Well, yeah, but that's exactly what definitions are for, if you know what I mean.Gwalchmai writes:
It is largely thanks to Asimov and others that Science Fiction has focused on ‘Hard Science.’
For the longest time, from the 1930's through the 1960's, science fiction was a category defined by its writers, and those writers were all into Hard Science. Even some writers we now think of as putting an emphasis on social elements began in those days, and still had a knack for thinking with an HS edge.Take Hal Clement. Damn nice guy, great private conversationlist, but boring as hell as a speaker. He *always* led off with the same dull, interminable point about how proud he was that the physics of any planet he created were realistic. He'd describe the instruments and even the equations he used to arrive at his formulae. And he'd do all this when you really wanted to congratulate him on the masterful way he handled the power struggle in group scenes, for instance.
But anyway, I'm getting off the point. (If I can recall it, which is doubtful.)
(Oh, yeah.)
Hard Science defined SF for the longest time, and it still has a considerable impact on the field--but you're right. The times, they are a-changin'.
