flaw I can remember was that the gravity on the moon (their eventual base) looked the same as on Earth. But that’s a forgivable issue, given the budget and state of special effects of the time. Space stations did spin for gravity, but in situations where that wasn’t possible in the real world (like in a small spaceship), the show tried hard to make it look like things were in microgravity. ---
**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:** [January 17, 2018, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/63 "2018-01-17T17:08:51Z")
The greatest, most-qualifying hard science fiction movie would be _Apollo 13_, if it weren’t based on a true story. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/64 "2018-01-17T17:21:19Z")
I’ll also add [The Space Explorers](http://greatbutforgotten.blogspot.com/2008/01/space-explorers.html), which fired my interest in science fiction back in 1958. It’s main plot involved a boy trying to find his father, who was missing somewhere in the solar system. It was as much science lecture as fiction; if they went to Mars, you’d get an explanation as to what Mars was like according to the knowledge of the time. It also used stock footage from a Nazi science fiction film and a Communist one. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/65 "2018-01-17T17:30:46Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > So does **Outland** , Peter Hyams’ inept re-setting of _High Noon_ in outer space. Harlan Ellison wrote a cute little piece eviscerating this film. There are science issues with it, too (people don’t explode in vacuum), but it overall qualifies. No FTL, no artificial gravity. I remember rather liking _Outland_ at the time. What was Ellison’s problem with it? ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/66 "2018-01-17T17:49:24Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > They’re not doing that. In the reference frame of the Earth, the trip takes about six years. In the reference frame of the traveler, the trip would take about three and a half years, but the distance is shorter due to relativistic length contraction. In either case, though, if a radio message were sent out at the same time that the ship was launched, it would beat the ship there by a couple of years. So the actual distance traveled by the traveler is not 4.3 light years? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/67 "2018-01-17T17:56:35Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > I remember rather liking _Outland_ at the time. What was Ellison’s problem with it? His essay is a masterpiece of snark that I would not want to ruin by giving and probably misquoting pieces from. It was published in an out-of-print collection of essays from Omni magazine (it might have first appeared in Omni). It might be in _Watching_ or another collection of his work. A few others: **Fahrenheit 451** , possibly **Charly** , based on Daniel Keyes’ _Flowers for Algernon_ **Project Moonbase** – low-budget Heinlein that, unfortunately, doesn’t reflect all that well on Heinlein. But it has some good stuff I it. **On the Beach** (and other post-apocalyptic films, like **Five** and **The World, the Flesh, and the Devil** ) **Lord of the Flies** , arguably. **THX 1138** **the Terminal Man** – I’m not generally a fan of Crichton’s, but this one and the Andromeda Strain (already mentioned) are probably his best. This one’s been pretty much forgotten, though. Fritz Lang’s **Woman in the Moon/Frau im Mond** , despite the fact that it has people walking on the moon without space suits (!). The scenes of the Rocket and its takeoff are astoundingly good – Hermann Oberth was advisor for the film, which features the first “count down” in history (although Jules Verne had given us a “count up” in _From the Earth to the Moon_). ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/68 "2018-01-17T17:57:57Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > So does **Outland** , Peter Hyams’ inept re-setting of _High Noon_ in outer space. Harlan Ellison wrote a cute little piece eviscerating this film. There are science issues with it, too (people don’t explode in vacuum), but it overall qualifies. No FTL, no artificial gravity. Funnily enough, I was about to write a post giving _Outland_ as an example of a movie in which the science is reasonably okay, but that doesn’t feel like hard sci-fi to me. I think for something to be hard sci fi it’s the science must not only be plausible, it must _matter_. The implications of how advanced or speculative science might change things in non-trivial ways must be integral to the story. It’s not sufficient that somebody just dies in a more spectacular way when the cop shoots the robber in space. It you set something against a space or nominally futuristic backdrop when it could just as easily be set in Victorian England or the Wild West without changing the story one iota, I don’t think it’s hard sci fi. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/69 "2018-01-17T18:00:31Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > So the actual distance traveled by the traveler is not 4.3 light years? The “actual distance” depends on your frame of reference. Alpha Centauri appears closer if you are traveling towards it at high speed. Btw the “Avatar” universe is supposed to be the same as the “Alien” universe, right? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/70 "2018-01-17T18:15:55Z")
A few other possibilities: **1984** two versions, but only the John Hurt one is really good and faithful (and was actually filmed in London in 1984!) **Brave New World** – three versions, I think, but I’d only recommend the one with Leonard Nimoy, which makes the future society seem believable. **Bicentennial Man** – for all its faults, this movie feels the most like an actual Asimov movie. It requires a belief in incredible advances in electronics, robotics, and bioengineering, but it doesn’t have FTL, teleportation, aliens, or time travel. ---
**Author:** ![cormac262](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f14d63/32.png) [@cormac262](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cormac262)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/71 "2018-01-17T18:16:56Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > So does **Outland** , Peter Hyams’ inept re-setting of _High Noon_ in outer space. Harlan Ellison wrote a cute little piece eviscerating this film. There are science issues with it, too (people don’t explode in vacuum), but it overall qualifies. No FTL, no artificial gravity. I enjoyed “Outland”. I never saw the Ellison piece about the science. - I had a big debate with a friend about whether (conventional) shotguns would be able to fire in a vacuum (I conceded this was possible, but still have doubts - is there enough oxygen within a sealed shell to allow a burn ?). - One big flaw that I recall was that they fell into the common trap of: breathable atmosphere = (normal, earth-like) gravity, “just outside” = no or less gravity. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/72 "2018-01-17T18:27:53Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > Btw the “Avatar” universe is supposed to be the same as the “Alien” universe, right? According to the [Alien Anthology Wikia](http://alienanthology.wikia.com/wiki/Alien_Universe_Timeline), it’s been established (and confirmed by Ridley Scott) that Blade Runner takes place in the same universe as the Alien films, but it doesn’t list Avatar as being part of it. (It also lists “[Soldier](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120157/),” a 1998 Kurt Russell film that I’ve never heard of before.) ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/73 "2018-01-17T18:31:06Z")
> [@cormac262](#): > > - I had a big debate with a friend about whether (conventional) shotguns would be able to fire in a vacuum (I conceded this was possible, but still have doubts - is there enough oxygen within a sealed shell to allow a burn ?) Yes, because the propellant in the shell contains its own oxidizer; it doesn’t have to suck air down the barrel to go Bang. It’s a common misconception. In an episode of _Firefly_, Jane fired Vera in a vacuum by encasing it inside an inflated spacesuit and firing through the faceplate. In the commentary, Whedon said they had asked an expert and been steered wrong. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/74 "2018-01-17T18:32:19Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > _Interstellar_ and _Contact_ are probably about as hard as it’s possible for science fiction to get, while still featuring FTL travel. But they do still feature FTL travel, which is a huge deal. First of all I totally share your sentiments about both those movies, and both demonstrate the same kind of solid commitment by their creative teams to real science, _Contact_ benefiting from the collaboration between executive producer Lynda Obst and Carl Sagan (who, in turn, had consulted Kip Thorne on his original novel), and _Interstellar_ again between Obst, Kip Thorne, and of course Christopher Nolan. However Thorne would strongly disagree that _Interstellar_ involves FTL travel, and indeed that was a major point of contention between him and Nolan, who wanted the concept as one of the movie’s plot points, and it was an issue on which Thorne states in his book that he would not back down, resulting in an impasse with Nolan that lasted several weeks, and on which Nolan eventually backed down. The scientific indulgence that the film permits itself is the wormhole, and Thorne is at pains to point out that, however unlikely this may be, the idea of traversible wormholes was shown as far back as 1916 (by Ludwig Flamm) to follow from Einstein’s equations of general relativity, and later independently discovered by Einstein himself and Nathan Rosen (hence, “Einstein-Rosen” bridge). He alludes to further work by himself and his mentor John Wheeler, and posits wormholes that could be held open if threaded by exotic matter (matter with negative mass), which can exist according to the laws of quantum physics. So Thorne appears to regard this as in the category of speculation and educated guesses based on derivations from real science, unlike FTL which from everything we know is impossible. > [@msmith537](#): > > That sort of begs the question of what is “hard science”, doesn’t it? Is it ok to allow wormholes and “ice clouds” and gravity drives and tesseract structures that allow communication back to the past because they are based on some actual theory? Is it “hard science” to pick one or two fantastic elements like warp drives and time travel while the rest of the movie uses realistic effects of relativistic time dilation and ships that look like something NASA will build in 50 years? In a word, yes, because “fantastic” is OK as long as you can show – as Kip Thorne wrote an entire book to do – that there is a plausible path there from known science, as noted above. In the early planning for _Interstellar_, when Steven Spielberg was still on board as the intended director, Thorne had suggested and got accepted the two guiding principles that (1) nothing in the film will violate firmly established laws of physics, and (2) speculations, wild as they may be, about ill-understood physical laws (like those that might govern wormholes) will spring from real science, from ideas that at least some respectable scientists regard as possible. Some of the scientific background work was impressive. At one point the Spielberg team convened an all-day workshop at Caltech that involved fourteen scientists to help them get the science right: astrobiologists, planetary scientists, theoretical physicists, cosmologists, psychologists, and a space-policy expert. When Christopher Nolan came on board as the project’s new director, the scientific rigor, if anything, increased even further. > [@msmith537](#): > > Of course Interstellar ignores the very obvious problem of it presumably being much easier to “colonize” a dying Earth with habitats than it would be to move a significant number of humans off world. I’m not sure that I’d regard this particular plot point as a particularly major stumbling block, or that it’s in itself an actual “science” issue. With regard to the actual science of what was supposed to be happening to earth, once more Caltech expertise was recruited. The production team met with four Caltech biologists including David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate with a broad perspective on all of biology. They came up with a whole series of possible if unlikely catastrophic scenarios, including mass crop failures and failures of the hydrological system, lethal pathogens, viruses, and toxins, perhaps due to runaway climate change or unintended side effects of trying to mitigate it. In the balance between “specialist” blights that can be very lethal but only attack a very specific species, and generalist blights that have broader but typically less lethal effects, the scenario they settled on was a generalist blight that had evolved to high lethality, combined with which the conditions were also reducing the earth’s oxygen supply to critical levels. One might assume that it’s always easier to fix and terraform the planet that you’re on than to travel to another one, but it does depends on the circumstances and the resources and time you have available. Maybe that’s why the film’s scenario also posits an earth where science and education has fallen by the wayside. In such an environment, it might be a lot more feasible to focus all your efforts on a single technological feat like interplanetary migration especially if you already have some of the necessary infrastructure, rather than the much more diverse problem domain afflicting the planet. And don’t forget that the problem is considerably facilitated (to say the least!) by the convenient wormhole apparently placed nearby by an advanced civilization. As Thorne says, this is terra _extremely_ incognita. But is it “hard” science fiction in the sense of hypotheses derivable from real, plausible science? They’ve made great and noble efforts to make it so. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/75 "2018-01-17T18:33:49Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Fritz Lang’s **Woman in the Moon/Frau im Mond** , despite the fact that it has people walking on the moon without space suits (!). The scenes of the Rocket and its takeoff are astoundingly good – Hermann Oberth was advisor for the film, which features the first “count down” in history (although Jules Verne had given us a “count up” in _From the Earth to the Moon_). I’ve just started a book on the 100 greatest science fiction movies, and _Woman on the Moon_ is in it. I’ve not seen it, but now I’d like to. > [@Riemann](#): > > Funnily enough, I was about to write a post giving _Outland_ as an example of a movie in which the science is reasonably okay, but that doesn’t feel like hard sci-fi to me. I think for something to be hard sci fi it’s the science must not only be plausible, it must _matter_. The implications of how advanced or speculative science might change things in non-trivial ways must be integral to the story. It’s not sufficient that somebody just dies in a more spectacular way when the cop shoots the robber in space. It you set something against a space or nominally futuristic backdrop when it could just as easily be set in Victorian England or the Wild West without changing the story one iota, I don’t think it’s hard sci fi. _Outland_ is set on a mining station on Io, which makes it seem like science fiction. But if you think about it a little it’s all about a local marshal trying to enforce the law with no one to help him, so there doesn’t seem to be any science driving the plot. Think about it a little more and you’ll remember that the original crime is that the head of the mining operation is giving drugs to the miners to enhance their performance, with the unfortunate side effect that some of them go crazy after too much of it. I think that puts it back in the science fiction category. > [@CalMeacham](#): > > **1984** two versions, but only the John Hurt one is really good and faithful (and was actually filmed in London in 1984!) Not only filmed in 1984, but at least one scene was filmed on the very day that it took place in the novel. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/76 "2018-01-17T18:53:10Z")
I disagree with item 2 of the OP as being a defining indicator of hard/soft science fiction (especially in TV) simply because the production challenges and cost of showing differing levels of gravity would make the show prohibitively expensive. I’m sure this has been noted (I only read the OP, so far), but it is a requirement which will make 99% of space-based sci-fi (with the possible sole exception of _Gravity_) fall out of the “hard” category. ---
**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:** [January 17, 2018, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/77 "2018-01-17T19:07:30Z")
I don’t understand your objection, **wolfpup**. Wormholes are FTL, and are subject to all of the same complications as any other method of FTL travel. They’re more plausible than just “step on the gas and accelerate until your speed exceeds c”, but only in incidental details, and they’re not any more plausible than (say) the Alcubierre drive. **DesertDog** , I’ve never much minded that scene from Firefly. Yes, a gun will fire just fine in a vacuum, but the show never contradicts that. All we know is that Jayne and Mal both _think_ that Vera will have problems in a vacuum, and that’s perfectly plausible: Neither of them are exactly known as intellectuals. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/78 "2018-01-17T19:08:45Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > I’m sure this has been noted (I only read the OP, so far), but it is a requirement which will make 99% of space-based sci-fi (with the possible sole exception of _Gravity_) fall out of the “hard” category. They handled it in _2001_ and _2010_, via depicting “gravity” as only being available in the spinning sections of the ships. But, yes, I do imagine that it becomes a not-insignificant hurdle for filming, which is probably why it gets handwaved away so often. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/79 "2018-01-17T19:14:36Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > They handled it in _2001_ and _2010_, via depicting “gravity” as only being available in the spinning sections of the ships. But, yes, I do imagine that it becomes a not-insignificant hurdle for filming, which is probably why it gets handwaved away so often. This has always bothered me. Low and zero gravity _can_ be filmed, and can be done so without expensive effects work – especially now that we can digitally composite images and create images with CGI. A lot can be done with how the shot is staged and set up and by having the actor move as if in low G. Heck, Destination Moon did it with wire work, Operation Moonbase did it with camera tricks, mainly. 2001 did it with wire work and rotating sets. There’s no reason it couldn’t be done more. And I want to see them treat low gravity – as on the Moon and Mars – properly, too. Not even _2001_ tried to show lunar gravity properly. I don’t any Mars movie that ever did (aside, ironically, from the definitely non-hard-sf _[John Carter_) ---
**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:** [January 17, 2018, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/80 "2018-01-17T19:36:33Z")
You can actually do a pretty good job of simulating low gravity just by slowing down your film by a factor of sqrt(g\_planet/g\_earth). This won’t let your actors make twenty-foot leaps or anything, but if they’re walking around in the cramped quarters of a moon base, they’re probably not trying to do that, anyway. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795.md?page=5)