Hard SF : About the Genre : Hard SF vs. Hard to Believe
Personally, I make a distinction between a space opera that doesn’t take itself and it’s “science” too seriously, and a book that blabbers on about supposed technology that runs counter to real science. I can deal with faster than light travel and other doubtful technology as long as the author doesn’t “explain” its dubious operation. Think of me as a cop car on the side of the highway – if you’re going to drive past me doing 90 MPH, at least don’t honk your horn to draw more attention to the fact. [The site has a section, for those interested, discussing technology and science in more detail than some readers will want.]
One of my pet peeves is “going back in time” stories in which 90% of the book is describing what the past looked like. Personally, I probably wouldn’t read a historical novel about the Civil War, but that by no means says nobody should write or read such books. As far as I’m concerned, if you want to write a book about the Civil War (or some other historical setting), write a historical novel and leave off the 10% of the book that talks about going back in time to that setting. If you feel a need to have characters rather than a narrator express an outsider’s point of view on the people of that historical setting, use a traveler from a distant country or an alienated person from local area. That’s not to say all time travel books are essentially historical novels, but many are.
I might be more tolerant of psychic powers in “science fiction” if it weren’t so common. There are exceptions to every rule – so allowing a particular unscientific element into science fiction once in a while isn’t that bad. And if people want to establish a literary genre with its own section in the library and book store of “psychic fiction”, that’s OK with me.
Science is a process for collecting information by which people can reliably anticipate events in the world around them. It’s not a completed process that has established absolute certainty about everything. It is within the realm of possibility that solid scientific evidence for practical “psychic powers” may at some time be found. Scientific foundations for “psychic powers” today are, at best, very weak. This is all the more true if we are looking for something that can be used in a consistent and dependable way. What nation or city has been able to employ psychics to predict terrorist attacks or major crimes in a way that has led to an absence of successful attacks and crimes? While there are claims of psychics occasionally aiding in criminal investigations, what nation or city has cleared up most of their unsolved crimes this way? Where is there a service that provides reliable communications using telepaths when electronic communications are unavailable or to be avoided for some reason? Assuming one does not believe in gypsy fortune-telling shops, there simply is an absence of practical “psychic powers” out there.
Even if we accept that some people can say what card another person is holding much more often than by random chance, how practical is the ability? Meteorology is a weak science in the sense there are considerable limits on the dependability and precision of weather predictions. To the extent we can make practical use of weather predictions, we must take meteorology seriously as a science. There may be no immediate practical uses for today’s theoretical physics, but there are practical uses for what was theoretical physics in the 1960s. Where are the practical uses of the “parapsychology” experiments of the 1960s? Also, there’s a difference between seeking practical uses for superstring theory and for purported human abilities.
As a scientific person, I must ask: why would people have “impractical psychic powers”, but not “practical psychic powers”? From a scientific perspective it is more reasonable to work under the premise there is no such thing.
In the real world, bookstores don’t even tend to have a “science fiction” section. Usually, it’s called “Science Fiction And Fantasy”. In this section, a good deal of the books is under no illusion that they are “science fiction”, but are pure and simple fantasy. I’d just as soon have these kinds of books divided into distinct sections. Perhaps the reason this is not done is the number of authors who mix the two styles together. (I don’t mean writers who write one book of fantasy and a second book of SF. I mean authors who write books like “Starship Wizard” and “Planet Of The Dragon Warriors”.) There are books about starships that arrive at planets with wizards and dragons. There are things like the supernatural aspects of “the force” in the Star Wars stories. There are stories where most of the people and activities describe a pre-technological world, but certain individuals periodically employ [questionable] technology that behaves like magic. Also, there’s frequently the use of telepathy and other “mind powers” in the midst of interstellar travel and interaction with aliens. Perhaps not as common as it once was, but there’s always the “creatures from outer space kills and eats humans” horror stories.
Having an imagination on the scale of science fiction, I like to dream that if fantasy, horror and science fiction were treated as 3 separate genres, then the mixing of these in the same books would become less common. I’m not so far gone to think that there will ever be impenetrable barriers between genres. Look at music - most artists can be fairly safely categorized into one of a fairly short list of genres, but there are always a number of artists who combine elements of 2 or more genres. That’s not “bad”, but those who especially enjoy one music genre would like to have a generous supply of music focused on that genre.
In terms of music, “pop music” tends to combine elements of a few genres in ways designed to provide a “lowest common denominator”. That is, to provide “something for everyone” in order to sell as many albums as possible. If an artist plays strictly in one genre, that limits the potential audience, and therefore the amount of money to be made by the artist and record company. As a result, there is often pressure put on artists by the recording industry “to give the people what they want” and make their music more pop-oriented. The same process will happen to some degree in the fiction publishing business.
Some will ask, “What’s wrong with recording or writing what the largest number of people wants to buy?” Perhaps there is nothing “wrong” with it. It can sap some of the resources away from niche areas, like hard SF, by encouraging writers to follow the money in more mainstream areas. It can encourage writers to think of their art more as a money-earning job than a creative craft.
And the results are not necessarily as good. While a “top 40” record may sell millions of copies in the short run, within a few years it may be unappealing to most people. (In my youth, I worked in a warehouse that distributed bargain bin records. We always had a lot of Top 40 albums that had been issued just a couple of years before. It seemed every time some artists released a new top-seller, another of their previous albums started going to the bargain bins.) The fact that a record or book does not endure over time may not mean it is “bad” or should not be published, but the ability to endure usually reflects a value in a book or record. There are sure to be “pop” books and records that do endure, and there are no shortage of non-pop books and records that lack what it takes to endure. Speaking in generalities, I think the process of fitting a book or record into the pop mold decreases its chances of having the ingredients of endurance.