Discussion MediaNotes / MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness

Moving Lensman to 3.

A gun is a fairly primitive piece of technology at its core, but try explaining a high altitude strategic bomber to a Roman without being accused of blasphemy.

I'm kind of new here, but you seem to have missunderstood the fundamental concept of the scale. It's a measurment of scientific accuracy. And in Bsg, what little exotic technology does appear is as accurate as one could desire, handled with full consistency, and newtonian physics are obeyed to the letter. A space opera pehaps, but a scientifically accuarate one. It most certainly deserves it's third-level rating.

BSG technology is not at all accurate by any reasonable standard. Newtonian physics is a tiny, tiny, part of science and observing it may be unusual and commendable for a sci fi show but doesn't make it in any way scientifically accurate. The combination of technologies in the constellation depicted is not credible. It is like putting an age of sail royal navy interior into a Gerald Ford class carrier, and civilian infrastructure is likewise antique compared to the top levels of technologies. That's not how scientific progress works - progress in one area inevitably leads to leapfrog progress in others. And yet in some areas of technology, BSG is lagging behind even the early 21st century. And most notably, as is quite common in sci fi, biological sciences get sorely neglected (above and beyond the existence of androids undistinguishable from humans, which magically was possible without any parallel advancements in medicine).

The technology of BSG is a convoluted mess that lacks any and all internal logic, and the notion that Galactica is a museum piece in no way excuses that. It's still an FTL capable carrier, which likely should be centuries ahead of our technology.

For Wells' works it depends on which work.

Borderlands is definitely World of Phlebotinum.

Team Fortress 2... Isn't in the Science Fiction genre.

And for Godzilla it depends on which version (but it's probably Physics Plus).

Possibly because Rubber-Forehead Aliens and No Biochemical Barriers aren't technically unscientific. The chances of one, let alone several, sentient alien species of the 'Rubber Forehead' variety existing in all the circumstances required for our hypothetical space exploring descendants to encounter them are very slim. But it's not, scientifically speaking, impossible. And therefore a work using them isn't really 'softer' than work using only Starfish Aliens or Absent Aliens. The fact is that until and unless we actually (and recognize, which may prove just as difficult) encounter real life extraterrestrial lifeforms (or their remains), everything we 'know' about aliens is mostly just guesswork and conjecture based on what we know about life on earth.

Other biological science things do get ignored frequently though. Such as the fact that human waste is not enough, even after being processed by all the necessary micro-organism, to provide sufficient nutrients for plants we can eat on its own, so "Hydroponics, of course!" is not actually an answer to the question "How do these astronauts spending several years between star systems stay fed?", yet works that use this excuse aren't considered 'softer' for it.

See also the aforementioned Human Popsicle issue.

Probably a 2.

I think the power supply, assuming I remember the first two movies well enough is enough for me to look at a bit further out than that. On the other hand, you do have a point, it's not massively advanced, and in some ways I could see them being made in another five years.

Fairly hard, yes, but for the fact walking mecha still probably would be a less-than-ideal design for vehicles no matter how realistic you try to make things. I don't really see that changing just because it's The Future.

I still think it belongs under science in genre only. The "science" is not only absurd, it also falls consistently under It Runs on Nonsensoleum.

I think this is just for fun really. Not many people live by the scale, except for the few who only read the harder stuff.

My only problem is that it's listed as a trope on a few pages. It would be better as trivia (the same goes for the rock and metal hardness scale), especially since "hardness" is so ill defined. A lot of stuff on the higher ends of this scale (especially the film, TV, and video game entries) are not what I, or a lot of people, would call "hard" SF, no matter how accurate the science is, because they don't require much scientific knowledge to appreciate, unlike the actual hard SF literature, and even if the science is important to the plot, they're generally not about the technology itself. I don't think hard SF can be effectively done in mediums other than literature, since info dumps and related tropes are a big part of it.

You may be taking the scale too seriously! :)

But in general, going outside the standard model, even to a plausible and current model, to explain FTL, would definitely soften the work slightly. Even though we don't know that the standard model is correct, it's still the standard model, and ignoring it takes the edge off your hardness. Not as much as if you went with a discredited or nonsense theory of course, but still...

Consider quantum mechanics. I may be a little out-of-date here, but last I heard, the Copenhagen Interpretation and the alternate worlds hypothesis were both still valid theories. But the CI requires a lot less handwaving, and thus is (or was until very recently) the standard theory. Of course, alternate worlds is a great theory for writers, and perfectly valid physics, but because it's less accepted (for good reasons), it reduces the hardness of the work, slightly.

I have a pulled out of the air theory. There is a fifth force in the multiverse such that the universe is biased to provide sentients with what they expect and/or desire. The coefficient of this force varies from universe to universe, and is an indicator of how much a universe's physics is enslaved to the desires and expectations of its inhabitants. A very hard science fiction universe has a bias coefficient of zero, a universe composed entirely of reality warpers (very soft)has a bias coefficient of 1.

I leave it to the tropers to argue whether the bias coefficient of real life has a nonzero value.

E=MC^2

Which has what to do with anything, my fellow feathered friend? You're talking to an artist here, not a scientist.

DC universe as a whole is very, very soft - I think it's listed already, but if it isn't, feel free to add it.

Korbi - One of the more well known ramifications of E=MC^2, though I'm not going to try and explain in any detail since I don't grok the why or have any idea the mathematical proof, is that the faster you travel the slower you age from your perspective. This has been proven with sending atomic clocks at high speeds (But not high enough to really make this effect much noticeable) that were out by a few microseconds compared to identical atomic clocks which stayed on Earth. IIRC on the experiment that proves that effect.

In short, though - If you're traveling fast enough (as in a decent percentage of light speed), you age really slowly.

Gizensha: I don't believe you're wrong, but I would emphasize that relativity means that "the faster you travel" is not really a well-defined phrase in the way your phrasing suggests — "relativity" literally means "you can recalculate everything as if you were standing perfectly still, and there will be no difference in your ultimate results." I would guess the folks editing The Other Wiki are a bit more informed; the case in question is rather well-known.

TO be honest, the DC and Marvel universes shouldn't even be on these lists. Sure there are Sci-Fi elements, but it's very clearly fantasy. I know that the argument could be made for things like Star Wars, but in these universes things like magic, god, demons, etc., clearly exist. Something like Watchmen on the other hand could be classified as Sci-Fi.

It does seem a bit silly that the page's sole argument for why harder sci-fi is appealing ... is that the author took greater effort. That, and a few dollars, will get the reader a cup of coffee. It'd be best if some hard sci0fi fan could add a little something extra to explain its appeal.

I think we should also add a specific disclaimer that a sci-fi work's "hardness" has no correlation to its literary value: masterpieces and hackwork can be found up and down the scale. Both "softness" and "hardness" have qualities that a talented writer can exploit, and that an untalented writer can hide behind.

Made a few small edits so it looks more neutral. Not all science fiction fans are worried about the science aspect of the story. What is good or bad depends on the reader, and there is absolutely no rule that it has to be dominated with science fact. I, and I know for a fact, others, feel that science should be used as a means to an end, not the other way round, and with few exceptions most of the respected "literary" SF authors after the "Golden Age" are not what most people would generally describe as hard science fiction - Banks, Le Guin, Phil Dick, Vance, Simmons, Wolfe, etc. Of course there are great hard SF writers as well, like Baxter, but for a lot of fans it seems getting the science right, or at least focusing a lot of time explaining the fictional science is more important than telling the story. Of course, there's a difference between deliberately altering the laws of physics and making genuine mistakes, but in the end it still shouldn't matter that much. A story that relies entirely on the strength of it's science probably isn't a very good story to begin with.

Another thing is that, despite the seeming prevalence of "Hard SF only" types (as seen on sites like Amazon), a lot of the major respected SF critics and writers tend to be more neutral about it or even opposed to the harder stuff (see this and this for examples).

Anything that was 'hard' according to the general scientific understanding of the time is still hard.

Note 4 is mostly there to stop the 'hard science' fandom and people who like works that happen to have FTL from getting into an edit war every time a study 'reveals' a particle travelling faster than light.

Because as I pointed out above, the 'hardness' scale is less about realism and more about whether or not a work conforms to the 'hard science' fandom's understanding of Physics.

Hard edge of World of Phlebotinum. Almost Physics Plus, but perfectly willing to break the rules if the plot demanded. It also tended to vary depending on the writer. Many individual episodes would qualify as Physics Plus, but the show overall? No.

I have mixed feelings about this. I realise that Avatar was not meant to be hard science fiction, but I think they managed to make it fairly hard nonetheless, and this successfully added to the film's overall effect. A lot of good sci-fi finds a balance like this, being "hard" when it adds impact, and "soft" where it's necessary to make the story better. Avatar has some very soft elements, but it also has some impressively hard bits (at least compared to many other works) that I think should be recognized.

The slower-than-light starship alone is very note-worthy, I think, and is the reason I think it can stay near the bottom of "FTL Travel". The AMP suits are actually a personal favourite of mine — you're right that they don't make perfect sense, but they're much more justified than what one might expect, considering that they're basically little mechs. I liked how the utility of their humanoid shape was actually shown on screen, for example, and they remind me a little of Real Life prototype powered suits.

So I'd caution against being too hard (...) on Avatar. I absolutely agree it doesn't belong any lower than the FTL section on account of the presence of the Subspace Ansible (amongst other things), but I don't think it's all mushy-soft, either. I absolutely agree that the Na'vi are ridiculous, but I'd also point out that there's a lot of otherwise-fairly-hard sci-fi that doesn't handle aliens very well, especially when it's trying to make some point or another about humanity. So while the Na'vi do make Avatar soft, I'd say they're no justification for treating it as being completely gooey.

Personally, the biggest problem I have is those beautiful, beautiful, but completely ridiculous floating mountains. I... don't know what to do about that.

Incidentally, I'd say the difficulty of picking a section for this movie really just illustrates an overall problem we have with categories. Basing how hard or soft a work is exclusively on whether it has faster than light travel or not is a bit silly. When it comes to its actual portrayal of space travel itself, Avatar is a lot harder than the majority of sci-fi works out there... But then, floating mountains.

What to do?

Honestly, I don't know. I don't much mind long paragraphs myself, but I suppose some less essential parts of it could be cut to make it look neater. I think the current position on the list is fine, but if you want to move it up a bit I can't think of a solid objection. I'd keep it in the same category, though, since I honestly think it's at least as hard as and probably harder than all the works in the Minovsky Particle section (which, again... makes little sense as a category if you look at its description. But if we judge how "hard" it is based on the works listed in the section so far, I'd say Avatar belongs a little to the south of it).

If you're going to base how hard scifi is on the laws of science it doesn't break, this scale needs substantial rearrangement. Even Star Wars has laws of physics it didn't break (I can't actually think of any, but...). And while aliens frequently take on quite specific human traits to illustrate a point, the Na'vi are blatant enough to embarrass Gene Roddenberry, and even he at least came up with the excuse of Precursors. The way I understand it, the breaches in the Minovsky Particle entries are (or should be) given just enough plausible technobabble that someone who's taken some AP science courses could believe in the phenomenon if told by a scientist rather than a screenwriter, or essentially, as hard as all the stuff about Unobtanium, which would include the flying mountains. Between the Unobtanium and the lack of the tiniest hint of who put the cast of Dances With Wolves on Pandora with a human-like language and an appendage that "just happens" to look like a hair braid, I'd say this certainly belongs at the hardish end of Imported Alien Phlebotinum, maybe generously into Minovsky Particle.

Well, I'd say if a work goes out of its way to not break a law of science that very commonly is broken in science fiction — e.g. faster-than-light starships — then that merits some consideration.

Honestly, I prefer to go by the overall feel of a work, rather than by counting exactly how many scientific laws it does and does not break, and to what extent. A work that goes out of its way to justify its superscience and make it seem plausible is, all things being equal, harder than one that does not. Avatar goes further out of its way to justify things like interstellar travel, interstellar trade, cool robot suits, and other assorted Rule of Cool stuff, than is the norm for such a film. As a result, it doesn't feel as soft as many other works involving these elements. Tossing it further up the list just because it includes several elements that don't make sense would seem to ignore this, and I think it'd be wrong to do so.

Heck, if I really wanted to play devil's advocate I'd claim Avatar should go into the No FTL section. After all, the Subspace Ansible is only implied in the film, as I recall, and never mentioned explicitly, so unless you go digging around in the manual, it's pretty easy to ignore... Combine that with a comparatively realistic non-FTL starship... And, as the No FTL description says, "even if some aspects are slightly softer than in a story with FTL, the physicists will forgive it in exchange for appeasing their Einstein-worship." (Incidentally, this contrasts with your view that we shouldn't judge how hard a work is based on which laws of science it doesn't break.) Hey, one could argue Avatar fits here perfectly!

Mind you, I don't really want to see it any further down than the FTL section. But I think bumping it all the way up to Minovsky Particle range, never mind Imported Phlebotinum, wouldn't be much better.

For the record, I'm not a big fan of the movie as such; but I am impressed by the things it got right, and I think the ridiculous things — the Na'vi and the floaty mountains — shouldn't be considered in isolation from this.

So in conclusion, if you want to move it to, say, the top of the FTL section, I'd have no real objections, but I don't think it should be moved any higher up than that. And if you're going to cut the paragraph down a bit, I think you should still include at least a brief mention of the things Avatar goes out of its way to try and plausibly justify.

"the mechs flat-out ignore the square-cube law, and their intuitiveness can't compare to the efficiency of a design that requires, what, a few days' training?"

they are Mini-Mecha, they are not at a scale for the square-cube law to be a issue. the mechas are physical plausible, whether the design is efficiency is neither here or there.

"the mechs flat-out ignore the square-cube law, and their intuitiveness can't compare to the efficiency of a design that requires, what, a few days' training?"

they are Mini-Mecha, they are not at a scale for the square-cube law to be a issue. the mechas are physical plausible, whether the design is efficiency is neither here or there.

Not to mention the lower gravity.

Yes. That's the entire idea behind wormholes, a connection in two distant points in spacetime. Unfortunately, the only currently known way of stabilizing a wormhole involves a highly theoretical and incredibly vague substance known as "exotic matter."

Wait, are you thinking of a "highway" in space?

As this is for an idea of mine, I was testing the waters, as it is an idea of space as separate to space. I called it the space between spaces when I was discussing this with another person(studying Maths and Phsyics, wanting to be an astrophysist), that within the realms of this physical space we occupy, faster than light travel is not effective possibly for a good long time due to a great many things, but if there was a way to access a denser version of space, travel in that would correlate to relative effective faster than light travel, in that you need to travel less, but still travelling at a sublight speed you arrive there faster because there is less distance to cover.

I also suggested that this space, because it was denser, would transmit the forces in a different way. While it does fall into the 'makes space an ocean' trope, this is a lightly explained hand wave to allow ships to travel vast distances without relativity bcoming a pain. On the other hand, at least in the current version, it creates currents, so a highway of sorts, in this other space.

In this case, as bad as the following example is and please bear with me, that the force of gravity and sound in water are somewhat equivalent in behaviour in this other space. Now you have things live convergent zones, where sounds travels well beyond what it would in air. A roughly similar effect would be seen in this other space, in that you have a gravity well such as a star, that would act a source of the effect. Not getting into specifics which would basically turn this into science fantasy without knights or magic swords, you have currents generated from the interacting of these forces. The more interaction, the greater the current, ideally. Of course 99.99% of this is based on extrapolation on the limited I know of Relativity, Quantum and String Theory.

It lead to a term I used in the game, Light Year Equivalent, because not all travel would be able to accurately measured, and on top of that I've also built in some Uncertainty into it, because I see the universe as advanced, but well and truly out of the Ultratech yet. Yes it has energy weapons, but for a whole the most common weapons for space based naval warfare are missiles and kinetic weapons.

That should explain the question much better.

Well, there are two current speculations (that I know of) to travel FTL while not traveling FTL by making the distance you have to go shorter. None of those have anything to do with a different matter you fly through, in fact, I think that "sort of water! in space! in wormholes! with currents!" is way more silly than FTL travel. The two theories I know of are as such: 1. The wormhole, as mentioned above. If you imagine our spacetime as a sheet of paper, you being on one edge and your target on the other, wormholes would be like folding the target on top of you, so instead of having to travel all the way down the paper, you would just "jump" over to the other side. 2. The Alcubierre drive - Some sort of relativity bubble. It was a long time ago that I read about it, but it went something like that: imagine our spacetime as a soft fabric, you being on one edge and your target on the other again. Instead of folding the fabric, you would push it together in front of you and stretch it behind you, therefore making the way you have yet to go smaller than the one you have allready traveled even when you have barely started traveling. Look up the drive on wikipedia, because my memory of it isn't that good

Reading the article, what sticks out in my mind is the fact it is still totally hypothetical, and that there is no current way suggested to create, enter or leave such a bubble. Not to mention, as taken from the Wikipedia article.

A paper by José Natário published in 2002 showed that it would be impossible for the ship to send signals to the front of the bubble, meaning that crew members could not control, steer or stop the ship. http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0264-9381/19/6/308/

There is no real point in having a ship that can travel vast distances if you don't have any control of it. On top of that the liking of it to the Star Trek warp has made more sceptical of the drive as a possible option. While I have little issue with some of the other factors, it is a case of doing research I need to focus in on my uni work.

Thinking about the drive for a moment, it might as well be the Improbability Drive from Hitchhikers, from some of the logical issues I can see reading some of the articles attached to Wikipedia article.

By chance are you familiar with Event Horizon, as I have seen that explaination of a wormhole there.

I don't see the issue with having travel through a different media, in this case there is a space apart from the one we know. We have air and water, and the same pressure force travels very differently through both, so applying that on a larger scale I can't see any issues. Look at old trading routes, they worked on ocean currents, ocean highways if you will, so again why can't they exist in other media?

Look, being honest Leogarg, it looks to me like you want the cake and to eat it as well. You can't have both in this case, as if you apply any form of relativity to it, you need wormholes, other dimensions, and plenty of handwavium or similar, because FTL in the current four dimensional space we occupy means FTL is very difficult to outright impossible. Yet on the other hand you suggest a drive that has serious control issues that would allow FTL travel, with some serious questions raised on my understanding of relativity. In creation of the above idea I tried to be consistent and bring it back to real world, proven theories in physics, which I hope we can both agree is alot more effort than alot of people put in.

Sorry, but that medium idea is just silly. If you want to leave your audience any suspension of disbelief at all, you'll better scratch that. Space is NOT an ocean. You cannot beat the speed of light, and any material, any current, any other matter/energy can't too. In fact, any medium but the vacuum of space would most likely just slow you down. Compare the speeds of your boat in a current and the one of a car. Hint: The boat is slower.

And even if the whole content of that alternate universe would be moving in your direction (maybe you meant that with "current"), it wouldn't help you. I guess you fell for the old "a train is traveling at the speed of light. I take a walk through the wagons, therefore being faster than light"-fallacy.

Even IF it would work, which it wouldn't, you would only generate yourself more problems. how would you ever get back against the current?

And that's not even counting the fact that "alternate universes" might not even exist, not occupy the same "space", not have a doorway to our universe, not be suitable for life, not have any current etc etc etc.

To say it harshly, your idea is not more credible than one invloving a prayer engine that gets god to teleport you to your destination.

You open way more holes than you close with that idea.

Heard of tacking against the wind? I can't see how that forces such as gravity would not have an effect in a denser medium. This is not just normal space, it's a different type of space. I am LIKING its behaviour to an ocean because it is the most effective way to convey the idea to a wide audience. If you don't know the details about how sound works in water, it's hard to visualise exactly what this is like when thinking about it on an astrological scale.

In some forms this is another version of the hyperspace in Babylon 5, because it is a different space, with different rules. It is so happens, that again, I am using an analagy to explain it, and using sound in water versus sound in air, or ocean currents because that is something that is easier to understand than me drawing up a whole frecking manifesto on a fictional world that explains exactly how it works.

At no point does this run into the massive and self-destructive issues that your idea has. It is controllable to a degree, it is something that keeps to the rules of both Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, though I will be honest and did use a touch of String Theory. At no points do the vessels break the speed of light, they are working in a medium that allows objects within to travel faster than they could in normal space. It just so happens that in this denser version of space that other forces of the universe, ie gravity, are transmitted differently to what they are in normal space. If we can have flows of water or ocean currents, why can't there, on a much larger scale be gravity currents?

Tell me, how many other concepts of hyperspace/FTL even mention the fact the forces would be transmitted differently? The only one I could think of at the moment is Star Wars, for the Kessel Run, because the last thing they wanted to do was run into a black hole or sun. Prove me wrong, and yes, that is a challenge.

If you want to put my idea in those words, then yours is a prayer engine, because there is nothing you can do to control it. That is such a serious issue to the idea I can not take it seriously. You don't say that you can have the cake and eat it, have both at the same time in some form of the quantum entanglement, and then say 'but... you can't control it, or get out of it once you're in it, and.... yeah, can't steer it either, actually it might rip your ship apart if you do anything other than let it keep on going.'

I will say this very simply, ships using this appear to travel faster than light, because they have less distance to travel. In this case, the boat is a hell of a lot faster, because it can use roads that would rip apart cars. Some of the time they will need to tack against the wind, other times they will have a much easier route. Or better yet, think of it as the wormhole being it's own dimension, and that through the drive technology you can access it.

To familiarise yourself with the principle, see attached web link. http://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae438.cfm

...that is a better scale, but "Hard Science Fiction" is too general to be the name for 4 — Like Reality, Unless Noted, perhaps?

Either that, or just 20 Minutes into the Future again, or some such. :P I'm not insisting on specifics here, just throwin' an idea out there.

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 "Minovsky Particle" 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 "Rule of Cool" or "Magic A Is Magic A".

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 Like Reality, Unless Noted 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 wonder if we could make a second Sliding Scale page - Rockwell Scale Of Science Fiction Hardness, perhaps.

It'd be my preference that we fix this page, especially since I doubt a separate, redundant index with a different scale would survive long. But I'd settle for that solution, if you don't think we can get away with a significant rewrite of this page.

I don't know how to put it to a vote - that would be the usual way.

Incidentally, I just remembered a bit in "The Closely Reasoned Technological Story": The Critical History of Hard Science Fiction:

3 and 4 are reversed relative to the scale girlyboy proposed, but otherwise the similarities are striking.

I agree that a second page prolly wouldn't survive for long. It would be seen as redundant, and deleted... However, a YKTTW could be created, perhaps. I've seen the YKTTW used a couple of times to "work on" tropes, rather than just propose new ones, so perhaps this would be an appropriate use? It would have the advantage of getting lots of people's opinions through comments (... if people are interested enough to comment, that is :P), helping to gauge just how (un)popular such a change would be and perhaps getting more input than it would here in Discussion, and the entire list could be re-sorted gradually, with everyone getting input, and with an already-sorted article complete and ready should the change ever actually be made.

I suppose if we wanted to get serious about this change (which I have to admit I didn't anticipate... :P) this could be coupled with (or, perhaps better, preceded by) a submission to the Trope Repair Shop, perhaps with a Crowner, to further see how people react and to get more attention. >_>

But such a fundamental change to such a huge, popular, and... also fundamental article might not be particularly popular. I guess it did eventually win Robin Zimm over to some extent... :P

Edit: Whoops, missed your last comment, Robin Zimm. I have not read that article... sound quite interesting indeed. It might bear mention in the main article as an interesting examination of sci-fi hardness, regardless of any other changes made...

• 1 to this; I came to propose something on these lines. So if you can see a way to make it happen, please do.

I agree with the above. A lot of the current distinctions are either fuzzy or just bizarre; as mentioned, the emphasis seems to be on what Phlebotinum is/isn't used rather than how much research the author actually did. The example above of Baxter's Xeelee Sequence is far harder then some of what's lower on the scale, just because he uses FTL (with time travel as mandatory accompaniment. That's almost unheard of, even in hard SF).

I frankly doubt enough tropers will actually care enough to rework the article. But I agree in principle that it needs the reworking.

Posted a Trope Repair Shop article.

Thank you, RobinZimm. :) I am sorry for being all lazy and useless. It looks like there might be some discussion, at least, which is promising.

I agree; it reads like an unnecessary repetition of the time travel example below.

I am sending it to the Quotes page and bringing back the pair — Micah, feel free to comment here if you have strong feelings about it.

Just wondering, where would the orignal Matrix go?

Just wondering, where would the orignal Matrix go?

Considering the blatant disregard for the laws of thermodynamics in the first movie, I'd say it's softer than most cyberpunk. Maybe a 4 or a 3.

Even declaring Discontinuity on the sequels, I would hesitate to go higher than Imported Alien Phlebotinum (is it actually possible to have a good enough reaction time to dodge a bullet at close range?), but you could argue for No FTL if you believe that the Oracle is extrapolating from current data.

Edit: Oh, yeah, and that Morpheus is an ignoramus. Thanks, zarpaulus.

Everything in the matrix itself can be handwaved. the Real World is were problems begins. the bio batteries were never said to be a closed system so we could generously label under moronic but inefficient. The mystic elements don't help things.

Everything in the matrix itself can be handwaved. the Real World is were problems begins. the bio batteries were never said to be a closed system so we could generously label under moronic but inefficient. The mystic elements don't help things.

Also: Giant anti-gravity flying squid robots? Not *too* bad I suppose, considering other stuff on the list but anyway, the Matrix definitely has a soft vibe. And IIRC the film very clearly meant that the robots were using humans as their main power source, to replace the solar power that was blocked out by the humans to try and shut them down, without any additional tricks to justify it. Sure, you could make excuses, but there's no real reason to believe Morpheus is an Unreliable Narrator or mis-informed or anything.

Great! We are now agreed on the derail. Now for the question I actually asked: is Time Travel (which would include precognition, of course) a good subdivision to add?

I think the range on time-travel is very, *very* wide, especially if you include pre-cognition. I mean, that would include everything from oracles who read tea leaves to some really well-justified hard sci-fi time travel story that uses everything known about real-life physics to come up with a plausible time machine...

Time travel is already, at the very least, a special case of faster-than-light communication/travel — anything which doesn't attempt to justify time travel will drift up into the higher categories (e.g. Minovsky Particle). I think it's worth branching out because it creates causal loops and all that implies.

Hmm. I think to make it work you'd have to specify precisely what time travel implies. For example, Human Popsicle stories are often written similarly to time travel stories, but there's nothing inherently impossible about them when it comes to known physics. And perfectly realistic space travel at high (sub-light) speeds can lead to time dilation, which is basically (one-way) time travel, yet has been proven to exist in Real Life. So this'd have to be limited to travel into the past, or travel into the future using physics-bending Applied Phlebotinum.

Another problem (which I think also kind of applies to the already-existing "faster than light" and "no faster than light" categories) is that whether a story contains time travel or not doesn't necessarily serve as a solid indicator of how hard or soft it is overall... I can imagine a story that includes time travel but is a lot "harder" than stories that have FTL, but no time travel, for example. (In fact, a story that has FTL and *actually takes the time to explore the fact that FTL would lead to time travel and causality violations* would, arguably, be a lot harder than a story that just has FTL, never mentions time travel, and never brings up the fact that FTL essentially is time travel. What would be harder — a story about a starship with an FTL drive and its crew having to deal with the time-bending consequences of using it, or a story about a starship with an FTL drive in which time travel is never brought up at all, even though according to known physics, it's an inevitable consequence of FTL?)

Sooo... basically I guess what I'm trying to say is *maybe* it would work, but you'd have to be careful about how you define the category, and there'd probably be some stories that involve time travel, but deserve to be harder than this new suggested category, if you're going to place it above FTL. And I dunno how to deal with those.

sorry Robin Zimm I ment to hit start new topic not reply, my bad.

sorry Robin Zimm I ment to hit start new topic not reply, my bad.

Ever since my second or third year in Undergrad (when I had a course on relativity, as part of a physics minor), I've been more than a little ticked off about series that have FTL drive, but still maintain some causal order — i.e. I head off to Alpha Centauri, spend a week there, head back to Earth, and arrive one-week-plus-travel-time-in-my-reference-frame after I left. Faster-than-light travel and time travel are the same damned thing on a very fundamental level. I wouldn't mind taking that fact into account in the rankings, i.e. by ranking stories with FTL drives and time travel as more realistc than stories with FTL drives and no time travel.

As to your suggestion, you may actually have it backward: if your story has FTL drives, it's more realistic, not less, for it to include time travel also (or at least to address the question). So maybe 3 being "hand-waved and/or causality-mainting FTL drives", and 4 being "relativity/simultanaity-questions-addressed FTL drives"?

Edit: @Girlyboy, I read your comment in detail only after I posted mine, and I think you and I are saying pretty much the same thing. "FTL with time-travel" and "FTL without time-travel" may be a usable ranking system, but it goes in the reverse of what the OP was thinking (FTL with time-travel is more realistic). Correct?

Yeah, I agree with that exactly. I dunno how needed this extra category would be. Still, if you're talking about things like Wells' original Time Machine, I could agree to ranking that softer than FTL. Also, take Star Trek: Both FTL and Time Travel exist, but they aren't directly connected. Well, you can travel in time by going around a star or black hole at warp speed (which actually might make some sense — as I recall, some Real Life theories about time travel actually involve travelling around super-massive objects in just the right way), but on the whole, Trek would be an example where FTL and Time Travel coexist, yet it's probably softer than lots of works where FTL exists alone. On the other hand, Trek is already in the MST 3 K section...

... Anyway, basically, as I said before I think this could be done, but would be very complicated, and I think it's not really worth it. And I absolutely agree with boldingd that there'd be exceptions where the inclusion of time travel can actually make a story harder than FTL, not softer.

Causality is a more intuitive law than light speed limitations so it's likely that a TV show will break one but not the another. but yes if you got an Enterprise you have a tardis. It's Elephant in the Living Room it's says so in the FTL page

There is, according to special relativity, a fundamental reason why FTL travel is not possible: because of the non-intuitive way Einstein's theory works, FTL travel would always imply time travel, and potential violations of causality itself. This would hold true regardless of which exact method is being used to get around the light-speed limit. The vast majority of works that involve FTL ignore this problem outright, without even attempting a hand-wave.

Causality is a more intuitive law than light speed limitations so it's likely that a TV show will break one but not the another. but yes if you got an Enterprise you have a tardis. It's Elephant in the Living Room it's says so in the FTL page

There is, according to special relativity, a fundamental reason why FTL travel is not possible: because of the non-intuitive way Einstein's theory works, FTL travel would always imply time travel, and potential violations of causality itself. This would hold true regardless of which exact method is being used to get around the light-speed limit. The vast majority of works that involve FTL ignore this problem outright, without even attempting a hand-wave.

I wrote that paragraph. :P Then someone yelled at me that I was ignoring *general* relativity, and somehow (I still don't understand how) in general relativity it's POSSIBLE that you could have FTL without time-travel. So a long explanation was added on. :( I still don't understand any of it... who ever thought theoretical physics would be so complicated! :(

Strictly speaking, if you violate relativity by having a privileged reference frame (the frame of the cosmic background radiation is an obvious choice), then you can allow FTL in that frame only without allowing causal time travel. That's why I put it in that order - time travel necessarily allows FTL, if only by traveling STL and then jumping back (or vice-versa).

And most people don't understand physics, girlyboy, including whoever 'corrected' you. This particular result should be elementary. ;)

@Robin Zimm While you obviously know, I'll state it for everyone else: that if there is a pretty huge one. Like, "just about as fundamental as Newton's Laws of Motion or the conservation of energy" huge. The discovery of a privileged reference frame like that would throw out almost a century of (very, very well-tested) physics. I can state with some confidence that no such thing exists. In fact, as I understand it, it was the fact that models based on the assumption that such a frame did exist where failing miserably when tested that led to the development of the theory of relativity in the first place!

My history is pretty week, but this is what I remember being taught: in the late 19th century, people still believed that there was a medium called "ether", and that light waves where propagating through this medium. In effect, they thought this medium might define a privileged, universal reference frame. They tried measuring the speed of light when they where at rest, and then when they where moving (with respect to the light source), thinking the person moving around would measure a slightly different velocity (because he was moving relative to the stationary ether): basically, they where thinking that the light-waves would propagate through the ether at a certain velocity with respect to the ether's fixed frame of reference (like mechanical wave propagate through matter), and that a person moving around with respect to the ether would see the difference in his velocity and the ether's velocity represented as a change in the speed that he would measure for the light wave. It didn't work: the same velocity was recorded (i.e. the person moving around saw the light-wave moving at 300,000 km/s in his frame, even as the person at rest measured the light wave moving at 300,000 km/s in his frame too). Head A Splode. It took years and years of head-scratching for someone (no points for guessing who) to figure out that the problem was the assumption that there was a fundamental rest frame.

FYI, if you can't tell, it gets under my skin the way people seem to assume that complex or counter-intuitive theories, like relativity, are ass-pulls, and that scientists do this kind of stuff because they're deluded at best, or malicious jerks at worst. I suspect most people think that Einstein just got really drunk one night, and came up with relativity as a joke, and then got together with a bunch of his egg-head buddies, and they all said, "what the hell, we'll assume this until proven otherwise." I bet most people would be shocked to learn that it went the other way 'round: scientists got weird experimental results that they could not explain, and not for lack of trying! Relativity, weird and counter-intuitive tho it was, was the only model that fit the experimental results.

@girlyboy I'm pretty sure that you where right the first time, and whoever's trying to convince you that General Relativity has some kind of mechanic for causality-respecting faster-than-light travel is... confused. I think you'll find that there are lots and lots of people, with a tenuous-at-best grasp on physics, who will none-the-less start trying to convince you of all kinds of things, based on something they saw on the Discovery channel... or the Sci-Fi channel... or their friend told them... or they read on this one web-forum about cats...

Thanks, boldingd!

Worth adding also is that the idea of relativity goes all the way back to 1632: Galileo Galilei argued in Dialogue Concerning the Two World Systems that experiments carried out belowdecks on a ship at rest and a ship moving at constant speed should produce the same result. He then argued that the same could be said of an Earth moving around the Sun, a claim which led to some disagreement with the Church.

Most people who allow faster-than-light travel but not time travel just plain don't understand why they're linked, though, or at least don't let on that they know they have a problem. For that reason, I'd say those would be softer, not harder. Harder are the ones who come up with a way to go faster than light, then actually think about what effects that has on causality. FTL without at least a passing mention of time travel is the realm of pulp space opera.

Also, yeah, @girlyboy: I think whoever "corrected" you was thinking of the Twin Paradox (If one twin stays on Earth while the other takes a ride in a fast ship, each identically sees herself as still and her sister as moving, so which  ^*

I just wanted to make the point of the Star Trek 2009 movie's use of a Black Hole...there are many respected physicists (such as Gerard 't Hooft) who believe that the mathematics of a black hole DO indicate that you could go into it and pop out somewhere else in space-time. The trouble is that if the black hole was too small the gravity waves would tear you apart. However, if it were large enough, you COULD make it into the hole without being torn apart by tidal forces. The trouble is that the accretion disk would pellet you so hard you'd be blown apart by little microscopic pebbles accelerating to relativistic speeds. On the other hand, Star Trek has magical force fields. So it's not necessarily impossible that they could fly into a black hole and wind up somewhere else.

I think this (and the whole hottip thing) kind of miss the point. It shouldn't be a discussion about whether or not time travel is possible, but an illustration that hard science fiction is perfectly happy to cut out applied phlebotinum and plot twists used in softer sci-fi if they aren't perfectly justifiable by present-day science.

In "really hard sci-fi" things with no known mechanism to initiate and no positive proof are treated as impossible. That's basically what makes it "really hard sci-fi" rather than "hard sci-fi".

Can we cut out the hot-tip? Please? It's not relevant to the matter at hand, and it's really really long. We can create, I dunno, a "Useful Notes / Time Travel" article or something?

Mind you, I usually like hottips fine, but in this bullet-ed list, it really detracts from the impact. This bullet point should be short and sweet, and shouldn't come with a paragraph discussing the speculative physics of time travel in Real Life. We already have an (appropriate) long spiel for the "Hard Sci Fi" bullet point.

Agreed — I mean, I could imagine writing a joke ("You sit in that chair until it's the time you want."), but brevity is a virtue there.

Given the "humans-as-batteries" premise, I'm tempted to say — at the hard end of "MST3K Mantra." Though to be fair, on the whole it feels harder than that, so I guess maybe somewhere in the "Imported Alien Phlebotinum" range?

oh right well here's an overview.

• The Matrix itself. It would be the world's largest MMO but could be done.
• Anti-gravity… that takes us to about NO FTL.
• Hard AI. taking as a giving by most scientist now a days
• Blacken Skies. no idea how this was supposed to of been done, any idea?
• Your Mind Makes It Real. there have been extrema cases of psychosomatic damage IRL… but there are the exceptions not the rules.
• The Bio Batteries. never happen.
• Fossil fuels running out and being replaced with solar power ;-)

The Sequels.

• Mind Uploading. smith taking over Blane.
• neo's powers working the The Real World. no _that_ far out. it's possible that he leaned the ''off codes" to the machines, it's not clear how he was able to turn his brain into a Wi Fi transmitter however.
• Neo getting trapped between worlds (either a result of uploading or the Wifi brain).

oh right well here's an overview.

• The Matrix itself. It would be the world's largest MMO but could be done.
• Anti-gravity… that takes us to about NO FTL.
• Hard AI. taking as a giving by most scientist now a days
• Blacken Skies. no idea how this was supposed to of been done, any idea?
• Your Mind Makes It Real. there have been extrema cases of psychosomatic damage IRL… but there are the exceptions not the rules.
• The Bio Batteries. never happen.
• Fossil fuels running out and being replaced with solar power ;-)

The Sequels.

• Mind Uploading. smith taking over Blane.
• neo's powers working the The Real World. no _that_ far out. it's possible that he leaned the ''off codes" to the machines, it's not clear how he was able to turn his brain into a Wi Fi transmitter however.
• Neo getting trapped between worlds (either a result of uploading or the Wifi brain).

Um... okay, well, Dis Continuity or not I'm pretty sure the humans as batteries thing was still there in the first movie, and was the whole reason why the Matrix even existed, and I think that rather sharply limits how hard it can be considered to be.

I'd put it as a fairly hard Imported Alien Phlebotinum, accounting for the bio-batteries and the Your Mind Makes It Real (edit: and Oracular Precognition). You could make a good case for making it harder save for those elements.

well yes we are forced to take the bio power as canon i guess. i never got the impression that the machines were only feeling the bodies of the dead to the People Farms. so thermodynamics if not logic is persevere IMHO.

well yes we are forced to take the bio power as canon i guess. i never got the impression that the machines were only feeling the bodies of the dead to the People Farms. so thermodynamics if not logic is persevere IMHO.

I agree with Robin Zimm: it belongs in the Imported Alien Phlebotinum range. I think the hard end of that part of the scale is reasonable.

If we pretend that Morpheus meant to hold up a microchip, I might buy Minovsky Particle.

okay well i placed it on the very top of of Minovsky Particle then if there is a consensus. feel free to move it you got a reason.

okay well i placed it on the very top of of Minovsky Particle then if there is a consensus. feel free to move it you got a reason.

... I'm pretty sure that if you look exactly two posts up and there's a comment saying it should be in Imported Alien Phlebotinum, which is also an agreement with an earlier comment saying the same thing, that means there isn't a "consensus" on moving it into Minovsky Particle. It's not a big enough deal for me to move it, I just felt the strong need to point that out.

Your brief description of the film is really good though. :)

thanks :)

thanks :)