Harder sci fi from female authors?

[Hex]

As a not-really-a-science-fiction-reader I find the question confusing. I've read Banks' culture novels, and I thought they were mostly about the way people and their culture had developed in the future. How come they're hard sf? Is it because the culture in the Culture isn't problematic?

 

[RX-79G]

As a not-really-a-science-fiction-reader I find the question confusing. I've read Banks' culture novels, and I thought they were mostly about the way people and their culture had developed in the future. How come they're hard sf? Is it because the culture in the Culture isn't problematic?

They are, and it isn't "hard SF". But there is an emphasis on how things physically work and detailed descriptions of dynamic physical situations that are beyond questions of culture and character. The "mechanics" of the culture are showcased as well as the people.

 

[Parson]

For example I found Elizabeth Moon's Heris Serano novels and Ky Vatta novels to contain enough of both to rival David Weber's Honor Harrington novels

I never once thought I'd hear a discussion that included the how our brains work differently as an explanation as to why women appear to somehow be excluded from genre fiction. I used to work with an engineer who believed women didn't have the mind set to be engineers and whats mostly disheartening is watching budding engineers allow this type of mentality to steer them from that path.

Yes, everyone is going to bring something different to the table and we all have to face the reality of that slippery beast, that doesn't mean that any of us threw caution to the wind and decided to just exclude or ignore certain elements because we don't think the same.

Elizabeth Moon.... I knew that there was a female writer that I read that I would consider in the military/Hard SF category that was excellent. But I couldn't think of her or the series; which I've read and am embarrassed that I could not remember.

I do NOT want to be understood as saying that there is any reason that a female could not write excellent Military/Hard SF. I don't think that there is, save perhaps good sense and interest.

It is very difficult to apply any label Hard SF, Military SF, Space Opera, Fantasy, etc. etc. in any kind of exclusive sense. I'm reminded of the Judge who said he could not define pornography, but he knew when he saw it. ---- As dumb as that is and sounds it is finally about how each person views it which is the only true indicator.

 

[tinkerdan]

Sorry sometimes what we think we hear is...well maybe on the scale as insane as what that judge said about pornography. Things just sounded like they were headed in that direction and sometimes if you don't object to what you thought you heard...people think you agree with it.

 

[apocalypsegal]

Y'all do understand the concept of pen names? Many of us write with male or gender neutral/ambiguous pen names because some men don't want girl cooties on their SF. It's the same thinking behind the men who write romance under female names. 'Cause you just know a man don't know nuthin' bout no lovey-dovey stuff.

 

[Bick]

Cherryh perhaps (Downbelow Station for instance). But her stuff is mainly space opera.

I can't think of many others that really offer hard SF. Most military SF isn't truly hard to be honest - it's mostly "semi-hard" space opera which is another thing (closer to space-based fantasy really).

But then I tend to consider SF as belonging broadly to 3 camps:
1) Soft (cultural, gender, social issues, with lots a great stuff by women);
2) Space opera, military, fun jaunts through space; most of which isn't 'soft' but isn't properly hard SF either; also lots of good female writers;
3) Hard (where the SF is based on extrapolations of scientific extremes or advances, with as great a reality as possible; well exemplified by works by writers like Baxter, Robinson or Clarke).

I can't think of any female writer examples of category 3 off the top of my head, though I'm loving Victoria's earlier very cool and obscure suggestion.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I can't think of any female writer examples of category 3

I can't think of many male writers in that category, either - my impression is of a very small niche indeed.

 

[Bick]

I can't think of many male writers in that category, either - my impression is of a very small niche indeed.

Baxter, Clarke, Anderson, Stross, Clement, Benford, Bova, Robinson, Vinge, Crichton, Pohl, Sheffield, Niven, Stephenson, Sagan, Forward, Haldeman, Wilson, Weir, Watts, Bear, Chang...

...to name a few.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Baxter, Clarke, Anderson, Stross, Clement, Benford, Bova, Robinson, Vinge, Crichton, Pohl, Sheffield, Niven, Stephenson, Sagan, Forward, Haldeman, Wilson, Weir, Watts, Bear, Chang...

...to name a few.

I struggle to equate many of those names with the preceding statement:

where the SF is based on extrapolations of scientific extremes or advances, with as great a reality as possible

It's one thing to apply scientific consistency, which IMO is an essential part of defining something as science fiction in the first place - it's another to extrapolate with any degree of reality, which is clearly hard SF but something many SF writers are unable to do.

I may have an especially narrow definition of hard SF.

 

[Venusian Broon]

I may have an especially narrow definition of hard SF.

Clearly!

Although we could quibble for decades on what really is 'hard' SF and sort through piles of books putting them in one camp or another. (And then picking them all up and rearranging them constantly!) @Bick's list of authors seems a very sensible starting place for authors who I'd put in the hard SF camp*.

Purely because you've got my interest piqued, who in your mind would you say is hard SF? Or perhaps what books exemplify what you think is hard SF?


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* There are of course some books by these authors that we could probably agree are not hard SF, but we are talking about their output in general.

 

[johnnyjet]

Joan Slonczewski writes what I consider "hard" SF in the biological sciences: A Door Into Ocean; Daughter of Elysium; The Children Star; Brain Plague; The Highest Frontier.

Joan Slonczewski

 

[Brian G Turner]

Purely because you've got my interest piqued, who in your mind would you say is hard SF?

Past masters are a given, but it seems we've had diminishing returns when it comes to visionaries in SF since the 70's. This is something I periodically complain about here.

And IMO hard SF has to be visionary - it cannot simply take contemporary science and technology and put them in a future setting, because then it becomes anachronistic by default.

Anyone who studies any field of science academically will know there are plenty of unanswered questions - some of them fundamental. Grand Unified Theory, abiogenesis, and the nature of consciousness are obvious examples - but there are plenty of less extreme ones across all disciplines.

If hard SF is about a focus on STEM, then by default is must begin to try and answer at least some of those questions. Otherwise, all it is doing is providing a snapshot of a paradigm just before that paradigm inevitably changes.

But when I pick up SF novels published in the 21st century, I struggle to find anything that does try to answer unresolved questions.

The irony is that my Gathering is ostensibly a mediaeval fantasy, yet has a science fiction subplot that attempts to address a range of problems.

But I digress...

 

[Venusian Broon]

And IMO hard SF has to be visionary - it cannot simply take contemporary science and technology and put them in a future setting, because then it becomes anachronistic by default.

Anyone who studies any field of science academically will know there are plenty of unanswered questions - some of them fundamental. Grand Unified Theory, abiogenesis, and the nature of consciousness are obvious examples - but there are plenty of less extreme ones across all disciplines.

If hard SF is about a focus on STEM, then by default is must begin to try and answer at least some of those questions. Otherwise, all it is doing is providing a snapshot of a paradigm just before that paradigm inevitably changes.

This is OT, so I will be try to be brief , but just to answer the two main attributes you put forward.

Personally IMO all good SF (whether it is soft, Space Opera, hard or whatever) has to be visionary. I of course take the definition of visionary in its broadest form, hence the works such as The Handmaid's Tale, Brave New World or 1984 come to mind first. However I think you're approaching it in terms of the visionary focus purely on science. But that is something I, honestly, don't think is always required even of hard SF.

As for your second point, that hard SF must try and 'answer some of the questions' I think that's far too restrictive. Very few fiction books of any time period come close to really answering the big questions of STEM*. But many SF or related books have a great deal of fun speculating. I think in the case of hard SF I interpret them as not using the current paradigm, but speculating at and beyond in a 'scientifically consistent' manner.

Writing a timeless SF is extremely difficult. Almost by definition as soon as it's written it decays anachronistically. A great SF novel endures by making this half-life as long as possible.

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*whereas I do think many give a very good stab at the human condition

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

Liz Williams. I don't know that all her books are had-SF, but Banner of Souls and Winterstrike certainly fit the bill, and that world features an all-female cast in which men have been eradicated and reproduction is via cloning.

 

[Danny McG]

To restart an old debate....
Greg Egan

 

[Venusian Broon]

To restart an old debate....
Greg Egan

I love his work and I'd call it hard SF (at least the books I've read) but is he female?

 

[Danny McG]

That's one of the deep, dark secrets of the hidden order of science fiction authors. Who is Greg Egan?
Woman?
Man?
Writing partnership?
A.I ?

 

[Charles Gull]

I used to work with an engineer who believed women didn't have the mind set to be engineers and whats mostly disheartening is watching budding engineers allow this type of mentality to steer them from that path.

I used to be an engineer and technologist. I had the good fortune of meeting several female engineers, technologists and mathematicians that could fold me into a paper hat and send me down the river. One even managed to spot a mistake I had been searching for for weeks without even pausing in her own work!

It is simply a question of motivation. People do what they feel most motivated to do.

 

[Charles Gull]

On a separate note. This thread really really really could do with being split into two. We keep tangling up two closely related yet independent themes:

1. Hard SF from females;
2. What constitutes Hard SF.

 

[Charles Gull]

Is it terrible that I am unable to say with any certainty what the gender of most writers is?

Y'all do understand the concept of pen names?

Ever since discovering the concept of pen names (an un-utterably great many years ago) I have more or less stopped thinking of pen names as people but far more as points of origin.