dystopian
Veteran Member
No; the technology is never integral. Is oxygen integral to an average modern day romance novel, because it determines whether the characters can breathe? No. Is the city that the romance story takes place in integral to the story? Surely it can have an importance in that specific locations in said city are used in the plot or even drive the plot forward, but no; these things aren't truly integral. Is the war that drives lovers apart and creates the conflict in the story integral? Certainly you can say that without the war, there would be no conflict and it is therefore integral to the story... but no, it ultimately isn't integral. The characters are and always will be core to any story; anything else is secondary and can if needed be altered or exchanged. These elements, like technology in sci-fi, is *setting*, not story. Without characters, setting isn't a story.
Some people think that hard sci-fi means you can't have any technology that is beyond what modern day science (or even just some scientists) thinks is going to be possible. This is for instance why some people will never accept a sci-fi story with FTL in it as hard sci-fi. Those people are idiots. Even the 'hardest' sci-fi can't and won't stick 100% to what we know for sure is scientifically possible; a story which starts with a technology that is absurdly fantastical and outside the realm of known physics can still be hard sci-fi. The point, as you have already alluded to, is to make the science that exists in that world; however impossible from our modern viewpoint; be well thought out and internally consistent. You can do this with any setting elements; so there's no need to throw out tropes and ideas just because others don't live up to some arbitrary standard about consistency or scientific rigor.
The problem though, is that some authors of 'hard' sci-fi have a tendency to get bogged down in overly long and complicated exposition describing the in-universe science behind technology. This is generally a rookie author mistake to make; based on the idea that your readers *need* to know exactly how everything that's different in your setting works and how it's come about. Some exposition may be necessary in order to establish basic rules and not resolve your plot with what seems like deus ex machinas (oh, I didn't explain that this device also works as a plot resolver?), but generally this stuff isn't particularly interesting; some authors have an entertaining way of conveying that information that *can* work, but even then it's generally superfluous to the story and can get in the way. I know from personal experience that avoiding such infodumps can be pretty hard though, because as an author you can just be so excited about a cool setting or concept you came up with, or want to share all those interesting facts you dug up and put them in the story somehow. I've had to prune so many infodumps from my writing...
