<story><title>Writer Liu Cixin on How His Visions of the Future Collide with Reality</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/writer-liu-cixin-on-how-his-visions-of-the-future-collide-with-reality-11633446000</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>schwartzworld</author><text>Sure.&lt;p&gt;Just like harry potter explores what happens if you have a cloak of deception or time turner. What would happen if Dementors invaded Hogwarts? Forgive me, I haven&amp;#x27;t actually read the whole series.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve never heard a definition of hard SF that didn&amp;#x27;t require some effort to make the science part sound plausible. It&amp;#x27;s one thing to not hold up to the scrutiny of experts, but there were a number of times I looked up from TBP and thought &amp;quot;that sounds wrong&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;If TBP is hard scifi than so is How To Train Your Dragon.</text></item><item><author>lazyweb</author><text>People have different opinions. I think the label &amp;quot;hard sc-fi&amp;quot; is too fuzzy with everyone having their own expectations. Personally I found the books to be immensely entertaining. There&amp;#x27;s a number of very intriguing thought experiments.&lt;p&gt;What happens when a ship is sliced in half by an almost infinitely strong piece of string? What if people were able to enter and move around in 4-dimensional space, or if 3D space suddenly collapsed to 2D? What could happen if the speed of light dropped to 16km&amp;#x2F;s?</text></item><item><author>schwartzworld</author><text>The Three Body Problem should be retitled. Here are some ideas:&lt;p&gt;- Nothin&amp;#x27; But Plot Holes&lt;p&gt;- Attack of the Flat, Interchangable Characters&lt;p&gt;- the Four Body Problem (since the trilsolarans don&amp;#x27;t actually live in a 3-body system&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m convinced that the only way to like that book is to have never read real SF before. It&amp;#x27;s so hackneyed and tropey. People call it hard sf, but it&amp;#x27;s the opposite.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TeMPOraL</author><text>Perhaps we need a Mohs scale for sci-fi hardness then.&lt;p&gt;TBP and the rest of the trilogy aren&amp;#x27;t &lt;i&gt;hard&lt;/i&gt; in terms of fully valid science, or even in terms of Atomic Rocket&amp;#x27;s[0] rule of &amp;quot;one scientifically implausible item per story&amp;quot;. But they aren&amp;#x27;t soft either, not like (say) Star Trek. It&amp;#x27;s something in between.&lt;p&gt;--&lt;p&gt;[0] - &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.projectrho.com&amp;#x2F;public_html&amp;#x2F;rocket&amp;#x2F;sealofapproval.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.projectrho.com&amp;#x2F;public_html&amp;#x2F;rocket&amp;#x2F;sealofapproval....&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Writer Liu Cixin on How His Visions of the Future Collide with Reality</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/writer-liu-cixin-on-how-his-visions-of-the-future-collide-with-reality-11633446000</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>schwartzworld</author><text>Sure.&lt;p&gt;Just like harry potter explores what happens if you have a cloak of deception or time turner. What would happen if Dementors invaded Hogwarts? Forgive me, I haven&amp;#x27;t actually read the whole series.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve never heard a definition of hard SF that didn&amp;#x27;t require some effort to make the science part sound plausible. It&amp;#x27;s one thing to not hold up to the scrutiny of experts, but there were a number of times I looked up from TBP and thought &amp;quot;that sounds wrong&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;If TBP is hard scifi than so is How To Train Your Dragon.</text></item><item><author>lazyweb</author><text>People have different opinions. I think the label &amp;quot;hard sc-fi&amp;quot; is too fuzzy with everyone having their own expectations. Personally I found the books to be immensely entertaining. There&amp;#x27;s a number of very intriguing thought experiments.&lt;p&gt;What happens when a ship is sliced in half by an almost infinitely strong piece of string? What if people were able to enter and move around in 4-dimensional space, or if 3D space suddenly collapsed to 2D? What could happen if the speed of light dropped to 16km&amp;#x2F;s?</text></item><item><author>schwartzworld</author><text>The Three Body Problem should be retitled. Here are some ideas:&lt;p&gt;- Nothin&amp;#x27; But Plot Holes&lt;p&gt;- Attack of the Flat, Interchangable Characters&lt;p&gt;- the Four Body Problem (since the trilsolarans don&amp;#x27;t actually live in a 3-body system&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m convinced that the only way to like that book is to have never read real SF before. It&amp;#x27;s so hackneyed and tropey. People call it hard sf, but it&amp;#x27;s the opposite.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Barrin92</author><text>most &amp;#x27;hard science fiction&amp;#x27; is essentially high concept fiction or science fiction that adopts a sociological frame. It is, and never really as been, about &amp;#x27;plausible science&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;just take the posterboy of American hard SF, Arthur C. Clarke. (whose writing resembles Liu Cixin a lot). A lot of his stuff is straight up fantastical or cosmic. Childhood&amp;#x27;s end for example (sort of TBP like) or The City and the Stars. The science in either one isn&amp;#x27;t really plausible. Hard science fiction was always distinguished by ditching characters and traditional adventure or hero narratives for ideas. It was never about writing a physics PhD thesis.</text></comment>