Hard SF

António Pedro Marques · 29 Nov 2012, 16:35 · from 2012-November.txt.gz

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From: entonio at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?QW50w7NuaW8gUGVkcm8gTWFycXVlcw==?=)
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2012 16:35:14 +0000
Subject: (urth) Hard SF
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Andrew Mason wrote (29-11-2012 16:02):
> Antonio Pedro Marquez

-es. -es.

(Whereas the o-acute is a matter of detail.)

> wrote:
>
>> I think I've said this a number of times but, for me, 'hard sf' is
>> that where the workings of science itself are a major driver of the
>> plot. Little to do with being science-'realistic', except as an almost
>> necessary implication. In that regard, Wolfe's work is not hard sf.
>
>
> I think 'hard SF' is an essentially ambiguous term. It can mean what
> Antonio says - I think Asimov defined it that way, for instance -

NB I said 'for me'.

> or it can mean SF which is scientifically accurate. It is widely used in
>  the latter sense as well.
>
> Obviously the two ideas to some extent go together, in that if you are
> exploring the implications of a scientific hypothesis you have to work
> them out consistently; it would not be very scientific, for instance, to
> hypothesise that if there were faster-than-light travel there would be
> unicorns. But in some cases I think the two concepts of hard SF actually
> pull against one another. Those works of SF which focus most on science
> are often ones where it is not real-world science - ones exploring the
> consequences of some imagined scientific development which isn't really
> possible; conversely, a work of speculative fiction in which science is
> not important, which deals with a future or another world whose
> distinctive features are social rather than scientific, can easily
> confine itself to the scientifically possible.

Very true. But it doesn't need to come to that, unless one is reading it 
purely for the 'science', which I don't think most people do. Books I 
consider the archetype of hard sf would be Rendezvous with Rama, The 
Invincible and His Master's Voice (I'm addicted to Lem's writing, which is 
baffling since his characters are quite unlikeable), and in none of those 
does the question really arise (in my opinion).

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