(urth) Hard SF

[nate jarvis]

It's been awhile since I read it, but Orwell's 1984 was science
fiction and I can't remember any "science mistakes" in it. I wouldn't
call it hard SF, though. Near-future SF without spaceships or robots
or any of the immediately recoginizable sciffy tropes can be Hard SF
IMO--Bear's Darwin's Radio, for instance. For those who haven't read
it, Darwin's Radio is centered around the idea that junk DNA is a
dormant mechanism for producing dramatic evolutionary leaps, and the
effects on society when that dormant mechanism ceases to be dormant.
So the focus of the story is a (as far as I can tell) rigorous
speculation on a scientific topic.

Most of the Charles Stross stuff I've read centers around a heist
(Halting State) or a chase (Iron Sunrise, Saturn's Children) or
something similar, but I'd still call his stuff hard SF. The
"hardness" is in the details, and on virtually every page there's a
line that makes me wanna run to google and see if there's a white
paper on whatever he's talking about. Stross might not meet the
definition Antonio proposes, though.

Nate.