Jon Dowland: hard sf
"Hard SF" is a sub-genre of Science Fiction where "Science" is key. It's very
hard to draw solid lines around stories that are examples of Hard SF, but it's
easier to provide examples of things which are not: "Star Wars", for
example, where space ships, travel and light sabres are window-dressing around
a fantasy story. If you look at the Wikipedia article on Hard
SF, in particular it's edit history,
you will see people continually argue back and forth.
Editor Jonathan Strahan recently asked for some recommendations of Hard SF
authors to be included in a new Hard SF
anthology.
I stumbled across this via
sfsignal.
There are some good comments at both sites, and a fair amount of disagreement
over whether certain authors should be considered Hard SF authors or not.
Alastair Reynolds was cited by people several times. I really enjoy much of
Reynold's writing, but I wouldn't consider it Hard SF. I argued this point and
Reynolds himself joined the discussion.
This page is a draft.