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I would generally agree, and I like your names for the fist two categories (or, well, the tropes you picked to describe those categories). I\'m not sure I like \
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I would generally agree, and I like your names for the fist two categories (or, well, the tropes you picked to describe those categories). I\\\'m not sure I like \\\"MinovskyParticle\\\" for the name of the third -- though I may be biased, since I don\\\'t know the reference. ;) My big objection is that it\\\'s not as self-explanatory (to my mind) as \\\"RuleOfCool\\\" or \\\"MagicAIsMagicA\\\".
I also had a little problem with the FTL/no FTL distinction: Stephen Baxter writes some of the hardest sci-fi in existence, if not the hardest sci-fi in existence, and his stories include FTL drives of various types. Ditto for Greg Bear, actually: Aeon/Eternity are \\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\' hard sci-fi, which includes... well, space warping to make FTL look like it represents a scientific knowledge no more advanced then a sailing ship.
But, yes, I agree with you completely, and think your scale is a large improvement.
Edit: I think that LikeRealityUnlessNoted is more the concept of number 3, where breaks from reality are allowed, but aggressively minimized. Category 4 is for things that do not violate the laws of physics at all.
Whether or not we know how to do Category 4 stuff now, we have every reason to believe that it\\\'s perfectly physically possible that it could be done. Artificial Intelligence (rigorous, human-equivalent Artificial Intelligence) might be a good category 4 entry: we don\\\'t know how to do it yet, but we have every reason to believe that, eventually, we\\\'ll figure it out.
Freefall has a lot of category 4 elements, and is one of the best examples I can think of right off the top of my head: it\\\'s fairly futuristic, and features a lot of impressive future-tech -- but, for the most part, common SF elements that would violate the laws of physics as we understand them have been avoided. There\\\'s no faster-than-light travel, there\\\'s no artificial gravity, there\\\'re no teleporters, and etc.
(Well, there is faster-than-light travel in Freefall, but it\\\'s apparently ridiculously expensive, very dangerous, and practically unused. It\\\'s not actually ever used in the main story, other than to explicitly say that it\\\'s ridiculously dangerous and expensive and no-one does it. I think. But you get the idea!)
I also had a little problem with the FTL/no FTL distinction: Stephen Baxter writes some of the hardest sci-fi in existence, if not the hardest sci-fi in existence, and his stories include FTL drives of various types. Ditto for Greg Bear, actually: Aeon/Eternity are \\\'\\\'extremely\\\'\\\' hard sci-fi, which includes... well, space warping to make FTL look like it represents a scientific knowledge no more advanced then a sailing ship.
But, yes, I agree with you completely, and think your scale is a large improvement.
Edit: I think that LikeRealityUnlessNoted is more the concept of number 3, where breaks from reality are allowed, but aggressively minimized. Category 4 is for things that do not violate the laws of physics at all.
Whether or not we know how to do Category 4 stuff now, we have every reason to believe that it\\\'s perfectly physically possible that it could be done. Artificial Intelligence (rigorous, human-equivalent Artificial Intelligence) might be a good category 4 entry: we don\\\'t know how to do it yet, but we have every reason to believe that, eventually, we\\\'ll figure it out.
Freefall has a lot of category 4 elements, and is one of the best examples I can think of right off the top of my head: it\\\'s fairly futuristic, and features a lot of impressive future-tech -- but, for the most part, common SF elements that would violate the laws of physics as we understand them have been avoided. There\\\'s no faster-than-light travel, there\\\'s no artificial gravity, there\\\'re no teleporters, and etc.
(Well, there is faster-than-light travel in Freefall, but it\\\'s apparently ridiculously expensive, very dangerous, and practically unused. It\\\'s not actually ever used in the main story, other than to explicitly say that it\\\'s ridiculously dangerous and expensive and no-one does it. I think. But you get the idea!)
