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Some Thoughts on Hard SF

Posted by Karl on Friday July 19, @09:49AM
I'm often categorized as a "hard" SF writer. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with having that sticker on my back. Certainly I write about ideas, but I don't think I'm doing engineering fiction, in which the design of the spaceships is more important than the inner lives of the characters. Here's some musings, anyway, on what I think of hard SF--and particularly, where I think SF in general and hard SF in particular are going.

What's the root of my discomfort over the hard SF label? It's simply this: I feel that the "two-culture war" of Science/engineering vs. the humanities is alive and well in SF itself. It tends to take the form of a perceived distinction between fantasy writing and 'big-S' Science fiction. Much of my work is about seeing beyond the two-culture war, and describing its resolution.

Here a quote might be in order. This is from The Nonlocal Universe by Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos; the book is marketed as a popularization of scientific ideas, but it's more a philosophical essay. Anway, in discussing the two-culture war, they end this way:
The philosophical postmodernists were correct in assuming that scientific knowledge exists in human subjective reality and wrong in assuming that this knowledge is not privileged in coordinating our experience with physical reality. Conversely, members of the scientific community were correct in assuming that the mathematical description of nature is privileged and wrong in assuming that this description exists in some sense prior to or outside of human consciousness.

What this means is that as an artist doing SF, you cannot ignore either the factual bedrock of reality, or the prismatic effect of human consciousness on how the real presents itself. My discomfort with hard SF as a distinct category is identical to my discomfort with fantasy as one; the dichotomy is an atavism, a relic of the two-culture war (although it remains an effective marketing distinction). I am trying to look past to a different brand of SF that accepts the richness of both the subjective and the objective.

Whew! Doesn't that sound pretentious! I suppose it might be. On the other hand, if the work of 20th century ideas was to step past the Newtonian worldview, implicitly ending the two-culture war, I believe the work of the 21st is to translate that victory into cultural fact--to live it. And there's nothing pretentious or abstract about that. It means abandoning some fears and worries about how we live; it means relaxing and accepting what we are and what world we live in: both the reality of electrons and hard science, and the reality of our own passions and values. I don't think people are going to find it hard to get with that programme.

So, as I work, I will be striving to maintain a balance: between adventure and thoughtfulness, between ideas and characters, between science and fiction. You can let me know how well I do.

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Busting the mind-as-software metaphor wide open.
Being There by Andy Clark
Extropians, sci-fi dreamers and Hollywood have swallowed uncritically the idea that the brain is a computer and the mind is software. In Being There, Andy Clark shows why this is not true. The mind is fully embodied: not just contained in flesh and blood, but identical with it--and more, mind is distributed between the body and the environment in a way that doesn't permit it to be completely distinguished from its surroundings. The Matrix is fantasy: this is science. Read Being There if you have an interest in knowing what it is that you really are.

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Re: Some Thoughts on Hard SF
by M.Alan Kazlev on Saturday July 27, @08:53PM

Karl what you say seems very true to me. As a purist, I naturally gravitate towards "hard" SF. And the challange for hard SF writers might be said to be two-fold.

On the one hand there is the philosophical-academic "Two Cultures" issue you mention. And it is here that sometimes hard SF can be ridiculous, as in Asimov's diagnosis of how religion works in his otherwise classic (if technologically dated) Foundation As you point out Hard SF should always try to take into human subjectivity, rather than create a 1-dimensional explanation of human experience and indeed of the universe as a whole. It would seem that to write a really good SF story one needs not only a good knowledge of science but a good knowledge of sociology, psychology, popular culture, comparative religion and mysticism, etc etc.

The other challange is to include the personal human element in a way that complements the hard science elements. Often it happens (not always) that Hard SF is dry and unbalanced, lacking sufficient human depth. As I see it, ultimately even the most ultra tech SF is still a human story (even if it doesnt feature a single earthling!). But this should also be done in a way that doesnt depreciate from the rigorous science side of the setting

Anyway I applaud your efforts and i agree completely on the need to transcend the old two cultures dichotomy. And no, i dont think it pretentious at all. As SF writers it is our job to present new approaches and visionary ideas!

I havent as yet bought any of your books, but having only just seen your web site and read the book reviws, as well as your own comments on various matters, I am now very keen to.

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