/sci/ - Science & Math

Blindsight by Peter Watts

>>9505326
>vampires
>hard sci-fi

>>9505311
"Mission of Gravity" by Hal Clement.
Collected with one addition novel, and one or two short stories as "Heavy Planet".
"Needle" also by Clement.
"Firestar" by Michael Flynn (1st of a series)
"Saturnalia" by Grant Callin

Fringe?

Isaac Asimov, and his books over AI are pretty lit

>>9505311
Karl Capek

>>9505311
Would be interesting but unfortunately there are barely any good writers in the subgenre. Alastair Reynolds is the only hard sci-fi author i actually bother to follow these days... and even his skills are lacking when it comes to actual storytelling and writing good characters. Particularly his books set in the Revelation Space -universe are worth reading.

obligatory Ringworld - Larry niven
Ender's Game - Orsen Scott Card
not really "hard"

>>9505667
Which Capek's work is hard sci-fi?

>>9505677
"Ringworld" is marginal.
It's sometimes necessary for even the "hardest" writers to avoid FTL as a "background" element to get the characters in place. I can accept that.
But then we have unimaginably strong materials and teleport discs and reactionless drives and you're pushing the limits.

"A World out of Time" or "The Integral Trees" are harder. Several of the concepts are wrong but they were at least plausible at the time the books were written.

Ender's game, of course, has relativistic slower-than-light ships AND the ansible -- and you can't have both!

>>9505677
"Ringworld" is marginal.
It's sometimes necessary for even the "hardest" writers to introduce FTL as a "background" element to get the characters in place. I can accept that.
But then we have unimaginably strong materials and teleport discs and reactionless drives and you're pushing the limits.

"A World out of Time" or "The Integral Trees" are harder. Several of the concepts are wrong but they were at least plausible at the time the books were written.

Ender's game, of course, has relativistic slower-than-light ships AND the ansible -- and you can't have both!

>>9505311
physics AND thermodynamics?
not like thermo is part of physics right

Tau Zero by Poul Anderson.
>no FTL
>Bussard Ramjets used to travel between stars
>effects of time dilation and relativity shown accurately
The only thing the book kind of fudges is that a Bussard ramjet probably wouldn't work as well as originally hoped.

>>9505326
Echopraxia was better, because it had a hot female vampire. I know, I'm a brainlet etc.

>>9506053
Yet the book ends with the characters reaching the end of the Universe which is the Big Crunch. We know now that the Universe isn't likely to end in a Big Crunch...

>>9505875
>and you can't have both!
Why not?

>>9505311
Autistic genre desu.

>>9506165
An Ansible is a device capable of instantaneous communication. You can't have realistic relativistic travel AND instant communication in the same universe.

Planetes was great hard science, despite the mushy romance

>>9506053
Except for the technobabble which allowed the crew to withstand 10 gee or more. Necessary to keep the proper time down so they'd reach destination still young and fertile.

>>9506153
Can't fault Anderson for that. It was a possibility at the time.

>>9506242
I was enjoying it, but then a spaceship (I recall it looked like an airliner with a row of windows down the side) was alerted they were in the path of a meteor (or maybe space debris)storm. A hatch opens on top and jointed mechanical arms emerge to clamp armor plates all over the outside of the ship.
Suspension of disbelief totally collapsed!!
The armor weighs the same whether it's inside or outside. Stored inside, it takes up cargo space and requires elaborate machinery to install it. Didn't seem to hurt anything by being outside.
I also didn't like that the "garbage collecting" station had some parts with centrifugal gravity and some parts where everyone's floating -- and people just step across. We didn't see any airlocks or relative motion of the sections.

But I guess it was still "harder" than having 20 meter tall powered suits and the pilots can easily jump most of that height to get in or out of the cockpit. :(

>>9506174
Why not?

>>9505638
How about reading the book before commenting on it you useless mouth-breather. Your parents should have drowned you in the river.
>>9506053
I still need to read that one. It seems interesting even if some of the elements are dated.
>>9506149
Echopraxia was just more insane overall. Also I kinda fell in love with the vampire.

Bump

No mentions of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy.

I am disappointed

>>9505311

Mass Effect

>>9506278
A on the ground and B in a rocket can see both their own clock and the other guy's. As B picks up speed, both will see the OTHER clock running slow. That seems paradoxical, but it's not. In order to compare clocks, they have to be in the same location. Not traveling at the same speed, but in the same place. In order to do that, B's ship must turn around and come back. At the instant of turning, an asymmetry is introduced. B is not longer in an inertial frame. General, not Special, Relativity applies.

Now, if you had an Ansible, A on Earth could transmit a tick every second. B receives it instantaneously, regardless of distance. The clocks can be compared WITHOUT bringing them together.
Without that turnaround we're back with Special Relativity and the situation is symmetrical. But the two clocks can't BOTH be faster/slower than their counterpart.
So now we have a logical paradox. Either Relativity is all wrong (and there's no time-dilation and no twin paradox) or ansibles are impossible.

Same applies to Heinlein's "Time for the Stars". Relativity is real. The twin aboard the starship stays young while his brother grows old. But they can communicate instantaneously via telepathy. All they notice is that the Earthbound twin "hears" the shipboard one thinking/speaking very slowly. And the traveling twin gets nothing but high-pitched squeaks. Heinlein never justifies this except to say that the experiment proved Einstein was wrong and the information gained eventually enabled the construction of FTL ships.

>>9506674
Thank you.

Any love for The Expanse?

Most of the stuff here isn't hard Sci fi.

Also, no Michael chriton, no Gregg bear. I'm dissapointed in you guys.

>>9505311
>Hard Sci Fiction
I like Sci-Fi that makes my Dick Hard

>>9506719
NO. It's not hard sci-fi. The ships don't even have radiators.

>>9506745
Fuck you. The Expanse is the most realistic science fiction series on television to date. Name another...

>>9506768
Mormons can't into space.

>>9506776
>Mormons can't into space.

SUCK. IT. BITCH!

>>9506768
>>on television
where there's your problem. We weren't talking about things that are exclusively on television.

>>9506792
>We weren't talking about things that are exclusively on television.

Okay fine.

What's harder than The Expanse?

>>9506053
The book is shit compared to the book it was based on. Aniara by Martinson.

The entire time I was reading it I was wondering where the cannibal dance fad cults were.

>>9506801
So what, all adaptations suck.

>>9506797
Dragon's Egg and Rocheworld.

>>9506768
>Name another...
Firefly, gotcha

>>9506842
>Firefly, gotcha

Cowboys in Space is more realistic than The Expanse? You're shitting me...

>>9506768
Stargate SG-1
Most episodes of Black Mirror
Lost in Space

>>9506876
>Stargate SG-1
>Lost in Space
>Hard Sci-Fi

>>9506883
Still more realistic than The Expanse.

>>9506349

>Vampires
>Aliums
>Antimatter rockets
>Transhuman brain modification

None of that shit has any realistic scientific basis.

>>9506849
>>9506883

All of that wormhole stuff is harder than the flat-out impossible unlimited 1G rockets without heat radiators that The Expanse is utterly reliant on.

>>9506745

The Expanse is amazing. The only way it could be ruined is if they get bored of in-solar-system action and feel the need to spice it up with some sort of ancient alien interstellar jumpgate tech or something.

>>9506892
Pst, don't read after Abaddon's Gate...

>>9506153
it has ended in a big crunch, just a matter of perspective, what we call the big bang is just a big crunch observed in reverse

Stanislaw Lem
Greg Egan
Gregory Benford(amazing guy, I spoke with him couple of times)
Stephen Baxter(especially Manifold series)
Alastair Reynolds
Greg Bear
Jacek Dukaj

Please name others, I am alwas curious about new authors

>>9505311
What's the name when reality surpasses Hard SciFi, aka the "Five Weeks in Balloon" case?

>>9506768
I'll grant that The Expanse is more realistic than most other SF movie and TV shows.
But that is setting the bar VERY low!!

>>9506888

>http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm#Notes

hard sci-fi is not actually "science" fiction but more like engineering/political fiction

>>9505326
I am currently reading his rifter series. I also quite like it. AND ITS ALL FREE YEAAA

Any SciFi with bullshits like faster than Light Travel and Time Machines isn't Hard Sci

>>9506888 >>9506883 >>9506876 >>9506849
>>9506623 >>9505659 >>9506719 >>9506797

>>9507646
No politics in "Mission of Gravity" or "Dragon's Egg". (Well, Cheela politics in the latter, but irrelevant to the issues humans face.)

And both books are among the hardest SF ever written.

>>9507742
well I meant engineering and/or politics.
My point was that actually making up novel science can be interesting and the idea behind the story as well.
Look at Greg Egan for example, he modtly tries to be accurate but except there's some twist in how his universes' physics work. Then the whole book is about explorig the effect this has.

>>9507832
Yeah, I read the Clockwork Rocket series. Interesting and informative.
But his latest (?) with two time dimensions...

I expect to be dropped into the middle of the action without warning. That's "the hook".
But I also expect things to start making sense eventually.
Possibly the first time I've ever accused SF of being too "hard".

>>9507855
>But his latest (?) with two time dimensions...
Thanks dude, didn't realize he released something in 2017. It's called Dichronauts apparently.

>>9507864
That's the one.

>>9507872
I can recommend Schild's Ladder and Diaspora by him, those two absolutely blew my mind at the time.

>>9507876
He's good. I liked both.
I just think he goes overboard occasionally. Which is not bad. You don't know where the limits are unless you push them.

I just find it stretching credibility when the Creatures of Planet X (whose greatest achievement to date has been ingenious ways of chipping flint) deduce Relativity over the course of a week. No experiments. Just sheer logic which makes it obvious and inevitable.
Whereas many on /sci/ dismiss it as Jewish Physics, so it CAN'T be right. Most stupid posters this side of the Flat Earthers.

>>9506733

>>9505311
Bobiverse was pretty interesting. Not the hardest of science when it came to interstellar communication.. But everything else was pretty well grounded in modern science

Bump

>>9506616
Who wants to spend hours reading about rock climbing terminology?

>>9505311

I've always liked Stehen Baxter, particularly his short story collection Phase Space. His stories tend to be about the human implications of some speculation eg in some stories we're living in a simulation which is modified from time to time, in others it's about life forms who existed in the plasma at the very beginning of the universe and who must confront the end of the recombination era when that plasma condenses into gas and the universe becomes transparent. There's always a constant theme of the vast depth of time and space of the universe, but still perceived from a human (or alien) perspective of little organisms trying to make a life for themselves in all this enormity.

>>9508651
Sounds good, I'll have a look at him.
>>9508092
>I just find it stretching credibility when the Creatures of Planet X (whose greatest achievement to date has been ingenious ways of chipping flint) deduce Relativity over the course of a week. No experiments. Just sheer logic which makes it obvious and inevitable.
Yeah, I get what you mean.
In the Orthogonal books there's a thing about the scientists doing biological experiments on themselves, discovering how nerves work, etc.., and it all seems to come out of nowhere, as if there was no prior work done in biology up to that point.

The best thing about Egan is imo the very natural way he describes issues like mind uploading, personality duplication, changing simulation substrate, backups, and things like that. Really drove home the point of functionalism/computationalism to me.

>>9508121
>Bobiverse
That sounds really stupid and the guy doesn't even have a wikipedia page. Quick rundown?

>>9508121
>>9508766

Here's a summary of the first book on Goodreads:
Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street.

Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first claim to entire worlds. If he declines the honor, he'll be switched off, and they'll try again with someone else. If he accepts, he becomes a prime target. There are at least three other countries trying to get their own probes launched first, and they play dirty.

The safest place for Bob is in space, heading away from Earth at top speed. Or so he thinks. Because the universe is full of nasties, and trespassers make them mad - very mad.

>>9508781

Sounds like a self-published garbage fire.

>>9508121
>>9508766
Here's the summary from Goodreads.com

>Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first claim to entire worlds. If he declines the honor, he'll be switched off, and they'll try again with someone else. If he accepts, he becomes a prime target. There are at least three other countries trying to get their own probes launched first, and they play dirty. The safest place for Bob is in space, heading away from Earth at top speed. Or so he thinks. Because the universe is full of nasties, and trespassers make them mad - very mad.

>>9505311

Best Hard SF movie of all time coming through...

>no seriously, screw you
>closest thing to an exaggeration of real physics was the wind speeds on Mars
>and it's climax was an astronaut and a spaceship doing everything they could to match delta v
>yet it was still a huge international hit

>>9508814

This is what happens when autists try to create art. It's all so fucking meaningless. Just event after event, signifying nothing.

>>9508822
>Just event after event

That's called "a story".

>It's all so fucking meaningless
>signifying nothing

Bullshit. It's established that the entire future of America's manned program is in jeopardy if he dies, due to public backlash. Also, the situation provides a needed opportunity to join up the US program with the Chinese, as shown in the epilogue.

>>9508831

>Bullshit. It's established that the entire future of America's manned program is in jeopardy if he dies, due to public backlash. Also, the situation provides a needed opportunity to join up the US program with the Chinese, as shown in the epilogue.

Those are just fictional events in the storyline. They're not real. What does the story mean for us? What's the human element? This is what makes art.

>physicists and thermodynamic experts
This triggers me

>>9508850

>Robinson Crusoe wasn't "art"
>pretty sure you're just a faggot trolling at this point

>>9508861

>He thinks Robinson Crusoe was "art"

There's no helping some people.

>>9508866
nigger are you serious, robinson crusoe is all about humility, destiny, fate and man's relationship with god. it's a great fuckin novel.

>>9508866

It'll remain famous and renowned long after you've given up on reproducing and die penniless and alone.

>>9508866
>>9508884
Any delineation between "art" and "not art" is arbitrary, you guys are having a very pointless semantics discussion here.

>>9508887

>you will die penniless and alone.

When you put it like that, I suppose Robinson Crusoe is great writing after all. Excellent themes.

>>9505311
dont like it

>>9506912
this

>>9507322
>>9505674
>Alastair Reynolds
>hard sci-fi
Pick one, I quite enjoyed revelation space but its not really hard sci-fi
anyway with poseidon's children Reynolds went full sjw so I dropped him

>>9505311

Genre fiction is invariably shit. It's so weighed down by the straitjacket of its genre that it has no room to spread its wings.

I'm just going to leave this here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjWEGlot35Y

>>9508960
>anyway with poseidon's children Reynolds went full sjw so I dropped him
yeah the "Africa the leading world superpower" was a bit much

>>9509067
didn't it end in people spamming nano-missile swarms?

>>9508766
Actually, the Egan I had in mind in >>9508092 was
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescence_(novel)

Incandescence is a 2008 science fiction novel by Australian author Greg Egan. The book is based on the idea that the theory of general relativity could be discovered by a pre-industrial civilisation.

>>9509073
And drones. And ridiculously powerful railguns. It's not that unrealistic to pump out of swarms of drones or tiny missiles really that's just a problem of manufacturing capacity

BUMP

>>9506719

>The forcediversitypance.

Gunbuster

Bump

>>9508797
Unironically one of the best series I've ever read.

>>9505311
Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke where my childhood.

>>9506745
It's harder scifi than most of the shit churned out nowadays and its on par with older works people usually class as hard scifi. Sometimes you need one big lie to keep the plot going. For some shows its FTL, for the Expanse its a magic wonder drive that has no waste heat, high thrust and ridiculous specific impulse.
>>9506242
>>9506271
I suggest checking out the manga for planetes. Less focus on the romance and a lot of the dumber stuff like the deploying armor and ninjas are absent.

>>9508814
I would agree but the end of the movie pissed me off. "Hey this stuff he says is dumb and jokes about in the book, how about in order to increase drama we have him actually do it?"

>>9509481
The Expanse is anything but hard sci-fi. Its space opera/adventure/ even crime/detective fiction, author managed to combine all these subgenres in one book, its why the first three books were so successful and the later books are lacking.

>>9507660

Nothing can't naturally move faster than light but nothing says we can't do it artificially. That's the point of science.

>>9506616
It was pretty fun. I'm glad that whore Zo died. It's a real shame he didn't expand on the rest of the solar system more though.

>>9510049

Doesn't it just turn into ersatz Stargate/Revelation Space after the third book?

>>9510159
Yeah, the latest book is bretty gud though.

>>9508960
>anyway with poseidon's children Reynolds went full sjw so I dropped him
Thats why i specified revelation space universe (which just got a new book which was easy 4/5 in my book)... only other book of his i've enjoyed was house of suns. And sorry to break it to you but Reynolds is very much a hard sci-fi author when you compare him to 95% of space opera thats out there. That being said i barely read sci-fi or fantasy these days, already tried every author worth trying´and most of it is shit.

Bump

>>9506053
>Bussard Ramjets
Don't work. A bussard ramjet's maximum speed is equal to its exhaust velocity.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/slowerlight.php#drag

Star Wars xD

>>9506726
>Crichton
He wrote Jurassic Park.
Are you telling me that was hard sci-fi?

Maybe you guys can help me track down a book that my dad used to own which I read as a kid like 15 years ago.
I don't remember the author or any names; what I do remember is that a team of scientists (possibly also some military personnel?) are in the sea (submarine or regular ship, I don't remember). For some reason their ship / submarine sinks and you'd think they would die... except they are rescued by a civilization that has a submarine habitat. Might have been mostly comprised of women, I'm not sure about this. At least one of the main characters falls in love with one of the submarine women. I distinctly remember mentions of naked people (and possibly sex scenes), and someone -- probably one of the submarine people -- being bludgeoned by one of the characters from topside who's lost it.

>>9508971
What if you combine all the genres?
Say, a magic detective who's funny AND dramatic AND tragic, with ye olde wizards, Star Wars references, fantastical fairy lands and set in contemporary Chicago?
Nah, sounds like shit. No way that could turn into a popular 20 book series that has been running for a decade.

← this

>>9509481
>>It's harder scifi than most of the shit churned out nowadays
it's not hard enough to be called hard scifi. If you just want to discuss mindless television, there's a board for that
>>>>>>>/tv/

>>9510540
the sequels were weird
and this shir isnt hard at all, come on it has energy shields and special drives if i remember correctly

>>9510760
Only one sequel I know of. "Gripping Hand". Others?
And, yeah, the Alderson Drive and the Langston field.
And I couldn't believe in a sub-species which had an immediate & innate understanding of technology (even totally alien technology) because they'd been bred as "watchmakers" for untold generations. What can you deduce about the workings of a solid-state gizmo just by looking at it?

>>9510760
Only one sequel I know of. "Gripping Hand". Others?
And, yeah, the Alderson Drive and the Langston field.
And I couldn't believe in a sub-species which had an immediate & innate understanding of technology (even totally alien technology) because they'd been bred as "watchmakers" for untold generations. What can you deduce about the workings of a solid-state gizmo just by looking at it? Just at the outer casing, I mean.

>>9506883
Well Stargate has the Gate itself, using wormholes. But they do relatively well in terms of the rest of physics. Only later do they throw it all overboard.

>>9510760
>>9510933
Come to think of it aren't Motes a bit similar to aliens in Blindsight?

>>9510934
You clearly dont know what hard scifi is then. Stargate is an action-adventure show with some sci fi elements.
I loved stargate but I was 15 at the time, tried rewatching it recently and it just felt cringy.

>>9510217
>house of suns
Couldnt get into it, felt more like some fantasy novel than sci fi, admitedly I only read like 20 pages but it wasnt making any sense.

>>9510933
Yea next to gripping hand theres "Outies" but I didnt read it.
I think it focuses on that other part of the universe and the politics of human renegade ciilizations.
So it's more of a spin off maybe.

>>9511888
Hadn't heard of that. Thanks.
By Jennifer R. Pournelle. Daughter, maybe.
Rave blurbs from Niven and Jerry Pournelle (though I suppose they might be somewhat biased.)

truly hard science fiction as typically defined (only using real concepts/science and physics) doesn't exist. with the exception of maybe less than five books, all hard scifi has at least one fantastic element.

the real test for science fiction is not whether you include fantastic elements in your story but how you use those elements once you've introduced them.

>>9505311

>thermodynamic experts

Why choose this absolutely cringeworthy picture which is obviously made by some euphoric highschooler?
And hard sci-fi usually does not hold up. The more I concern myself with science the more I despise the genre. What is even the point? The plot is paper thin in most cases and the concepts presented are described much better in scientific literature. I'd much rather read some wacky borderline fantasy stuff which atleast has some creativity in it.
Or even better a book which actually revolves around the characters and the circumstances they find themselves in which is by far the most patrician literature around because after reading it you realize that most genres are shallow shit with some flavouring, true literature can insert its plot in any setting.

>>9512053
It's clickbait. You already know the image is going to be an edgy demotivational poster just from the clickbait and you can't control your masochistic desire to find out just how bad it is.

>>9512036
Allen Steele has some books that are quite down to earth Hard SF without any fantastic elements,same thing with Ben Bova

>>9512036
>>9512053
Amused by these posts having fallen next to each other.
Might I recommend "Close to Critical" by Hal Clement?
Human drama, absolutely correct science (with a whopping chunk of thermodynamics) and no "fantastic elements". No antigravity, impossible materials, etc. (FTL may have been used to get the characters into position but, if so, it happened before the book began and is never mentioned. It plays no part.)

Clement was the foremost advocate of "hard" SF. He liked "playing the game", as he put it. The author was allowed ONE assumption but it had to be presented right at the beginning. Thereafter, everything should be as faithful to science-as-we-know-it as possible. The reader's role, besides enjoying the story, is to unearth any mistakes the author made. Accordingly, authors are bound to "play fair". Suddenly resolving the plot by introducing teleportation or telepathy or future history ("As you know, Watson, all Brazilians have spoken Swahili since 2160") is cheating -- exactly as bad as the detective in a mystery finding an essential clue and never mentioning it the reader until he whips it out to confront the murderer.

Very few authors can pull this off successful. Ever fewer have. But, done right, it's a joy to read. That's one of the reasons a lot of SF remains in print. Same applies to some other genres, like mysteries. But look at "mainstream" novels, stuff that's supposed to have "literary merit", or was weeks on the best-seller list. Look at those lists from 10 or 20 years in the past. You'll probably not recognize a single book or author. They've been forgotten (and usually deservedly so.)
But Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein (and a few others) continue in print and continue to sell because they had something to say beyond the usual mundane idiot-plots of "modern" novels.

>>9512053
>Or even better a book which actually revolves around the character
Utterly disgusting. If I would want to hear about emotions I would listen to a woman.Are you a woman?

Anyone can give an opinion on James E. Gunn?
Never read his novels, are they good?

>>9512122
He's written good and he's written bad.
Like most writers.
Look up reviews of particular books.
I thought "Transgalactic", his latest, was bilge, but your mileage may vary.

>>9506053
Good book, was bogged down by shitty romances and other character interactions.

>>9510070
:)

>>9506623
>Mass Effect
>Biotics
>Hard Sci-Fi
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Biotics

SciFi Magic N' Shieeeet.

Bump

>>9513473
>SciFi Magic N' Shieeeet.
>Biotics

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_mass

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_matter

It's not really magic

>>9514246
So by your reasoning any Soft Sci-Fi is Hard.

Things like the "Force" in Star Wars are not Science. It's fantasy.

Star Trek Voyager because 7 of 9 made my dick hard.

>>9505875
Integral trees was cool

>>9508797
Loved it

>>9514261
>the "Force" in Star Wars

What is the scientific explanation? If it's just "the cells emit a form of energy that allows you to do that", it's not science fiction, it's fantasy.

In the case of Mass Effect, there is a credible explanation.

For me, the hard scifi does not only mean "according to the science that we are capable of producing today". Otherwise it's not science fiction, it's just science. We must dare to go beyond current science BUT remaining credible.

>>9514281
>In the case of Mass Effect, there is a credible explanation.
no there's fucking not. there's literally no way you can explain how manipulating matter's apparent mass can give you telepathy

>>9511207
>felt more like some fantasy novel than sci fi
It is essentially a fantasy novel and has very little to do with hard sci-fi. Its just a very unique book that deals with gigantic timescales and very experimental ideas/themes.

>>9506883 >>9506876
>Stargate
>Hard Sci-Fi

We wuz Egyptian Kangz n' shieeet

>>9506887 >>9506889 >>9510934

>>9514281
The technology in "2001: A Space Odyssey" is pretty achievable today (if Elon Musk worked harder)

Artificial Intelligence, Space Ships, Artificial Gravity by Rotation, all pretty achievable

Most of the Movie is credible Hard Sci-Fi. Except the Ending.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHjIqQBsPjk

>>9514451
also the parts with a telepathic alien monolith

>>9514451
also the part where the United States was smart enough not to just junk everything after we beat the Russkies to the Moon.


Ending not Clarke's fault. He laid out multiple versions in "The Lost Worlds of 2001", but all were either were anti-climactic letdowns or unfilmable within the time and budget (which Kubrick has already exceeded.)

>>9514451
Oh, and also that part about the FUCKING SOVIET UNION BEING AROUND IN 2001!!!

>Inb4 I know it came out 1968

>>9505311
2001 a space odyssey.
It depends on where you draw the line for hard-scifi. The first half of 2001 is objectively pretty hard-scifi though.

>>9506616
My highschool biology teacher recommended that to me. Never ended up reading it though.

>>9508797
Just finished this about two weeks ago. Really enjoyable.

>>9505311
>>Because a physicist can't be entertained by Lord of the Rings

All fiction is stupid garbage for brainlets and a waste of time.

>>9516657
>>9516657
>>9516657

>>9506674
Yeah but your argument just means that ansibles are inconsistent with Einstein's relativities, whereas what you were saying made it sound like you believed that it was specifically the combination of ansibles and FTL drives that is inconsistent. Time is dilated to some degree even sub-FTL

>>9505311
gundam when it's not trying to be autistic space magic

Everyone in space is a catholic.

>>9516657
Yes, luckily for humanity SOME of us have far better uses of our time, like shitposting on /sci/.

>>9517186
hardly. The whole premise of dropping a colony is not realistic. You'd build space colonies at L4 and L5 which are stable lagrange points, meaning you'd have to do quite a bit of work to get them out of the the lagrange point and crash them to earth. There's also magical fusion reactors and a whole lot of disrespecting orbital mechanics.

>>9517167
If you got that impression, it wasn't intended. I thought I was being clear.
Relativistic effects are real and cause no problems or paradoxes so long as nothing can propagate at super-light velocities.

Even some authors normally considered "hard" break the rules occasionally. In Larry Niven's "Flatlander" our heroes match velocities with a still-condensing proto-sun which is cutting through Known Space at a good fraction of lightspeed. The universe appears to flatten and stars ahead of them become severely blue-shifted. (That's not what it would look like, but credit him for trying hard.) But they also have FTL travel and FTL radio.

In the "Fleet of Worlds" books (Niven and Lerner) someone makes a hyperwave phone call from a world which is receding from Earth at nearly lightspeed. The book specifically mentions that the people on Earth seem to speak very slowly. (I don't recall if the people on Earth think the travelers are speaking fast or slow.) Either way, it's impossible.

>>9508814
The book, yes. The movie... not so much.

>>9517271
The potential wells are L4 and L5 aren't that "deep". The colonies would actually be in "halo" orbits", circling the exact spot.
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1678-58782006000200001 is about the L-points for the Sun-Earth system, rather than the Earth-Moon system, but the principles are sound.

If you had the rocket-power to build a colony in the first-place (importing material from the asteroids?) and transporting other stuff to and from it, you'd be able to move the colony.

I am NOT disagreeing about the "magical fusion reactors" and ridiculous orbital mechanics. It's stupid. And it you really wanted to damage Earth you'd drop a cheap rock (of which there are plenty) and not an expensive space colony. That's like entering a Porsche in a demolition derby.

>>9517324
>And it you really wanted to damage Earth you'd drop a cheap rock (of which there are plenty) and not an expensive space colony.
In Gundam the zeon would gas space colonies that are loyal to earth and then just attach rockets to them or something to deorbit them at a target. It was more of a terror attack that way.

>>9505311
Although I don't read much fiction, I prefer actual literature like Doestoevky, Proust, or Goethe.

>>9517329
Oh. I never watched very much, so I stand corrected.
But it's still probably cheaper to drop an asteroid.
If you ALSO want to wreck a colony to deny the enemy use of it in the future -- that's what fusion bombs are for.

Query: they have fusion rockets but do they use fusion bombs in Gundam? I've seen other anime which employ technobabble to avoid using the dread word "atomic". It's a sensitive subject in Japan.

>>9517350
They use nuclear bombs (illegally as they are banned by a treaty in the setting) but the only time they're actually used on screen is some annoying disregard for science, since they use it to blow up a space fleet gathered for a demonstration even though a nuclear bomb in space is little more than a bright flash and some radiation.
Maybe it was some kind of nuke designed for space use with a thick vessel containing some kind of material that would be heated by the reaction and act as the destructive medium according to some source book but I'm not weeb enough for that.

>>9517369
Probably through the use of Minovsky particles. They can be used to justify ANYTHING.

>>9506616
>KSR
I see you are a man of culture as well

>>9512110
Allen Steele can't write an interesting story. It's all boring as dirt.

What do you guys think about Winchell Chung's Atomic Rockets website?

>Note: OP image comes from that website

>>9517575
It's a great site.

>>9517264
this series is without end, I tried reading it but resigned, great vision but too barosque for me

>>9507350
future shock maybe

>>9509409
>>9514277
>>9514831
Nice viral marketing you got there, Dennis

>>9505311
Reminds me of Mike Mew
>Eat HARD Foods
Maybe someone could write a HARD Sci-Fi that deals with the subject of optimal dental arch development.

>>9517575
i re-read it every now and then

>>9505943
>Pedant detected

>>9506888
>>9507660
No FTL or time travel in blindsight. Daily reminder that genetically engineered primordial vampires and antimatter rockets are infinitely more realistic than anything with FTL.

>>9512111
>FTL
Not hard scifi, period. It's pretty much the least realistic thing out there. I will accept magic self replicating femtotech before FTL.

>>9506888
What's more likely to come first?
>FTL
>Mind Uploading
>Genetically engineered sub-species
>Nanotechnology/Femtotechnology

>>9518316
>too barosque?
wat? explain further

>>9519855
>>9518316

do yu mean like baroque or something? I haven't read the series but im curious as to how sci fi could be considered baroque at all or i guess how baroque applies to literature? I only know the musical connotation

>>9519714
I think you have to allow authors ONE contrafactual assumption, provided they state it early and just use it as a background element.
I don't believe in it, and I understand the physics of why it'll likely never be overthrown. But without it, you're pretty much limited to;
A) staying within the Solar System, or
B) introducing some other improbable technology: Alastair Reynolds' "Cojoiner drives" (handwavium with time travel) or Bussard Ramjets which can pull 10 gee indefinitely in "Tau Zero" (more of an engineering problem than a physical impossibility, but...)

In the case of Clement's "Close to Critical", I mentioned FTL simply because it appeared in another book of his which shared a character with this one. But FTL isn't an issue in "...Critical". The book starts with the characters already in orbit around Tenebra, Just as "Mission of Gravity" began with men already on (or near) Mesklin.

Name some books you consider both good AND hard. Do any take place beyond Pluto?
(Even within the Solar System, "hard" is difficult". We've already lambasted The Expanse. Anderson's "Tales of the Flying Mountains" didn't have FTL, but it did have gravity-control and that's exactly as verboten as FTL.

>>9519714
I think you have to allow authors ONE contrafactual assumption, provided they state it early and just use it as a background element.
I don't believe in it, and I understand the physics of why it'll likely never be overthrown. But without it, you're pretty much limited to;
A) staying within the Solar System, or
B) introducing some other improbable technology: Alastair Reynolds' "Cojoiner drives" (handwavium with time travel) or Bussard Ramjets which can pull 10 gee indefinitely in "Tau Zero" (more of an engineering problem than a physical impossibility, but...)

In the case of Clement's "Close to Critical", I mentioned FTL simply because it appeared in another book of his which shared a character with this one. But FTL isn't an issue in "...Critical". The book starts with the characters already in orbit around Tenebra, Just as "Mission of Gravity" began with men already on (or near) Mesklin.

Name some books you consider both good AND hard. Do any take place beyond Pluto?

Even within the Solar System, "hard" is difficult. We've already lambasted The Expanse. Anderson's "Tales of the Flying Mountains" didn't have FTL, but it did have gravity-control and that's exactly as verboten as FTL.

>>9519817
Nanotechnology, but not as cool as in the books.

>>9519817
FTL is an impossibility, the future of space will be slowboating

>>9505311
Read Zajdel and Lem

>>9510540
Great books, but not that hard in many ways. Excellent as a procedural drama and excellent portrayal of a novel alien species.

>>9514246
>>9514281
Lol'd.

>>9519869
>But without it, you're pretty much limited to;
>A) staying within the Solar System, or
>B) introducing some other improbable technology: Alastair Reynolds' "Cojoiner drives" (handwavium with time travel) or Bussard Ramjets which can pull 10 gee indefinitely in "Tau Zero" (more of an engineering problem than a physical impossibility, but...)
No. Look up the many different variations of laser sail propulsion. Interstellar travel is perfectly doable with no magic.

>>9520460
I knew Forward. Helped him get the science right in a few of his books.
I'd forgotten about that.
It's "merely" an engineering problem. And a financial one. And maybe a little biochemistry since we haven't discovered "No-die".

And, if I recall correctly, he DID pull a rabbit out of the hat to end the Rocheworld series. Total mass-to-energy conversion rockets so the explorers could be brought home. Something they hadn't expected.

Read the Three-Body Problem trilogy by Liu Cixin. breddy gud.

>>9520578
It's good but the guy has zero knowledge about modern telescopes.Ability to detect life and civilizations through hypertelescope makes "Dark Forest" theory obsolete.

Anyone read Karl Schroeder?
As far as I know he doesn't use FTL in most works and keeps it hard.

Crystal trilogy by Max Harms.
The last book is coming out this year.

>>9520621
I also found that funny while reading, also the massive floating lens telescope they built in the asteroid belt seemed impractical and unlikely.

>>9507350
Zeerust-http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Zeerust
Science Marches on-http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScienceMarchesOn

>>9520543
Financial and engineering barriers do not preclude something from being hard sci fi. Interstellar lasersails are physically doable, just very expensive. But they're well within the capabilities of any K1 or K2 civilization.

>>9506616
pornography for geologists

>>9506719
I love the early books and the TV series. Near-space space opera, requiring only one big magic item (the super-efficient fusion engine). But then they had to introduce the magic alien tech and the weird shit that killed them off.

>>9506788
>what was the original Battlestar Galactica?

it was a gigantic allegory for the Book of Mormon

>>9506817
yeah, that one was pretty cool. Loved the surfing math aliens, too.

>>9521696

>>9510070
holy uncanny valley, live action Alita was a mistake

>>9520380
Lem writes great stories, but none of it is very hard.

(I just want a Pirx the Pilot TV series, is that too much to ask?)

>>9505674
>Absolution Gap
>hard scifi
>good

>>9522574
Revelation Space was good.
Redemption Ark sucked.
Absolution Gap was decent.

>>9519663
I dunno, the text on OP's picture sounds retarded because of the redundancy: it suggests the creator doesn't understand that thermo is part of physics.

>>9505311
>What do you think of Hard Science Fiction and what is your favorite Hard Science Fiction series/franchise?

Writing hard scifi is my favorite... whenever I write myself into a corner, I just invent a completely new thing to make sure my story stays diamond hard.

Checkmate, fiction!

hard sci-fi is for gays, Asimov is a hack and Gene Wolfe is the best sci-fi author precisely because he writes fantasy

>>9524652
>asimov
>hard
that old kike could probably barely manage a chub for his own wife

>>9507322
How has nobody so far mentioned John Brunner?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituaryjohn-brunner-1598748.html?amp