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Comment by schwartzworld | Hacker News Reader

Sure.

Just like harry potter explores what happens if you have a cloak of deception or time turner. What would happen if Dementors invaded Hogwarts? Forgive me, I haven't actually read the whole series.

I've never heard a definition of hard SF that didn't require some effort to make the science part sound plausible. It's one thing to not hold up to the scrutiny of experts, but there were a number of times I looked up from TBP and thought "that sounds wrong".

If TBP is hard scifi than so is How To Train Your Dragon.

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Perhaps we need a Mohs scale for sci-fi hardness then.

TBP and the rest of the trilogy aren't hard in terms of fully valid science, or even in terms of Atomic Rocket's[0] rule of "one scientifically implausible item per story". But they aren't soft either, not like (say) Star Trek. It's something in between.

[0] - http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/sealofapproval....

TV Tropes has an article titled exactly "Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness" which is probably a good approximation of what you're thinking of.

most 'hard science fiction' is essentially high concept fiction or science fiction that adopts a sociological frame. It is, and never really as been, about 'plausible science'.

just take the posterboy of American hard SF, Arthur C. Clarke. (whose writing resembles Liu Cixin a lot). A lot of his stuff is straight up fantastical or cosmic. Childhood's end for example (sort of TBP like) or The City and the Stars. The science in either one isn't really plausible. Hard science fiction was always distinguished by ditching characters and traditional adventure or hero narratives for ideas. It was never about writing a physics PhD thesis.

It's not hard scifi, but so what? Most scifi isn't hard scifi. Ben Bova's Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy would count, I think. Nothing too fantastical there, just an extrapolation of existing science and technology to terraforming Mars.

But then you don't get any aliens or speculative technology that way. Which most future science fiction is interested in. That or robots and galactic colonization. Dune and Foundation are just as fantastical in their own way as a Remembrance of Earth's Past. And yet, they're classics and cornerstones of modern science fiction.

Red/Green/Blue Mars is authored by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Oh right. It's been a while since I read them. I have Robinson's 2312, which I guess is a sequel to the Mars trilogy. Has a train city running along the dark side on Mercury propelled by the sun on the light side expanding the tracks. I got distracted and never finished the story.

You definitely wouldn't like ball lightning. It makes some... stretches.

Agreed, though it was a bit easier to follow since it's shorter. The ending could be interpreted as a prequel to TBP.

Oh yeah, in TBP, the translation notes noted some references to Ball Lightning, so they're definitely within the same universe.

Perhaps forget the idea that it should be hard scifi then? Seems all your criticism is that some label doesn't apply to it.

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