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I came across this article on the Astronomical Society of the Pacific website with a list of hard scifi books with good physics and astronomy. A great find! .

He he. Interesting list, however at least one of the books mentioned (several times) as having good astronomy and physics science has absolutely horrendous evolutionary biology in it.

Spacefaring aliens that are single celled organisms the size and shape of a swamp? Please explain how they built spaceships. (That's a rhetorical question for the author, not any of us here.)

which book are you referring to?

Stephen Baxter's Vacuum Diagrams.

The stories in that series were actually pretty good. But he killed it for me by breaking what I call the tool-maker supposition: any alien, no matter how intelligent, must have some way of manipulating tools and materials in order to develop and use high technology, especially space flight.

Yet in his Xeelee Sequence, he has fish aliens using space ships, and single celled aliens the size and shape of swamps doing the same. He never explains how they could create the tech they use, and their physiology makes it seem almost impossible for them to have ever developed such tech naturally.

I mean, I can think of ways around that (their current physiology is not their original physiology and in the past they were able to develop such tech; or they didn't make the tech but somehow got others to do it for them), but Baxter never bothered to explain it.

Which to me means he really didn't care about the evolutionary biology in his work being scientifically plausible. He seemed to just do what a lot of authors do: come up with a cool sounding alien, something you wouldn't expect, and then run with it despite the fact that such aliens building spaceships is highly suspect.

your criticisms makes sense to me.

when i run across such things, I assume the aliens are some sort of technopath. which makes little sense of course, and may as well be fantasy, but it makes things easier for me.

Actually I just looked up that book again. The Qax were the big single cell things. And they became intersetller traders by manufacturing chemicals (I assume in their bodies as it sounded like they did that kind of thing)...and they don't have their own space ships, but they do fly around in Spline ships.

Now, the Spline were whale-like ocean creatures who managed to learn how to coat their bodies in "stuff" (my word) that made it possible for them to survive in space...so they turned their bodies into giant space ships which they hire out as transport...

...Ocean creatures. Flying through space. Same problem. He, he!

How they figured out how to blast off into space (and then fly through space) we may never know.

That's the thing that's always bothered me about the praise of "hard science fiction" we celebrate them for getting the science right, when really they get the physics' right. Biology, sociology, psychology, all these things seem to get a pass. I don't know why, but it's always bugged me.
I'll also add, I'm not bashing hard science fiction, just kind of baffled by some people's elevation of it above other SF.

Exactly. Hard should strive for verisimilitude in all science, not just physics.

I don't know how accurate he is, but Greg Bear's always sounded very Hard on his biological fiction (like his two Darwin's Radio books and others like Vitals). Yet he isn't on that list at all.

I think a lot of this comes from the compartmentalized nature of science. For example, I heard recently that neuroscientists are partnering with the computer science world (hackers) to try and develop algorithms to tell the difference between healthy and diseased neurons. Neurologists simply don't have the computer skills to develop this stuff on their own...The scientific community is too locked into its specialization silos for that.



So when an astrophysicist or astronomer looks at SF, they analyze the physics and astronomy, not the biology.

I'm not even bothered that an author doesn't get everything right, you simply can't. What bothers me more, is the attitude of some readers, authors, and critics that what we call hard sf is the only really valid sf. As if the physics is the only thing that really matters.

Christopher wrote: "I'm not even bothered that an author doesn't get everything right, you simply can't. What bothers me more, is the attitude of some readers, authors, and critics that what we call hard sf is the onl..."

Agreed. I'm even confused about what is meant by "hard SF" nowadays. I consider Alastair Reynolds to be hard SF, because where real science is referenced it seems to be accurate to the best of our knowledge (he is an astrophysicist after all), yet I keep seeing his work described as space opera, I guess because there is also technology well in advance of ours which is not necessarily explained. Still, it's far from Star Wars territory.

Scott wrote: "Christopher wrote: "I'm not even bothered that an author doesn't get everything right, you simply can't. What bothers me more, is the attitude of some readers, authors, and critics that what we cal..."

And isn't 'hard Science Fiction' more than a bit oxymoronic?

After all, it is Fiction !

Scott wrote: "I consider Alastair Reynolds to be hard SF...yet I keep seeing his work described as space opera..."

The term 'space opera' is thrown around a lot in reference to Reynolds, Banks, Hamilton, and a bunch of other modern SF writers, but really that's just an abbreviated term for 'new space opera,' a sub-genre that started showing up in the '70s. It's kind of a reaction to the old space opera, keeping the big epic interstellar scope of story and universe creation, but focusing more on stronger characterization, higher literary standards, scientific accuracy, and more reflection on the social implications of technology and space travel.

So really there's no dichotomy between hard SF and new space opera.

CD wrote: "And isn't 'hard Science Fiction' more than a bit oxymoronic?"

Not really.

Science fiction can be either an extrapolation on current scientific understanding, or it can be pure invention. Both are still fiction. One is (or should be) concerned with scientific plausibility (Hard); the other is concerned with just the story, tech is only there to make the story possible (Soft).

Micah wrote: "The term 'space opera' is thrown around a lot in reference to Reynolds, Banks, Ha..."

Ah, okay, thanks for the explanation.

I wonder who the earliest big-name hard science fiction writer can be said to have been. None of the big three (Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke) qualify. To write for Campbell meant your focus could not be the science. I can think of several male names from the 1970s, but they are by no means big-name. Women broke in to the sub-genre even later. I can't think of a woman who would have qualified until maybe Joan Slonczewski writing hard biology in the 1980s. Her A Door into Ocean remains a favorite for me. I'm really stymied!

Nancy Kress?

I read Kress's Beggars in Spain about halfway through before putting it down for missing some key ingredient I could not put my finger on. There was some pseudoscience in it, but nothing that would make me place her in the hard science fiction camp. I also read her book on how to write, which was superb. She strongly advocates a character first and foremost approach, placing that ahead of plot, theme, or situation. At least she advocates this in theory. In practice, I found her characters in Beggars oddly underdeveloped. So who knows?

Thinking about my own question more, I think perhaps Larry Niven is the earliest, consistent hard science fiction male author.

Dan wrote: "I wonder who the earliest big-name hard science fiction writer can be said to have been..."

Can't answer that. Hard SF has never been a big attraction to me.

And the only works I've read by Asimov were his original Foundation Trilogy books (way off from anything hard). Clarke generally bored me to tears (tried reading Rama about 4 times and I never make it more than a handful of pages in). And I never thought of Heinlein as hard. What I've read of his were all pretty much social SF. Never read Niven.

SF for me starts in the '50s with Kurt Vonnegut's work (which he never admitted was really SF), and Philip K. Dick's short stories. PKD's my favorite author so you can see that Hard SF ain't my thing!

The biggest hard science fiction writer was Hal Clement. I would go so far as to say he was the defining type. And he was pretty big.

Dan wrote: "...(tried reading Rama about 4 times and I never make it more than a handful of pages in)..."

Don't worry, I got half way through by sheer power of will, and it remained that boring, you didn’t miss anything.

I think the greatest authors are those who don't fixate on hard or soft or w/e. They simply write a great story with great characters, sound science, and interesting plot.

I always thought of myself as a hard scifi reader. Until I actually read hard scifi. I found that nothing bores me more than someone explaining to me how things work. Just make it plausible and get on with it!

Which brings me back to my first paragraph. Imo the greatest sin a writer can commit is to make his story boring. Everything else doesn’t count if you bored your audience to sleep.

I just read The Three-Body Problem by Chinese sci-fi author Liu Cixin. I would consider it hard science because I understood none of the quantum physics and nanotechnology that was in play. But the story was pretty good. I very much enjoyed the use of the Chinese Cultural Revolution to explain why one of the main characters decided to betray humanity.

Micah wrote: "Dan wrote: "I wonder who the earliest big-name hard science fiction writer can be said to have been..."

Can't answer that. Hard SF has never been a big attraction to me.

And the only works I've r..."

Wouldn't class Dick as hard SC FI - more philosophical/reality questions. But I would say he's one of the ultimate greats
and highly entertaining

Linda wrote: "I just read The Three-Body Problem by Chinese sci-fi author Liu Cixin. I would consider it hard science because I understood none of the quantum physics and nanote..."

sounds good. i like Chinese writing generally

Linda wrote: "I just read The Three-Body Problem by Chinese sci-fi author Liu Cixin. I would consider it hard science because I understood none of the quantum physics and nanotec..."

I really liked this one too. I just picked up the sequel at the library. What I liked was the science went over my head, but that didn't detract from the story. So many times I'm reading these and the author pushes the science and technology so much the story suffers.

I've been diving really deep into Arther Clarke and Isaac Asimov lately. Other than reading from these old guards, any recommendations for really new, up-and-coming hard sci-fi authors, maybe those that have just started publishing over the last couple of years?

JJ wrote: "I've been diving really deep into Arther Clarke and Isaac Asimov lately. Other than reading from these old guards, any recommendations for really new, up-and-coming hard sci-fi authors, maybe those..."

I love Clarke and Asimov. But I have a real problem with more contemporary hard sci-fi authors like Greg Bear.

what is the problem you have with them?