Hard science fiction

The hard science fiction or hard science fiction, literal translation of the English term hard science fiction (in sometimes abbreviated as hard SF), is a subgenre of science fiction characterized by giving special importance to the scientific or technical details of the narrative. The term was used for the first time in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of the novel Islands of Space by John W. Campbell, Jr., published in Astounding Science Fiction magazine. The complementary term soft science fiction, which arose by analogy with the concept "hard science fiction", first appeared in the late 1970s as a way of describing science fiction in which scientific coherence was lacking. is relevant or in which the scientific knowledge of the time is not taken into account.

The term was formed by analogy with the popular distinction between the "hard" (natural sciences) and "soft" (social sciences) sciences. However, these concepts are not part of a rigorous categorization, but rather a way of defining stories that critics and audiences have found useful. Actually, there is no dichotomous classification between "hard" and "soft" science fiction, but rather there are different scales between "harder" and "softer" science fiction.

Scientific rigor

The essence of a work that is considered "hard science fiction" lies in a good relationship between the scientific content and the narrative development of the story, and, for some readers, in the "toughness" or rigor of the science in yes. The story developed in a work of "hard science fiction" must be precise, logical, credible and rigorous in relation to the scientific and technical knowledge of the moment, the technology, phenomena, scenarios and situations described being theoretically possible. This fact allows the novel to not age with the passage of time. For example, P. Schuyler Miller called Arthur C. Clarke's novel A Fall of Moondust (1961) "hard science fiction", and the designation has been considered valid despite the fact that an element crucial part of the plot, the existence of deep pockets of "moon dust" in the craters of the Moon, has been denied. There is a degree of flexibility about how far a novel can stray from "real science" before it falls within this subgenre. Some authors scrupulously avoid implausible facts such as travel at speeds greater than the speed of light, while others They approve of these concepts, also known as "enabling devices" as they allow the story to be possible, but focus on a realistic depiction of the worlds such technology could generate. From this point of view, in a scientifically "hard" story, it is not so much the absolute precision of the scientific content that matters, but the rigor and consistency with which ideas and possibilities are treated.

Readers of "hard science fiction" often try to find mistakes in stories, an entertainment that Gary Westfahl has called "the game." For example, a group at MIT concluded that the planet Mesklin in Hal Clement's novel Gravity Mission (1953) should have had a sharp axis at the equator and at a In the novel Ringworld (1970), by Larry Niven, the top layer of the soil would have slipped into the seas after about a thousand years. quite a bit of criticism from physics aficionados because the system in which the Ringworld is created should lead to its own destruction. Niven corrected some of his mistakes in his sequel Ringworld Engineers (1980).

Representative novels

• Serious mission (1953) by Hal Clement, where we are described life on a planet with gravity ranging between 3 and 600 G.
• Tau Poul Anderson (1970) where a ship without control approaches the speed of light, producing all kinds of strange effects.
• World Ring (1970) by Larry Niven, in which we are described a world with an annular form that extends around the entire orbit of his sun.
• Quote with Rama (1973) by Arthur C. Clarke.
• Dragon Egg (1980) by Robert L. Forward, about the evolution and development of a strange way of life in a neutron star.
• Chronopaisage (1980) by Gregory Benford, who have come closer to what is actually the scientific world, mixed with a plot of communications with the past.
• Contact (1985), of the American astronomer Carl Sagan, one of the greatest scientific divulners of the century. It's about the trip to the center of the galaxy.
• Fiasco (1986) by Stanisław Lem, in which the author surprises us with a somewhat pessimistic view of human technological capacity that reaches the point of being skilled in the resurrection of the dead and in the manipulation of time and an entire planetary system.
• Quarantine (1992) of Greg Egan, which mixes metaphysics with quantum physics.
• The Martian Trilogy (Red sea (1992), Green sea (1993) Blue sea (1996)) by Kim Stanley Robinson, describing the Mars terraform.