Clarke's Third Law bears mentioning in some capacity. There's "magic" as in A Wizard Did It and then there's "Magic A" Is "Magic A" and/or Rule Magic. Neither has a very solid realistic basis but the later is internaly consistant, and may invoke the Girl Genius corollary ("Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from SCIENCE!").
Yes, I just think of Clarke's Third Law as being pretty hard-science / high on the scale, actually. It implies that there is no such thing as magic. Low-on-the-scale names should convey softness, right?
Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.I like the CTL references, but Might As Well Be Magic seems more intuitive for those not familiar with it.
I also agree with making the "minor FTL" category "minor fudge" or something similiar. After all, one of the problems with the current scale is too much emphasis on particular breaks from reality like FTL instead of on the general nature of the work.
Phlebotinum On Every Street? Phlebotinum Bulk Purchase?
edited 19th Dec '10 12:09:51 PM by Deboss
Fight smart, not fair.I'm not here to simplify — I'm here because these new categories are more like my own personal instinct for science fiction hardness than the old ones. Not to mention, having too few categories is worse than having too many — we need binning if we're going to be able to sort very accurately within classes, and splitting the page into subpages for each category (which I'm beginning to really like as an idea, but probably with "Mohs" as the namespace) will allow potholing to a precise description of the hardness of a work.
That said, we really need to work on these names. I was considering "Science In Genre Only" for the softest box, but I'm not sure what to do for the two boxes between that and One Big Lie.
All right, one more time:
1. Science In Genre Only: The work is unambiguously set in the literary genre of Science Fiction, but scientific it is not. Applied Phlebotinum is the rule of the day, Green Rocks gain New Powers as the Plot Demands, and both Bellisario's Maxim and the MST3K Mantra apply.
Examples include:
- Futurama
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
- The DC and Marvel universes.
- The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
2. World Of Phlebotinum: The universe is full of Applied Phlebotinum with more to be found behind every star, but the Phlebotinum is dealt with in a fairly consistent fashion despite its lack of correspondence with reality and, in-world, is considered to lie within the realm of scientific inquiry.
Examples include:
- E. E. "Doc" Smith's Skylark of Space and Lensman series.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion. We think.
- Star Trek: The Original Series.
3. Physics Plus: Stories in this class once again have multiple forms of Applied Phlebotinum, but in contrast to the prior class, the author aims to justify these creations with real and invented natural laws — and these creations and others from the same laws will turn up again and again in new contexts.
Examples include:
- Schlock Mercenary.
- David Brin's Uplift series.
4. One Big Lie: The author invents one (or, at most, a very few) counterfactual physical laws and writes a story that explores the implications of these principles.
Examples include:
- David Weber's Honor Harrington series.
- Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth series.
- Robert A Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold.
4.5 One Small Fib: These stories include only a single counterfactual device (often FTL Travel), but this mechanism is not a major driver of the plot.
Examples include:
- Many Hal Clement novels, e.g. Mission Of Gravity, Close to Critical.
- Freefall.
- The Alien series.
5. Speculative Science: Stories in which there is no "big lie" — the science of the tale is (or was) genuine speculative science or engineering, and the goal of the author to make as few errors with respect to known fact as possible.
Examples include:
- Early works in Larry Niven's Known Space series.
- Robert L. Forward's Dragon's Egg and the first two books in his Rocheworld series.
- Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.
- Robert A Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.
5.5 Futurology: Stories which function almost like a prediction of the future, extrapolating from current technology rather than inventing major new technologies or discoveries. Expect Zeerust in older entries.
Examples include:
- Gattaca.
- Max Headroom.
- Moon.
- The Machine Stops
by E. M. Forster.
edited 26th Dec '10 9:00:45 AM by RobinZimm
No, I think Futurology belongs as a subclass of Speculative Science, now — works do not become harder SF just because they describe worlds more similar to present life. Question before I make a crowner for this, though: Max Headroom. Futurology, or One Small Fib? Because I watched the first episode recently, and the mechanism by which the Blipverts killed people was pretty much complete garbage.
All right — the consensus isn't perfect, but I think we can start a crowner with what we've got. Does anyone want to suggest options beyond the following for the question "How Should Mohs Scale Of Science Fiction Hardness Be Revised?"
- It should be left as is, or only altered slightly.
- It should be rebuilt as described in this thread, or only altered slightly from the description in this thread.
- It should be rebuilt with categories as described in this thread, but with different names for many of the categories.
- It should be rebuilt with some categories as described in this thread, but others altered, merged, or split.
- It should be rebuilt in an entirely new fashion.
All the "in this thread" bits will be links to this post
or whatever post replaces it before the crowner.
edited 2nd Jan '11 1:53:09 PM by RobinZimm
WAY too many options there. And we don't often do crowners for description rewrites. If one must be run then it should either be a single prop (Replace the current article with this (insert link) proposed draft), or at most, 3 options:
- Replace with the proposed draft (insert link)
- Replace the description but not with the proposed draft (say why in the thread please)
- Leave as is.
I'm not sure if this is what you were suggesting, Kalaong, but I was planning on making a Mohs namespace and having the main page (ultimately, after the examples are sorted) be just definitions and links. If we keep the current names, that would be Mohs.Science In Genre Only, Mohs.World Of Phlebotinum, Mohs.Physics Plus, Mohs.One Big Lie, and Mohs.Speculative Science.
I think that a complete rework needs to be done, also because I think some of them need to be re-allocated.
I think Starship Troopers deserves a mention in that while it does discuss technology, it is not about it and is internally consistent all the way through. On the other hand a show like Farscape or Stargate SG 1 either starts at one level and shifts to another (later seasons of SG 1, never mind Farscape needing an episode by episode review, some damned hard, others very light. Also consider the fact everything is from a human point of view for us to make sense of it).
I think there has to be a differentiation between something that does because it can, and something that does, and is consistent in each catagory. You might have something like Dr Who, which is pretty soft, but has as far as I have seen, consistent, over the Green Rocks and New Powers type of show, or unfortunately what I saw of the earlier seasons of Smallville.
Perhaps an addition of a consistancy scale as well as reworking this scale itself could be of benefit.
Crown Description:
Several tropers question whether the present categories correctly describe what science fiction fans mean when they discuss how "hard" or "soft" a given work of science fiction is.

Agree. To me, "Indistinguishable from Magic" says "totally made up", and "Artistic License" says "somewhat but not completely made up". Perhaps the former should keep the word "magic" but lose the allusion to Clarke's third law.
Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.