“Space Opera is the Hard SF version of Bollywood.” (Jonathan Strahan) Not sure if that quote will make it into his upcoming anthology, but it should!
@FredKiesche If it doesn't take tens of generations to get to the next star, it is not Hard SF.
@alan @FredKiesche @nyrath I'd say it's a spectrum, tbh. If you have FTL but keep everything else scientific I'd say it's still hard, just not fully hard. This seems to be the general consensus: if you pay more attention to physics than the average popular SF franchise, then it's hard.
I generally think that any definition of a genre that excludes the way 90% of its fanbase uses it, is rather pedantic and misses the point of genre classification.
@maxthefox @FredKiesche @nyrath That's a fair point.
@maxthefox @FredKiesche @nyrath After thinking about this for a bit, what we need is a sliding scale of SF "hardness". I think something like the way we categorize Tofu: soft, medium, firm, extra-firm and then hard (not actually a tofu term)! Hard would be bound to our solar system, but extra-firm could do FTL. 😂
@alan @maxthefox @FredKiesche @nyrath
Heh. I've been calling mine "firm SF" for years.
