Hard SF

Lee Berman · 30 Nov 2012, 13:33 · from 2012-November.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2012 08:33:48 -0500
Subject: (urth) Hard SF
Message-ID: <SNT123-W1565201C5695DF6818979DCF430 at phx.gbl>

>I think Wolfe's red sun was more of a literary choice than a scientific one.                         

>David Stockhoff: Totally. I'm not sure why, then, you would classify Urth as "driven by 
>a scientific premise."

Good question. I'll try to explain. It is a common hard SF trope to have primitive aliens 
believing in some magical principle to understand some large, problematic issue in their lives. 
Then some space-faring humans come in with their scientific knowledge and technology and use it
to fix the problem, often becoming "gods" along the way. We all get a good chuckle out of that.
This can be recognized as a remnant of the colonial/imperialist thinking here on earth.

I think Wolfe has turned this formula on its head. On first reading, we see there are some 
mystical explanations floating around Urth to explain Urth's dying sun. But as readers we
understand that stars have a lifespan and Urth's sun has simply arrived at the end of one.
So for most of the story we have a scientific explanation for Urth's condition in mind.

Eventually, through the Green Man and Master Ash, we get the sense that there actually is
a solution to the dying sun. With Tzadkiel and Yesod and the white fountain cancelling out
the black hole we have the "scientific" solution to the problem. But it isn't human beings
using science who facilitate the solution. It is higher beings using what appears, even to
us readers, as some sort of divine power.

What I am suggesting is that  the premise of "hard SF" is that magic is the soft
explanation and science is the hard explanation.

But what Wolfe is doing is suggesting that to a divine intelligence, science is a soft, magical
primitive way of understanding the universe. There is a harder, more comprehensive 
understanding than science to those higher beings who can grasp it.

So, I think, from Wolfe's own perspective, he is not really writing Fantasy/SF.  He is writing 
SF which takes "hard" to a new level and definition. As science is harder than magic, so Wolfe
feels there is a divine knowledge which is harder than science. (I don't mean to suggest Wolfe
is alone in taking this approach)

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