Hard SF

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 29 Nov 2012, 17:40 · from 2012-November.txt.gz

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From: danldo at gmail.com (Dan'l Danehy-Oakes)
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2012 09:40:15 -0800
Subject: (urth) Hard SF
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There's a sort of grey area of reasonably-hard SF (firm SF?) where certain
"canonical miracles," such as FTL travel, are allowed, but the story ideas
still need to be based around solid scientific speculation. A good example
of this is Larry Niven's "known space" series, which is generally
considered hard (or hardish) SF despite the presence of FTL and psi,
because it speculates hard about things like tidal effects and antimatter.


On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 9:25 AM, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote:

>
>
>  *From:* David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
>
>  > Yes, I agree. Science realism is after all impossible, if you are
> > proposing scientific impossibilities such as FTL.
>
> > On 11/28/2012 8:56 PM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques 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.
>
>  That?s my view too.
>
>  There are different types of hard SF though.  There is the realistic
> sort where the writer tries to tell a story that could actually happen
> (e.g. the Mars trilogy).  And there?s the kind where the writer takes some
> dubious physics theory and extrapolates wildly based on that (e.g. Schild?s
> Ladder by Greg Egan).
>
>  Of course, even a hard SF writer isn?t going to get the science
> perfect.  (I never believed you could oxygenate Mars using wind power.)
>
>  Wolfe isn?t writing hard SF, so his standard for plausibility divided by
> coolness is correspondingly lower.
>
>  - Gerry Quinn
>
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-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
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