12-01-2008, 11:37 PM | #76 | |
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I personally classify the series as Hard SF. |
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12-02-2008, 06:48 AM | #77 |
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I haven't read this entire thread, but I recommend:
Stephen R. Donaldson's "Gap" series as well as Harry Harrison's "Stainless Steel Rat" series (Long live the Rat!!) |
12-02-2008, 07:00 AM | #78 |
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What about my all time favourite "The Time Ships" Stephen Baxter is that Hard SF? I think so....
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12-02-2008, 08:58 AM | #79 | |
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I personally don't consider time travel and traveling to alternate realities Hard SF... and especially when accomplished by ships made out of quartz by Victorians using "Platternite." (Not that the story isn't good, mind you--I haven't read it.) Time travel and alternate realities are wonderful and inventive theories, with obvious attractions, but without any concrete basis... which makes them Soft SF. |
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12-02-2008, 09:13 AM | #80 |
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12-02-2008, 10:18 AM | #81 | |
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'Time Ships' is a classic. |
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12-02-2008, 10:31 AM | #82 |
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12-02-2008, 11:00 AM | #83 | |
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Although I was thinking more of Baxter's approach to the issues of time travel (e.g. avoiding paradoxes) - rather than the machinery involved. Wells didn't address that side of things to any great extent iirc. I don't mind a novelist using a few conceits to get where they want to be in order to depict a hard SF narrative. It's what they do when they get there I find interesting. I'd say Rudy Rucker's 'White Light' was a hard SF exploration of abstruse (to me) mathematical concepts - even if he does use 'fuzz weed' to set things up. |
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12-02-2008, 12:25 PM | #84 | |
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In my opinion, the dividing line occurs if there is no scientific basis, or if the scientific basis for something is so thin as to be beyond plausible. If we limit ourselves to what is known to be true, then an awful lot of science fiction stories that are currently considered Hard will have to be labeled as soft scifi. -- Bill |
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12-02-2008, 01:02 PM | #85 |
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I've always felt that Jack Vance pretty much demolished the dividing line between hard SF, soft SF, and fantasy with The Dying Earth., long before Clarke's famous aphorism.
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12-02-2008, 02:09 PM | #86 | |
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Anyway, that's just my opinion on those particular vehicles, and when it comes to "plausibility," there's a lot of subjectivity involved (or we wouldn't be debating these things at all). |
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12-02-2008, 02:17 PM | #87 |
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FTL travel is perfectly plausible in some theories (e.g. wormholes combined with matter-to-data-to-matter conversion) so I don't see your objection based on your definition. But you're entitled. I'm just being curious and argumentative.
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12-02-2008, 03:16 PM | #88 | |
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12-02-2008, 03:31 PM | #89 | |
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Penforhire... you're forgiven for being "curious and argumentative." Even the data-through-wormhole theory has a lot of holes in it... big, big holes, mostly involving the nigh-infinite amounts of energy required to control such a process, which is IMO what makes it a Soft SF element. (Where's Stephen Hawking when you need him?) |
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12-02-2008, 03:39 PM | #90 | |
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Further, FTL is not just fringe science these days; modern cosmology believes that most of the Universe is expanding away from us faster than the speed of light . Steve, I think the difference between your point of view and mine is that you seem to want experimentally verified results, where I am willing to allow non-mainstream solutions to mainstream theories as a basis for an SF story. While it is true that most of these solutions will never work, we can't be sure which will and which won't; Einstein didn't think much of Georges LeMaitre's work indicating that the Universe must be either expanding or contracting. So I think it would be unfair for us to rule out certain solutions to the theories just because they don't seem plausible to us. -- Bill |
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