The subgenre exists because the readers have identified something which makes them seek out stories of a certain mood and atmosphere. The difficulty we have is defining to anyone's satisfaction what that atmosphere is. It is like defining a family resemblance: you can see everyone in the Smith family has a certain cast of features, but it is hard to put into words.
My own definition (for what SF author does not dabble with his own definitions?) is that SF is "Hard" when the illusion of reality of the invented science in the work is bolstered by real science, or something in the spirit and approach of real science: and the science plays so crucial a role in the tale that the tale cannot be told without it.
Jules Verne makes a cannon shot to the moon seem realistic, even though we know such a thing is fantastic, by adding what we really do know about ballistics and astronomy to the mix. He places his moon-cannon in Florida for the same reasons in real life NASA launched from Florida: there the science is so realistic it is actually real.
I call it an illusion because story-telling, ultimately, is like casting a magic spell. If the spell does not work, the illusion is shattered, and the reader can no longer suspend his disbelief. In the case of Hard SF the illusion depends on the reader's interest in, or familiarity with, real science.
Soft SF can rely on less plausible science, because science is not the emphasis, the humanities or some other discipline, like anthropology is. Character development means more than problem-solving in these stories.
Ray Bradbury's FAHRENHEIT 451 is a fine example of a 'soft' SF book. The robot dogs or giant wall TV's are not needed to tell the story. (The movie adaptation told the story with no mention of the robot dogs.) The science is peripheral. The solution to the problem of book-burning, that a devoted cadre memorize the texts, is not a hard science solution. The book is really about Montag's rebellion against conformity of a intellectually deadened society.
Contrariwise, Larry Nivens' NEUTRON STAR is 'hard' SF. The story cannot be told without telling real astronomy, what causes tides. The props like hyperdrive and invulnerable spaceship hulls are not scientifically realistic, but they are scientific in atmosphere, and so their use does not break the illusion of realism, as, say, a Harry Potter on the broomstick would do.
Let me mention in passing the THE COLD EQUATIONS is famous because it took the Campbellian premise of real science seriously, but did not add the Campbellian premise of can-do Yankee optimism. The problem is not solved and the girl dies. All other Hard SF stories are like chess problems; THE COLD EQUATIONS are a checkmate. The enjoyment of a chess problems story or checkmate story cannot be had except by someone who admires the rules of chess.
If I may press this analogy one step further, even if Hard SF invents a new chessman, a knight that captures like a pawn, let us say, the enjoyment of the story depends on using that chessman according to the rules, displaying an appreciation, shared by the reader, for the cool intellectual pleasure of the game.
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November 8 2006, 17:21:21 UTC 5 years ago
November 8 2006, 20:28:39 UTC 5 years ago
"Hard" Fantasy?
Are fantasy stories told with logical integrity really "hard" SF? Stories like MAGIC, INC by Heinlein or all those Spague deCamp stories? The idea is that magic can be treated like science, we just need to know the rules. Most of todays commonplace technology would be considered utter magic by a 19th century physicist. But we have found those rules, so it ceases to be magic?November 8 2006, 20:45:20 UTC 5 years ago
Re: "Hard" Fantasy?
LORD OF THE RINGS is "Hard" fantasy. Here was a fantasy tale with dwarves and elfs, dragons and wraiths, noble kings and wicked counsellors, and all the trappings of medieval tales--but with the travel times and hardships of the journey all mapped out in meticulous detail, the language and solid appearance of its nonhuman races mapped out, given a past. Compare Lothlorien with the Forest of Arcadia in MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Surely the elves in the Golden Wood seem more realistic, more hard. This was a book written by a man who'd lived through the Great War, and his attempt to combine the Great War feeling and realism with the War of Elfland was so successful that it is hard to remember what an unrealistic, fantasy-flavored fantasy is like. Read THE WORM OROBOROUS if you want to savor the contrast: that is spectacular fantasy for the sake of fantasy, with no hint of real world suffering or sorrow in it.Lord Juss at the end of WORM OROBOROUS gets exactly the fate Galadriel was punished by expulsion from Heaven for wishing: a way to bind up time, and keep the good life of a few brief years alive and young and fresh forever. It is an immature ending, voluptuous and dreamlike. It is valhalla: a life of endless and glorious war. The departure of Frodo the Last Ringbearer to the West in the end of LOTR, by contrast, is as real and poinient as a sunset. Sam returns without any trumpets to his wife, and the only place that Elenor and Nembrithel, the elfin flowers, will bloom again in Middle Earth, is in the names of Sam's rosey-cheeked children. That is hard and real.
DEED OF PAKSENARION by Elizabeth Moon: I notice a scene where the Amazon-ish warrior women are given contraceptives, so they don't get pregnant in combat: I notice a scene where the troops drilling with spears so they learn how to march. All these are realistic details.
A GAME OF THRONES by George RR Martin is practically a history book. It does not get more realistic than this.
All these are what I would call Hard Fantasy.
November 8 2006, 21:06:19 UTC 5 years ago
Re: "Hard" Fantasy?
Of course, the "one ring" must have been a technological device. Frodo could be the ring bearer because he could not "interface" very well with the ring, hence avoiding it's danger (well, almost).Actually, what I'm talking about in this post is logical integrity. In some fantasy, anything can happen. In a Sprague deCamp story, there are rules! In Star Trek, next gen, anything can happen, so it's soft fantasy. In Babylon 5, there are rules!
I guess I'm thinking about the John Campbell style fantasy where the "logic" of magic is brought to the foreground. In much the same way, the "logic" of science is brought to the foreground in a "hard" SF story. If the hard science is just background, couldn't it be replaced with a desert mesa or a pirate ship? A lot of SF has been written by taking the reverse trip. For example, consider David Drake's rewrite of O'Brien's Aubry and Maturin. Asimov's NAKED SUN could be made into an episode of LAW AND ORDER with Daneel some sort of ethnic character, but most people would call this novel "hard" SF.
November 8 2006, 21:34:12 UTC 5 years ago
Re: "Hard" Fantasy?
I must respectfully disagree. 'Hard' or 'Soft' stories still need logical integrity. If there are stories where anything can happen, that is not a story, that is a phantasmagora. (Which still can be done: see NIGHT OF DELUSIONS by Keith Laumer).Let us propose that in addition to hard and soft, there is also sloppy and tight. Bab 5 was tight: Star Trek Next Gen was sloppy. Good enough.
So for my purposes, Hard SF means stories where (1) the science is essential rather than peripheral and (2) the scientific world view is treated soberly. Even where it deviates from real science, (teleportation or hyperdrive) these deviations are still science fictional in flavor: a telepath has a power that can be explained in a mechanistic way, it is not a blessing from the gods, it is a mutation or an invention. In other words even if the thing (telepathy) makes no sense in the scientific universe, the way it is handled does (mutations and inventions happen in the scientific view of the world and blessings do not happen.)
Again, for my purposes, Hard fantasy means stories where (1) the fantasy world is treated as a realistic one (2) the world is treated soberly, even if it is fantastic.
Tolkein's Middle Earth was not only sober, it was an is the most serious of all fantasy worlds to date, the most realistic, the most like our own world we know with its grim moral choices and its sorrow for days that will not come again. There is nothing like that in Arcadia or on Prospero's Island.
Notice how very little magic is actually used in Tolkein. The ring itself is fraught with moral significance: to use it is to be corrupted by power. There are crystal balls, but looking into them can break your mind. There are ghosts summoned up by ancient curse from the paths of the dead. There are wraiths, kings and sorceror twisted and eaten by magic.
There is nothing even remotely like "Randall Garrett" or MASTER OF FIVE MAGICS or any sort of nuts-and-bolts approach to magic here. Instead, the magic is treated as a diabolical threat, not too different from the diabolical threats of our own nonmagical world; the elfin magic of Galedrial is treated much the same way miracles in medieval stories are, or the riddles of sybils.
Look at the pre-Tolkein fantasy: Hope Merliss, Lord Dunsany, ER Eddison, Clarke Asthon Smith, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E Howard. None of them dwellt on the details, counting the days in long treks, noting where characters stopped for water, showing something of the realistic (WWI) spirit of war. Realism was what fantasy writers sought to flee.
Tolkein was the writer who could do realism better than most realists, and created a whole world to do the impossible: create realistic fantasy. His imitators have rarely if ever understood what he was doing.
I suggest that nuts-and-bolts style fantasy is not the same as Hard fantasy, because it does not show the same respect for the realism of the fantasy world. Nuts-and-bolts SF, in contrast, is one and the same as Hard SF, becase respect for Hard Sf means interest in the nuts and bolts.