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Hard Science Fiction

Fnord

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Some friends and I started a thread on another website about "What Separates Hard Science-Fiction From Space Opera?"

"Hard" SF adheres to the known laws of physics, and merely extrapolates on what we already know. SF "softens" when one progressively adds gimmicks or plot devices that violate one or more physical laws, thereby becoming "Space Opera."

So, here is a short list of what I think constitutes Hard Science Fiction, based on the question, "Keeping in mind our currently know physical laws, and extrapolating thereon as needed, what might we expect to find when humanity finally reaches the stars?"

· Alien races would be either "Apes or Angels" -- they would be more likely to be far ahead or far behind in their evolution relative to our own, and not likely to be equally evolved with us.

· Due to a roughly 50/50 chance of a world evolving amino acids and sugars that are either left- or right-handed, alien amino acids and sugars would have a roughly 50/50 chance of NOT affecting us, meaning that what might be poisonous or nutritious to an alien might not be so to us roughly half of the time.

· IF the impact theory of lunar formation is true, then those worlds that have no impact-produced moon would likely have little or no heavy metals near their surfaces. Such worlds would have quiescently settled their heavier elements (Cu, Fe, Au) into their cores, leaving lighter elements (Al, Be, Si) near the surface.

· No "star drives," teleportation/transporters, or other violations of causality.

· No "Zero-Point" energy sources, or other violations of thermodynamic laws (unless some quasars are actually the results of a race's first ZPE experiment ... and their last).

· No gravity control. This leaves out contra-gravity drives, grav plates, and inertial dampers. Therefore, low acceleration (about 1 gee), and decks are orthogonal to the drive axis. This leaves Ion drives, fusion rockets, and Bussard ramjets (maybe).

· No psionics.

· Not everybody out there speaks English!

· Not everyone who wears a red shirt will be the first to die on an alien world.
 
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What about many of the marvels of nanotechnology... (or even better picotechnology. Controlling anything like that, Thermalnoise? What would that do to *directed* replication. I am assuming that nanotechnology is by definition significantly smaller than any virus.

Slightly OT, I quite like Alastair Reynolds for his books ("Revalation Space" and "Chasm City" especially, even if he sometimes ends a bit suddenly).

Mostly hard SF.
 
Fnord said:
Hard" SF adheres to the known laws of physics, and merely extrapolates on what we already know. SF "softens" when one progressively adds gimmicks or plot devices that violate one or more physical laws, thereby becoming "Space Opera."
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I think this definition is not right. It will be hard to find any hard sci fi. All Vernor Vinge’s books would be space opera, and also the Foundation trilogy, etc. We have to have some leeway. Going to the moon would appear to be space opera 200 years ago by this definition.
 
Fnord said:
· No gravity control. This leaves out contra-gravity drives, grav plates, and inertial dampers. Therefore, low acceleration (about 1 gee), and decks are orthogonal to the drive axis. This leaves Ion drives, fusion rockets, and Bussard ramjets (maybe).
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Offhand I can't think of any sci-fi novel whatsoever that adheres to this, and I must have read a thousand or more.
 
baron said:
Offhand I can't think of any sci-fi novel whatsoever that adheres to this, and I must have read a thousand or more.
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Robert Heinlein's "Time for the Stars" if I am not mistaken has a spaceship that looks like a "torch". They always accelarated 1g forwards. If I am mistaken, there is another one also from Heinleing where people keep traveling between the moon and Mars using a spaceship that accelarates at low 1-5gs, turns itself around and slows down the ship at the same "gees". I don't remember the title though.
 
chracatoa said:
"...there is another one also from Heinleing where people keep traveling between the moon and Mars using a spaceship that accelarates at low 1-5gs, turns itself around and slows down the ship at the same "gees". I don't remember the title though.
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Not sure about that one, but one that I remember is "The Rolling Stones", Juvenile Sci-Fi from Heinlein. In that one, the ship purchased by the Stone family is designed to tumble through space, providing opposing areas of "gravity" at each end of the ship. While aimed at younger audiences, the juvie stuff from Heinlein is excellent reading and followed the then-known facts about the solar system.

"Farmer in the Sky" is my favorite among them.
 
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chracatoa said:
I think this definition is not right. It will be hard to find any hard sci fi. All Vernor Vinge’s books would be space opera, and also the Foundation trilogy, etc.
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I've only read a couple of Vernor Vinge's novels, but I'd call both of them space opera. The same goes for Foundation.

That's not saying that they weren't good space opera. It isn't necessarily a negative term.
 
Mojo said:
I've only read a couple of Vernor Vinge's novels, but I'd call both of them space opera. The same goes for Foundation.

That's not saying that they weren't good space opera. It isn't necessarily a negative term.
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LOL, I looked space opera at wikipedia and BOTH are listed as space opera books. I thought that space opera should have black-and-white characters in a medieval setting (star wars!). I guess I'm wrong....
 
Fnord said:
"Hard" SF adheres to the known laws of physics, and merely extrapolates on what we already know. SF "softens" when one progressively adds gimmicks or plot devices that violate one or more physical laws, thereby becoming "Space Opera."
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This goes back to the old argument between buffs that the abbreviation "SF" stood for "Speculative Fiction" ("True" or "hard" science fiction, eg "1984") against "Sci-Fi" which was the forerunner of space opera, eg E E Smith's Lensmen series.
 
I'll cast another vote for Alastair Reynold's books (as some might figure from my username).

Although the books to not totally adhere to your requirements--inertia modification exists, for example--the technologies are never "magical" in the way transporters and inertial dampeners exist in Star Trek. Most technologies carry some very strong drawbacks, and the mere hint of causality violations usually cause the universe to bite back hard.

The way aliens are dealt with in the novels (and particularly the solution to the "Fermi Paradox") is fairly novel, IMHO.

- Dr. Trintignant
 
jimbob said:
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
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seconded.

Also, Mother of Storms by John Barnes.

Most hard SF (by this definition) would probably have to be near-future. Most far-future settings need some kind of star drive. I haven't recently read a far future setting without a star drive!

BTW, Fnord, I don't think some of your criteria are correct:
- I really don't buy the Apes or Angels thing...
- Even a lot of space operas don't have everybody speaking English...
- etc. etc. etc.

You seem to be defining Hard SF as specifically not Star Trek or Star Wars.

What about mixed technologies? Does a story which uses star drives as a facilitating device, but tries to be exacting in all other areas automatically become disqualified from being hard SF?
 
Learning Phase said:
Not sure about that one, but one that I remember is "The Rolling Stones", Juvenile Sci-Fi from Heinlein. In that one, the ship purchased by the Stone family is designed to tumble through space, providing opposing areas of "gravity" at each end of the ship. While aimed at younger audiences, the juvie stuff from Heinlein is excellent reading and followed the then-known facts about the solar system.

"Farmer in the Sky" is my favorite among them.
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Bzzt. The Rolling Stone was not a tumbling pigeon design. The War God, the passenger liner they rescued, was.

"Torch ships" appeared in several Heinlein stories.

ETA: I find it amusing that in Between Planets and Space Cadet, early in the stories the main characters are using a particularly futuristic device: a mobile phone small enough to keep in your pocket, and apparently ubiquitous enough that nearly everyone has one. I wonder if kids today reading the stories for the first time will even notice it?
 
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Orphans of the Sky

Heinlein's "Orphans of the Sky," expanded from a short story called "Universe," is set on a starship that takes centuries to travel between the stars, because it's impossible to travel faster than light. The ship spins for gravity, so gravity lessens as passengers move towards the core. The story is pretty fanciful about how radiation could mutate people, but on the whole I'd say it's "hard" science fiction.

--Scott
 
Fnord said:
Some friends and I started a thread on another website about "What Separates Hard Science-Fiction From Space Opera?"

"Hard" SF adheres to the known laws of physics, and merely extrapolates on what we already know. SF "softens" when one progressively adds gimmicks or plot devices that violate one or more physical laws, thereby becoming "Space Opera."
Click to expand...
I'm conflicted. Someone said they'd class Vernor Vinge's books as space opera- and while I agree, the reference seemed to disparage Vinge's technical ideas as "impossible." Interestingly, Vinge's main career isn't as a writer. He is mostly known as a retired Professor of Computer Science in the Mathematics Department at San Diego State. This is a guy who knows his way 'round tech.

Now, that don't mean he ain't gonna write something with something impossible in it- but he sure doesn't set out to, and if classification as "Space Opera" means "technically impossible," I gotta disagree, if we're talking about bobbles, or if we're talking about the Slowness and the Beyond in A Fire Upon the Deep (and maybe A Deepness in the Sky, if you think they might both feature one main character, a distinct possibility). Not to say he hasn't written some pretty "out there" stuff.

Now, I have a different view of what constitutes "Space Opera." I look for a particular plotting style, and a particular representation of the characters. Not necessarily black-n-white good-n-evil, but archetypes. People who are of extremely strong character, good, bad, or in between. Then there have to be sweeping starscapes, one way or another. And a sense that the events portrayed are historically pivotal, for much of the starscape portrayed. There might or might not be non-humans- but there have to be different cultures at minimum, and some in conflict, usually this serves as a major plot device. The sweeping view of history is essential- most good space operas are written by people who spent a lot of time figuring out the basics of the cultures involved before they ever started writing. Finally, there must be le grand guignol the final confrontation where one side wins utterly, securing (the Empire/the Galaxy/the planet/whatever) forever, and the other side falling to ashes and dust.

To me, speaking of Vinge, The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime aren't space opera- but A Fire Upon the Deep is for sure, and A Deepness in the Sky might be. Smith's Lensmen for sure is, since it's been brought up; penis swamp of 1940s American morality that it is, it's still space opera, and I have read it in the last year, and probably will again several more times now that I have it again, just to get to the meat of it in Galactic Patrol, probably the best of them. Most of Cherryh's Union-Alliance novels aren't, but the Chanur series are, and the Foreigner series might be; but I'm conflicted about that last, they're too... touchy-feely. They're about people, not about historical events; I almost hesitate to put Chanur in there, but in the end, you can't really question it. Heinlein couldn't write a space opera if he tried- and if he ever had, it wouldn't be much good. That's not what Heinlein does. Closest he ever came was By His Bootstraps, and there's not a sweeping starscape to be seen. Foundation is space opera, no question, but it's about the only space opera the good Doctor ever wrote. C. S Friedman's This Alien Shore might be; but no one could possibly question her In Conquest Born, which may be one of the best space operas ever written. Greg Bear's Eon qualifies, even without the starscapes; so does his pair, The Forge of God and An Anvil of Stars. And to complete the "killer Bs," we have to mention Benford's Galactic Center series, particularly Great Sky River and Tides of Light, and Brin's Startide Rising and The Uplift War; no listing of modern space opera would be complete without those. H. Beam Piper's Space Viking is a classic of the genre, much better written, though with not a great deal better ethics, than Smith's work. And since we started with Vinge, we'll end with Vinge: Joan Vinge, Vernor's wife and predecessor in fame, wrote The Snow Queen and The Summer Queen, which are on a lot of top 10 lists.

A great deal of this is some of my favorite stuff. I have read and re-read most if not all of these again and again. Some of it, I'm on the second or third copy, because the earlier ones fell apart I read them so much. Even Lensman has its attractions; sinking back into being 12 again for a little while not the least of them.

When I think hard SF, I think Michael McCollum; I think of Hal Clement. I think of Niven. I think of Jim Hogan (though he gets pretty woo on a pretty regular basis, and I'd put his moral tone somewhere just a little better than Smith's and a little worse than Piper's). I think of much of Asimov's work, and quite a bit of Laumer's too (although Retief belongs in a class of his own, and Laumer tended to get pretty wild with the tech- he liked time travel a bit too well sometimes to really fit in with the hard science crowd). Pournelle is a mixed bag- sometimes hard as a rock, sometimes off on flights of fancy (and both relatively good stories, but filled with cardboard characters). I simply don't see the wealth of good stories coming from this camp; they're workmanlike, but the dialog is too often stilted, the plots too often predictable or formulaic, and the characters don't seem to develop much. Pages and pages are spent describing some relatively unlikely piece of hardware, and landing in the middle of a teeming jungle is described as, well, here we are, it's a jungle, moving right along here's the next mcguffin.

There is a third class, and I alluded to it above. It's significantly harder to write, and many writers never develop the skills to do it. Whatever else SF might be, it's fiction, and it's about people. Cherryh probably does the best at this stuff, particularly at looking out from behind an alien's eyes and telling you what you look like. But as I've grown older and more perceptive, I've noticed that the best space opera writers can score some of this; and women seem to do it better than men, with C. S. Friedman's The Madness Season and Joan Vinge's The Summer Queen forming shining examples, though Brin is a major counter-example. I almost hesitated to put The Uplift War in with the space opera for precisely that reason. These books are rare; not many writers can do this, for the simple reason that you must not only have the imagination to think what might happen, but the imagination to think how people might be different, and then take that one step further and tell the reader what s/he looks like from in there. Neil Stephenson inhabits this class as well, and is the only one of them not to have tried his hand at space opera. Piper's Lord Kalvan and Little Fuzzy stuff make this list too; Uller Uprising would except he's so damn bigoted. So does Stranger In a Strange Land, though that's the only one of Heinlein's that does.

And then, of course, there are the cyberpunks. The most sweeping vision among them, I think, is John Sterling's. But again we have the cardboard cutout characters; the saving grace is the plotting, the use of translated film techniques like the slam cut and the interpolated mixed up scenes with things out of order and mixmastered together until you have to watch/read it three times to figure out what happened, and the cutting dialog; if you ignore the characters' lack of, well, character, and just read the dialog, you can get along with it. And if you like a little liberal politics with your SF, you can even read John Shirley's A Song Called Youth series, or go dig up some Norman Spinrad like Bug Jack Barron or Little Heroes.

But now we're far afield. And there's much farther to go, and it's all off-topic. I guess I'll shut up now. Thanks for reading my... well, I guess it's more than $0.02 from my POV, y'all are welcome to your own opinions.
 
Dr. Trintignant said:
I'll cast another vote for Alastair Reynold's books (as some might figure from my username).

Although the books to not totally adhere to your requirements--inertia modification exists, for example--the technologies are never "magical" in the way transporters and inertial dampeners exist in Star Trek. Most technologies carry some very strong drawbacks, and the mere hint of causality violations usually cause the universe to bite back hard.

The way aliens are dealt with in the novels (and particularly the solution to the "Fermi Paradox") is fairly novel, IMHO.

- Dr. Trintignant
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Alastair Reynolds is a wonderful author, and I would classify his work as Hard Sci-Fi. Softer then some, though, as he does speculate a bit more on the progress of tech (the Hell class weapons, inertia modification, the neutron star Hades, etc.). He also had particularly "alien" aliens. The Pattern Jugglers, for example.

For other good hard sci-fi novels, I highly recommend 'Diaspora' by Greg Egan, 'Accelerando' by Charles Stross and other books by Alastair Reynolds such as 'Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days'.
 
...a bit more on Alastair Reynolds...

As the series progresses, the books get "softer" and by the definition given above, ultimately turn into space opera - acausal weaponry anyone? loved Absolution Gap, right up until the ending...
 
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