Hard sci fi and rule of cool

Well for me hardness is about how many laws of physics you explicitly break or accidentally break. Explicitly breaking laws of physics puts it onto the soft side. Accidentally breaking minor laws puts it on softer side, accidentally breaking major laws puts it on the same level of explicitly breaking laws except that since the author didn't intend to do so, it's just bad writing.

Then there is stuff that I don't think affect the scales, which are technologies that are advanced like magic but don't break any laws of physics. Some people like to say this makes a work softer but I would disagree. If you aren't breaking any laws, then it's not making it softer but since you don't explain it, it's not making it any harder.

Does the use of Subspace or Hyperspace automatically make a sci-fi work soft?

I think trying to draw exact lines is both silly and leads to the "my science is better then yours" mentality we've all attacked here. However, I think the revised Mohs Scale Of Science Fiction Hardness does a good job at outlining the general categories.

Depends on what else is there. It will be softer then a setting with science drawn entirely from real life, but it isn't on its own that much softer then other forms of Applied Phlebotinum, though as a means of FTL Travel it is towards the softer end of the scale (FTL is never really hard science, but there are some actual theories on the subject, and Subspace or Hyperspace is definitely not one of them). One reason the Mohs Scale was revised to begin with was to do away with the silly "FTL stigma" that had it alone bump works lower down towards the "soft" end, while works with utterly absurd "science" but no FTL were considered to be towards the harder end of the scale.

I don't know. Does FTL travel really break the suspension of disbelief so much? Then again, I do think that lacking FTL travel, causing things like generational ships and stuff...

Well science hasn't really solved the problem of FTL, so I mean, it feels like non-physicists are attaching way too much weight to that one aspect. I mean research on the subject is quite interesting. So I don't think that FTL itself makes a work softer except if it implements it in silly ways.

Subspace though, I think, does lean on the softer side of things since I don't even know what it means and is quite made up.

I think one of the worst distinctions between hard and soft sci-fi I've read is that hard sci-fi is based on physics, and/or chemistry, while soft sci-fi is based on the soft science of biology (and sociology, but that one is reasonable).

edited 2nd Aug '11 5:35:24 PM by brc2000

^ Face meet Palm. Whoever said that was an idiot for that rule.

It was on a Wikipedia article (unopposed since 2007). Obviously, I had to edit out that nonsense.

FTL travel doesn't really seem more unbelievable than things like artificial gravity and whatever, though it seems to have developed its own ghetto...

I would say the one thing that can exist in soft Sci Fi but not hard Sci Fi is unfacilitated Psychic Powers... or generally when people are "evolving" all at once.

(though my use of Subspace or Hyperspace in my WIP is for rudimentary time travel rather than FTL travel.)

Technically, artificial gravity is perfectly realistic. Artificial gravity of the sort that doesn't involve spinning your ship... then we have problems. As for FTL, there is indeed some weird stigma attached to it, but at least on this site it's been purged. Some ways to do it can be reasonably hard - as mentioned, there's some interesting real life theories in the area. The real Willing Suspension of Disbelief, at least on my part, is in putting them into practice. Although as noted Subspace or Hyperspace is pretty far towards the "soft" end of the lot.

What lunatic wrote that?

A Wikipedia admin. To be fair, it was more along the lines of "some have made the distinction", but there were no citations, and I've literally never heard anyone else ever say that, and see no reason why anyone would have thought it worth mentioning in an article.

edited 2nd Aug '11 6:25:06 PM by brc2000

I know about the spinning thing, but would you really consider that artificial gravity? Simulated gravity. Bleh. Either way, the one where space ships obviously have an up and a down and magically some way when they're in space they're all oriented the same way is more unbelievable than FTL, simply because there's no rhyme or reason to it other than people on Earth are used to cars/ships/whatnot moving in one direction.

Or an accelerating ship. I remember Niven did that in one set of stories.

There's three levels of...hm... inconsistencies and each breaks a different level of believability for me.

1) lack of consistency: plot holes where a phlebotinum should be able to do something and nothing prevents it, but it doesn't happen. Or if the characters forget, and don't facepalm later (which would actually be a really good way of showing flaws which raises my views).

2) lack of application: a phlebotinum has properties that would make it useful in a specific application and there aren't any good reasons for it to not be there.

3) simple impossibility: breaking actual physical laws

1 does the most damage and pretty much destroys my valuing of the work. 2 does a lot of damage, but is survivable. 3 is something I can skip over provided no-one points it out or the work isn't claimed to be Like Reality, Unless Noted.

I personally think it's less of a matter of what you have but how you do it. You can FTL travel and psychic power but you have to have a dam good and well explanation and justification for it

^^That's a good system.

edited 2nd Aug '11 9:39:34 PM by joeyjojo

For me, as long as it follows the sci-fi equivalent of Magic A Is Magic A, I won't have too many problems with it.

edited 3rd Aug '11 2:34:51 AM by brc2000

my 2 pennies...

FTL travel doesn't automatically "soften" a work; real science is still kicking around ways in which it might be accomplished (we just have no way to test them so they remain theories), so it can't be filed away as impossible yet. What usually gets me more is when physical laws that are well-known are overturned; like sound in space, how ships maneuver, little things like that...that's going to bug me a lot more.

I'm a high school graduate with emphasis on the liberal arts. If I can poke holes in a writer's science, then they plainly did not do enough homework.

Seconding that last sentence. If I can tell that you're full of it... you probably are.

You might be able to have artificial gravity without spinning your ship, since we already have problems in the field of physics with explaining gravity fully. The whole "dark energy" problem for instance goes to show that our understanding of the issue is lacking in some major way.

I like works that put in the time to be as accurate as possible. I don't like works that pretend to be super accurate yet be chock full of mistakes which they pretend is how it actually works.

The ones that are the best are the ones that not only do accuracy, but really put effort into thinking up applications of their technology and when it's actually feasible to use them.

Also, I briefly toyed with the idea of helping people who write Military Sci Fi with some advice. There are three primary factors that determine who wins a fight between two different species/groups: tech, numbers, intelligence. The side you want to win has to have at least one of these advantages, and has to use it, or you'll have to have some kind of Deus ex Machina come in and save the day. And that gets boring.

edited 5th Aug '11 1:17:01 AM by Deboss

That's why I like little gems like "The Kzinti Lesson" - apparently harmless Earth technology (such as lasers for solar sails and the exhausts of ship's drives) can be used to great effect as weapons if need be.

If someone's managed to work out how to flip a switch and have proper gravity (not caused by rotation, magnetism or Velcro shoes) then they must know how to flip a switch and negate gravity - which would lead to some pretty sweeping changes in the way things are done in that society.

If they've got matter-energy-matter teleportation then they've got far more incidental technology than the Space Program ever unleashed on the world - perfect replication, functional immortality, the "cure" for conservation of momentum, fan-frigging-tastic computers and so much more - and a far more changed society as a result.

Look at what the space program did for our lifestyles so far and imagine what even more fantastic technology would do.

Then see if "The Battle of Britain IN SPACE" would really work in such a society.

If you can justify why/how it would work, well and good. But if you don't, Fridge Logic will kick you in the arse.

Yeah it's called having a ship bigger than existing spacecraft.

Physics-wise, gravity exists from the smallest atomic particles to the largest bodies of mass in the universe.

What I'm getting at is build a ship that for example is 600 meters in length, 120 meters in width and it'll natively have some gravity. Sure the level will be "things take several minutes to settle onto the nearest/most massive surface and you can leap through the air with the greatest of ease" but there will be gravity.

Go even bigger and it merely gets stronger. A ship that is 10 km in length, 1 km in width will have gravity comparable to large asteroids.

edited 5th Aug '11 4:56:02 AM by MajorTom

Very large things have a tendency not to be stable. Square-Cube Law applies in large quantities.

And here's the problem I tend to have with military scifi. Given that either side could have the advantages of tech, numbers, or intelligence, you're destined to have the winning side use tech to their advantage.

If the winning side merely has numbers for their advantage, that means numbers wins out over intelligence and tech, which is highly antithetical to the message almost any sci-fi author wants to send. (unless of course the Bugs end up winning and it's an Allegory)

If the winning side merely has intelligence for their advantage, that means the opposing side has the tech, and that means, while the story could be brilliant, we don't get to showcase the tech in the hands of the good guys. The good guys have to have SOME tech or there's no reason to set it in the future, since you can win battles by acting smart without super tech. This sometimes happens in series as the good guy's specific tech level is known and static, but even then they tend to get a deus ex machina because it's easier.

The best case scenario tends to be that the tech is equal, the enemy has numbers and the good guys have intelligence. Which, even listing right here, I can feel a crapload of cliches welling up underneath.

edited 5th Aug '11 11:03:33 AM by RickGriffin

The thing is, combat doesn't usually turn on small technical advantages. And intelligence is useless without the strength to do something about it. (There's a great illustration of this in that the Wehrmacht knew, weeks in advance, of the Russian 1944 summer offensive. It did them no good because they simply didn't have the means to stop it.)

The truth is, combat at the strategic scale often turns on things that were decided a long time before it happens, on doctrine, logistics, and other battles won and lost. Humanity as a whole has fought only one war that was remotely even in the last couple centuries, and World War One was an incredible clusterfuck from a strategic standpoint, a terrible idea terribly executed that devolved into a race to see whose army would mutiny in the field first.

At the small scale, combat turns on very small things. Unless there is a truly vast disparity in equipment and weapons, then it comes down to who's willing to endure fire longer and who can put out more of it. There's not much room for tactical brilliance in a squad or platoon command.

It's not like you can't match them. The point is that making your victors the underdogs on all counts is a way to break the stories believability. Particularly when you hear the equivalent of "Protagonist Powers ACTIVATE".

And it's not like it's either technology or bare tooth and claw. It's more commonly a smaller number of more advanced and powerful ships versus a larger number of lower tech ships. The good almost always have the more advanced technology, but it's not like there hasn't been the reverse.

By intelligence, I'm mostly referring to avoiding Hollywood Tactics.