[mercutio2]

Fascinating. Vinge is about the furthest from “soft” sci-fi I can think of. We must have very different definitions of what makes something soft.

It’s certainly true that Vinge doesn’t spend much time on the engineering details, but I find him unusually clear on “imagine if we had this kind of impossible-now technology, but the rest of what we know about physics remained, how would people behave?”

He was, after all, a physics professor.

Rainbow’s End is much clearer on this than his distant future stuff, of course.

[com2kid]

> Fascinating. Vinge is about the furthest from “soft” sci-fi I can think of. We must have very different definitions of what makes something soft.

That award goes to Greg Egan who has full list of citations on his website for each of his novels, as well as a list of mathematicians and physicists he requested help from.

If you want to read books that occasionally delve into pages of equations, Greg Egan is the author for you! (Seriously though, really good books, and the implications of his "what-ifs" are pretty damn cool)

[loxias]

Seconding this, Greg Egan is one of the best of all time.

The short stories "Luminous" and "Dark Integers", the novels "Diaspora" and "Schild's Ladder". So good.

qntm (another author) hits somewhat similarly.

[exe34]

i might have to have another go at dichronauts. that one broke my mind a few pages in and I had to stop.

[opo]

>He was, after all, a physics professor.

Actually, he was a mathematics and computer science teacher at San Diego State University.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge

[mercutio2]

You’re right, I was wrong!

[Retric]

Soft vs hard is based on how closely the world tracks with modern physics/science. As such even just FTL is soft, let alone everything else that doesn’t fit.

[jrussino]

> Soft vs hard is based on how closely the world tracks with modern physics/science

Maybe it's not productive to quibble about definitions like this, but FWIW I don't agree with this criteria. I would argue Greg Egan's work, for example, is just about the "hardest" sci-fi there is, and yet much of that work takes place in universes that are entirely unlike our own.

Personally, I think what makes for "hard" sci-fi is that the rules of the universe are well-laid-out and consistent, and that the story springs (at least in some significant part) out of the consequences of those rules. That may mean a story set in the "future", where we have new technology or discover new physics, or "alternate universe" sci-fi like Egan's.

[Retric]

If changing the laws of the universe is fine, then nothing gets excluded even Harry Potter. It’s one of those definitions that allows anything and ultimately only feels fine because you’re adding some other criteria.

In defense of hard science fiction, it’s a meaningful category to talk about even if it’s not something you personally care about. People often want to weaken it but that just opens a door for a new category say “scientific science fiction” and we are back to square one.

Asking questions like what does AGI look like when they can’t just magically solve all issues can be fun. Hand waving the singularly as some religious event can also make interesting stories but so is considering how chaos theory limits what computation can actually achieve.

[com2kid]

> If changing the laws of the universe is fine, then nothing gets excluded even Harry Potter.

Greg Egan's law changes are on the level of "I consulted with a bunch of theoretical physics professors and asked them what the implication of tweaking this one fundamental constant would be, then I spent years meticulously crafting a world that takes into account those implications, and I had others physics professors check over my work to make sure it was within the bounds of actuality, and then I wrote a story about characters in this new world."

> Asking questions like what does AGI look like when they can’t just magically solve all issues can be fun.

Greg Egan actually has a great book about this! Permutation City. CPU cycles aren't unlimited, and there are tons of ethical problems being confronted with the entire "simulate a person" thing.

[burnished]

Harry Potter isnt typically considered scifi because it doesn't critically examine its own premise and because the rules of the universe are yoked to the needs of the plot.

[Retric]

> the rules of the universe are yoked to the needs of the plot

It’s common for the rules of the universe to be adapted to fit the plot of random Star Trek episodes.

HP is not considered science fiction because of the trappings of the story. People use spells and enchanted objects for telekinesis, teleportation, and time travel not psychic abilities and technology to do the same things.

> critically examine its own premise

A great deal of science fiction doesn’t do that while plenty of fantasy does.

[exe34]

> If changing the laws of the universe is fine, then nothing gets excluded even Harry Potter

the laws of the universe in Harry Potter are so fickle and ever changing with the plot line that to me, it can only be considered soft. compare with Egan who takes a given cosmology and then works 100% within that world. that's hard.

[Retric]

That’s not a question about the underlying rules of a fictional work but your perception of how they are created. It’s possible to have a completely well defined fantasy setting with exact rules without the reader being aware of what those rules are or even knowing it’s using well defined rules.

Consider The Martian, early versions where posted online and the author changed what resources the character had to work with at the beginning. So what feels like a creative solution to limited resources was really giving the character exactly what they needed after a solution was found. Only examining a work we can’t distinguish ‘soft’ physics updated as the plot demands from a story based around fixed rules.

[exe34]

You seem to confuse the creative process with the final product. The rules can change during the creative process. It's the final product that I judge as a reader - I won't bother going over the inconsistencies in Harry Potter here, it's been done ad nauseam elsewhere. The physics doesn't change over the course of the story of the Martian.

[jamiek88]

That is simply your personal definition, right?

You don’t claim to be definitive?

[Retric]

It’s a classic definition. Soft/hard science fiction has two meanings either the topic is focused on hard sciences (physics) vs soft sciences (sociology) or “It can also refer to science fiction which prioritizes human emotions over scientific accuracy or plausibility.[1]”

So it’s not universal but is an accepted definition that any deviation from the possible or probable (for example, including faster-than-light travel or paranormal powers) to be a mark of "softness."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_science_fiction

Popular science fiction is generally extremely soft, but occasionally you get stuff like The Cold Equations where the plot is driven by real world constraints. Even then it included FTL so a purest would call it soft.