ABSTRACT
Hard sf is the black hole around which the sf universe revolves, but whose identifying features are always in dispute. Stories most clearly drawn by its gravitational pull differ from other fantasy, but the genuine article is a logical impossibility. Most simply characterized as “getting the science right,” hard sf seeks to avoid contradicting the contemporary state of scientific knowledge, something never completely realized. Less a category than a tendency, it is only loosely modeled on scientific practice. Hard science relies on mathematics usually inaccessible to most readers without translation into expository prose with practical applications. Drawing more on popularized versions than laboratory reports or theoretical papers, verbal sf transforms them into narrative. Only elements of spectacle translate well into visual media, as in the Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke film and novel, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Guaranteeing no aesthetic quality beyond “local color,” hard sf is distinguished by literary as well as scientific characteristics.
