The way you wrote it sounds like soft sci-fi. If it's a fusion reactor that uses known materials in a plausibly realistic way, that's hard sci-fi. At least based on my understanding that the general consensus is fusion reactors probably are viable, we just haven't worked out how to get there yet. But if it's just vague technobabble that could be replaced with "A Wizard Did It" to turn it into a fantasy setting, then it's soft sci-fi. I'd also note that the "hardness" of sci-fi elements exist on a gradient, & you can easily have a story where some plot points are harder & others are softer.
It should ne noted that you are NOT using the sci-fi scale of the science continum, but substituting Sanderson's rules for it.
In sci-fi lit the hardness or softness depends on the sciences being discussed. Chemistry and physics are applied mathmatics and very hard sceinces. Social sciences are much softer and more theoretical. Biological sciences are somewhere inbetween either of those. The hardness or softness relates to the science at the heart of the fiction.
The actual sci-fi system existed for a century before Sanderson decided his fantasy system was better.
....
Just FYI, I've been blocked (and I suspect reported?!) for the unedited above replys. Silnce and smear campaign is appatently the goal, so here's the additional reply he'd like to silence:
At this point I have lost track with the block and the posts that I can no longer read. I would not be surprised if they've been edited, so I don't actually know what he's claiming anymore.
A 5 second search will give you any result on the internet you desire, that doesn't actually make it real, relevant or used in the community.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_science_fiction
I've taken whole courses on sci-fi lit. Theirs plenty of room for interpretation, and the classes I took were decades ago, but I'm still finding what I'm talking about with a 2sec search on google.
I'm using a [very commonly accepted](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction) definition.[Apparently](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_science_fiction), the guy who coined the term "soft science fiction" did mean it the way you suggest, but he also wrote that it's an imprecise term, & many sources give both definitions. I also can't find any evidence Sanderson came up with the distinction I gave. All attempts just lead to his hard & soft *magic systems* definition, which he appears to have based off of a preexisting concept for science fiction.
I guess it's possible he did it somewhere that's just not coming up, but I don't really see why it matters who came up with it. The question is how useful it is. To that, the "soft sci-fi" examples I'm seeing largely have no connection to the social sciences beyond being about "exploring the human condition," which is the vaguest, most nebulous thing I've ever heard. The definition I provided maps onto them anyway but is much clearer.
No. It's existed in science fiction literary circles for more than a century, and has been a reference to the types of sciences involved since the early days.
Sanderson took the idea, referenced it as a 'sci-fi' term in the lectures on his "laws" and ignored the century of history related to its meaning. Its in his lecture series on youtube.
Within Science fiction that distinction is very useful.
Within fantasy not so much.
Thats likely why Sanderson made the choices he did, but supplanting fantasy elements over sci-fi literature and erasing it's framework & lexicon doesn't help anyone. It disrupts and undermines sci-fi as a whole, and only further devides the communities. Its also an easy way to get oneself dismissed by sci-fi, as a fantasy writer instead.
Again, its a system we have been actively using to catalog and organise fiction for a hundred years.
I'm not saying you can't use those terms but thats it can be important to differentiate especially if you want to be taken seriously in sci-fi circles. Inpart because of dismissive fantasy writers erasing sci-fi's methology and actual history.
You ignored the evidence I provided, frankly don't seem to have even read what I said, and are just repeating your claim about Sanderson without evidence. This is very obviously bad faith. And I do not feel like giving you a strike three.
Well what about them applying what we consider quantum theory with full applications?
If we can't fully explain it, should we still consider it hard sci fi?
And if they have a completely different explanation of that same concept which is simply not directly explainable with what we have researched about quantum theory, but something they can grasp
Then would that still be a violation of hard sci fi?
Simply speaking, we don't get it yet but they do, and even then they can't explain it directly to us because there's a huge comprehension gap
But its still very much functioning on quantum theory
As before, it's soft sci-fi if it can be functionally replaced with "a wizard did it." In the MCU, Ant-Man's technology supposedly runs on "quantum theory," but that really amounts to nothing more than the writers saying "quantum" & "atoms move closer together." There's no actual reason to believe the Pym Effect would really work. Functionally, Ant-Man is just doing magic with a thin coat of technobabble paint.
Certainly, nobody would expect you to explain the exact machinery that makes a viable nuclear fusion reactor work because nobody DOES know how to make that work. But hypothetically, most nuclear physicists would look at the idea & say, "Yeah, that will probably exist some day." That's what makes it hard sci-fi. If the aliens' technology is "so advanced they can't even begin explaining it to us," then it sounds like a case of a "sufficiently advanced technology that is indistinguishable from magic," which makes it soft sci-fi.
I would argue it can still be far off but hard sci-fi, or at least fairly hard. For example, we know antimatter can be produced, we know in large quantities it could be the key to accelerating at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, & we don't know of any hard limit that would prevent us from making that much if we had better technology. So, even though we're nowhere near doing it, we have the grounds to argue that an antimatter engine is legitimately scientifically viable.
But compare this to something like how the Planet Express ship flies faster than light by "moving the universe around it:" Amazingly, there is some science that tentatively suggests it could be possible. However, this relies on some pretty dubious physics, including that the ship would be able to use either the mass of Jupiter or whatever the hell negative mass is (other than something we have no evidence of & no reason to suspect actually exists). So, now we're getting into much less plausible (i.e. more soft) territory.
>hypothetically, most nuclear physicists would look at the idea & say, "Yeah, that will probably exist some day."
lets say humans dont have the resources
but these E.T.s do, so now they can practically do what we've only been theorising
but now that's really where the problem arises
if we don't have the resources how are we supposed to know the steps to build from the ground up?
lets say i invent something dependent on quantum teleportation
now it follows all what we know about that concept
EXCEPT do i really need to apply every single thing we know about quantum teleportation so far to write it down?
If i rather just let the creator use their alien resources to build something that may really not end up resembling whatever human progress will achieve
then is that error justifiable?
because honestly speaking if i were to research and write out something myself on anything based on this concept i would still be making something super innacurate
but if it's really just alien resources and material, it would still not break whatever logic humans research about quantum teleportationright?
You're pitching soft sci-fi. The point of soft sci-fi is the license to make things up. The point of hard sci-fi is it's expected you'll do a lot of research to make it as accurate as you can. There are no upsides to writing soft sci-fi & calling it hard sci-fi because you're going to attract readers who expect hard sci-fi but can see they're getting soft sci-fi.
Tell you what. Look up a guy on YouTube called Isaac Arthur. It's not really a writing channel, & I'm not going to tell you everything he talks about makes for a compelling narrative, but if you watch at least a few of his videos on something like space colonization or mind uploading or some other sci-fi trope, that's in the ballpark of what hard sci-fi is.
If you find that stuff is what you want to write about, well there you go, & now you'll also have a resource to start with. If not, you should really just accept that you want to write soft sci-fi. It's hardly unpopular. Star Wars, Dune, The Twilight Zone, all of those are soft sci-fi.
if thats the next best thing i guess ill look into the youtube channel
but honestly speaking i dont wish to write scientific fantasy, i just don't have a fully educated idea of how to take this real scientific concept and put it through the lens of an alien creation which would not resemble a human creation but still follow the laws of one
Hard Sci Fi isn't "real technologies only >:(". Then it wouldn't really be science fiction. You'd just be writing a fiction story set in space or something. The genre is inherently speculative.
"Hard" science fiction relies on sound theories with a scientific basis. We know nuclear fusion exists, so a fusion reactor is hard scifi. Actually, go a step further, we know antimatter exists so an antimatter reactor is hard scifi.
Quantum mechanics is based on sound scientific theories, so as long as you don't use it as a buzzword to justify something like time travel, hard SF.
so making a teleporter based on quantum teleportation, but the design of such teleporter is completely alien, probably nothing resembling a real human teleporter whenever that may come in the near future
then would that still be scientifically sound? cause as far as i can concieve if aliens have unique assets they wouldnt be limited to what appears to be just like a human design
and truth be told, i dont know jackshit on how a quantum teleporter would look, i barely delve into this realm at all, I just want it to justify the technology, and i want it to justify it very logically
I just don't know if i could include it without looking like I'm writing complete magic portals
Well would the portal from the game itself not be scientifically sound?
If that can be justified so can this?
By the way the idea is to take an object (not on the scale of a literal quantum particle)
keep it at position A, let it be subjected to quantum teleportation and recieve it at B
no cloning or anything, just what seems to support the concept itself, its just that simple idea but i dont know what its execution is
I’d say yes. Here’s how: don’t try to explain anything about the aliens. Keep the POV and focus on the humans. Look at “Arrival.” How do the aliens travel? The time loop nature of their language and lives? Don’t know. That’s plenty hard sf.
So simply keeping it ambiguous still makes it hard sci fi?
But what if i want to make the technology a part of it
Which needs to be used but in terms of understanding its beyond our grasp as of now
If you insist on defining it as staying strictly within the bounds of currently known science, then "hard science fiction" is something that barely even exists
It would allow only for extremely near future stories that play it so conservative with speculation that they're barely even science fiction at all
That's not what most well-regarded writers whose works are considered hard sci-fi do *at all*
Why do you want to "adhere to hard science fiction" and does that mean to you?
i guess that the term science fiction itself is kinda self contradictory
but then again, some things won't remain just like our world in a story
>Why do you want to "adhere to hard science fiction" and does that mean to you?
as of now, i have E.T.s in my story, as i mentioned before, and they're intelligent and just like us
only difference being they have unique and various powerful resources
Gives them an advantage over us in the realm of scientific progression obviously
But for that reason i wouldnt give up scientific accuracy just to create wonderful alien inventions. No, that's not the objective
And to be honest this story isnt even "science fiction" its DRAMA
And its from the perspective of a human and not E.T.s at all
But even then, i refuse to just make aliens do alien magic
It belittles their existence and intelligence
So i hope that i can at least make sure we're not breaking scientific facts and following potential facts/current theories in order to explain alien creations
The fiction part simply arrives from the fact they're not exactly real enough to witness by our own eyes
Well, have you heard of Clarke's third law?
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".
This is less a "break out of jail free" card and more of an inevitability of writing science fiction. If we knew exactly how to create miraculous futuristic technologies, we would have those miraculous futuristic technologies already.
What you can do if you want (and this is what most "hard science fiction" writers do) is use currently known science as a point of departure from where to start your creative endeavours. You will still be writing magic, necessarily, but this will be magic built on top of scientific reality.
So, do your research, and then when you don't know how to get from A to B (let's say you need a super-powerful energy source as you mentioned), just make something up. Keeping things vague in strategic parts is key to giving it an air of plausibility.
in that sense soft sci fi seems to be purely magical if hard sci fi itself seems to break away from its origin
or so i think, but i believe hard sci fi should involve anything explainable by science, even if not completely explainable, but at least science shouldnt prove it wrong
When those terms first started to be used "soft sci-fi" referred to works that explored more social and psychological themes, like Frank Herbert's Dune and the works of Usula K. Le Guin, which were contrasted with more traditional golden age sci-fi (Azimov, Clarke, etc.) that put the scientific and technological aspects front and centre. It was about focus, mostly. I personally think that's a more tenable definition.
But in any case, can you give me an example of a book you would consider hard science fiction? Because, as I said, works that stay strictly within the bounds of currently known science or venture away from it very little are extremely rare, and barely even science fiction at all.
Arthur C. Clarke was one of the first writers whose work was given the hard sci-fi label, and he wrote the law I cited above. Greg Egan, who is frequently said to write the "hardest" science fiction out there, makes up entire scientific theories for his books
So would it be hypocritical to simply explain whatever seems simple enough to do so but to avoid going deep into concepts which me, or the reader or a professional haven't uncovered?
Because that seems really prejudiced right? And then i should completely avoid explaining it at all, but then i will completely lose the opportunity for a character to get even a bit familiar with the technology which surrounds them
'Hypocritical'? 'Prejudiced'? Those are some strong words to use lol
No, you will never be able to fully explain to your readers the workings of alien technologies that are beyond humanity's current level of understanding. That is inherently impossible
So there's no harm in keeping things vague where you need them to be
And of course you can explain the parts of it that your human characters eventually come to understand
well thank you for at least making me come to terms with that
if i went ahead and asked family or people round me, they look at me like i'm a madman no matter what i discuss with them
this is far from what i'd ask them.. sometimes i just gotta head to the internet to get my own concerns explained out
(This may come off as telling you off, but I'm trying to get to the heart of it instead of meandering...)
If you aren't going to do the research into the science, then it'll be impossible to write hard sci-fi. Because hard sci-fi is defined by its accuracy to real science. Without knowing that real science, you can't put the real science into the book. That's about all there is to it.
That said, if you look at things like the Expanse books, there's a whole lot of weird alien stuff that no one understands and is more likely to just be made up. But it's not presented in a way that is meant to be understood and brushed past like "It's a warp reactor (shrug) what do you want from me?" It's presented as something beyond human science, and beyond our capability to understand it with science. It's not brushed over, it's a mystery that cannot be explained.
Maybe you can use that method, I don't know.
From the perspective of a writer, "hard" and "soft" science in sci-fi are really just tools to be used for the sake of your characters and plot, and they are not mutually exclusive. Almost every sci-fi ever written (with maybe the exception of The Martian) will have at least a little of each, because that is the nature of the genre. Technically, the moment you say "aliens have better technology than us because they have a better understanding of the universe" or "aliens can build better technology because their planet has materials that can't be found on Earth", you've introduced an element of soft science into your story because we can't know things we haven't discovered yet, or predict the existence of materials we have yet to find/invent. But there is nothing wrong with that. As long as you keep the science mostly internally consistent, and remember that it is there in service of the plot and characters, having a little of both is perfectly fine and even kind of expected.
Well said to be honest
I should just keep the science meaningful enough to be interpreted correct
and nothing beyond that, after all I'm writing more of a drama and less of a sci fi
in fact it's ridiculously a comedy
It's hard science for what humans do, soft for aliens. If you want to bother breaking it down.
In my first book, I had the humans stuck at the limits of current tech, but with huge resources. I allowed myself one cheat, an alcubierre drive that allowed FTL travel. Not instant, but years instead of millennia to go from star to star. Outside of that, everything being used was within the capability of modern science. I used the Atomic Rockets website to check into the harder science and make it all realistic.
Aliens, however...they had super fast FTL, anti-gravity, all that fun stuff. Trick was that the alien civilization was millions of years old. Every time they try to explain how it works to humans, it just makes no sense, because their culture has certain kinds of deep reference points we just don't have the background to understand yet. The aliens just shrug, and start to explain it in more simple terms, but it's still over our heads. We'll figure it out, but we have millennia of basic work to do first.
So in book one, we just have the POV character living and interacting in his hard science world, and every once in a while aliens zip by, and everyone just goes: "those things are weird." But society is still built on interactions with those aliens, so...it's a cool future, IMHO.
Book two has a character being taught by the aliens how to take the next tech step, and that was just a bundle of fun to write.
So I'd say have weird alien tech and don't bother to explain it. Not sure what your story is, but the interactions between weird alien and hard science should give you about a million interesting side stories in your setting.
Have you read “Project Hail Mary?” The main character comes across a solid object made of pure Xenon. He’s confused because Xenon is a noble gas and therefore *cannot* be a solid, but yet there it is. It boggles his mind, but he chalks it up to even Earth’s smartest minds not 100% understanding physics and chemistry. So we never find out why Xenon is somehow able to do the impossible, but we learn to accept it as an unexplained property above our level of understanding. Maybe one day the main character will find out, maybe not. It’s never explained further, but we the reader accept it because things are weird in outer space and the main character is a smart scientist who knows things.
In “The Martian” by the same author, the Hermes spaceship is able to transport humans from Earth to Mars in only six months using an ion engine, a new technology from NASA. The ion engine is not a real thing, but the main character mentions it in an offhand way as if it’s obvious that firing ion engines are a thing. Who am I, a liberal arts millennial, to question NASA and an astronaut about their future technology?
That’s all to say, if you demonstrate a fairly strong grasp of science in your book, you can stretch it to create new technology and chalk it up to 2024 humans not knowing how it works yet, but future humans and advanced alien races know how it works. Of course this unbreakable glass is real. We invented it decades ago, but I won’t bore you with the details of the thousands of hours it takes to melt and buff and shatter-proof each individual atom of the glass. Just know that my uncle works there and so that’s why I got some cheap for our space ship.
Also, back to “Project Hail Mary,” they are able to create a space ship that can travel close to the speed of light. How? They discover an alien microorganism that travels near the speed of light if given access to carbon dioxide. Suddenly it makes sense to stick a bunch of those microorganisms in an engine with a supply of carbon dioxide just out of reach so that as the billions of them all collectively try to migrate near the speed of light towards it, they also move the ship in the process and thus allow passengers to quickly travel to different solar systems.
It’s your world, so you can create new previously undiscovered organisms and materials from distant stars and planets that somehow allow this technology to exist. Just let the reader know that A+B=C in this world and 99% will accept it. Did you know there’s a radioactive planet near a distant star with unique purple dust on it that, if snorted by cancer patients, will kill all their cancer cells and cure them within a month. Why does that work? Because scientists found it and tested it and it worked. Radiation dust + scientific method = new technology.
So ... it's possible, you just might end up being wrong. Hard science fiction requires the rules to be explicit and consistent, there's nothing saying those rules have to be technically accurate. An example of this is how comic book characters get power when exposed to gamma rays or radioactive waste. It's explicit and internally consistent. It's just wrong. Jump in gamma rays and radioactive wastes and you wont' get super powers, unless you count dying quickly afterwards as a superpower.
Another example, closer to what you're talking about, would probably be element zero and mass effect fields from Mass Effect. It's complete nonsense, scientifically, but it follows explicitly explained rules that are consistent.
The way you wrote it sounds like soft sci-fi. If it's a fusion reactor that uses known materials in a plausibly realistic way, that's hard sci-fi. At least based on my understanding that the general consensus is fusion reactors probably are viable, we just haven't worked out how to get there yet. But if it's just vague technobabble that could be replaced with "A Wizard Did It" to turn it into a fantasy setting, then it's soft sci-fi. I'd also note that the "hardness" of sci-fi elements exist on a gradient, & you can easily have a story where some plot points are harder & others are softer.
It should ne noted that you are NOT using the sci-fi scale of the science continum, but substituting Sanderson's rules for it. In sci-fi lit the hardness or softness depends on the sciences being discussed. Chemistry and physics are applied mathmatics and very hard sceinces. Social sciences are much softer and more theoretical. Biological sciences are somewhere inbetween either of those. The hardness or softness relates to the science at the heart of the fiction. The actual sci-fi system existed for a century before Sanderson decided his fantasy system was better. .... Just FYI, I've been blocked (and I suspect reported?!) for the unedited above replys. Silnce and smear campaign is appatently the goal, so here's the additional reply he'd like to silence: At this point I have lost track with the block and the posts that I can no longer read. I would not be surprised if they've been edited, so I don't actually know what he's claiming anymore. A 5 second search will give you any result on the internet you desire, that doesn't actually make it real, relevant or used in the community. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_science_fiction I've taken whole courses on sci-fi lit. Theirs plenty of room for interpretation, and the classes I took were decades ago, but I'm still finding what I'm talking about with a 2sec search on google.
I'm using a [very commonly accepted](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction) definition.[Apparently](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_science_fiction), the guy who coined the term "soft science fiction" did mean it the way you suggest, but he also wrote that it's an imprecise term, & many sources give both definitions. I also can't find any evidence Sanderson came up with the distinction I gave. All attempts just lead to his hard & soft *magic systems* definition, which he appears to have based off of a preexisting concept for science fiction. I guess it's possible he did it somewhere that's just not coming up, but I don't really see why it matters who came up with it. The question is how useful it is. To that, the "soft sci-fi" examples I'm seeing largely have no connection to the social sciences beyond being about "exploring the human condition," which is the vaguest, most nebulous thing I've ever heard. The definition I provided maps onto them anyway but is much clearer.
No. It's existed in science fiction literary circles for more than a century, and has been a reference to the types of sciences involved since the early days. Sanderson took the idea, referenced it as a 'sci-fi' term in the lectures on his "laws" and ignored the century of history related to its meaning. Its in his lecture series on youtube. Within Science fiction that distinction is very useful. Within fantasy not so much. Thats likely why Sanderson made the choices he did, but supplanting fantasy elements over sci-fi literature and erasing it's framework & lexicon doesn't help anyone. It disrupts and undermines sci-fi as a whole, and only further devides the communities. Its also an easy way to get oneself dismissed by sci-fi, as a fantasy writer instead. Again, its a system we have been actively using to catalog and organise fiction for a hundred years. I'm not saying you can't use those terms but thats it can be important to differentiate especially if you want to be taken seriously in sci-fi circles. Inpart because of dismissive fantasy writers erasing sci-fi's methology and actual history.
You ignored the evidence I provided, frankly don't seem to have even read what I said, and are just repeating your claim about Sanderson without evidence. This is very obviously bad faith. And I do not feel like giving you a strike three.
That is not true, hard sci fi is sci fi based in real scientific principles, you can literally spend 5 seconds on Google to find that out
Well what about them applying what we consider quantum theory with full applications? If we can't fully explain it, should we still consider it hard sci fi? And if they have a completely different explanation of that same concept which is simply not directly explainable with what we have researched about quantum theory, but something they can grasp Then would that still be a violation of hard sci fi? Simply speaking, we don't get it yet but they do, and even then they can't explain it directly to us because there's a huge comprehension gap But its still very much functioning on quantum theory
As before, it's soft sci-fi if it can be functionally replaced with "a wizard did it." In the MCU, Ant-Man's technology supposedly runs on "quantum theory," but that really amounts to nothing more than the writers saying "quantum" & "atoms move closer together." There's no actual reason to believe the Pym Effect would really work. Functionally, Ant-Man is just doing magic with a thin coat of technobabble paint. Certainly, nobody would expect you to explain the exact machinery that makes a viable nuclear fusion reactor work because nobody DOES know how to make that work. But hypothetically, most nuclear physicists would look at the idea & say, "Yeah, that will probably exist some day." That's what makes it hard sci-fi. If the aliens' technology is "so advanced they can't even begin explaining it to us," then it sounds like a case of a "sufficiently advanced technology that is indistinguishable from magic," which makes it soft sci-fi. I would argue it can still be far off but hard sci-fi, or at least fairly hard. For example, we know antimatter can be produced, we know in large quantities it could be the key to accelerating at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, & we don't know of any hard limit that would prevent us from making that much if we had better technology. So, even though we're nowhere near doing it, we have the grounds to argue that an antimatter engine is legitimately scientifically viable. But compare this to something like how the Planet Express ship flies faster than light by "moving the universe around it:" Amazingly, there is some science that tentatively suggests it could be possible. However, this relies on some pretty dubious physics, including that the ship would be able to use either the mass of Jupiter or whatever the hell negative mass is (other than something we have no evidence of & no reason to suspect actually exists). So, now we're getting into much less plausible (i.e. more soft) territory.
>hypothetically, most nuclear physicists would look at the idea & say, "Yeah, that will probably exist some day." lets say humans dont have the resources but these E.T.s do, so now they can practically do what we've only been theorising but now that's really where the problem arises if we don't have the resources how are we supposed to know the steps to build from the ground up? lets say i invent something dependent on quantum teleportation now it follows all what we know about that concept EXCEPT do i really need to apply every single thing we know about quantum teleportation so far to write it down? If i rather just let the creator use their alien resources to build something that may really not end up resembling whatever human progress will achieve then is that error justifiable? because honestly speaking if i were to research and write out something myself on anything based on this concept i would still be making something super innacurate but if it's really just alien resources and material, it would still not break whatever logic humans research about quantum teleportationright?
You're pitching soft sci-fi. The point of soft sci-fi is the license to make things up. The point of hard sci-fi is it's expected you'll do a lot of research to make it as accurate as you can. There are no upsides to writing soft sci-fi & calling it hard sci-fi because you're going to attract readers who expect hard sci-fi but can see they're getting soft sci-fi. Tell you what. Look up a guy on YouTube called Isaac Arthur. It's not really a writing channel, & I'm not going to tell you everything he talks about makes for a compelling narrative, but if you watch at least a few of his videos on something like space colonization or mind uploading or some other sci-fi trope, that's in the ballpark of what hard sci-fi is. If you find that stuff is what you want to write about, well there you go, & now you'll also have a resource to start with. If not, you should really just accept that you want to write soft sci-fi. It's hardly unpopular. Star Wars, Dune, The Twilight Zone, all of those are soft sci-fi.
if thats the next best thing i guess ill look into the youtube channel but honestly speaking i dont wish to write scientific fantasy, i just don't have a fully educated idea of how to take this real scientific concept and put it through the lens of an alien creation which would not resemble a human creation but still follow the laws of one
Hard Sci Fi isn't "real technologies only >:(". Then it wouldn't really be science fiction. You'd just be writing a fiction story set in space or something. The genre is inherently speculative. "Hard" science fiction relies on sound theories with a scientific basis. We know nuclear fusion exists, so a fusion reactor is hard scifi. Actually, go a step further, we know antimatter exists so an antimatter reactor is hard scifi. Quantum mechanics is based on sound scientific theories, so as long as you don't use it as a buzzword to justify something like time travel, hard SF.
so making a teleporter based on quantum teleportation, but the design of such teleporter is completely alien, probably nothing resembling a real human teleporter whenever that may come in the near future then would that still be scientifically sound? cause as far as i can concieve if aliens have unique assets they wouldnt be limited to what appears to be just like a human design and truth be told, i dont know jackshit on how a quantum teleporter would look, i barely delve into this realm at all, I just want it to justify the technology, and i want it to justify it very logically I just don't know if i could include it without looking like I'm writing complete magic portals Well would the portal from the game itself not be scientifically sound? If that can be justified so can this? By the way the idea is to take an object (not on the scale of a literal quantum particle) keep it at position A, let it be subjected to quantum teleportation and recieve it at B no cloning or anything, just what seems to support the concept itself, its just that simple idea but i dont know what its execution is
I’d say yes. Here’s how: don’t try to explain anything about the aliens. Keep the POV and focus on the humans. Look at “Arrival.” How do the aliens travel? The time loop nature of their language and lives? Don’t know. That’s plenty hard sf.
So simply keeping it ambiguous still makes it hard sci fi? But what if i want to make the technology a part of it Which needs to be used but in terms of understanding its beyond our grasp as of now
Hard science fiction is still fiction. Go read Three Body Problem. It's extremely fantastical and largely considered hard Sci fi.
when you're writing\*
If you insist on defining it as staying strictly within the bounds of currently known science, then "hard science fiction" is something that barely even exists It would allow only for extremely near future stories that play it so conservative with speculation that they're barely even science fiction at all That's not what most well-regarded writers whose works are considered hard sci-fi do *at all* Why do you want to "adhere to hard science fiction" and does that mean to you?
i guess that the term science fiction itself is kinda self contradictory but then again, some things won't remain just like our world in a story >Why do you want to "adhere to hard science fiction" and does that mean to you? as of now, i have E.T.s in my story, as i mentioned before, and they're intelligent and just like us only difference being they have unique and various powerful resources Gives them an advantage over us in the realm of scientific progression obviously But for that reason i wouldnt give up scientific accuracy just to create wonderful alien inventions. No, that's not the objective And to be honest this story isnt even "science fiction" its DRAMA And its from the perspective of a human and not E.T.s at all But even then, i refuse to just make aliens do alien magic It belittles their existence and intelligence So i hope that i can at least make sure we're not breaking scientific facts and following potential facts/current theories in order to explain alien creations The fiction part simply arrives from the fact they're not exactly real enough to witness by our own eyes
Well, have you heard of Clarke's third law? "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". This is less a "break out of jail free" card and more of an inevitability of writing science fiction. If we knew exactly how to create miraculous futuristic technologies, we would have those miraculous futuristic technologies already. What you can do if you want (and this is what most "hard science fiction" writers do) is use currently known science as a point of departure from where to start your creative endeavours. You will still be writing magic, necessarily, but this will be magic built on top of scientific reality. So, do your research, and then when you don't know how to get from A to B (let's say you need a super-powerful energy source as you mentioned), just make something up. Keeping things vague in strategic parts is key to giving it an air of plausibility.
in that sense soft sci fi seems to be purely magical if hard sci fi itself seems to break away from its origin or so i think, but i believe hard sci fi should involve anything explainable by science, even if not completely explainable, but at least science shouldnt prove it wrong
When those terms first started to be used "soft sci-fi" referred to works that explored more social and psychological themes, like Frank Herbert's Dune and the works of Usula K. Le Guin, which were contrasted with more traditional golden age sci-fi (Azimov, Clarke, etc.) that put the scientific and technological aspects front and centre. It was about focus, mostly. I personally think that's a more tenable definition. But in any case, can you give me an example of a book you would consider hard science fiction? Because, as I said, works that stay strictly within the bounds of currently known science or venture away from it very little are extremely rare, and barely even science fiction at all. Arthur C. Clarke was one of the first writers whose work was given the hard sci-fi label, and he wrote the law I cited above. Greg Egan, who is frequently said to write the "hardest" science fiction out there, makes up entire scientific theories for his books
So would it be hypocritical to simply explain whatever seems simple enough to do so but to avoid going deep into concepts which me, or the reader or a professional haven't uncovered? Because that seems really prejudiced right? And then i should completely avoid explaining it at all, but then i will completely lose the opportunity for a character to get even a bit familiar with the technology which surrounds them
'Hypocritical'? 'Prejudiced'? Those are some strong words to use lol No, you will never be able to fully explain to your readers the workings of alien technologies that are beyond humanity's current level of understanding. That is inherently impossible So there's no harm in keeping things vague where you need them to be And of course you can explain the parts of it that your human characters eventually come to understand
well thank you for at least making me come to terms with that if i went ahead and asked family or people round me, they look at me like i'm a madman no matter what i discuss with them this is far from what i'd ask them.. sometimes i just gotta head to the internet to get my own concerns explained out
(This may come off as telling you off, but I'm trying to get to the heart of it instead of meandering...) If you aren't going to do the research into the science, then it'll be impossible to write hard sci-fi. Because hard sci-fi is defined by its accuracy to real science. Without knowing that real science, you can't put the real science into the book. That's about all there is to it. That said, if you look at things like the Expanse books, there's a whole lot of weird alien stuff that no one understands and is more likely to just be made up. But it's not presented in a way that is meant to be understood and brushed past like "It's a warp reactor (shrug) what do you want from me?" It's presented as something beyond human science, and beyond our capability to understand it with science. It's not brushed over, it's a mystery that cannot be explained. Maybe you can use that method, I don't know.
exactly what im looking for, informative and thanks to you
From the perspective of a writer, "hard" and "soft" science in sci-fi are really just tools to be used for the sake of your characters and plot, and they are not mutually exclusive. Almost every sci-fi ever written (with maybe the exception of The Martian) will have at least a little of each, because that is the nature of the genre. Technically, the moment you say "aliens have better technology than us because they have a better understanding of the universe" or "aliens can build better technology because their planet has materials that can't be found on Earth", you've introduced an element of soft science into your story because we can't know things we haven't discovered yet, or predict the existence of materials we have yet to find/invent. But there is nothing wrong with that. As long as you keep the science mostly internally consistent, and remember that it is there in service of the plot and characters, having a little of both is perfectly fine and even kind of expected.
Well said to be honest I should just keep the science meaningful enough to be interpreted correct and nothing beyond that, after all I'm writing more of a drama and less of a sci fi in fact it's ridiculously a comedy
It's hard science for what humans do, soft for aliens. If you want to bother breaking it down. In my first book, I had the humans stuck at the limits of current tech, but with huge resources. I allowed myself one cheat, an alcubierre drive that allowed FTL travel. Not instant, but years instead of millennia to go from star to star. Outside of that, everything being used was within the capability of modern science. I used the Atomic Rockets website to check into the harder science and make it all realistic. Aliens, however...they had super fast FTL, anti-gravity, all that fun stuff. Trick was that the alien civilization was millions of years old. Every time they try to explain how it works to humans, it just makes no sense, because their culture has certain kinds of deep reference points we just don't have the background to understand yet. The aliens just shrug, and start to explain it in more simple terms, but it's still over our heads. We'll figure it out, but we have millennia of basic work to do first. So in book one, we just have the POV character living and interacting in his hard science world, and every once in a while aliens zip by, and everyone just goes: "those things are weird." But society is still built on interactions with those aliens, so...it's a cool future, IMHO. Book two has a character being taught by the aliens how to take the next tech step, and that was just a bundle of fun to write. So I'd say have weird alien tech and don't bother to explain it. Not sure what your story is, but the interactions between weird alien and hard science should give you about a million interesting side stories in your setting.
Have you read “Project Hail Mary?” The main character comes across a solid object made of pure Xenon. He’s confused because Xenon is a noble gas and therefore *cannot* be a solid, but yet there it is. It boggles his mind, but he chalks it up to even Earth’s smartest minds not 100% understanding physics and chemistry. So we never find out why Xenon is somehow able to do the impossible, but we learn to accept it as an unexplained property above our level of understanding. Maybe one day the main character will find out, maybe not. It’s never explained further, but we the reader accept it because things are weird in outer space and the main character is a smart scientist who knows things. In “The Martian” by the same author, the Hermes spaceship is able to transport humans from Earth to Mars in only six months using an ion engine, a new technology from NASA. The ion engine is not a real thing, but the main character mentions it in an offhand way as if it’s obvious that firing ion engines are a thing. Who am I, a liberal arts millennial, to question NASA and an astronaut about their future technology? That’s all to say, if you demonstrate a fairly strong grasp of science in your book, you can stretch it to create new technology and chalk it up to 2024 humans not knowing how it works yet, but future humans and advanced alien races know how it works. Of course this unbreakable glass is real. We invented it decades ago, but I won’t bore you with the details of the thousands of hours it takes to melt and buff and shatter-proof each individual atom of the glass. Just know that my uncle works there and so that’s why I got some cheap for our space ship. Also, back to “Project Hail Mary,” they are able to create a space ship that can travel close to the speed of light. How? They discover an alien microorganism that travels near the speed of light if given access to carbon dioxide. Suddenly it makes sense to stick a bunch of those microorganisms in an engine with a supply of carbon dioxide just out of reach so that as the billions of them all collectively try to migrate near the speed of light towards it, they also move the ship in the process and thus allow passengers to quickly travel to different solar systems. It’s your world, so you can create new previously undiscovered organisms and materials from distant stars and planets that somehow allow this technology to exist. Just let the reader know that A+B=C in this world and 99% will accept it. Did you know there’s a radioactive planet near a distant star with unique purple dust on it that, if snorted by cancer patients, will kill all their cancer cells and cure them within a month. Why does that work? Because scientists found it and tested it and it worked. Radiation dust + scientific method = new technology.
So ... it's possible, you just might end up being wrong. Hard science fiction requires the rules to be explicit and consistent, there's nothing saying those rules have to be technically accurate. An example of this is how comic book characters get power when exposed to gamma rays or radioactive waste. It's explicit and internally consistent. It's just wrong. Jump in gamma rays and radioactive wastes and you wont' get super powers, unless you count dying quickly afterwards as a superpower. Another example, closer to what you're talking about, would probably be element zero and mass effect fields from Mass Effect. It's complete nonsense, scientifically, but it follows explicitly explained rules that are consistent.