Hard Science Fiction

What is Hard Science Fiction?

To put it simply … well, it’s science fiction so we won’t really be able to put it simply; however, hard sci-fi is a science fiction subgenre that concentrates on relating stories from a correct scientific perspective and an attention to technological detail. Other common themes are well researched arguments that are tied to hard sciences and an inclination for militaristic masculine values.

This being said the subgenre has two major characteristics. The first is a varying degree of flexibility given to help the story make sense. Some speculative element of science, some technological advance that hasn’t happened in real life as of yet, something of that sort that represents the backbone of the story, an axiom that is unquestionable and if taken out or questioned makes the whole story collapse.

The second would be the rigorous attention to scientific detail and the logical repercussions of accepting the first characteristic. In other words, where some sci-fi stories can go on about dinosaurs with laser guns attached to their heads battling those pesky half shark people that flew from the Gladeron universe, hard science fiction will enable some sort of scientific gain like time travel or traveling with the speed of light; however, everything that follows will be a scrupulous, realistic description of what a world with those scientific gains would look like. It will explain every step in great detail and expand on the scientific gains with technical jargon.

Some famous books that you might have read without knowing they are hard science fiction are Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea” and Isaac Asimov’s “I, Robot” or Arthur C. Clark’s “Fountains of Paradise”, stories that aside from a slight stretch of science follow a credible and logical narrative thread.

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