Hard Sci-fi or Soft?

Which do you prefer, Hard Sci-fi or Soft?

  • Yes, I want to know exactly how dilithium crystals work

    Votes: 22 48.9%

  • F*** tachyon emitters, I want some action!

    Votes: 17 37.8%

  • Saruke needs to take his meds

    Votes: 6 13.3%
  • Total voters
    45
Saruke

Saruke

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I got the idea for this thread from a previous discussion and decided to dedicate a thread to debating the issue of whether, as a reader, you like technical descriptions of futuristic devices or find them boring and meaningless?

Enjoy.
 
Hard.

But I didn't really read science fiction so.
 
I think I prefer hard sci-fi, but I like it soft too.
 
Good hard sci-fi: when the author knows his/her stuff, but is tactful enough to only tell us what we need to know, and not show off/bore us to death with unneccessary detail.
 
Wait, does soft mean less action and more description?
 
Well, I like the sci-fi that goes into super detail, which ever that is.
 
soft science fiction uses advanced tech and futuristic stuff as a setting for focusing on other themes.

A reasonable comparison is Hard sci-fi being the mechanic and soft being just someone who drives a car.
 
@ zombie: That's hard. Like me.

@ Saruke: WRONG--well, not exactly, anyway.
Wikipeedo said:
Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both.
Click to expand...
 
Viperidae said:
@ zombie: That's hard. Like me.

@ Saruke: WRONG--well, not exactly, anyway.
Click to expand...

..... how is that not exactly what I said?

and ummm why are you taking wikipedia's word as truth?

thats just some random person's definition who may or may not know what their talking about.
 
I thought the definition was dependent on the sciences used - you know, 'hard' being SCIENCE science, and 'soft' being the humanities and social sciences.

But then I don't read much sci-fi anyway.
 
Soft. Most hard sci-fi fails at science.
 
Soft. Hard Science-Fiction tends to explore ideas at the expense of characters and (at times) plot. To me plot and character should take first priority over scientific accuracy, having said I have limits and it's annoying when things are terribly inaccurate.
But it's not like I can't enjoy hard science-fiction - I enjoy the works of Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov for example.

BTW I voted "Saruke needs to take his meds" because I don't see why soft sci-fi should be equated with "action"
 
Viperidae said:
Good hard sci-fi: when the author knows his/her stuff, but is tactful enough to only tell us what we need to know, and not show off/bore us to death with unneccessary detail.
Click to expand...
Exactly. The reader generally only needs to know information that relates to the story.

And if you do want to describe something anyway, show the reader rather than boring them with a chunk of description. If you show your characters using the item in a certain way the reader should get the idea.

It helps to give the item a non-stupidly-sci-fi name too. Like the "mood organ" in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" You could take a decent guess at what it was without knowing anything about it.
 
I'm disheartened by the unpopularity of option C....
 
You know, I always subconsciously classify hard and soft sci-fi as realistic and unrealistic, though I've heard definitions that make more sense.
 
I've not read much sci-fi but my favourite sci-fi book is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which is, I guess, soft. So I'll vote soft.
 
I really expected some erection jokes...

I don't mind hard sci-fi if it doesn't detract from the story
 
Overall hard scifi has given me more pleasure, but my favorite scifi books are soft.
 
Personally, I like it Hard and ten times a night and find it odd that you're all saying that there's less action when it's Hard and more when it's Soft.
Corp. Sheepo said:
I really expected some erection jokes...
Click to expand...
Oh, we're much too mature for that.
 
The amount of detail should be whatever is appropriate to the story. I don't care as long as they don't explain things with concepts that are impossible or flat out wrong. This means that ignorant authors have to keep details minimal because they don't know anything, but well researched authors have the opportunity to put greater detail where it is needed.
 
the taglines connected to the choices are supposed to be jokes!

Bad ones, but jokes not the literal derfinition of the concept!

Sheesh!
 
Both.
I enjoy hard sci-fi books by Arthur C. Clarke or Stanislaw Lem but I also love soft sci-fi by P.K. Dick.
 
I killed the thread.

I don't know whether or not that implies that my joke 'killed'.
 
I prefer middle-hard. Kind of. Take the Terminator movies for example. You see these flying, rolling, and walking machines in the few post-apocalyptic scenes in the movies, and you kind of start wondering how they work and what their purposes are. At least I did. Stuff like how the sole reason the Terminators have those evil grins is due to tests on TechCom prisoners, etc. That kind of stuff is pretty interesting, leaves you to construct some more stuff in your imagination, and might even inspire you to write some of your own -- To build upon what they've laid the foundation for.
 
I would have thought of Terminator as entirly soft sci-fi.
 
I haven't much experience of hard sci-fi but since one of my favourite authors is Vernor Vinge, who writes sci-fi that is sufficiently stiff to be called 'hard', then I think I have to go with hard sci-fi.

I have read some other hard sci-fi which leads me to suspect that it's a term too often used to be synonymous with poor characterisation and over use of flashy jargon intended to confuse the reader. Vinge, however, pitches it perfectly IMO. He explores the potential real world implications of common sci-fi concepts while still maintaining excellent characterisation and narrative drive.

For example, one of his recent novels dealt with the hackneyed sci-fi concept of an encounter between two alien civilisations - one human (the visitors), and one a bizarre arachnid derivative. Throughout the book the alien homeworld is described vividly from the perspective of the 'spiders', until the humans show up and it is described as a shabby mess of dark reds and browns - a clever way of exploring the cultural confusions that could arise between species that see in different colour spectrums. The linguistic clashes are explored in a great deal of depth too, and it was the first time I'd ever been introduced to terms like 'voiced alveolar plosive' without immediately tuning out due to disinterest.

Having said all that, the book is essentially a character study and slow burning revenge tale about one of the characters on the human side. I like books that use the in-depth science as a backdrop to something greater, although it can also be a winning formula for the scientific concepts themselves (and how the characters deal with them) to be the main draw...
 
All sci-fi stories do not fall into hard and soft categories. When you say hard sci-fi or soft sci-fi your describing the extreme ends of the spectrum such as Do androids dream of electric sheep or The bicentennial man.


These are just two specific genres that only a few books fall into, not every single one.
 
Not entirely true... In my experience the term 'soft' sci-fi tends to be used to refer to any sci-fi which can't be described as 'hard' sci-fi. As such you have 'hard' sci-fi, and then you have any other sci-fi. Having a soft->medium->hard banding would be a bit too anal even for sci-fi...
 
I like to know how things work in the future, but I also like to see that Humanity hasn't changed one bit, with a lot of conflict and grit
 
I like to know how the technology works, even if it isn't scientifically accurate. Good sci-fi will present an explanation for the way things work that seems plausible enough to work, to the layman. Even something as simple as a fictional new scientific discipline or theory.

Techno jargen and babble will work if properly used. "Modify the phase variance"? yeah... okay.
 
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