Hard SF: Definition, Discussion, and Story Suggestions

[Swamp]

Since a few people have requested more Hard SF on Escape Pod, or cited the lack thereof, I feel it warrants it's own thread.

Definition (from Wikipedia, of course): "The heart of the 'hard SF' designation is the relationship of the science content and attitude to the rest of the narrative, and (for some readers, at least) the "hardness" or rigor of the science itself. One requirement for hard SF is procedural or intentional: a story should be trying to be accurate, logical, credible and rigorous in its use of current scientific and technical knowledge about which technology, phenomena, scenarios and situations that are practically and/or theoretically possible [at the time]."

In you view, does it require being in space?  What makes for good exposition vs. info dumping?  How much science/accuracy is reqired?

What may be helpful of the discussion is to list particular examples of hard sf stories you have enjoyed on the podcast.  The first that jumps to my mind if "Exhalation" by Ted Chaing.  What others are there?

Also, since Escape Pod produces many reprints, feel free to use this thread to suggest specific short stories that you have read and would like to hear on EP.

[Chuk]

Definitely, being in space is not required. (But if it is in space, then I want ships that follow all the rules. I played a video game recently that was a first-person shooter set in orbit -- not much gravity to speak of, but your suit had its sensors tied in to speakers, so you could still "hear" things. But if you wanted to be quiet and stealthy, you could shut down most of your suit's systems, and if you did that the game's HUD went away and so did the sound. Neat hard SF-ish twist.)

The science and the accuracy are what make it "hard SF", to me -- if there's a lot of handwaving or flatly impossible things going on, it's not hard SF. With regular SF, I like stories that take one 'unreal' thing (time travel, FTL, telepathy), and then extrapolate a world or story from that, without adding lots of other unreality.  With hard SF, I like it if the 'unreal' is something that's technically still possible, like a big space program that in real life would never get funding, but would be physically possible to build if someone had the money.

"Exhalation" is an interesting example. Lots of not-real tech in there (mechanical AI? we don't even have electronic AI yet), but nothing that we know for sure is not possible. The great thing about "Exhalation" is how the exposition really drives the story, plus it brings up lots of interesting philosophical considerations, and it has some drama (if sort of slow-moving drama). If you could find more stories that do all those things, that'd be great.

[Grayven]

Hard SF tries to base itself on what we know. It can throw in new "future" discoveries, but it tries to play fair and stick to things that might actually be true, and not just make things up;