i.e do you prefer:
- technically grounded and plausible science elements (e.g The Martian)
or
- stuff so fantastical that it doesn’t even warrant trying to explain it (Dr Who, some Marvel/DC stuff, Star Wars)
Another way to look at this would be Sci-Fi versus Science Fantasy, perhaps.
- Old-School Sci-Fi like HG Wells centers around a core scientific idea and the consequences arising from that,
whereas
- Science Fantasy (more prevalent nowadays) only looks to science - or the impression of some science - to serve the fantasy devices it uses.
So which is better?
I have recently got myself into hard sci-fi and I am having a blast. My last books were The Hot Zone, Jurassic Park and Lost World. I have now started The Martian. There are so many science facts you can learn from these while being wonderfully entertained along the way. So in conclusion I am more into the sci part where the fi part is just a careful extrapolation of an actual scientific basis.
My preference is for when the sci-fi setting is so fundamental to the story that the same story could not be retold in another setting. Like the basic story of star wars could be reframed as a cowboy epic with a few wizards or a scientist instead of jedi and it’d still work. Those kind of sci-fi books tend to not get filmed tho.
I wish Star Wars had leaned more heavily into the fantasy side of things for the prequels and sequels. I never really noticed as a kid, but you could honestly replace most of the science stuff in the originals with fantasy aspects very easily.
Giant floating sphere that destroys kingdoms, dragons the rebellions rides, hell even the lightsabers are just magic swords.
Part of the reason the prequels feel so goofy is that they feel like they should be grounded in reality, but the writing is still using fantasy logic. Tell me the Anakin/Padmè romance wouldn’t have felt better if they were in a fantasy movie. You don’t feel the pull of “The Dark side” like you do in the originals for the same reason, you’re just like “dude you just genocided a native tribe, chill the fuck out.”
disney, leaned to hard on interpersonal drama, instead of fantasy.
I like a good story, with interesting characters, multiple coherent worldviews, and interesting conflicts. The sci-to-fi spectrum certainly grabs my attention and holds it while I learn about the characters and world, but ultimately, it’s about compelling people, from James Holden and Jean-Luc Picard through Cassian Andor to Taylor Hebert.
I do enjoy when the science is accurate, but it feels more like an impressive artistic flourish to me. I realized a while back that if I insist on accuracy in my media, I’ll miss out on a lot of good, fun, even classic entertainment. It irks me when something isn’t internally consistent, but a miss on scientific accuracy is more like spotting the boom mike in a shot - mildly annoying, but usually worth focusing on what they’re trying to say.
I think, personally, its less about how hard or soft the sci-fi is and more about how fleshed out the sci and the fi is. Im a big fan of science coming into contact with the unexplained, in an Event Horizon or Doom 3 type of way. The audio logs and background stories of Doom 3 are fantastic and really makes the world feel real and fleshed out.
I just don’t like a lame middle ground.
Hard science sci-fi can be great. Three Body Problem and Andy Wier’s work is wonderful. And I love me some sci-fi so loose on the sci, it’s bordering on fantasy. But pick a lane.
pick a lane
Why? I love both ends, why choose
Because it’s not with the time and effort.
For example: Star Trek is fantasy. 100%. People trying to retcon transporters are wasting their time and energy. The easiest evidence is the technical diagrams, a “Heisenberg compensator” pops up to magic away real science problems.
I think that mean, “Don’t vacillate wildly between the two in the middle of a story or try to poorly justify something with half considered hand waving in the guise of science.”
Not really an answer to the question, but whatever The Expanse is. It’s right in the sweet spot.
It strikes me as very sciencey.
- The space travel, for instance, is “how could space travel actually work?” And even when they have a satisfying explanation for planet to planet travel, they need one for longer distances, so they introduce those wormhole gates? I haven’t read very far into it
- it tries to make space colonisation as realistic as possible, including the body horror
However it then surprises the reader by introducing
the alien plague
And therein lies the balance. Real science for where we know (or think we know) the boundaries of science, and completely theoretical fantasy for things we don’t know about (the existence of alien life and what shape it might take)
Mostly depends on my mood. But generally I’d prefer fiction element, it’s more enjoyable.
Both as long as they are not in the same setting.
The Martian is great Sci.
Dune is great Fi.
I wouldn’t want Dune to get all nitty and gritty about how Spice or space witch powers work scientifically and I wouldn’t want the Martian to have sand worms. Both are great for different stories, and as long as they are internally consistent they won’t break immersion.
Star Wars is Fi and shouldn’t have had an attempt to explain where the Force comes from, and any description of tech is just ‘ok sure, as long as we are consistent’ when it comes to hyper drives and Kyber crystals.
Now, it’s been a long time since I read the book, and I’ve never delved anywhere beyond the original novel, so treat this accordingly, but I think completely writing off the “science” of Dune is doing it a minor disservice. However, I’ll grant you that it isn’t “hard” sci-fi as that genre might typically be defined, either. Rather, the sciences that Herbert applied to his space opera were the social sciences, e.g. geography, sociology, history, and political science. I recall frequent digressions in the text talking about the ecology of Arrakis and how that has influenced interstellar politics, the most prominent example of this of course being the spice melange. Heck, the Liet-Kynes character was explicitly an Imperial Planetologist stationed there to learn about the Arrakis environment.
In fact, while checking my memory against the wiki article to make sure I wasn’t forgetting something, I saw this quote, which succinctly sums up my argument here: “the attention to ecology is hard, the anthropology and the psychic abilities are soft”.
All of which is to say, I agree with your main point: different stories require different approaches to scientific faithfulness. I liked all of the hard science of The Martian because, despite the fictional premise of an astronaut being stranded on Mars, I would largely expect an astronaut in that situation to think in terms of physics and biology and so on. I do not feel similarly about Han Solo. Right or wrong, I feel like authors with rigidly-held ideas about the value of hard vs soft science fiction tend to be insufferable pedants, and they write accordingly.
I love star wars, but don’t know even if it’s even nominally SF, which, hard or soft, should be exploring some ideas. Soft SF can explore psychology or sociology or religion in a futuristic setting. Dune, for instance, has plenty of thematic exploration of politics and economics and religion.
Star Wars, however, is just glorified set design. The elements of society and technology don’t interact in any meaningful way. Things are just sort of there because they look cool without any thought to the impact they would have. The ur-example of this is droids–which are just exist, though their social, religious, and economic ramifications would be enormous.
Star Wars is fantasy that happens to be set in space.
stars wars is somewhat vague how different races develop the “force” or where it came from other than your “mitochondria does it”, also they have “space witchs” using actual magic.
Star wars is more sci- drama/fantasy, than scifi, DISNEY just ruined the franchise. sg1 and trek is more like sci-tech, adding elements of all the other stuff.
i prefer them leaning into the sci-tech side, with element of good writing story telling. instead of tropes like with nutrek.
sci-fantasy books might be different from film.
stargate trys to develop the stories behind certain tech, how they work.
I like harder sci-fi. Very often it will explore “what if it’s like now, but this one thing is different?” You get to explore the human condition a bit more that way.
Softer sci-fi tends to be just fantasy that refuses to say the word “magic” out of pure marketing, and they end up being either the same old hero’s journey told and retold in current generation’s slang, or sloppily handled allegory.
It’s fine to like harder sci-fi, but don’t denigrate soft sci-fi just because you don’t like it. Soft scifi is no sloppier in allegory than hard sci-fi is. There are only 7 stories.
I like heavy sci, heavy fi and balanced sci-fi as long as its good storeytelling.
yes this, thats why old trek and stargate were good, not sgu 1st season though, thats why the original showrunners for stargate were hesitent to make another show/series, because of things like what amazon wanted , to turn into something like nutrek is what im guessing, good thing it never went through, otherwise it would be a disaster worst than sgu.
What I realized I like is the world building.
Only if it’s written organically.
I tried to read Lord of the Rings/A Song Of Fire and Ice and skipped parts where it was 20 pages about the lore. Granted, they are written in a compelling way. But I’m tired of it, especially in the hands of weaker writers. And sci Fi authors have a LOT of them.
Rock-hard science fiction for me.
🥴🥴🥴
Ah. An Arthur C. Clarke man of wit and discretion, I see.
This is a long-running conflict.
Honestly the only Bradbury novel I’ve read so far was Fahrenheit 451 (I loved it). That’s probably not sci fi, because tho it is set in the future, the futuristic elements which couldn’t exist today are spoke about in vague terms and it’s more a story of highlighting what’s wrong with our current society by extrapolating where it will go from here
Woke up this morning thinking about Bradbury. The Martian Chronicles is kind of an Edda for Mars, and an obvious point of inspiration for the Big Man folklore in KSR’s Mars trilogy.