Hard SF

Gerry Quinn · 30 Nov 2012, 14:39 · from 2012-November.txt.gz

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From: gerry at bindweed.com (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2012 14:39:56 -0000
Subject: (urth) Hard SF
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W1565201C5695DF6818979DCF430 at phx.gbl>
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From: Lee Berman

> > 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.

Actually, we learn the correct explanation from Dr. Talos's play, in the 
second book:

    PROPHET: Yet even you must know that cancer eats the heart of the old 
sun.
    At its center, matter falls in upon itself, as though there were there a 
pit
    without bottom, whose top surrounds it.

    AUTARCH: My astronomers have long told me so.

The above is a very explicit depiction of a black hole.   The explanation is 
not known to Severian, but it is known to many humans in high places.  I 
don't think Severian's ignorance of science can stand in for all of 
humanity.

> 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.

This I can agree with.

- Gerry Quinn

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