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Comment by SeanDav | Hacker News Reader

> "Sad to hear this - last of a magnificent cohort of SF writers, for my money."

This prompted me to look at how many of my favourite SF authors are still alive - and the vast majority are dead. I honestly think that the era of true Science Fiction is over (as opposed to Science Fantasy which is still going strong).

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On the contrary, I have been getting into modern science fiction after being raised on my dad's collection of Asimov/Clarke/Heinlein/etc. and the modern stuff is great. Check out Vernor Vinge, Greg Egan, Kim Stanley Robinson. None of that is science fantasy. If anything, I'd say that science fantasy is less popular now than it was two or three decades ago. Look at the popularity of modern TV and movies: Arrival, The Martian, Gravity, The Expanse, Interstellar. Three of those are complete hard science fiction and the others are more in the vein of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Contact than Star Wars.

Interstellar is solidly science fantasy. Arrival is arguably science fantasy since it's central conceit isn't very sciencey (amazing movie though).

The Expanse is borderline since there's basically a magic substance (the proto molecule), though everything _except_ that is very hard sci fi.

> basically a magic substance

Is it though? Sufficiently advanced technology, after all, is indistinguishable from magic...

> Arrival is arguably science fantasy since it's central conceit isn't very sciencey

Read the original short story: the actual premise is actually very science-y, and completely "true sci-fi." Don't want to spoil it here though.

> though everything _except_ that is very hard sci fi.

Yeah, personally I think sci-fi (rather than sci-fantasy) is allowed to break a single physical law and still be considered sci-fi, as long as it's done consistently and the consequences properly explored.

Personally I like James Nicoll's definition of hard science fiction: it's hard SF if the author gives enough details that the reader can be _certain_ it wouldn't work.

Granted Vinge is some 20 odd years younger than Asimov, but I'm not sure I'd contrast either Vinge or Robinson as new or contemporary sci-fi (still great, though, no argument there).

Maybe Alastair Reynolds, Charles Stross and Ian Banks could be singled out as being "new hard sci-fi"?

More in the same age as Vinge, I'd also mention Nancy Kress.

Even William Gibson and Bruce Sterling are approaching retirement age these days...

> Even William Gibson and Bruce Sterling are approaching retirement age these days...

Iain Banks has died.

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

Oh dear, my apologies. Feels wrong to"up"-vote that, but thank you for pointing out my too hasty check of birthdates (only).

I think he was pretty constructive about it, by HN standards.

Hm, I was actually rather worried about ruining your day. No need to apologize.

If you go all the way to W. Then check out Peter Watts and Blindsight. Contemporary, interesting/challenging, fun and good.

I unintentionally stayed up until dawn reading Seveneves (Neal Stephenson) at the weekend.

There's sufficient description of orbitals, metallurgy, robots and delta-v to make this science fiction. It's a little odd to see that together with social media, smartphones, and mentions of ESA: not much sci-fi I read is set in the present.

When it comes to media/entertainment, people say "the era of X" is dead all over the place. Not to pick on you, but they're usually wrong. The democratization of fiction publishing has made it so that any X where there are consumers can exist.

Go look at the Kindle Store and how many "true Science Fiction" books are published every month. They're there. You just have to look for it, same as every other catered niche.

Yeah, I think we're now in the era of curators. Since it's much harder to find good books in a particular niche, it would be really nice to find a good trusted curator to weed through.

If you're fiending for good hard sci-fi check "The Expanse" or the "Remembrance of Earth's past" trilogy. Vernor Vinge his "Zones of Thought" trilogy is also great :)

I had no idea that Science Fantasy was even a thing. Now much to my dismay I have discovered I don't actually like Sci-Fi, I only like Science Fantasy... but I'm actually not going to make the distinction. It's all fiction.

Gregory Benford is still around (even though he is 76). I don't know if he is still writing but his body of work is quite good.

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

I would contend that the genre has moved on in a stylistic sense, but is still pretty robust:

Jeff VanderMeer (The Southern Reach trilogy, Finch); Ann Leckie (The Imperial Radch trilogy); China Miéville (Embassytown)

are three I can think of immediately.

This is an interesting point. The near future must look far more vivid to the current crop of SF writers than it did to Aldiss's generation, and no wonder since VR, social media, and robotics are so much more advanced. Even Non-Stop, which took place in one relatively short narrative timeframe, I'd put further into the future than, say The Martian or any Stephenson novel... would be intensely curious to know of modern SF that ponders far-future questions.

Read Iain Banks' Culture novels, starting with The Player of Games and going on with Excession

> The near future must look far more vivid to the current crop of SF writers

I was a SF reader in the 1970s, and the near future as perceived then seemed intensively vivid, even if the subject matter (e.g. spaceflight, nuclear war, etc) now appears dated. NASA was launching astronauts to the moon while I was reading SF.

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