# 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:** 7
**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 18, 2018, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/121 "2018-01-18T14:44:24Z")
Thorne is right to be proud of _Interstellar_. It is, as I said, about as hard as it’s possible to get while still having FTL (which, by any relevant definition, it unambiguously does). The thing is, there’s a reason why FTL has traditionally gotten a free pass in science fiction stories: Ultimately, it’s all about the stories you’re telling, and there are a lot of stories you just can’t tell without FTL. Some stories you can, in fact, tell without it, and so you do, but if you restricted yourselves to just those stories, the genre would be much poorer for it. So if you’ve established that you absolutely must have FTL for a particular story, then the question just becomes how you implement the FTL, and Thorne and his team did a very good job there. ---
**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 18, 2018, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/122 "2018-01-18T15:33:19Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > Dallas specifically mentions that it will take about 18 months in suspended animation for them to get home. That’s calculated following the realization that they’re nowhere near Earth. So… > > 1. They’re near another sun. There are no worlds/asteroids like the one they land on in the solar system. > 2. It’s going to take them less than 2 years to get to Earth from wherever they are. > 3. They have to be at least 4.3 light years away > > Ergo, using on canonical sources - from the first movie - they have some form of FTL. Perhaps he means that it will only seem like 18 months to them? ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/123 "2018-01-18T15:59:21Z")
> [@Horatio\_Hellpop](#): > > **A Clockwork Orange** and **Century City** (the TV show from 2004 that looked like a mash-up of _Star Trek_ and _LA Law_). Heh, you may never see these two productions mentioned together in the same paragraph again, but both are feasible, near-future stories purged of magic and obvious pseudoscience. > > On the other hand, both are more rooted in “soft” social sciences than in physics or astronomy, so they may not be exactly “hard” SF. Century City was one example I thought of as well. Particularly because the whole premise was trying to find plausible effects of plausible near-future technologies. And some of those plots are even starting to come true! There was one episode that dealt with genetic selection of embryos, in which a doctor had noticed that very few parents would choose an embryo that had a genetic tendency towards homosexuality, which is pretty much what’s happening now with [Down’s Syndrome](http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/22/health/ohio-governor-signs-down-syndrome-abortion-ban/index.html). Essentially, what happens when people are given new information, and then make what some people consider to be the “wrong” choice based on that information? Do we ban the technologies that provide the information, do we ban that choice, or do we just live with it? There was another one that I’d bet large sums of money will come true within a few years, in which a married couple was caught having sex in their self-driving car while on the highway. ---
**Author:** ![cormac262](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f14d63/32.png) [@cormac262](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cormac262)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/124 "2018-01-18T16:16:21Z")
> [@flip-68](#): > > **Elysium** may fit in - if you accept that by 2154 we will have med pods that can generate body parts and reverse the aging process And we have built an orbiting hoop that not only has enough mass to generate earthlike gravity on the inner side, but also holds in atmosphere ! (the ships that come to land on the inner surface never pass through any barrier) ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/125 "2018-01-18T16:35:27Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > Dallas specifically mentions that it will take about 18 months in suspended animation for them to get home. That’s calculated following the realization that they’re nowhere near Earth. So… > > 1. They’re near another sun. There are no worlds/asteroids like the one they land on in the solar system. > 2. It’s going to take them less than 2 years to get to Earth from wherever they are. > 3. They have to be at least 4.3 light years away > > Ergo, using on canonical sources - from the first movie - they have some form of FTL. LV-426 is in the [Zeta Reticuli](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeta_Reticuli) system which is 39 light years away from Earth. From the film Alien: _“Found it. Just short of Zeta II Reticuli. We haven’t even reached the outer rim yet”_ I missed the previous question about the _Sulaco_ specs being “official” and it’s always hard to say with this stuff. The Technical Manual with the specs was authorized by 20th Century Fox and supposedly had some studio input but when you’re dealing with large studios owning the right to a franchise someone else developed, where do you decide that something is in the original designer’s intent or canonical? In any event, given the distance between Zeta Reticuli and Earth and the (relatively) short time Ripley spent lost before being recovered and finding herself in Earth’s orbit, some sort of FTL travel is the only realistic option. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/126 "2018-01-18T17:09:20Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > Agent Smith indeed tells Neo that the first Matrix was designed as a perfect human world, and that human minds did not accept it. But we mustn’t forget that the reason the world is trashed, the sun obscured, with everybody living underground is as a consequence of the apocalyptic war between man and machine. It is not known which side started it, but I never got the impression the machines had humanity’s best interests at heart. > > When interpreting _The Matrix,_ we must also not ignore the allegorical aspects of the story where Neo = Jesus, etc. Humanity in soulless shackles, even in a false paradise, was a situation he had to redeem. > > None of this directly contradicts the supposition that the machines-- somehow-- meant well (and Morpheus admits that it is unknown but possible that the machines were only defending themselves), but, if so, then they were themselves ultimately misguided. A [Paperclip Maximizer](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer) told to “protect humanity” could easily end up there. And I could imagine that most people got into the goop pods of their own volition before the war. > [@Ethilrist](#): > > The problem is that Neo was able to shut down the HK spermbots in the real world, after they got out of the hovercraft. Did that happen in the first movie? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it. If not, I’m willing to accept that the sequels don’t count as “hard”. I’m willing to ignore them altogether. ---
**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 18, 2018, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/127 "2018-01-18T20:06:28Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > Wait a minute, was the hovercraft actually full of eels? > [@Ethilrist](#): > > Flying robotic ones, with lasers, but yeah… That’s [close enough](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MyHovercraftIsFullOfEels)! > [@Chronos](#): > > 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. > [@SlackerInc](#): > > I love that this film trickery itself involves math! Do you know of any examples where this was done? Not exactly what you asked, but something like this happens in _Capricorn One_. NASA is ready to launch the first manned mission to Mars, but just before liftoff the astronauts are spirited away and secreted somewhere. Turns out there was a problem with the spacecraft, so a small group of conspirators have decided to fake the mission from a soundstage, and the crew reluctantly participates. During a broadcast from the soundstage, that’s supposed to be from Mars, technicians slow the footage down to simulate Martian gravity. And by the criteria in this thread, _Capricorn One_ probably counts as hard science fiction. ---
**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:** [January 18, 2018, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/128 "2018-01-18T20:22:01Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Except for the giant Space Cannon that fires the travelers to the moon, _From the Earth to the Moon_ is a pretty mundane story, too. > _reductio ad absurdum_, indeed. I trust you don’t consider Verne hard science fiction. However, they were weightless, and he knew enough not to have them land on the moon, so it wasn’t totally mundane. Flowers for Algernon is the kind of science fiction which those not particularly versed in science can write, and which is more accessible than hard sf. Flowers for Algernon would have worked just as well if a fairy made Charley smarter, and the temporary nature was later discovered. It’s a great story, but is hard sf any sf where the author doesn’t get the science wrong by not having much science? Seems a stretch. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/129 "2018-01-18T20:42:40Z")
> [@flip-68](#): > > **Elysium** may fit in - if you accept that by 2154 we will have med pods that can generate body parts and reverse the aging process I agree on the technological aspect. It’s on the social science end of things that \*Elysium \*gets way too much stuff super wrong IMO. > [@cormac262](#): > > And we have built an orbiting hoop that not only has enough mass to generate earthlike gravity on the inner side, but also holds in atmosphere ! (the ships that come to land on the inner surface never pass through any barrier) That last point is a definite problem. But a spinning hoop just needs the right rotational speed to create artificial gravity, not any particular amount of mass. > [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > That’s [close enough](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MyHovercraftIsFullOfEels)! > > Not exactly what you asked, but something like this happens in _Capricorn One_. NASA is ready to launch the first manned mission to Mars, but just before liftoff the astronauts are spirited away and secreted somewhere. Turns out there was a problem with the spacecraft, so a small group of conspirators have decided to fake the mission from a soundstage, and the crew reluctantly participates. During a broadcast from the soundstage, that’s supposed to be from Mars, technicians slow the footage down to simulate Martian gravity. > > And by the criteria in this thread, _Capricorn One_ probably counts as hard science fiction. Yup, agreed. I remember seeing that movie many years ago on TV. Pretty enjoyable. Wasn’t OJ one of the astronauts? > [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > Dallas specifically mentions that it will take about 18 months in suspended animation for them to get home. That’s calculated following the realization that they’re nowhere near Earth. So… > > 1. They’re near another sun. There are no worlds/asteroids like the one they land on in the solar system. > 2. It’s going to take them less than 2 years to get to Earth from wherever they are. > 3. They have to be at least 4.3 light years away > > Ergo, using on canonical sources - from the first movie - they have some form of FTL. Fair enough! > [@Chronos](#): > > Thorne is right to be proud of _Interstellar_. It is, as I said, about as hard as it’s possible to get while still having FTL (which, by any relevant definition, it unambiguously does). The thing is, there’s a reason why FTL has traditionally gotten a free pass in science fiction stories: Ultimately, it’s all about the stories you’re telling, and there are a lot of stories you just can’t tell without FTL. Some stories you can, in fact, tell without it, and so you do, but if you restricted yourselves to just those stories, the genre would be much poorer for it. So if you’ve established that you absolutely must have FTL for a particular story, then the question just becomes how you implement the FTL, and Thorne and his team did a very good job there. Again: I’m not arguing hard sci-fi should be the only kind. Some of my all-time favorites (those first 25 episodes of nu-BSG being a prime example) fail to qualify. But I think it’s legit to define it as a sub-genre, and to give it a little extra appreciation when it’s done properly since, as you note, it’s more difficult to do so. Now, in the case of _Interstellar_, I also happen to not think it’s an especially good movie (more precisely, it’s got really cool parts and really groan-inducingly awful parts). _Scientific American_ said: > **[What "Interstellar" Gets Wrong about Interstellar Travel](https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/observations/what-interstellar-gets-wrong-about-interstellar-travel/)** > > Christopher Nolan’s new film, Interstellar, is a near-future tale of astronauts departing a dying Earth to travel to Saturn, then through a wormhole to another galaxy, all in search of somewhere else humanity could call home. > [@](#): > > Despite being heavily promoted as hewing close to reality—Caltech physicist Kip Thorne wrote the first version of the story, and served as a consultant and producer on the film—some of the science in Interstellar is laughably wrong. Less lamented but just as damning, some parts of the story having nothing to do with science lack the internal self-consistency to even be wrong. Then later they had Thorne on the site to defend himself and the movie (and pimp his book). Even in that capacity, he admitted: > **[Parsing the Science of Interstellar with Physicist Kip Thorne](https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/observations/parsing-the-science-of-interstellar-with-physicist-kip-thorne/)** > > In an earlier blog post about Christopher Nolan's latest blockbuster movie, Interstellar, I lauded the film for its ambition, its visuals     and the strong performances of its cast. > [@](#): > > I think the laws of physics very probably forbid warp drives and traversable wormholes. The research that has gone on over the past 25 years trying to determine whether its possible all point in negative directions, but it’s not a firmly closed door. So there are two issues here. One is that the laws of physics probably forbid it, but, gee, if they don’t, it would be great to have! The other is that the technology required to make a warp drive or a traversable wormhole is so far, far, far beyond the technology needed for a laser sail or a nuclear-pulse rocket that I would not be in favor of putting any significant resources into trying to develop it. Then, when asked why he had a wormhole be the mode of transit if it’s probably impossible: > [@](#): > > To a great extent, my motivation here was to try to use the movie as a lure to get people who might otherwise not have much interest in science curious about it, by exposing them to strange, exotic phenomena like wormholes. That’s fine, but I don’t believe that is hard sci-fi. I would say, BTW, that although I adored Carl Sagan as a person, really liked the book _Contact_ (which he wrote with Ann Druyan), and mildly enjoyed the movie adaptation (minus the McConaghey parts), I would not consider either the book or the movie to be hard sci-fi. Which is a little surprising given the source! ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/130 "2018-01-18T21:14:20Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > 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._ I agree with Chronos. Why are you taking FTL travel off? FTL travel was a staple of Hard cord SF from the very beginning of the genre. Also rules of Asimov, much of Heinlein, Clarke, etc You dont want hard SF, you want realistic SF. > **[Hard science fiction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction)** > > Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell's Islands of Space in the November issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The complementary term soft science fiction, formed by analogy to the popular distinction between the "hard" (natural) and "soft" (social) sciences, first appeared in the late 1970s. Though there are Stories revolving ar... But others listed here are not SF at all: Lord of the Flies- where is the SF? Fahrenheit 451: kinda sorta set in a alt future, but nothing esle SF about it. In fact this story has ruined so many High Schoolers idea of what good SF is. Here are a few that qualify by your rather outré quals: Marooned - (1969) Destination Moon (1950) Silent Running Moon (2009 ) ---
**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 18, 2018, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/131 "2018-01-18T21:19:58Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Yup, agreed. I remember seeing that movie many years ago on TV. Pretty enjoyable. Wasn’t OJ one of the astronauts? Yes, he was (the other two were James Brolin and Sam Waterston). It’s another example, I think, of the hypothesis that came up early in this thread: the further in the future that a sci-fi film or TV series is set, the less likely it is to be purely “hard” sci-fi. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/132 "2018-01-18T21:25:37Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > You dont want hard SF, you want realistic SF. I see them as the same. That you don’t is hardly shocking to me. After all, the first sentence of my OP reads: > [@](#): > > I’ve been getting the sense lately that there is very little consensus on what this term means. You seem to see it as the same as “\*hardcore \*SF”, which is not something I had ever even considered. I don’t know if that factors into the origin of the term. But your own cite defines it as “characterized by an emphasis on scientific accuracy”, and I would agree with that. Scientific accuracy precludes FTL travel. But maybe I need to state for the umpteenth time that for me to say something is not hard SF is not to say that it is “not really SF at all” or even that it is not as good. Some of my favorites are not hard, although if a story is meticulously hard it is likely to have a “floor” of legitimacy that keeps it from being one of my least favorites. ETA: > [@kenobi\_65](#): > > Yes, he was (the other two were James Brolin and Sam Waterston). > > It’s another example, I think, of the hypothesis that came up early in this thread: the further in the future that a sci-fi film or TV series is set, the less likely it is to be purely “hard” sci-fi. Indeed. And on that point, I’ll once again flack for _Passengers_: unlike _The Martian_ or _Gravity_, it has to be set at least a thousand years from now, if not more. So I think it might be sui generis in being so hard that far in the future–at least for a major motion picture. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/133 "2018-01-18T21:49:31Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > I see them as the same. That you don’t is hardly shocking to me. After all, the first sentence of my OP reads: > > You seem to see it as the same as “\*hardcore \*SF”, which is not something I had ever even considered. I don’t know if that factors into the origin of the term. But your own cite defines it as “characterized by an emphasis on scientific accuracy”, and I would agree with that. Scientific accuracy precludes FTL travel. > > But maybe I need to state for the umpteenth time that for me to say something is not hard SF is not to say that it is “not really SF at all” or even that it is not as good. Some of my favorites are not hard, although if a story is meticulously hard it is likely to have a “floor” of legitimacy that keeps it from being one of my least favorites. Nope, I mean Hard SF, as per that wiki link: \*Scientific rigor[edit] The heart of the “hard SF” designation is the relationship of the science content and attitude to the rest of the narrative, and (for some readers, at least) the “hardness” or rigor of the science itself.[8] One requirement for hard SF is procedural or intentional: a story should try to be accurate, logical, credible and rigorous in its use of current scientific and technical knowledge about which technology, phenomena, scenarios and situations that are practically and/or theoretically possible. For example, the development of concrete proposals for spaceships, space stations, space missions, and a US space program in the 1950s and 1960s influenced a widespread proliferation of “hard” space stories.[9] Later discoveries do not necessarily invalidate the label of hard SF, as evidenced by P. Schuyler Miller, who called Arthur C. Clarke’s 1961 novel A Fall of Moondust hard SF,[3] and the designation remains valid even though a crucial plot element, the existence of deep pockets of “moondust” in lunar craters, is now known to be incorrect. There is a degree of flexibility in how far from “real science” a story can stray before it leaves the realm of hard SF.[10] Some authors scrupulously avoid such technology as faster-than-light travel, while others accept such notions (sometimes referred to as “enabling devices”, since they allow the story to take place)[11] but focus on realistically depicting the worlds that such a technology might make possible. In this view, a story’s scientific “hardness” is less a matter of the absolute accuracy of the science content than of the rigor and consistency with which the various ideas and possibilities are worked out.[10]\* Now sure, you can say that you want to _hardest_ of hard SF, those that avoid FTL, and that’s fair. But FTL is indeed \*Hard SF. \* ---
**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 18, 2018, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/134 "2018-01-18T22:02:08Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > But FTL is indeed \*Hard SF. \* Or, at least, as per that Wiki description of the genre, “use of FTL doesn’t necessarily preclude a work from being Hard SF.” ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/135 "2018-01-18T22:04:28Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > Or, at least, as per that Wiki description of the genre, “use of FTL doesn’t necessarily preclude a work from being Hard SF.” Sure. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/136 "2018-01-18T22:12:59Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Now sure, you can say that you want to _hardest_ of hard SF, those that avoid FTL, and that’s fair. But FTL is indeed \*Hard SF. \* From your excerpt of the Wiki article (emphasis mine): > [@](#): > > Some authors scrupulously avoid such technology as faster-than-light travel, while others accept such notions (sometimes referred to as “enabling devices”, since they allow the story to take place)[11] but focus on realistically depicting the worlds that such a technology might make possible. **In this view** , a story’s scientific “hardness” is less a matter of the absolute accuracy of the science content than of the rigor and consistency with which the various ideas and possibilities are worked out.[10] “In this view”. A very important caveat, which if it were not already there, I would edit in. IOW, we are back to what I said from the beginning: there is no universal agreement on what counts as “hard”. You can’t jump from what amounts to “Wikipedia says _some people_ believe FTL should not in and of itself be a disqualification” to “Wikipedia says FTL is okay in hard SF”. Not the same thing. ---
**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 18, 2018, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/137 "2018-01-18T23:07:46Z")
I think that the point is that hardness of science fiction, like so many other things in life, is a relative, not absolute, thing. There are science fiction stories which are harder than _Interstellar_ by virtue of not having FTL, but there are also stories without FTL which are a lot less hard than it for other reasons. That said, _Interstellar_ does “try to be accurate, logical, credible and rigorous in its use of current scientific and technical knowledge about which technology, phenomena, scenarios and situations that are practically and/or theoretically possible.”, even as concerns the wormhole. Kip Thorne is the foremost scientific expert in the world today on the subject of wormholes, he’s done calculations, solved equations, and published papers about wormholes, and the wormhole in _Interstellar_ is consistent with everything that he knows about them. That’s a lot harder than just saying “The ship can go FTL because, um, warp bubbles and antimatter, and something called dilithium, whatever that is, oh, and those long tube thingies on the side of the ship have something to do with it too”. And I say that in spite of the fact that someone did eventually come up with equations and so on for something that can reasonably be called a “warp bubble”. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/138 "2018-01-18T23:15:34Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Kip Thorne is the foremost scientific expert in the world today on the subject of wormholes, he’s done calculations, solved equations, and published papers about wormholes, and the wormhole in _Interstellar_ is consistent with everything that he knows about them. Then why did he say: > [@](#): > > I think the laws of physics very probably forbid warp drives and traversable wormholes…the laws of physics probably forbid it, but, gee, if they don’t, it would be great to have! [T]he technology required to make a warp drive or a traversable wormhole is so far, far, far beyond the technology needed for a laser sail or a nuclear-pulse rocket that I would not be in favor of putting any significant resources into trying to develop it. ---
**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 18, 2018, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/139 "2018-01-18T23:19:07Z")
Note the “very probably”, there. He’s not certain, and if they do exist, they (again, probably) look like the one in _Interstellar_. Scientists spend a lot of time on exploring the question “But what if I’m wrong?”. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795/140 "2018-01-18T23:29:18Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Note the “very probably”, there. Again, with “very probably” and the Arthur C. Clarke “magic” quote, you can do all kinds of stuff any time you portray alien civilizations, or our own far enough in the future. And more power to you! You might make something I will like, or even love. But I’m not going to classify it as “hard” SF. \*Contact \*is a great example to point to: the machine they make instantly whisks her away to some far-off planet. No one knows how: even though they were just barely able to follow the blueprints, they don’t actually understand what it does. Fine–neat idea. But “sufficiently advanced” though those aliens are, that makes the story simply science fiction, not “hard” science fiction. Here’s another way to think about it: A hard science fiction writer (and I say “writer” because movies and TV shows also begin with writers) is likely, I think, to begin with “Scientific principle or technology X [which already exists and is proven accurate] is interesting, and might plausibly lead to Y. Let’s explore in a story how Y would impact human society and/or individual relationships.” A non-hard science fiction writer is, I think, more likely to start at the opposite end: “Wow, it would be cool if the human race, or individual people, found themselves in Scenario Y. Let’s invent Handwavium X, perhaps based on some very speculative scientific musings, to justify their getting into that scenario.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-tv-shows-qualify-as-hard-science-fiction/806795.md?page=8)