Got to agree, X. I am certain that van Vogt's _Voyage of the Space Beagle_ was hard as diamond sf in its day, but today it's wonderfully retro science nonsense. But glorious and sciencey -- like "chocolatey" or "jazzy".

I'm not a real big fan of the term "hard sci-fi".

What would be good examples of modern hard sci-fi?

I've heard it applied to Robinson's Mars trilogy, I'd say it isn't though, but whatever.

Offhand I can't think of any.


Though if one assumes a world where P is equal to NP, the tv show Person of Interest might actually be hard sci-fi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P_versus_NP_problem

(There's many reasons to suspect that P is not equal to NP).

Quote from: Brander;7232292300 is about the only one.  They didn't seem frustrated and the only real problem was lethality.

As for the rest of the thread, I think we live in a fantasy world now.  I mean in the last 200 years we have learned to fly, harness the power of the atom, dramatically increase lifespans, made most infants survive to adulthood, re-attached severed limbs, attached someone else's limbs to people missing limbs, developed telepathy (from radio to cell phones), created a group memory that most everyone can tap into with something they carry in their pocket (internet), and all that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I can only imagine what the next 50 years will bring, much less further than that.  I prefer Science Fantasy because adding in magic and seeing where that takes us is more logical than deciding that what we know now is somehow a hard limit.  Science is the tool we use to create new magic, not the harness around it.

see also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws

As I said in my review of Shadowrun 5th Edition, when that game first came out, the idea of a world with corporations being supreme over government, widening income disparity and people going anarchist and taking quasi-legal jobs to keep themselves alive was also considered science fiction.

JG

Quote from: ggroy;723299What would be good examples of modern hard sci-fi?

Silent Running?

Not sure how modern that is, though.

JG

Quote from: Rincewind1;723156Jeff, I'm afraid you're conflating a bit too much hard science fiction genre with general science fiction genre. Going by your, mistaken I'm afraid definition of genre, Philip K Dick wrote science fantasy.

For some of his stories, I have to agree. Then again, so did some of my favorite authors like Harlan Ellison, David Gerrold, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, H. Beam Piper, the list goes on.

Quote from: CRKrueger;723169The problem is one Nobel Laureate's "impossible" is another Nobel Laureate's "possible but we just don't know how yet".

Nanotechnology - Science or Fantasy?
Brain to Computer Interfaces - Science or Fantasy?
Artificial Intelligence - Science or Fantasy?

Classic Science Fiction is all about proposing a new technology and then exploring it's impact/influence on the human condition and such technology isn't always based on existing science.  Going back to early or proto science fiction that includes works like Frankenstein.

A lot depends on how it is done. There is a way to explore emergant technology in a dramatic and logical manner through fiction that does not resort to suddenly saying that this or that New Thing is "magic".

Quote from: ggroy;723299What would be good examples of modern hard sci-fi?

Quote from: James Gillen;723328Silent Running?

Not sure how modern that is, though.

JG

I love that movie, but Oh fuck no it is not hard SF.


The anime Planetes qualifies as Hard SF. So would the movies Brainstorm, Gattaca, and Deep Impact.

Quote from: ggroy;723299What would be good examples of modern hard sci-fi?

Well the term has a couple of different applications.

(Also, although Forrest J. Ackerman meant well when he coined "sci-fi," it is in my experience rather a pejorative in SF fandom, applied to Hollywood productions and such that borrow superficial trappings with no regard for the deeper ethos.)

One application, perhaps less current nowadays, identified 'soft' SF as treating subjects in the psychological and social sciences (as opposed to 'hard' ones such as physics and chemistry). By that measure, such things as Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, Philip Dick's Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, and Harlan Ellison's "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" might fall into the category of 'soft' SF.

More often, it's a judgement on how much of the story depends on extrapolation from current science and technology. Jules Verne's work was to a large extent so 'hard' in this sense that it was just a step ahead of history. H.G. Wells, partly because he was more interested in examining social consequences, went further afield. Precisely how his "time machine" might be constructed is of little concern; what matters for the story is the premise that -- somehow or other -- it works.

Robert L. Forward and Charles Sheffield, both professional physicists, stand in contrast for the extent to which their works depend for instance upon Einstein's relativity theory. Sheffield, IIRC, once wrote that a story that does not really depend upon scientific speculation is not really what he would call proper SF at all, but such centrality is more often grounds for calling a work 'hard' SF.

In my sci-fi games, magic use will always have some technological explanation for how it works.  It just looks like magic to those not-in-the-know.

My players have no expectations of psychic powers in a sci-fi game, though I do usually have them.