Hard Science Fiction

The *real* purpose is to curate a collection of kickass hard sci-fi art so I can keep it all in one place

Feel free to recommend creators (read: pleasepleaseplease I'm so normal about this I swear).

We're talking about ✨unobtanium✨, which means anything goes as long as we don't get caught up in the causes of your fictional chemical.

Unless you plan on consulting with actual chemists/rocket engineers (of which I am neither) to work out precisely how you are breaking physics to get what you want, the first thing you want to do is shove your hyper-chemical into a black box, where nobody can see why it does what it does. It just works.

With that out of the way, let's focus on effects.

Ryland-class Exploratory Cruiser

Original concept art by Sir_Lazz

Let's see what this movie is abou-

Ok, so I read the phrase "habitable moon of Jupiter" and briefly blacked out due to dangerous levels of "what" (also, apparently one of the astronauts is pregnant? Who let that happen?!?)

But I'm going to muster all of my willpower and only focus on the spaceship.

The Aether!

(Art by Jonathan Opgenhaffen)

(also got any hard sci fi media faves to rec?)

I'm currently reading Exodus: The Archimedes Engine by Peter F. Hamilton, which is the tie-in novel for the upcoming Mass Effect spiritual successor Exodus. It's way better than a video game tie-in novel has any right to be, and somehow features a space opera setting with no FTL at all. I'm having a lot of fun with it so far.

My favorite hard SF novel of all time thus far is 2001: A Space Odyssey. I've only recently started reading more SF, so it might be a minute before I have something to recommend that isn't already well-known.

If you play TTRPGs, though, I endorse 2300AD and Orbital 2100, which are both built on the bones of Traveller.

2300AD features an interstellar setting where Earth hasn't unified under one world government, which is a surprisingly rare development. Also, the speculative biology of the aliens is very good.

Orbital 2100 is a plausible mid-future "rocketpunk" setting like The Expanse, but with nuclear rocket engines and an alternate future history beginning in the 1980s.

Anyways, on to the Phoenix:

The Runaway, from the hard-SF webcomic Runaway to the Stars

To start with, go browse Atomic Rockets. I can find no better repository for information pertaining to hard SF.

Besides that, are you creating a setting for a novel/game/art, or are you worldbuilding for its own sake? This will affect the choices you make, including what liberties you take.

"The Martian" is a beloved comfort scifi watch of mine, and I love the design of the Hermes. It reminds me a lot of the Discovery from "2001: A Space Odyssey" 🤔

The Hermes!

The Martian is one of my favorite movies, and I got into it very early on in my hard SF journey.

To start, the Hermes is a cool ship for the aesthetic of the film, which is heavily NASA-coded. This checks out, because NASA was very enthusiastic about providing support for the film.

However, this NASA-inspired aesthetic doesn't necessarily mean it's the most realistic. The Hermes is very clearly based off the International Space Station, like so:

So, I have a few notes.

Let's start with the good:

The Hermes uses a VASIMR ion drive, which is notable in that it can "shift gears" between low-thrust, high efficiency mode and high(er) thrust and low(er) efficiency mode. This is all from the book, and perfectly acceptable for a very-near-future Mars mission.

If we get a slightly different angle on the Hermes...

My system is also linear, but it extends in two different directions, instead of just being "soft" vs. "hard." I think this is important because some science fiction settings combine realistic physics with implausible technology, or realistic technology with fictional physics, and I wanted to distinguish them.

So, because I should put it somewhere, here it is:

The Official(ish) Hardspaceships pH Scale of Science Fiction Hardness!

Acidic Science Fiction

Acidic SF violates the laws of physics in some significant, unpardonable capacity. The nature of the violation becomes more precise as pH increases.

0-1: Technology is whatever looks cool on screen. Technobabble abounds. Spaceships bank in space and blasters go "pew". This is where you find Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

2-3: Certain laws of physics are acknowledged, but liberally-applied handwavium technology helpfully ignores anything that gets in the way of the story. Space is probably silent, at least. Star Trek goes here, as does the Lancer RPG.

4-5: The laws of physics are now assumed to reign supreme, but we use handwavium to tweak our setting into the form we desire. Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, and Firefly all go here.

6: We take the real world, change it, and justify our changes with precisely-engineered handwavium, with clearly-articulated effects. Hard magic systems, basically. Mass Effect and Mobile Suit Gundam go here.

Neutral Science Fiction

7: Apart from our "free pass", we aren't breaking the laws of physics at all. We aren't taking pains to implement realistic technology, either. The Expanse is my go-to example here.

Alkaline Science Fiction

Alkaline SF incorporates realistic technology. The overall realism of the technology increases with pH.

8-9: This is where you see technology that is purely speculative. Quantum radiators, black-hole drives, Dyson spheres/lasers, etc. We can't even begin to know how to pull these off, but we can consistently model their effects using real-world physics. High-concept and distant-future SF resides here.

10-11: This is where you see technologies that have had papers written on them, and may have fields of study dedicated to making it work. Fusion reactors/drives, Nuclear Salt-Water Rockets, nuke-pumped lasers, etc. Most "hard" SF is probably going to wind up here, where things are realistic-yet-still-speculative.

12-13: This is where you find technology that has actually been tested in real life. The Orion Drive, Nuclear Thermal Rocket engines, ion drives, etc. Typically the realm of near-future SF, like The Martian and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

14: Essentially reality, with no speculative elements. Space Brothers and Gravity go here.

This is mostly just vibes, and it would probably work better as a four-quadrant chart, but I do think it's worthwhile to distinguish between physics and technology when analyzing "realism" in science fiction.

I've always held that "hard" isn't a binary, and what it even means can be different for different people (I've heard people call Starfield "hard sci-fi" when it's a 3 at best). I might write about that in the future.

Before I answer that, let me yap a bit about how I approach scientific hardness in SF:

My grading system for hard/soft science fiction exists along a scale that resembles the pH scale.

"Basic" science fiction (pH 0-6) invents fictional physics at the higher end, and ignores physics entirely at the lower end. Eezo, Minovsky Particles, and Handwavium/Phlebotinum generally.

"Acidic" science fiction (8-14) makes use of realistic, or at the very least, plausible technology. Radiators, nuclear thermal rockets, Orion drives, that sort of thing.

The Expanse is (excluding the protomolecule, but every hard SF property gets one handwavium pass) what I call "neutral" science fiction, where a general lack of rubber science is combined with implausible technology. A neat middle ground between breaking the laws of physics and being forced to read NASA white papers.

The spaceships, therefore, follow suit. Expanse ships have unreasonably powerful torch drives, but don't use gravimetrics. They don't have radiators (apart from a few mentions of open-cycle cooling in the later novels), but they don't have inertial dampeners either. They don't use laser weapons, but neither do they use energy shields.

Instead, we get orthogonal deck layouts (as God and Robert Heinlein intended), artificial gravity thanks to Newton, and travel times measured in days (early writing mistakes notwithstanding). Voila! Space opera that doesn't exclude the physicists!

So, no, I don't consider the ships of the Expanse to be particularly plausible, but they are squarely neutral: following the laws of physics, but not doing any more math than is necessary for the story.