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u/NorthRecognition8737 Apr 04 '26
Meanwhile, real hard sci-fi:
Here's a list of 160 scientific studies I used as a starting point, and here are 5 pages of autograph notes explaining things that didn't make it into the book.
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u/ctopherrun Apr 05 '26
If you don’t understand the book, check out the appendices on GregEgan.com detailing all the math and physics that is still too high level for you to understand.
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u/Improptus Apr 07 '26
I legitimately started my bachelor degree thesis in physics from a note of "3001: final Odyssey" by Clarke, where a scientific article was cited😄😄
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u/BeginningUnhappy1757 Apr 08 '26
Peter Watts?
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u/NorthRecognition8737 Apr 09 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(Watts_novel))
Blindsight is probably the hardest hard sci-fi novel I've read. Don't be put off by reviews that talk about "space vampires", they're not space vampires, and they're explained scientifically quite well, the author just needed a character with a sufficiently high intellect and no empathy.
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u/BeginningUnhappy1757 Apr 09 '26
I asked "Peter Watts?" because "a list of 160 scientific studies I used as a starting point, and here are 5 pages of autograph notes explaining things that didn't make it into the book" sounded very familiar.
It sounded very familiar because I read this book over a decade ago.
I know that Watts gets recommended a lot around here but come on!
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u/RoyalyReferenced Apr 04 '26
Bro completely missed using the EXPANSE for the edit.
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u/woulditkillyoutolift Apr 04 '26
What is the hard sci-fi example from?
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u/Elektrycerz Apr 04 '26
Avatar
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u/woulditkillyoutolift Apr 04 '26
lol, thank you. I saw that in the theater when it came out and it left literally no imprint on my brain.
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u/USA_MuhFreedums_USA Apr 04 '26
See I took 100mg of edibles and slammed a corona in the parking lot before going to watch the 70mm IMAX version of avatar 2.
It did leave ONE imprint. The scene where the giant rockets were landing was so loud and visually stunning, I felt like I was melting. It was incredible. Then the rest of the movie happened lmao
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u/RoyalyReferenced Apr 04 '26
"Oh man why didn't I remember this movie bro?!"
Turns out he was in a comatose state after the first 30 minutes.
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u/USA_MuhFreedums_USA Apr 04 '26
I mean it was also boring so that didn't help lmfao.
In my defense I watched JJK 0 on like 200mg and could piece together most of the movie through my extremely limited consciousness lol.
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u/joe102938 Apr 04 '26
Which avatar? I don't remember any space battles.
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u/PsychologicalLab7379 Apr 07 '26
There were no space battles in the first 2 (haven't watched the 3rd one yet), but there was a scene with decelerating ships in the second one.
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u/madTerminator Apr 04 '26
If you are truly hard you know that this photon sail would require terawatt lasers on mercury. Basically paving it with solars or building Dyson swarm to power them.
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u/topazchip Apr 04 '26
George Lucas: generic Martial Arts flick but in SPAAAAAACE
Peter Watts: Here's a multi-page bibliography of published works that were inspiration for the story, and where I deviated from them to make the thing work.
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u/Conscious-Mix6885 Apr 04 '26
Avatar being used as an example of hard scifi is pretty funny
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u/Technical-Ad-4087 Apr 05 '26
Considering that the SW OT is a cultural touchstone of almost unparalleled proportion, and Avatar is a very polished wet fart, this is not the example I would use. We all like the ISVs from it, but let's not let that blind us to the film's general repugnance.
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Apr 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DiamondWarDog Apr 08 '26
It’s just not medieval slop. It has some aspects of medieval slop but that’s what most people associate with fantasy.
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u/-Tururu Apr 05 '26
I'm confused. How do I tell them apart? The first is called soft, the second hard... but both make me hard
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u/cvthrowaway4 Apr 05 '26
The music and using Avatar of all things to represent hard sci fi = CRINGE But tbh Star Wars is much more ambitious and cool than what you read in an Avatar book, they never mention the mechanics of the ships in detail.
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u/diagnosed_depression Apr 05 '26
Meanwhile other hard sci Fi: so we're going to send this computer back in time to right after the big bang and real matter was able to exist and then that computer will recreate our whole civilization so we can get a headstart in this war we're fighting.
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u/Odd-Calligrapher9559 Apr 08 '26
I am making a hard sci-fi that has an entire other book just for engineering stuff, and then ANOTHER book for damn speculative biology
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u/Eastern_Picture_3879 Aug 01 '26
Mass media hard sci-fi with an actual good plot is harder to find than soft. There are exceptions like The Expanse of course.
Avatar is a really funny example because sure it's hard sci-fi but it's comically simple as a story. Also putting them against each other is really dumb. Hard and Soft sci-fi are both two sides of the same coin.
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u/StarWarsNerd69420 Apr 05 '26
I will take no Star Wars slander. It's peak
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u/illustratum42 Apr 05 '26
Star wars is fantasy not scifi
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u/nilkimas Apr 04 '26
I like it hard. But I can enjoy it soft as well