> and disagree with Mike Levy:
> >I would argue that to the
> >extent that the phrase "hard science fiction" means anything today, it's
> >simply a political concept used to describe the work of a group of
> >generally (although not exclusively) conservative or libertarian science
> >fiction writers, most of whom are male, most of whom center their stories
> >on physics and engineering.
> My understanding of the "hard" is more to do with the sciences than the
> political stance. Sturgeon's _The Skills of Xanadu_ comes to mind.
If you look at the writers who are generally labelled hard science
fiction writers they are almost all politically conservative males and
many, in fact, use relatively little real science in their stories. Some
have been known to make really silly scientific errors. Larry Niven, for
example, once had the sun rising in the west.
Female SF writers are almost never labelled as hard sf writers even when
their stories are chock full of scientific materials. Check out the
chemistry in Nancy Kress's Beggars Ride or the Biochemistry in
Slonczewski's books or the Chemistry and Engineering in Griffith's Slow
River. By any rational use of the term, these books are much more hard
science than most of what Larry Niven and Poul Anderson are doing, but
Niven and Anderson are labelled hard sf writers and Kress, Slonczewski,
and Griffith aren't.
Mike Levy
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