But that's not what Wikipedia says!

Or this dude is just wrong.

I thought hard Sci-Fi was stuff like LA Blue Girl.

@Aethyr: Almost cited wikipedia's definition... but I thought that might weaken my case. :)

BTW I just fixed the mistake in the first paragraph... I know the novel is The Inverted World. Sorry about mixup!

"dudes finding themselves in the wilderness"...
When you put it that way, it sounds like some sort of nature-fetish porn.

Dendrophilia... in space!

Obviously I have nothing constructive to add to the conversation, so I'm going to lunch.

Why would you define Hard Science Fiction that way?

i am of course wary of any genre-commentary that uses the phrase "X can be defined as." That's sort of irresponsible criticism, IYAM. It limits narrative, closes off potential, and (in this case) produces millions of piss-poor essays by first-years on Star Wars and "the hero's journey" -- which i can recite in my sleep.

I've always defined Hard Science Fiction as fiction that starts from a set of assumptions and predictions and then tries to follow the logical consequences of how they affect the characters and events.

Soft Science Fiction is more a case of window dressing.

I am thinking Clute's poorly constructed/executed first sentence refers to hard sci-fi as the: "... clearly defined, SCIENCE-BASED cognitive breakthrough..." All other words and descriptions are the cream that this fact/fragment is bathed in.
I further think that: "... he begins to understand the true nature of his world... [and later on]... hero from cognitive darkness to conceptual light..." is the particular flavour of this particular hard sci-fi piece - not the definition of what hard sci-fi is.
My apologies on the choice of words - i am eating.
So yeah - 'science is trappings for lost boys'.

@Garrison Dean, King Awesome:
No, that's just what happens when you watch it.

@braak: Because a) you're an idiot, b) you don't know the history of pulp science fiction, and c) you're an idiot.

"Hard" science fiction (IMO) refers to science fiction grounded on technology, the science behind technology, science in general, and how those things affect a civilization. I cite the original Foundation books, early Heinlein stories, and Gateway as examples.

*Braces for the Campbell haters*

@Ryan H: See, that's how I define 'Science Fiction.'

I'd define 'Hard Science Fiction' as "all of that, but with the margin for error dialed way back."

Then again, I also don't mind defining SF as a style and defining it as a genre.

wow, i don't agree with this at all. i don't have an especially coherent argument, due to the fact that i napped in the grass during lunch, but i know that doesn't sound right.

terminal case of English Major

John Clute's raison d'être is to get his readers to turn their heads sideways like a cat and go "mrrwha?" It's usually interesting, if rarely right.

@Mathmos: Ouch! For the win!

...but was it a good book?

Sigh. Geez. OK, you can certainly have a hero's journey with or without the rigorousness of Hard SF. I always thought what made Hard SF was, gee, I dunno, the Science? Like Chris Moriarty's seven pages of citations on quantum entanglement at the end of SPIN STATE, or that an author did the math when world-building the story's solar system.

And this whole lost boy thing? Really. Tired. Of. It.

Thank effin god! Hard Sci-Fi as it relates to science and technical accuracy is a stupid term. If its based on current technology, there is no 'fiction' to it, and if its just shit thats made up its fiction WHICH CAN'T BE TECHNICALLY ACCURATE!

Also lots of the made up stuff in the last few decades is now actual stuff...

Haha, Time for the science fiction writers and fans to retreat to their secret headquarters and figure out what the hell they are all talking about.

@Log1c: Unless its the logical extension of current science... which is what Hard Sci-Fi is. Of course we don't have ships that travel at the speed of light, but if you apply theoretical concepts to it you can get good stuff like The Forever War, or you can just say HyperSpace and not worry about any of it making it soft Sci-Fi or Fantasy.

He's just wrong. What he describes sounds more like "space opera." Next case.

I guess:
the more logical the extension from today's science,
the more that the science is used to formulate/inform the plot, and,
the more compelling the theories use to support the science (i.e .I have more physicists supporting my theory than you've got supporting yours) ---> the 'harder' the sci-fi.
It's probably not useful to create a strict definition of 'hard scif-fi' but be relativist and say this is more hard than that.. shades of grey, you know? - especially since it is fundamentally fiction.

@Garrison Dean, King Awesome: The problem with logical extension of current stuff is that it thinks in a linear fashion when we develop technology exponentially, over the short term this is fine, but thinking far into the future is crap because it ignores this.

Clute's description sounds more like what people (not me! don't shoot!) tend to call "space opera," particularly the "journey" part.

In contrast, "hard" science fiction seems to revolve around characters who stay in place while science, technology and planets move around them: hence the old, old theme of human nature subverting the most potentially beneficial developments of human ingenuity.

Hard SF is about using science (or some theorectical version thereof), to help resolve the story's delema. The protag uses his brains and science to save the day and the girl. If you think you've learned some good science after you're done with a book (Robinson's Mars books), then it's probably Hard SF.

@dangrgirl: You just don't appreciate the fact that the Lost Boy has saved your world so, so many times... his personal growth is also your salvation!

I agree with Slatz_Grobnik: Hard SF is just SF with the tolerances cut a lot finer.

Then again on the other hand, this doesn't always work. Imagine an writer trying to write an AI story in 1968 where she tried to follow the state of the art as closely and acurrately as possible. The result would suck! You'd get descriptions of giant tape memory banks and grids of ferrite cores. Yuck.

When Vinge wrote "Bookworm Run" he deliberately ignored the state of the art in electrical engineering and as a result the story dates well as hard SF. (Well, aside from all rather embarrassing Commie menance references.)

For me, all science fiction is about human responses to technological change.

Aspects such as hard or soft should have no bearing on this aspect of sci-fi. Its more a good story vs bad story sort of thing.

Good sci-fi portrays realistic human responses to a given scenario (see Galactica season 1). Bad sci-fi fails
to do this (witness the toaster luvin in Galactia's third season).

@copore-metal...

What about HAL? dreamed up in 1968, still one of the definitive portrayals of AI in our culture.....

@Dug: Sure, and you'll notice that Kubrick and Clarke did their best to ignore the current state of the art to do so. Later on when 2010 came out, they tried to follow the state of the art a little more closely and it's like technology took an enormous step backward--big bulky spacesuits instead of slim ones in 2001, big bulky CRTs instead of the flat-panal-esque rear projected computer animation Kubrick had.

On the other hand by the time has not been kind to 2001. No real AI, no human expeditions to Jupiter. Sigh.

Hard SF is a hard row to hoe.

Yeah - i think that you (the writer) take a huge leap of faith when you try to incorporate today's (or yesterday's) 'leading' theories with tomorrow's realities. Unfortunately, if we rely too much on the 'real' possibilities (i.e. no faster-than-light travel), i would say the scope of the stories becomes a lot less interesting. If the science can reasonably let you suspend your 'disbelief' and allow you to get caught up in the 'story' (i.e. not get distracted by the annoying little incongruities) than huzzah - a good sci-fi yarn ((and if you have a hard sciences background and you're still carried away - extra points))

@Charlie Jane Anders: A Lost Gal would have gotten it right the first time. ;)

@designguybrown: I've read a couple of good books lately which used cryo-sleep in place of FTL travel. You can also get up to near-light speeds and play with the time differential between the traveler and a stationary observer. But yeah, if you take FTL out of the picture, your options get a lot more limited. I do think it's possible to make speculative leaps forward while keeping a certain amount of scientific realism. You just have to be honest about the scientific challenges involved, and then show how you solved them.

@Charlie Jane Anders: I do think it's possible to make speculative leaps forward while keeping a certain amount of scientific realism.

I think Catherine Asaro's inversion drive is one example, where she gets around the speed of light with imaginary numbers.

This guy is just wrong

@Charlie Jane Anders: What does it mean, "The Lost Boy"?

@nonbreakingspace: Agreed. I could go on speechifying, but "just wrong" covers it all.

John Clute is an idiot who needs to go read some Larry Niven.

I agree iwth everyone saying "totally wrong."

@braak: If you don't understand, it could mean that you're Lost!

Just because you get your critical essay published, it doesn't mean you're not full of shit.

Case in point: wouldn't Clute's definition place Star Wars squarely in the realm of Hard Sci-Fi?

So much for that analysis...

Sweet! So I guess that makes "Star Wars" hard science fiction then, right? Right?

@bonniegrrl: Beat you to it! :-p

Hard SF can be defined this way... the same way an elephant can be defined as a small domesticated mammal of the felidae family.

@StrangelyBrown:
great smartasses think alike! ;-)

Although John Clute is obviously the World's Foremost Authority on _____ and a prolific Critic of the Speculative Fiction I've never been able to take him seriously since I read his novel "Appleseed". It's one of the few trade paperbacks I've ever brought back to the used bookstore for credit. Mind you, they wouldn't take it back the first couple of times because they already had a bunch of used copies that just weren't moving.
Why did it not appeal to me? I dunno, I just..y'know, thought it ummm...sucked.

Sorry, I'm just not a very good Critic.

uh-huh.

GET YOUR FILTHY STINKING LITERARY PAWS OFF OF MY PULP YOU DAMNED DIRTY APE.

Comment on Hard Science Fiction Isn't About Science After All "Inverted World" wasn't Priest's first novel -- it was preceded by "Indoctrinaire" and "Fugue for a Darkening Island". Nick Smale

No.

@corpore-metal: You should grab a copy of David Gerrold's "When Harlie was One"--- the original, not the 2.0 version. (Nothing against the revision, just not germane to the discussion)
Gerrold uses 1972 state of the art computer science and extrapolates AI from it. If I'm not mistaken, the concept of the computer virus was introduced in that book.

And it was hard s-f; by which I mean he took the maxim "If this goes on..." and built a plausible world based on certain engineering assumptions.

@Grey_Area: Actually, I think you are a good critic. Writers shouldn't think they can please all the people all of the time. I count on reviews that tell me what was weak or what didnt' work for the reader. But ballance is required, so I would through in just one good comment about the book :)

/me can't help but recall what Harlan Ellison's insectoid opinion of "science fiction" is.

I gotta agree with Charlie's original thought.

That, and if you simply look at "science fiction", then it can also be read to be understood that portrayals of science within are fictional. ;)

Hard Science Fiction is SciFi written for people who understand Calculus 4....

This definition is stupid...

Literally is says that Star Wars is Harder Sci-Fi than Star Trek....

CLEARLY the opposite is true.
(not that I am saying one is better than the other (nor that Star Trek is particularly hard))

Hard Sci-fi uses more science as plot and tries to maintain a framework for things and how they work...
Star wars just has stuff with not even so much as a handwave...

I mean what is the engine/power source?

This is clearly not the established concept of Hard Sci-fi that most people use.. why try to radically redefine a word/genus?

It is not like Hard sci-fi is better (universally) than soft sci-fi.. It is subjective...

@dailyread: I totally love When Harlie Was One. Side note, I just recently got a used copy of the "2.0" version and have been wondering if I should read it when I get a sec... is it better or worse than the original? The original is such a demented acid trip, it's hard to imagine the revision doesn't just dilute it...

As a devotee of hard sci-fi, I have only one comment on that estimation:

Bullshit.

You can't define 'science fiction' much less 'hard' science fiction. The words simply mean whatever they mean within the context they are used in.

@Jeff-Minor: "... a good comment" about Clute's Appleseed. hmmmm. [scratches chin thoughtfully]
Wellll, there *was* a good deal of freaky sex which is always fun. It made me think of "Heavy Metal" magazine--purile fun for the whole family.
And robots, there were definitely robots of some sort. Everyone likes robots, right?

@dailyread: Yes, I have read "When Harlie was One," "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream," "Dial F for Frankenstein" and host of others from that time and before where the authors followed the state of the art in electrical engineering and it shows.

Don't get me wrong, in all those great stories the concepts still hold up quite well despite the vacuum tubes and trunks of copper wiring.

But if you're a hardware geek about this stuff, some little part of you winces when you read AM's speech about its hatred of existence (Where it talks about writing the word "hate" on each angstrom of all the wiring in its body.) versus the little feeling of joy you have open seeing David Bowman yank the holographic and photonic cubes of crystal of HAL's brain. The first seems a little dated (Even though general concept of Ellison's story is still quite cool!) while the second still seems futuristic.

It's little details like that are really hard to pull off. As a writer or creator of hard SF, you have to know when to make it as scientific and technically realistic as possible and when to ignore our current thinking and thereby be more accurate in the long run. Obviously nobody can do this very well all the time. Otherwise futurology would be really easy and boring.

As I said, hard SF is a hard row to hoe. If you have the Earth revolve in the wrong direction in your story and the fans are all over you. On the other hand, when you take a risk and let your imagination run wild, ignoring current science and engineering, and thereby wind up being more accurate about the future in the long run--that's tough to pull off.

I'd suggest skipping past Clute's babble and get on with the book which is great...one of those that sticks in your head long after you finish it.
You do have to admire Clute though for making a career out of talking complete nonsense.