- published: 29 Nov 2013
- views: 655
Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific accuracy or technical detail or both. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Islands of Space in Astounding Science Fiction. The complementary term soft science fiction, formed by analogy to hard science fiction, first appeared in the late 1970s. The term is formed by analogy to the popular distinction between the "hard" (natural) and "soft" (social) sciences. Science fiction critic Gary Westfahl argues that neither term is part of a rigorous taxonomy; instead they are approximate ways of characterizing stories that reviewers and commentators have found useful.
Stories revolving around scientific and technical consistency were written as early as the 1870s with the publication of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in 1870 and Around the World in 80 Days in 1873, among other stories. The attention to detail in Verne's work became an inspiration for many future scientists and explorers, although Verne himself denied writing as a scientist or seriously predicting machines and technology of the future.
Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction dealing with imaginative concepts such as futuristic settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, time travel, faster than light travel, parallel universes and extraterrestrial life. Science fiction often explores the potential consequences of scientific and other innovations, and has been called a "literature of ideas." It usually eschews the supernatural, and unlike the related genre of fantasy, historically science fiction stories were intended to have at least a faint grounding in science-based fact or theory at the time the story was created, but this connection has become tenuous or non-existent in much of science fiction.
Science fiction is difficult to define, as it includes a wide range of subgenres and themes. Author and editor Damon Knight summed up the difficulty, saying "science fiction is what we point to when we say it", a definition echoed by author Mark C. Glassy, who argues that the definition of science fiction is like the definition of pornography: you do not know what it is, but you know it when you see it.
Hard science and soft science are colloquial terms used to compare scientific fields on the basis of perceived methodological rigor, exactitude, and objectivity. Roughly speaking, the natural sciences are considered "hard", whereas the social sciences are usually described as "soft".
Precise definitions vary, but features often cited as characteristic of hard science include producing testable predictions, performing controlled experiments, relying on quantifiable data and mathematical models, a high degree of accuracy and objectivity, and generally applying a purer form of the scientific method. A closely related idea (originating in the nineteenth century with Auguste Comte) is that scientific disciplines can be arranged into a hierarchy of hard to soft on the basis of factors such as rigor, "development", and whether they are "theoretical" or "applied", with physics, and chemistry typically being the hardest, biology in an intermediate position, and the social sciences being the softest.
What is Hard Science-Fiction?
Top 5 Underrated Sci-Fi Movies
The definition of Hard Sci-Fi
Hard Sci-fi
“EMPSILLNES” Award Winning Sci-Fi Animated Short Film by Jakub Grygier
36: Sci Fi Books Every Geek Must Read
Top 10 Sci-Fi Movies of All Time
HACKED BY OBNOXIOUS AND PEIN twitter.com/poodlecorp
RPG: Stop Calling it Hard Sci-Fi
Yes Internet, Savage Worlds Can Do Hard Sci-Fi
Little green men coming out of paint cans,
Phosphate mines and Slaked Lime, 1966, he was sixteen,
it's Central Florida in the era of the dragline,
play it over the pit and dig up more of that green shit,
and trade it with the Russians, who are traditionally hated,
you can imagine that after a few years
that you'd run out of things to say,
and I'll be here every day.
Phospho~Gypsum, Radon-222,
the daughters watch over you,
on a transformer four stories high it walks like a cripple
and turns on its base,
diggin' up that Dicalcium Phosphate.
Travel the blacktop
and you won't have far to go to find an alien civilization,
a creature from a creation that's from outer space.
Sixty foot high for miles around;
one million tons of Phospho~Gypsum tailings rise to the sky.
Nearly half the world's fertilizer once lay beneath the overburden;
it got taken off this sandbar,
and now there's something that's left behind.
Hey, this place is a mess!
'what are you takin' about?
I'll clean it up later.
No, that's not the way it is at all, I'm not a miner I don't care,
man, that's pant of the system, I'm punk,
but who's gonna indict the Wall Street Journal, just me and Bob Ray,
it's just part of the system here on the surface of the planet
and the day has come when there's only work left
There's unlimited sunshine in a bottle of Tropicana,
with his friends and his 'Spooky Tooth' 8-track flipped upside down,
drivin' in his Mercury Monterey down to Lithia Springs,
saying that if we could take the tailings,
and build a building for the New York Stork Exchange,
then we could tell everyone about
how we live in a state that digs Radon by the ton
and you'll be loved by everyone,
and the government will give us a Superfund,