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Originally Posted by crane3
Also brings up another question on whether Sociology & Psychology are considered sciences; is Biology considered a "hard" science?
Me, I just want to enjoy an entertaining book of whatever.
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Sociological, psychological, biological, anthropological, and even paleontology SF has been done and done well, going back to the 50's. Hard and soft SF isn't just a matter of which science drives the story but also the extent to which it drives it.
(Edit: Even history can serve as the "science" in the fiction, given the right alternate history construct. It's really about the ideas driving the story.)
You can call anything you want "science fiction" (SYFY certainly does) but SF is a literary form with its own established rules, just as poetry and romance and mystery do and good SF adheres to them. A story that lacks the discipline to work within the rules can be a good and entertaining story. It just won't be good SF.
The field is broad enough within its own rules and subgenres that it doesn't need to accept half baked imitations. It takes hard work and discipline to get things right and more often than not when people decry "bad sf" from tradpub or Indies what they are decrying is the violation of those rules.
SF as a field was decried and deprecated for too long for its practitioners and supporters to accept outsiders that can't be bothered to do the job right.