Science Fiction: Hard to Soft

[lpetrich]

There are two main axes of variation from  Hard science fiction to  Soft science fiction:

• Nuts-and-bolts technology -- sociology
• Level of realism

The latter one I find especially interesting:
Grading SF for Realism - Kheper

The following is a suggested rating as to the scientific authenticity of science fiction literature and popular culture. Please note that this is not a rating as to the enjoyability of the story, or its quality or value as imaginative literature! It is simply a rating as to the suggested scientific realism of the setting as described within the work in question. A soft science outlook for example is often part and parcel of the author’s desired outcome of the work.

Seen in this light, we find this continuum:

Mundane literature -- (hard end) science fiction (soft end) -- fantasy

"Mundane literature" is intended as the opposite of "speculative fiction": science fiction to fantasy.

Now for the classification at kheper.net with my two ends:

• Mundane literature
• Hard SF
  • Present-Day Tech: no big advances over present-day tech
  • Ultra Hard: interplanetary colonization, terraforming genetic engineering, direct neural interface to computers, strong AI
  • Very Hard: interstellar colonization, relativistic spaceships, vacuum-adapted life, nanotech, mind uploads, small number of ET civs
  • Plausibly Hard: smaller than nanotech, wormholes, reactionless drive, sub-nanotech, FTL drives with time-travel paradoxes
  • Firm: ET devices still work after being abandoned for a long time, medium number of ET civs, transplanted Earthlings
  • Medium: FTL without real explanation, antigravity, disintegrator guns, psionics, large number of ET civs, ETs much like Earth organisms
• Soft Sci Fi
  • Soft: forcefield barriers, anthropomorphic ETs with uniform psychologies and societies
  • Very Soft: lots of technobabble (midichlorians, subspace anomalies, ...), lifeless planets with breathable atmospheres, lots of Earthlike planets, humanoid of the week, ET societies much like late 20th / early 21st cy US or past Earth ones, very uneven tech development (FTL spaceships but no life extension, ...)
  • Mushy Soft: ionizing radiation makes an organism more advanced, alien races never before encountered speak perfect English without a translator, animals too large to stand in Earth gravity (Godzilla, giant insects), weapons that make energy beams without putting energy in, space battles in 2D but not 3D, interstellar travel without FTL or centuries-long voyage, mutants with super energy powers, disintegrator guns with clean effects
• Fantasy

By this standard, most visual-media SF is well on the soft end, though some notable SF movies are well on the hard end, like "2001".

 

[marc]

Long ago I read the book Indistinguishable From Magic. It was written by a physicist who likes to write hard sci-fi. The book would have a chapter on the reality of some sci-fi trope, and then a chapter that was a story using that subject. Very interesting reading. Some of the stuff, like time travel, would have to involve stellar masses moving at or near the speed of light, so testing the theories is a bit problematic, and you would only be able to go back as far as when the thing was first switched on.

 

[Politesse]

Any projection of the future is a fantasy, in my opinion. The idea of formulating an opinion of a work based how how future technology is handled in it seems kind of silly to me. At what point in human history have we ever correctly predicted what was coming next in any level of detail? When the genre was in its natal days, some of our great 19th century science fiction writers made great predictions about the 20th century, that seemed absurd to many alive at the time but later proved plausible. Others made predictions that seemed like logical extensions of current technologies or scientific knowledge, but which look absurd in retrospect. And none of that really affects whether a good story has been told, or not.

 

[Jayjay]

The way I see the distinction is that "hard" science fiction is about the science. The soft end of the spectrum uses science or science-sounding technobabble as a setting for the actual story, which is about something else.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Any projection of the future is a fantasy, in my opinion. The idea of formulating an opinion of a work based how how future technology is handled in it seems kind of silly to me. At what point in human history have we ever correctly predicted what was coming next in any level of detail?

We probably cannot predict it with detail, but we can in many cases predict that some technologies are possible in our universe, whereas others are not, and then there are others we are not in a position to tell. That can be used to make a distinction.

 

[Politesse]

We probably cannot predict it with detail, but we can in many cases predict that some technologies are possible in our universe, whereas others are not, and then there are others we are not in a position to tell. That can be used to make a distinction.

If a writer predicted in 1895 that in a short amount of time we would have the ability to transmute new basic elements that did not exist in nature, would that have been seen as possible or plausible? Science fiction is creative; it relates to science in various ways, but I think it is more of a fuzzy boundary than the dichotomy of "hard" and "soft" woudl suggest.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

[*]Hard SF

• Present-Day Tech: no big advances over present-day tech

• 
  
  Pretty hard to do SF without introducing some tech--otherwise it's not going to be SF in the first place.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

We probably cannot predict it with detail, but we can in many cases predict that some technologies are possible in our universe, whereas others are not, and then there are others we are not in a position to tell. That can be used to make a distinction.

If a writer predicted in 1895 that in a short amount of time we would have the ability to transmute new basic elements that did not exist in nature, would that have been seen as possible or plausible? Science fiction is creative; it relates to science in various ways, but I think it is more of a fuzzy boundary than the dichotomy of "hard" and "soft" woudl suggest.

In 1895? Probably, the writer would not have been able to predict that on the basis of the available evidence. I agree that the boundary is fuzzy, but that seems to be the case for most of our classifications, including animal species, domestic/wild animal, different types of vehicles (car vs. not a car, but an SUV or whatever), and so on.

I also agree that science fiction is creative. I was not talking about predicting the future, but rather, about considering fictional futures that we can tell are possible within our universe, or fictional futures that we can tell are not possible, or fictional futures we cannot tell either way. Of course, it's also fuzzy: there are futures we can say that probably are possible but we cannot be sure, etc. But fuzziness in the boundaries does not have to be a problem, at least if generally we can make the classification, or compare different works and tell which one is softer or harder science fiction, etc.

 

[lpetrich]

Pretty hard to do SF without introducing some tech--otherwise it's not going to be SF in the first place.

That reminds me of when Analog magazine ran a story, "Shuttle Down", over 1980 - 1981, about a Space Shuttle suffering a malfunction after departing Vandenberg Air Force Base and having to do an emergency landing in Easter Island. Getting it back was a logistical and political nightmare.

When I read it, it didn't seem much like science fiction because the technology was all present-day, even though it was cutting-edge present-day technology. So it's at where science fiction fades off into mundane literature.

Wikipedia:  Shuttle Down

At the opposite end is SF-fantasy hybrids -  Science fantasy - and fantasy that treats sorcery as a kind of technology:  Hard fantasy

As to hard SF, I like Writer's Guidelines - Contact Us | Analog Science Fiction - "We publish science fiction stories in which some aspect of future science or technology is so integral to the plot that, if that aspect were removed, the story would collapse. Try to picture Mary Shelley's Frankenstein without the science and you'll see what I mean. No story!"

They also say "The science can be physical, sociological, psychological. The technology can be anything from electronic engineering to biogenetic engineering. But the stories must be strong and realistic, with believable people (who needn't be human) doing believable things–no matter how fantastic the background might be."

One might (say) write some story set in some exoplanetary system where two colonists fall in love with each other -- but they come from rival colonies whose leaders hate each other. Guess what classic story I ripped off.

 

[DrZoidberg]

There are two main axes of variation from  Hard science fiction to  Soft science fiction:

• Nuts-and-bolts technology -- sociology
• Level of realism

The latter one I find especially interesting:
Grading SF for Realism - Kheper

The following is a suggested rating as to the scientific authenticity of science fiction literature and popular culture. Please note that this is not a rating as to the enjoyability of the story, or its quality or value as imaginative literature! It is simply a rating as to the suggested scientific realism of the setting as described within the work in question. A soft science outlook for example is often part and parcel of the author’s desired outcome of the work.

Seen in this light, we find this continuum:

Mundane literature -- (hard end) science fiction (soft end) -- fantasy

"Mundane literature" is intended as the opposite of "speculative fiction": science fiction to fantasy.

Now for the classification at kheper.net with my two ends:

• Mundane literature
• Hard SF
  • Present-Day Tech: no big advances over present-day tech
  • Ultra Hard: interplanetary colonization, terraforming genetic engineering, direct neural interface to computers, strong AI
  • Very Hard: interstellar colonization, relativistic spaceships, vacuum-adapted life, nanotech, mind uploads, small number of ET civs
  • Plausibly Hard: smaller than nanotech, wormholes, reactionless drive, sub-nanotech, FTL drives with time-travel paradoxes
  • Firm: ET devices still work after being abandoned for a long time, medium number of ET civs, transplanted Earthlings
  • Medium: FTL without real explanation, antigravity, disintegrator guns, psionics, large number of ET civs, ETs much like Earth organisms
• Soft Sci Fi
  • Soft: forcefield barriers, anthropomorphic ETs with uniform psychologies and societies
  • Very Soft: lots of technobabble (midichlorians, subspace anomalies, ...), lifeless planets with breathable atmospheres, lots of Earthlike planets, humanoid of the week, ET societies much like late 20th / early 21st cy US or past Earth ones, very uneven tech development (FTL spaceships but no life extension, ...)
  • Mushy Soft: ionizing radiation makes an organism more advanced, alien races never before encountered speak perfect English without a translator, animals too large to stand in Earth gravity (Godzilla, giant insects), weapons that make energy beams without putting energy in, space battles in 2D but not 3D, interstellar travel without FTL or centuries-long voyage, mutants with super energy powers, disintegrator guns with clean effects
• Fantasy

By this standard, most visual-media SF is well on the soft end, though some notable SF movies are well on the hard end, like "2001".

Why is soft sci-fi less realistic? Both hard and soft science fiction is about taking our current world and fiddling with the settings somehow and projecting it into the future. Both operate on the same principles.

What sets them apart of which settings they fiddle with. Since the physics is less important for soft science fiction, (because it's about the social impacts, rather than technological impacts) the hard science is less important to define. That's why introducing midiclorians was such a massive crime in Star Wars. It shifted it from soft to hard sci-fi breaking the contract with the viewer.

Hard sci fi isn't likely to translate well to the screen. It'll be very talkey. It'll be much more exposition. It can be done. Kubrick nailed it in 2001. But it's harder.

 

[Politesse]

Pretty hard to do SF without introducing some tech--otherwise it's not going to be SF in the first place.

That reminds me of when Analog magazine ran a story, "Shuttle Down", over 1980 - 1981, about a Space Shuttle suffering a malfunction after departing Vandenberg Air Force Base and having to do an emergency landing in Easter Island. Getting it back was a logistical and political nightmare.

When I read it, it didn't seem much like science fiction because the technology was all present-day, even though it was cutting-edge present-day technology. So it's at where science fiction fades off into mundane literature.

I always appreciated the way Michael Chrichton walked that line, usually writing about technologies that either existed already or were very close to existing, resulting in many stories that either are or aren't science fiction depending on how you look at them. One of my favorites of his was Airframe, which involved no fictional technology at all. Not long after, though, we got Timeline, which was so "soft" in its science as to be nearly fantasy, yet treated time travel with a level of respect for the practical difficulties thereof as to outdo some works that tried to handle it more "seriously".

 

[Jayjay]

For something that's hard to categorize with the guidelines of this thread, I present to you Greg Egan's  Orthogonal_(series). It's set in a universe where speed of light can be infinite. It's considered by many to be "hard" due to it's mathematical rigor of depicting the alternative physical laws, but it might as well be fantasy because it's not set in any kind of future or involve humans at all. But on the other hand on a thematic level it's an allegory of gender relations here on Earth.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Pretty hard to do SF without introducing some tech--otherwise it's not going to be SF in the first place.

That reminds me of when Analog magazine ran a story, "Shuttle Down", over 1980 - 1981, about a Space Shuttle suffering a malfunction after departing Vandenberg Air Force Base and having to do an emergency landing in Easter Island. Getting it back was a logistical and political nightmare.

When I read it, it didn't seem much like science fiction because the technology was all present-day, even though it was cutting-edge present-day technology. So it's at where science fiction fades off into mundane literature.

Wikipedia:  Shuttle Down

Yup. I've read it, also and the book should be around here somewhere--just because it's centered around a Shuttle doesn't make it SF to me.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Yup. I've read it, also and the book should be around here somewhere--just because it's centered around a Shuttle doesn't make it SF to me.

My absolute favotite TV Guide listing was of the movie about the race to land men on the moon, filmed before men landed on the moon.

Science, no longer fiction.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yup. I've read it, also and the book should be around here somewhere--just because it's centered around a Shuttle doesn't make it SF to me.

My absolute favotite TV Guide listing was of the movie about the race to land men on the moon, filmed before men landed on the moon.

Science, no longer fiction.

Love it!

 

[bilby]

I am not sure how useful it is to divide SF up in this way. There's a tendency to consider fiction to be less serious the more fantasy elements it has, but that's just snobbery.

Terry Pratchett put it brilliantly:

 

[Politesse]

I am not sure how useful it is to divide SF up in this way. There's a tendency to consider fiction to be less serious the more fantasy elements it has, but that's just snobbery.

Terry Pratchett put it brilliantly:

View attachment 32317

Oh, God bless the man. It was a good answer, and uncommonly daring for a man on a book tour!