What is 'literature' and what SF qualifies?

[Bick]

Could you elaborate? I think you're on to something that will help me, but I'm not getting it completely.

Hard SF is ‘hard’ only in the sense that it extrapolates from known science and tends to obey the rules of nature as we understand them. It says nothing about the use or involvement of any particular discipline of science. This is distinct from ‘soft’ SF, or science fantasy, which is less about extrapolation within the laws of nature, and more about either sociological exploration (e.g. Left Hand of Darkness), or future romance, or simply fantasy fun set in space or the future.

 

[Swank]

Hard SF is ‘hard’ only in the sense that it extrapolates from known science and tends to obey the rules of nature as we understand them. It says nothing about the use or involvement of any particular discipline of science. This is distinct from ‘soft’ SF, or science fantasy, which is less about extrapolation within the laws of nature, and more about either sociological exploration (e.g. Left Hand of Darkness), or future romance, or simply fantasy fun set in space or the future.

I think that this is, historically, entirely debatable. Hard SF was coined without its opposite, and different folks have filled in what they think constitutes "soft" ever since.

Meanwhile, the "hard" part has been just as debated, with one side insisting that only current science is acceptable and the other side saying that any book focused intently on even a completely fictitious science qualifies.


Messy, messy, messy.

 

[Bick]

I think that this is, historically, entirely debatable. Hard SF was coined without its opposite, and different folks have filled in what they think constitutes "soft" ever since.

Meanwhile, the "hard" part has been just as debated, with one side insisting that only current science is acceptable and the other side saying that any book focused intently on even a completely fictitious science qualifies.

Messy, messy, messy.

It's not really messy, is it?
Soft isn't 'hard' so that's easily defined, and 'hard' is obviously only from the perspective of what was known at the time it was written - anything else would be daft.

 

[Swank]

It's not really messy, is it?
Soft isn't 'hard' so that's easily defined, and 'hard' is obviously only from the perspective of what was known at the time it was written - anything else would be daft.

Vernor Vinge and Alastair Reynolds are considered Hard SF by many, despite science that is not "known".

Meanwhile, the "soft sciences" (sociology, economics) can be written about in a hard way, and something like Star Trek that gets all the science wrong in service of plot would also be considered "not hard" and therefore Soft SF. So I don't know what you mean about easily defining them, as people have defined them as either un-hard or soft science based.

So it might be simple for you, but that's because you've decided already and simply disagree with counter-opinions. Because they were never formally defined.

Lays it out:

Soft science fiction - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Hard science fiction - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Personally, Hard SF feels like Hard SF - lots of focus on the interactions of speculative or real science with the plot. Everything Peter Watts writes seems like HSF, regardless of how real or speculative it comes from.
I think Soft SF isn't actually defined at all. It is just assumed a definition must exist as an antonym to its opposite, but that didn't really happen. IMHO.

 

[psikeyhackr]

1.Hard science means deep mathematics. Now mathematics by its very nature is as bloodless a thing as the human mind can engage itself with. Agreed? -- is that fair?

I remember overhearing a conversation between a couple of classmates in about 5th grade. They were complaining about word problems in mathematics and preferred being told to add, multiply and divide. I thought word problems were fun.

Some people are weird. The problem is figuring out which ones.

 

[Brian G Turner]

For me personally I see Hard SF as actually trying to make real predictions on the future of science and speculate on new scientific theories and discoveries. I do that in my own writing, but I don't see modern SF authors I've read trying to do that.

 

[Swank]

For me personally I see Hard SF as actually trying to make real predictions on the future of science and speculate on new scientific theories and discoveries. I do that in my own writing, but I don't see modern SF authors I've read trying to do that.

Have you read the Rifters books by Peter Watts? Or Stephenson's Fall or Termination Shock?

 

[Brian G Turner]

Have you read the Rifters books by Peter Watts? Or Stephenson's Fall or Termination Shock?

No, but I'll add them to my list.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

For me personally I see Hard SF as actually trying to make real predictions on the future of science and speculate on new scientific theories and discoveries. I do that in my own writing, but I don't see modern SF authors I've read trying to do that.

I think so too, but SF has a poor record of doing it with good characters, which goes part way to explaining why it is so derided.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Star Trek is fantasy because of warp speed and matter transfer. Alastair Reynolds is SF because of relativity.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Hard SF is ‘hard’ only in the sense that it extrapolates from known science and tends to obey the rules of nature as we understand them. It says nothing about the use or involvement of any particular discipline of science. This is distinct from ‘soft’ SF, or science fantasy, which is less about extrapolation within the laws of nature, and more about either sociological exploration (e.g. Left Hand of Darkness), or future romance, or simply fantasy fun set in space or the future.

I think this is not unreasonable.

 

[Bick]

Britain is a staid, innately conservative, highly stratified society, and has been for centuries. A self-selecting group of individuals two or three centuries ago, most of whom by chance happened to have land or money, raised themselves into positions of control and domination by acts of depriving others - mostly in local communities. This social system eventually took over from feudalism. What is so bizarre about the British is that they have a masochistic need to keep this obscene, utterly unfair, divisive, dangerous and damaging system going - witness to take just one example the fact that we still have a "royal family," and there's no sign of it going. The "royal family" in fact epitomises and symbolises British deference to people who keep on telling those not in their little clique that they are superior. It's a bizarre, macabre, dismal system which places Britain way, way behind equivalent European countries. This attitude of superiority, exclusion and control applies to literature as well as society in general. The literati have decided what's good and what isn't, and that's all there is to it. It's a kind of literary version of Enclosure.

Quite an extreme, neo-Trotskyist political opinion.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Quite an extreme, neo-Trotskyist political opinion.

It's a view from the point of view of human beings. I know very little about Trotsky, except what I learned from Animal Farm.

 

[Bick]

It's a view from the point of view of human beings. I know very little about Trotsky, except what I learned from Animal Farm.

Not supposed to engage in political opinion or debate though, are we? Naughty Stephen.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

 

[Brian G Turner]

Alastair Reynolds is SF because of relativity.

I read his The Prefect and it just struck me as a fantasy in space. I didn't recall anything particularly scientific of speculative about it.

 

[Vertigo]

I read his The Prefect and it just struck me as a fantasy in space. I didn't recall anything particularly scientific of speculative about it.

That one is probably not a good example of his hard SF. However when he does any kind of space opera he pretty much always stays within the limits of the speed of light. House of Suns is an excellent and intriguing example. Also most of the Revelation Space books in which the people operating interstellar spaceships have their own culture as the relativistic effects essentially put them outside normal society. A subject I find particularly interesting.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Star Trek is fantasy because of warp speed and matter transfer. Alastair Reynolds is SF because of relativity.

When Star Trek was created we did not know about space expanding and the rate of expansion of the universe increasing. There is still unknown physics out there. Science fiction can get speculation wrong but getting known physics wrong is a no-no.

Michael McCollum speculated about 3 forms of FTL in his two trilogies and he is an aeronautical engineer.

Clarke was wrong about liquidlike dust on the Moon. Einstein covers much of what we know about physics now. That does not mean he is the be all and end all of physics. H G Wells came up with the term "Atomic Bomb" but his concept of its effect was completely incorrect. I am very impressed that he predicted it 15 years before the discovery of the neutron however. The neutron is necessary for nuclear fission which so far is necessary for those cute fusion bombs.

Every form of FTL portrayed in SF books is almost certainly wrong but the size of the galaxy would make the impossibility of FTL really annoying. Imagine the next 10,000 years without FTL. 20% of C may be a useful speed for some purposes but less so for storytelling. SF is very useful for mind expansion. Fantasy is silly fun, like Conan the Barbarian.

 

[psikeyhackr]

And now for something completely different:

Fifty Years Hence:​

OR
WHAT MAY BE IN 1943:
A Prophecy supposed to be based on Scientific
Deductions by an Improved
Graphical Method.
BY
ROBERT GRIMSHAW.
NEW YORK
PRACTICAL PUBLISHING CO.
21 Park Row
1892

---

Copyright, 1892,
BY
ROBERT GRIMSHAW

Fifty Years Hence, by Robert Grimshaw—A Project Gutenberg eBook

gutenberg.org

Not enough about the elimination of horses. LOL

 

[Astro Pen]

Dandelion Wine by Bradbury is literature to me. Not really SF though.