Quote:
Originally Posted by GeoffR
Broadly speaking the genre is Hard SF. But as usual, while it is easy to give examples of books that belong to the genre, is can be a hard to pin down an exact definition. Roughly: stories based on plausible speculation from known facts, high degree of scientific accuracy, often with an emphasis on ideas from the the physical (hard) sciences, engineering and mathematics.
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A very different definition of Hard SF is an SF story in which, if you took away the science part, the story would be compromised. The science part doesn't have to be physical science - see the linguistics in China Mieville's
Embassytown, or the anthropology (for want of a better word) in Mary Doria Russell's
The Sparrow. Soft SF is then a different type of story - mystery/detective, romance, family saga, etc - that happens to be told in a SFnal setting (in space, another planet, postapocalyptic earth, etc).