I am a big sci-fi fan and I disagree here. I think there is a difference between soft and hard sci-fi, but that difference is more about how consistency with the rules is treated. Soft sci-fi can be thought of as fantasy with a future setting, while hard scifi sticks to it's own world rules tightly, and often explores the consequences of these rules and the characters are just a means for that. (Relatedly, I think there can be hard and soft fantasy as well)
Greg Egan is often cited as one of the current greats when it comes to hard sci-fi. His novels explore some very far out ideas in terms of how the world may work, but he sticks to the consistency and really explores the politics and consequences of that universe.
Clarke also does this, but to a somewhat lesser extent. In many of his stories, the world and its rules are the main character, and the actual beings are the supporting characters.
> Greg Egan is often cited as one of the current greats when it comes to hard sci-fi.
I'd also suggest a good look at Baxter's books and Robert L Forward's too.
I've jokingly called Forward's books science papers with a plot. Timemaster starts out with:
> There exist semieducated but obstinate people who have raised the concept of strict local causality to godhead, and attempt to use such words as "obviously" and "it only makes sense that ..." in an attempt to "prove" that their version of causality cannot be violated, and that any sort of time machine is logically impossible. From my reading of the scientific literature, they are wrong. If I receive a letter from this sort of person complaining about the "impossibility" of the time machines in this novel, I will throw the letter in the nearest wastebasket... unless the letter is accompanied by a reprint of a scientific paper published in Physical Review (or any other reputable, refereed scientific journal), written by the person writing the letter, which proves that the paper "Cauchy Problem in Spacetimes with Closed Timelike Curves" by Friedman, Morris, Novikov, Echeverria, Klinkhammer, Thorne, and Yurtsever, is erroneous.
My take on it is more of a "what is the focus of the story?" Is it the soft sciences? Psychology and sociology and politics ... and the Foundation.
Or is it one more of challenges met with the STEM disciplines of physics and astronomy and biology?
It's also not a "it is either a this or that." Some books can be both and I think that Clarke is a prime example of this. 2001 is as much of a story of psychology as it is about astronomical distances and the ship needed to accomplish that goal. The Songs of Distant Earth is about two cultures clashing ... with the real problems of engineering a ship to travel (it's a softer story than it is hard).
Protector by Niven likewise scores high on both the soft and hard scales.
Foster tends to higher on the 'soft' side of the scale, though sometimes it edges up there with some real biology and the limits of technology are sometimes real limits.
And so, it is "are the challenges that the characters surmount solved with tools developed from the soft or hard sciences?"
"Use the Force Luke" is not a hard science solution.
I share a similar view to you on what is hard or soft science fiction, but it can be tricky to pin down. Star Trek to me is somewhat firm (in between) as the technology may as well be magic (Heisenberg compensators), but it tries to be consistent with the scientific rules within the show for the most part. Revelation Space more or less feels like a universe operating off the same principles as ours with a more reasonable assumption about the future (hard). Then you have things like Star Wars that are fun, but so ridiculous as to very much be on the soft side.
ST:TOS and ST:TNG era seemed to deal with some hard sci-fi ideas. Nothing I've watched in the last 20 years seemed hard sci-fi. Most of them seem to be "how can we work some action sequence into this story". Admittedly I haven't watched them all and I'm sure there are moments of hard sci-fi but my impression is it's devolved into space opera.
Star Trek was always meant to be space opera, but yes... ironically TOS, considered the campy black sheep of the franchise now, is the one series that at least attempted to be harder than others would, with input from actual engineers and science fiction writers of the time. The episode with the introduction of the Romulan cloaking device, for instance, hinged on the actual laws of thermodynamics (a perfect cloak is impossible - it must be radiating something somewhere.) In modern Trek, they'd just something something subspace some bullshit.
It helped that Gene Roddenberry was in the Navy and that Trek was basically The Cold War In Space which is actually more of an interesting dynamic to me than Starfleet being basically invincible and everything running on space magic.
Lewis Carroll, writing as Charles Dodgson, in a review of a new university belfry tower described it as best viewed from such distance that perspective dwindled it to a point.
I agree that there's a clear difference between hard and soft science fiction. But in my mind, it's "hard" science fiction if the world is entirely consistent with physical reality as we know it.
There's basically little to no truly hard sci fi under that definition. Even the Martian fudges things to make the storm happen as the plot needs it to. I can't think of any other recent movies or books that fit your criteria, though I'm sure there are some books at least.
There has always been a lot less hard sci-fi than soft, true, and it used to be more common than it is now.
But the real dividing line in my mind isn't quite as stark as I made it sound. There's still a gray area. Unusual events that exist purely for plot purposes don't disqualify anything, for instance.
The differentiator I have in mind is more basic: if the story involves things that are simply not possible, it's not hard sci-fi. If it involves things that are very unlikely, but still within the realm of possibility, it can certainly still be "hard". Same if it involves things/effects that don't (as far as we know) exist, but wouldn't break the laws of physics if they did.
Off the top of my head, I'd count Asimov's Foundation, Crichton's The Andromeda Strain, Niven's Ringworld, Gibson's Neuromancer, Bear's Darwin's Radio, and Stephenson's Snow Crash.
Those are literally just morality plays with no scientific grounding whatsoever. The "positronic brains" behind the robots only exist because Asimov thought it sounded cool and futuristic.
Your understanding of the terminology sounds a lot different than mine. I always interpreted "hard" and "soft" to simply be references to "hard science" and "soft science."
In other words, I thought "hard sci-fi" means fiction that deals mostly with fictional facts in fields like physics, astronomy, geology, and biology, while "soft sci-fi" means fiction that deals mostly with fictional facts in fields like psychology, economics, and political science.
Yes this is a reasonable way to misunderstand given the way we refer to “hard sciences” and “soft sciences”, but it does not map to the terms “hard scifi” and “soft scifi” in common usage.
It’s not exactly about rules consistency either as stated by the GP, though that’s part of it. It’s more about strong consistent application of scientific principles even theoretical or untested principles.
This is in contrast to futuristic fantasy with no real focus on the science. But futuristic or space fantasy can be very consistent just like magical systems in fantasy can be very consistent. Hard scifi has to be constrained by plausible consistent science and that science is typically a main character in the story, or even THE main character.
I don't know if it's a misunderstanding, or if usage is just very mixed and inconsistent. Both Wikipedia articles provide both definitions, and both claim that usage is sometimes contradictory and not at all rigorous.
> The complementary term soft science fiction, formed by analogy to the popular distinction between the "hard" (natural) and "soft" (social) sciences,[6] first appeared in the late 1970s. Though there are examples generally considered as "hard" science fiction such as Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, built on mathematical sociology,[7] science fiction critic Gary Westfahl argues that while neither term is part of a rigorous taxonomy, they are approximate ways of characterizing stories that reviewers and commentators have found useful.[8]
> The term soft science fiction was formed as the complement of the earlier term hard science fiction.
> The earliest known citation for the term is in "1975: The Year in Science Fiction" by Peter Nicholls, in Nebula Award Stories 11 (1976). He wrote "The same list reveals that an already established shift from hard sf (chemistry, physics, astronomy, technology) to soft sf (psychology, biology, anthropology, sociology, and even [...] linguistics) is continuing more strongly than ever."
I'll throw out one I expect I'll get lots of disagreement over. Firefly (the series, not the movie) seemed pretty "soft sci-fi" to me. They could have changed the setting to people in a Winnebago towing a trailer going from city to city on Earth and nothing would really have changed in at least the first 7 episodes.
Good one. I think it's generally considered a Western in a sci-fi setting. They did try to stick to self-consistent rules and a realistic "feel" with the technology, physics, special effects and so on (no sound in space, etc) which would put it on the harder side of the spectrum perhaps. But since the sci-fi elements barely interact with the story, and so there's no deeply-considered exploration of how those sci-fi elements are consequential to the story / characters / society of that world, it could also be considered soft.
> I think it's generally considered a Western in a sci-fi setting.
This is how I think of it as well. I actually don't really consider it science fiction, it just uses the scenery. Although I equally wouldn't say anyone who calls it "science fiction" is wrong.
That brings up another thing: I think a story can be science fiction without involving anything futuristic or space-related at all.
For me it’s soft sci-fi because the show was about the people. Space was just the backdrop.
Whereas something like Foundation is about the exploring the concept of psycho-history and galactic civilisations and the people are there to move that story forward.
It looks to me like both definitions are widely used. The first paragraph on Wikipedia claims that the term "hard sci-fi" was coined first, then "soft science fiction" was coined specifically to make the distinction between hard science and soft science. That paragraph also notes that there is no rigorous distinction, and mentions Foundation as a classic example.
I strongly disagree, I don't think the "soft-science fiction" and "hard-science fiction" meanings are widely used; if you use these meanings often then you'll probaby very frequently cause confusion and prompt discussions like this one. Almost everybody is using the other meanings, at least in recent years.
Greg Egan is often cited as one of the current greats when it comes to hard sci-fi. His novels explore some very far out ideas in terms of how the world may work, but he sticks to the consistency and really explores the politics and consequences of that universe.
Clarke also does this, but to a somewhat lesser extent. In many of his stories, the world and its rules are the main character, and the actual beings are the supporting characters.