What is Hard SF?

Hard SF : About the Genre : What is Hard SF?

Hard SF is generally understood as science fiction which is more interested in scientific accuracy than other genres and subgenres.

What is described by some readers / reviewers as hard SF is, to my way of thinking, more like "near-future fiction". That is, if the science and technology described in the story is almost the same as ours, then we know it really works. Since it works, the science must be accurate. Since the science is accurate, it's "hard SF".

I'm not saying either the writer or reviewer has consciously thought of it that way. Just that if you look at what some call "hard SF", you'll find most of the stories with similar tech to our own.

On the one hand: it's fiction, it's at a future date, there is a science element and there isn't scientific inaccuracy. This would tend to meet the kind of criteria I would suggest in distinguishing hard SF. On the other hand, say a writer wrote a novelized biography about Stephen Hawking's efforts to forge cutting edge physics. Suppose the book did not portray any events that had not yet occurred (the setting is past and present). But the physics is advanced compared to the knowledge of most people not working in fundamental physics. In fact, Hawking's topics (black holes, worm holes, a pre-Big Bang universe defined by imaginary numbers, etc.) may actually better reflect the "fantastic" and "amazing" feel of SF better than a purely fictional story about a renewal of Apollo-like flights to the Moon in 2015.

The border between genres is always fuzzy. There may not be one "right" answer to which of the above stories is hard SF and which isn't. For my tastes, what I look for in SF is not always hard SF and not only scientific accuracy. I'm interested in what we could accomplish if we set our minds to it, what we might find if we explored, what different avenues nature may have taken on other worlds, and that sort of thing. A story of the near future can do some of that. Stories that are not limited by being in the near-future or near to our technology can (if the writer chooses) go further into that territory.

At the other end of the spectrum, the further into the future and the more different the technology from ours, the harder it may be to maintain scientific accuracy. Planets will still orbit stars according to laws of nature which may be expressed somewhat differently than Newton and Einstein, but gives essentially the some velocity, radius, etc. But how can the story be "hard" about the new theories expressing the physics? How can we picture such foreign yet realistic and accurate technology?

As Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." If you describe something that looks like magic, how do we know there is any science to it? Even if it is safe to assume that one day there will be technology you and I could not distinguish from magic, we have no way to know that the specific "magical" technology in a story could ever exist. If we can neither prove nor disprove there is scientific foundation, it may not be right to call it "hard SF".

I think there is also a matter of the "feel" of the story and technology. If it "feels" like magic, it may not "feel" like hard SF. It may not appeal to the tastes of people who like hard SF, even if it fits the dictionary definition of hard SF.

I'm reminded of some books by a well-known SF / fantasy writer. A central character has a sword. The sword includes highly advanced ("magical") technology in it. Most of the settings in the books are pre-industrial societies. People, including this character, ride horses. The character usually uses the sword as a regular sword, only using the "magical" technology when needed. Even if we consider the sword's technology to be plausible enough for hard SF; the horses, swords and other aspects of the settings are more in line with "swords and sorcery" stories. As a result, when the "magical" technology is used, I find it all the more credible to treat it as literally magic than as science. This sort of factor may also effect what "feels" like hard SF. In a case like this, it may feel more like fantasy than even soft SF.

There's an old problem of how we can imagine what aliens might look like. It's easy to come up with an idea that is to some degree anthropomorphic. It's not so hard to come up with explanations why the human body makes sense and other intelligent species would be likely to share a number of characteristics with us. I suppose in the sense that a mathematician can describe a coffee mug and a donut as being topologically equivalent, an alien species may "be like us". Actually envisioning a plausible and different alien is hard. Far-future technology and science would be similarly foreign and difficult to imagine.

So perhaps, hard SF is better suited and effective when describing the middle future.

There is more to scientific accuracy than avoiding descriptions of machines that ignore the laws of nature, picturing sound waves traveling through vacuum or saying future physics theories will say a heavy object falls faster than a light object. It's not uncommon for science fiction stories to have characters use psychic powers. Just as our current scientific evidence tells us objects fall at the same speed regardless of their weight, current scientific evidence tells us there aren't psychic powers that can be put to the practical uses pictured in fiction. We can't categorically say that science won't come to a different point of view on these two questions in the future, but it is not hard SF to suggest that science will change on these points.

Other sections and articles in this site will discuss unscientific elements that appear in "science fiction".