Re: Hard Sci-fi?

: Remus Shepherd <remus@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
: I don't care if you
: have a story-consistent reason for allowing a character to fly whenever
: he's in danger -- that's *not* science fiction.

No anti-gravity belts?  Aw, man, we never get to do anything fun.

: The attitudes of the characters are not what separates 'hard' and
: 'soft' sci-fi stories, to me.  It's the attitude of the author that
: matters.  Authors either say, "Accept this and I will tell you a
: story", or "Here's what could happen and I'll tell you how and why."
: Those are the defining differences, IMHO. 

I tend to agree.  But only to a limited extent, because the boundary
between the two cases is inherently blurry.  "Accept this could happen"
and "this *really* could happen" have a huge overlap where "the "really"
is arguable, for one thing.  Plus, the problem that what *really* is
going to happen is that our notions of what really could happen are
going to change, so some element of "accept this" is inevitable, except
for extreme near-future SF bordering on technothriller.

Or so it seems to me.


Wayne Throop   throopw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
   http://sheol.org/throopw