I also recommend Sheffield. I was very sad, for selfish reasons, when he died. He was one of my favorite current writers. There just aren't that many science fiction writers these days that I really like to read. He had some stories that assumed only known physics, though he did have others that added FTL and so forth.

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Well, that gets into what you mean by "hard SF." In my mind, a story is "hard SF" as long as a writer follows known physics, except for those items he specifically identifies (for example, FTL). In those cases, the hard SF writer will place rules on what the introduced idea can do, the more limitations the better. Larry Niven does that just fine. The one that bothers me is James P. Hogan, who is sometimes called a hard science fiction writer, but cheats with physics.

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Hogan is a strange one. I enjoyed many of his earlier books even though he tended to make up his own physics. He created his own model and then wrote stories around that model. He always seemed to be pro-science and aggressively supported the scientific method, but in the case of his fiction he applied that method to a set of self-created physics. Basically, he created his own Universe with it's own laws, but tended to stay true to those laws. I never had a problem with that, Niven does something similar.

I haven't yet read his later works, but many have claimed he "jumped the shark" (is that the right phrase). Some things on his webpage have got me wondering about where he really stands on some issues.

I don't necessarily mind a writer twisting or even making up physics to tell a story, as long as they stay true to the laws they establish and we both (the writer and I) realize that this is fiction. I've been starting to wonder if maybe Hogan really does believe some of this stuff.

OTOH... Arthur C. Clarke has always been a hard SF writer, and I believe he wrote his first novel in the '40s.

Odd thing is - this occurred to me when I was in the car. I had responded to a post about "Voyage" earlier and used the same author. I'm actually reading this book right now - so I shouldn't get the authors name wrong. And they shouldn't smoke in hospitals.

The other oddity was Heinlein not envisioning a future where men and women were more equals in the work place. He has them as nurses or secretaries or the "woman behind the man". Even the strong women have to be secret about it and do their work behind the scenes. All subservient roles to the men they take care of.

Off topic - but I started it.

As far as some of the negatives on hard Sci-Fi - I don't disagree. I don't want all the fiction removed from all science fiction. I guess ever since I saw that discovery channel series - I've been hoping there was a really good book with a similar premise.

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While not space centered, Peter Hamilton's Greg Mandel books (at least some of them) were pretty reasonable.

Personally Carl Sagan's Contact is my favorite "hard" sci -fi and is really as hard as go in that category.

The problem with the sci-fi you are looking for is that while it might be interesting now, in 20, maybe even 10, years it could very well be outdated.

I read most of it. Never really grabbed me for whatever reason. Probably would help if I had read 2001 and 2010 before hand - but I am familiar enough with those stories (and they weren't on the library shelf at the time).

I read one Larry Niven book after hearing about his "hard sci-fi". I picked the wrong one. He was all over the place spoofing every Mars story ever written. Some "time machine" that wasn't a time machine, but actually transported people to fictional places written in literature. Not at all what I was expecting when I picked out one of his books. I can't recall the name of it.

I'm almost ashamed to admit it on this board - but I haven't met a Crichton novel that I didn't enjoy. I know a lot of people here don't like his books - but he does write a quick read that a person with three young kids can get through 50 - 100 pages after bed-times are done and the kitchen is cleaned up. I also liked the "Bourne" series by Ludlum - but that has little to do with Sci-Fi (or the "Bourne" movies for that matter - other than the lead character shares a name and poor memory).

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

Sounds like one of the Svetz series, probably Rainbow Mars.

If you want Niven at his most Hard-Science, check out The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring. Humans on a STL starship had colonized one of the weirdest liveable environments in the universe, then fallen back to barbarism and forgotten their roots.

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Not similar. Niven lets you know what he's doing. If he has a mystery where teleportation is important, he let's you know about it before he springs the mystery on you.

Hogan jumped the shark in Inherit the Stars.


I agree that he is a hard science fiction writer - as are Asimov, Heinlein, Niven, etc. But they all introduce FTL and other things that aren't within the realm of known physics.

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Destiny's Road would be another one assuming only known physics, although not as interesting as those stories.

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The National Geographic programmes about Aurelia and the Blue Moon are very good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurelia_and_Blue_Moon
They represent the sort of realistic sci-fi I would like to read more of- but of course they are not stories, just speculative non-fiction. It is quite difficult to find narrative fiction with that kind of hard speculative science- but you could always write it yourself...

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James Gunn's The Listeners is even more hard SF than Contact, and still well worth reading more 30 years after it was written.

I agree that Baxter's alternative future in Voyage is excellent. It's probably by favourite hard Mars novel.

Jon

I prefer my SF to be at least moderately hard. Come to that, I prefer most fiction to be "plausible if you don't look too close" (unless it's Gabriel Garcia Marquez's magic realism or the like).

For instance, I will happily read or watch a story about a rampaging monster, but I get very annoyed if it goes from very small baby to very large car-stomper without any explanation for the increase in mass.

However, I have two issues with SF that is based entirely on knowns:

1. Unless it is set in the near future (or, in the case of Baxter's excellent Voyage, a might-have-been past or present), the author is working on the basis that nothing unexpected is going to happen in science. To put this in perspective, one of H.G. Wells' rivals could have written a story about someone steadily accelerating to lightspeed and beyond without any time dilation effect, and that would have been both hard SF and wrong.

2. Whereas the science may be spot on, sometimes (though not always) the characters behave in a way that undermines the credibility. Someone mentioned Hal Clement, which made me think of a novel of his which has bothered me for decades.

The novel is Ocean On Top. It features a heavy fluid medium at the bottom of the ocean. Human beings, after a simple (but irreversible) operation, can breathe freely in this fluid, so they can live lives as mer-creatures, swimming around far below the sea.

So far so good. I have no idea if such a medium is possible, but I am happy to assume it is.

But then one character accidentally makes another one laugh. The other goes a bit convulsive, looks ill, then writes on his writing pad something along the lines of, "Please don't do that again. It is very dangerous - potentially fatal - to laugh with this dense fluid in your lungs."

So, for the rest of your life you can swim around underwater, but you can never laugh again. To my mind that is way, way too high a price for anything. Yet it is never discussed after that brief explanation.

Rainbow Mars is it. With limited reading time and expecting something different - it was rather disappointing.

Maybe a childrens book with pretty pictures. I'll have to learn how to draw.

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Planet

This is the show I saw. OH! I should have check there first.

Looks like my search is over. Thanks for all the help!

Rats - after reading the commentary and reviews at Amazon - the book doesn't appear to mirror the special as close as I had hoped. Plus it's more of a picture book with story commentary. Not a real novel that a person could immerse themselves in and imagine their own pictures.

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

That occured to me as soon as I saw KaiYeves' post re: smoking. Specifically, I thought about Henlein's "All You Zombies". One thing I found very amusing in that one: there is a guild of professional comfort women for the spacemen. When Heinlein wrote "All You Zombies", the idea that sex is a natural need that must be met whether a man is married or not was scandalous, and the idea of a class of women who are trained to meet that need a very progressive one. Yet it never occured to Heinlein (not at that time, anyway) that women may do same jobs in space as men, and people would simply form couples.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

Two minor points - the smoking observation was mine - but KeiYeves' does always have interesting input so it was an easy mistake to make. Every once in a great while I have a post that gets referenced by others. I hate to lose credit on the rare occasion that it occurs.

As far as "comfort women" - Heinlein likely got the idea from Japanese military brothels during WWII. Except many of those women didn't exactly volunteer for the posi... err ... career choice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

In the case of 2061, not having read the previous novels should have helped you like it, IMO.

If even so it didn't do anything for you, I guess it's hopeless. Take a look at Hammer, though. It's more readable; 2061 has a zigzagging narrative at the beginning that I found off-putting.

I wouldn't call it odd. It's what Heinlein was like. He never completely shook off the patriarchical mentality of the time he was born.

Was it? Or was it, rather, officially condemned, while unofficially condoned, even expected?

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