Hard science fiction

Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both.^[1][2] The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Islands of Space in Astounding Science Fiction.^[3][4][5] The complementary term soft science fiction (formed by analogy to "hard science fiction"^[6]) first appeared in the late 1970s. The term is formed by analogy to the popular distinction between the "hard" (natural) and "soft" (social) sciences. Neither term is part of a rigorous taxonomy—instead they are approximate ways of characterizing stories that reviewers and commentators have found useful.

Today the term "Soft Science Fiction" is often used to refer to science fiction stories which lack a scientific focus or rigorous adherence to known science. The categorization "hard SF" represents a position on a scale from "softer" to "harder", not a binary classification.

Scientific rigor

The heart of the "hard SF" designation is the relationship of the science content and attitude to the rest of the narrative, and (for some readers, at least) the "hardness" or rigor of the science itself.^[7] One requirement for hard SF is procedural or intentional: a story should try to be accurate, logical, credible and rigorous in its use of current scientific and technical knowledge about which technology, phenomena, scenarios and situations that are practically and/or theoretically possible, and later discoveries do not necessarily invalidate the label. For example, P. Schuyler Miller called Arthur C. Clarke's 1961 novel A Fall of Moondust hard SF,^[3] and the designation remains valid even though a crucial plot element, the existence of deep pockets of "moondust" in lunar craters, is now known to be incorrect.

There is a degree of flexibility in how far from "real science" a story can stray before it leaves the realm of hard SF.^[8] Some authors scrupulously avoid such technology as faster-than-light travel, while others accept such notions (sometimes referred to as "enabling devices", since they allow the story to take place^[9]) but focus on realistically depicting the worlds that such a technology might make possible. In this view, a story's scientific "hardness" is less a matter of the absolute accuracy of the science content than of the rigor and consistency with which the various ideas and possibilities are worked out.^[8]

Readers of "hard SF" often try to find inaccuracies in stories, a process which Gary Westfahl says writers call "the game". For example a group at MIT concluded that the planet Mesklin in Hal Clement's 1953 novel Mission of Gravity would have had a sharp edge at the equator, and a Florida high-school class calculated that in Larry Niven's 1970 novel Ringworld the topsoil would have slid into the seas in a few thousand years.^[10] The same book famously featured a devastating inaccuracy: the eponymous Ringworld is not (in) a stable orbit and would crash into the sun without active stabilization. Niven fixed these errors in his sequel The Ringworld Engineers.

Representative works

Arranged chronologically by publication year.

Short stories

• Hal Clement, "Uncommon Sense" (1945)
• James Blish, "Surface Tension" (1952), (Book 3 of The Seedling Stars [1957])^[11]
• Tom Godwin, "The Cold Equations" (1954)^[11]
• Poul Anderson, "Kyrie" (1968)^[11] Link with information about this story
• Frederik Pohl, "Day Million" (1971)^[11]
• Larry Niven, "Inconstant Moon" (1971) and "The Hole Man" (1974)^[11]
• Geoffrey A. Landis, "A Walk in the Sun" (1991)^[12]
• Vernor Vinge, "Fast Times at Fairmont High" (2001)^[12]

Novels

• Hal Clement, Mission of Gravity (1953)^[11]
• Arthur C. Clarke, A Fall of Moondust (1961)^[5]
• Stanislaw Lem, Solaris (1961)
• Poul Anderson, Tau Zero (1970)
• James P. Hogan, The Two Faces of Tomorrow (1979)^[5]
• Robert L. Forward, Dragon's Egg (1980)^[13]
• F.M. Busby The Star Rebel (1984)
• Charles Sheffield, Between the Strokes of Night (1985)^[5]
• Kim Stanley Robinson, The Mars trilogy (Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1993), Blue Mars (1996))^[14][15]
• Ben Bova, Grand Tour series (1992-)
• Nancy Kress, Beggars in Spain (1993)^[12]
• Greg Egan, Schild's Ladder (2002)^[16]
• Gwyneth Jones, Life (2004)

Anime / Manga

• Makoto Yukimura, Planetes (1999, 2004)

See also

• Hard science
• Soft science fiction
• Hard fantasy

References

1. ^ Nicholls, Peter (1993). "Hard SF". In John Clute, Peter Nicholls. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. 
2. ^ Wolfe, Gary K. (1986). "Hard Science Fiction". Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy: A Glossary and Guide to Scholarship. 
3. ^ ^{a b} "hard science fiction n.". Science fiction citations. Jesse's word. 2005-07-25. http://www.jessesword.com/sf/view/1674. Retrieved 2007-10-07. "Earliest cite: P. Schuyler Miller in Astounding Science Fiction ... he called A Fall of Moondust "hard" science fiction" 
4. ^ Hartwell, David G.; Kathryn Cramer (2002). "Introduction: New People, New Places, New Politics". The Hard SF Renaissance. New York: Tor. ISBN 0-312-87635-1. 
5. ^ ^{a b c d} Westfahl, Gary (1996-02-28). "Introduction". Cosmic Engineers: A Study of Hard Science Fiction (Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy). Greenwood Press. p. 2. ISBN 0313297274. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0313297274/ref=sib_fs_bod/102-2504711-0986542?ie=UTF8&p=S00J&checkSum=ZwwEGNBG6d5NLftyICuVTufBHo5H7Wz8ym1GDkXz0Sk%3D#reader-link. Retrieved 2007-10-07. "hard science fiction ... the term was first used by P. Schuyler Miller in 1957" 
6. ^ "soft science fiction n.". Science fiction citations. Jesse's word. 2005-07-25. http://www.jessesword.com/sf/view/1843. Retrieved 2007-10-07. "Soft science fiction, probably a back-formation from Hard Science Fiction" 
7. ^ Samuelson, David N. (July 1993). "Modes of Extrapolation: The Formulas of Hard Science Fiction". Science Fiction Studies. 20 part 2 (60). http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/abstracts/a60.htm. Retrieved 2007-10-07. 
8. ^ ^{a b} Westfahl, G. (July 1993). ""The Closely Reasoned Technological Story": The Critical History of Hard Science Fiction". Science Fiction Studies (SF-TH Inc) 20 (2): 157–175. JSTOR 4240246. 
9. ^ Chiang, T. (April 15, 2009). "Time travel is one of the trickiest SF/F tropes to use well". http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2009/04/mind-meld-time-travel/. Retrieved 2009-04-28. 
10. ^ Gary Westfahl (2005). "Hard Science Fiction". In David Seed. A Companion to Science Fiction. Blackwell. pp. 195–198. ISBN 1405112182. http://books.google.com/?id=HO_z5WFKwpoC&pg=PA196&dq=%22james+white%22+%22science+fiction%22. Retrieved 2008-12-18. 
11. ^ ^{a b c d e f} David G. Hartwell, Kathryn Cramer, ed (1994). The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF. New York: Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.. ISBN 978-0312855093. http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/exper/kcramer/anth/Part1.html. 
12. ^ ^{a b c} Hartwell, David G.; Kathryn Cramer (2002). The Hard SF Renaissance. New York: Tor. ISBN 0-312-87635-1. 
13. ^ Chris Aylott. "The Humans Were Flat but the Cheela Were Charming in 'Dragon's Egg'". http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/books/dragons_egg_000330.html. Retrieved 2009-01-27.  Some editions also inclide a preface by Larry Niven, admitting that "I couldn't have written it; it required too much real physics"
14. ^ Alyott, Chris (2000-06-20). "The Vanishing Martian". SPACE.com. http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/mars_three_visions_991130.html. Retrieved 2008-07-20. 
15. ^ Horton, Richard R. (1997-02-21). "Blue Mars review". http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton/bluemars.htm. Retrieved 2008-07-20.  Review by Rich Horton]
16. ^ Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan

Further reading

• On Hard Science Fiction: A Bibliography, originally published in Science Fiction Studies #60 (July 1993).
• David G. Hartwell, "Hard Science Fiction,", Introduction to The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard Science Fiction, 1994, ISBN 0-312-85509-5
• Kathryn Cramer's chapter on hard science fiction in The Cambridge Companion to SF, ed. Farah Mendlesohn & Edward James.
• Gary Westfahl (1996-02-28). Cosmic Engineers: A Study of Hard Science Fiction (Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy). Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-29727-4. 
• A Political History of SF by Eric Raymond
• The Science in Science Fiction by Brian Stableford, David Langford, & Peter Nicholls (1982)

External links

• Kheper Realism scale
• The Ascent of Wonder by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer. Story notes and introductions.
• Hard Science Fiction Exclusive Interviews
• The Ten Best Hard Science Fiction Books of all Time, selected by the editors of MIT's Technology Review, 2011