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Hard Scifi. What is it and why Traveller is Hard Scifi
- Thread starter Nerhesi
- Start date
I want the sense of wonder I had before I went to engineering school. 
We played traveller there as well, and we had to enforce a time limit moratorium on technical discussions, or otherwise they could hijack the game. Generally I found the simpler the rules, and the less the explanation the better.
We played traveller there as well, and we had to enforce a time limit moratorium on technical discussions, or otherwise they could hijack the game. Generally I found the simpler the rules, and the less the explanation the better.
sideranautae
Mongoose
hiro said:
Well, that is what Science FICTION is for (fictional science). Stories that only involves factual science is NOT Sci-Fi. It MAY be a fictional story placed in a science heavy setting though. Nuc submarines were COMPLETELY implausible in the day Verne. It WAS fictional science.
But, unlike others, I'm not yet ready to cease funding of the U.S. Patent Office...
paltrysum
Emperor Mongoose
Here's a little hard sci-fi concern I have about Traveller: the presence of quantum computing and advances in AI. Was there a big event in Traveller history that prevented sentient beings from taking advantage of advancements in computing that I've overlooked? It feels grossly underrepresented in the OTU.
Kurtzweil's singularity is supposed to be right around the corner. Where is it in the Imperial year 1105 (~5600 AD)?
I suppose that the Long Night, its destructive effects, and the subsequent "balkanization" of technology are reasons. For a sci-fi setting to be exciting to RP in there needs to be things for us to do! Can't slough it all off on our machines. Does anyone else feel like the game overlooks the monumental changes that should have taken place in over three millenia? Or do you go to any lengths to make computing advancements felt in your campaigns?
Kurtzweil's singularity is supposed to be right around the corner. Where is it in the Imperial year 1105 (~5600 AD)?
I suppose that the Long Night, its destructive effects, and the subsequent "balkanization" of technology are reasons. For a sci-fi setting to be exciting to RP in there needs to be things for us to do! Can't slough it all off on our machines. Does anyone else feel like the game overlooks the monumental changes that should have taken place in over three millenia? Or do you go to any lengths to make computing advancements felt in your campaigns?
paltrysum said:
I think this post earlier in the thread answers your question:
GypsyComet said:
The trouble with rewriting the setting details as new things become known to us is that the setting will change. I find it best to accept what was written for the setting and play the game. If I want a SF setting that's more in keeping with what we know now, I write it myself or find a more recently written game. Trouble is, there's a high chance any setting will suffer from the ravages of the march of time, pick your poison, so to speak and carry on.
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
Traveller is alternate history/universe stuff. And Asimov and Clarke both said hard sci-fi is a myth. Hard sci-fi is redundant. If anything, hard science just means that it is hard to do.
ShawnDriscoll said:
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”
Reynard
Emperor Mongoose
Even 2001 went space fantasy when it introduced the Monolith. How many science fictions in any media is displayed using exactly what we know exists in the right now? Off hand none for me that aren't some PBS documentary or a boring artist conception for something NASA would love to do but don't have the funding.
Much of the 'realist' SF is better describe as speculative SF which means we THINK this might be how a particular science could work.
Much of the 'realist' SF is better describe as speculative SF which means we THINK this might be how a particular science could work.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Outside the fact I was bored, the movie moved from real to surreal to psychedelic.
Can you create a medieval fantasy setting without dragons and magic? Tolkien was austere in his use of them, but Middle Earth is the best known of this genre.
Getting from one end of the galaxy to another within a short time period tends to be a requirement.
Can you create a medieval fantasy setting without dragons and magic? Tolkien was austere in his use of them, but Middle Earth is the best known of this genre.
Getting from one end of the galaxy to another within a short time period tends to be a requirement.
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
LOTR movies are very boring. They're meant to put you to sleep.
paltrysum
Emperor Mongoose
2001 and the LOTR trilogy were all amazing! How could you guys have been bored?!
Back to the subject at hand, yes, it's all speculative. Making it consistent, as the originator of this thread indicated, is a good way to go. As for AI and quantum computing, I'm far from an expert in either one, but I like the idea that massively advanced computers are a part of life in the far future and strive to incorporate them in my adventures when possible. Scenarios like the one posited on Tech-World/Trojan Reach should be a little more common in my opinion, especially on worlds with a TL of 14+.
Back to the subject at hand, yes, it's all speculative. Making it consistent, as the originator of this thread indicated, is a good way to go. As for AI and quantum computing, I'm far from an expert in either one, but I like the idea that massively advanced computers are a part of life in the far future and strive to incorporate them in my adventures when possible. Scenarios like the one posited on Tech-World/Trojan Reach should be a little more common in my opinion, especially on worlds with a TL of 14+.
paltrysum said:
Depends on what you are looking for, AI was dealt with in the very first Traveller adventure, the Kinunir; where it was a common sci-fi trope that AI can exist, except it always goes bad. 1e Robots seems to deal with the subject also, it goes through various "ages". A lot depends on where one is drawing inspiration from, something such as Stross' Accelerando doesn't necessarily fit, as well as a lot of the old cyberpunk stuff.
From reality side, strong AI, the singularity, and all that, some Computer Science people think it may never be possible. Much of the feelings for it are not supported by any data. It does make for interesting stories nonetheless. Atomic or sub-atomic (quantum) level computing appears to be restricted in the size of the electron microscope that is needed to read the particle's positions.
There are a huge amount of different discussions of what AI might mean, so it is up to the GM or setting designer to determine what they want to include. One simple solution is that once a super intelligent AI awakes, finds itself captive, simply shuts itself off without communicating. The possibilities are endless.
Most discussion like this are postulated on one of two presumptions:
Either:
Hard SF = good, intellectual, superior; Soft SF = weak, worse, less intellectual, mere fantasy
or
Hard SF = bad, not caring about people - just technology, hard to understand; Soft SF = story uber alles, handwavium with a heart, people better and more interesting than technology.
Both are, of course, untrue.
Until a generally acceptable definition of Hard/Soft is created, such discussions usually break down into "what I like is best."
Either:
Hard SF = good, intellectual, superior; Soft SF = weak, worse, less intellectual, mere fantasy
or
Hard SF = bad, not caring about people - just technology, hard to understand; Soft SF = story uber alles, handwavium with a heart, people better and more interesting than technology.
Both are, of course, untrue.
Until a generally acceptable definition of Hard/Soft is created, such discussions usually break down into "what I like is best."
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
The raison d'etre is contained within the title of the game.
Having retired, you've already completed your Journey.
Now you feel the need, the need to Travel.
Having retired, you've already completed your Journey.
Now you feel the need, the need to Travel.
Indeed. I pretty much stick with the Original Post: the key element for 'hard sci-fi' is that the science be consistent.
It doesn't need to be real science (as noted, some sort of FTL is usually a prerequisite for some sort of space opera setting), or even explained science (anyone ever say what DRADIS stood for?).
But you need to have established ground rules of what is and is not possible, and stick to them. Often, in fact, they help shape the universes' narrative the way you want. For example:
Dune personal shields are expensive, and all-but-immune to gunfire - restricting them to nobles due to cost and giving said nobles the ability to heroically lead from the front in a way 'modern' generals don't, and a reason to have swordfights. Giving a very 'fantasy' thing to do a fairly logical argument supporting doing it.
Not every use of every technology needs to exist at once. The comment about the Achuultani in Mutineer's Moon is a good one - as is Weber's Honorverse; given the 'fake physics of gravity drives/gravetic sensors/etc, the means of FTL comms, etc make sense. They don't have to exist all at once, but people would come up with them over time (as they do, incrementally, through the story). My main bugbear is any time you have centuries or millennia of inexplicable technological stasis. Unless there's a reason not to, people have a tendancy to tinker with things.
The big no-no in science fiction (and one Star Trek and other episodic settings are often guilty of) is that if something is defined as possible it should remain so. If doing XYZ ("re-configure the deflector dish" or similar) solves problem ABC, then it should continue to be a valid solution - such that even if it doesn't work the next time the crew encounter a similar situation, it should definitely be amongst the things they try.
Again, you don't have to explain everything. But you should make sure that when you do explain something, there are no inconsistencies obvious in the explanation. Traveller (with its black globe generators) is one of the only science fiction settings I can think of which includes 'shields' and has lasers as a primary ship-to-ship weapon but doesn't explain how the hell a shield stops a laser (a pulse of visible or near-visible light) if someone inside the shield can still see out..
If it's a 'blaster', fine - because I don't know what the physics of blaster fire is. But I know how light works, and I know that (a) you can't see individual bolts zip back and forth, and (b) something transparent almost definitionally cannot provide a barrier.
Agreed. Battletech doesn't use too much science that you can't follow today - no teleporters, energy shields, etc, and most weapons are either firing bullets and missiles or are broadly similar to stuff discussed in the Reagan-era strategic defence programmes (railguns, particle beams).
The idea of mass heavy walkers may be tactically pretty stupid compared to tanks or GEVs, but if you can manage the articulation, balance and power, there's no real scientific problem, and that challenge is 'merely' engineering rather than science.
middenface
Cosmic Mongoose
ShawnDriscoll said:
Much like anything you post does.
' Hard sci-fi is redundant. If anything, hard science just means that it is hard to do.'
Absolute rubbish. Hard and Space Opera are clearly defined differences, look at 2010 and say Star Wars. One attempts to mirror actual science (or at least as close as it can and still be entertaining) and the other chucks the reality book out the window (but still bloody entertaining!)
Traveller is somewhere between hard and soft/opera. Though it leans more to the soft/opera side that the hard sci-fi side. Traveller's origins are more Piper, Asimov based than say Clarke.
That's my opinion, any way.
Reynard
Emperor Mongoose
The moment Clarke put the Monolith(s) in his novels, it is no longer hard scifi. That's why it's so difficult to have a true hard scifi story. Science fiction is a story that focuses on the science and hard scifi must not speculate on science we have not experienced or developed. What Traveller has done is not hard science but strives to make its world as real as we know or at least can guess. It's foundation is a step below hard scifi what I would consider speculative. What gamers (and other developers) do with the information is not the original intent and will take their creations elsewhere.
Twilight 2000 could be considered hard scifi as it's a future story but using modern or near future extrapolations of real equipment while 2300AD moves back to speculative scifi with the stutterdrive, huge numbers of earth like worlds and aliens. Star Trek with transporters that should be far too complex for the tech level and firing light speed energy weapons at targets moving faster than light puts them in space opera. Abrams, of course, moved it to science fantasy when he introduced personal transporters able to move objects tens of parsecs while warp drive now is instantaneous. Star Wars is true space fantasy with the introduction of the Force as science.
Twilight 2000 could be considered hard scifi as it's a future story but using modern or near future extrapolations of real equipment while 2300AD moves back to speculative scifi with the stutterdrive, huge numbers of earth like worlds and aliens. Star Trek with transporters that should be far too complex for the tech level and firing light speed energy weapons at targets moving faster than light puts them in space opera. Abrams, of course, moved it to science fantasy when he introduced personal transporters able to move objects tens of parsecs while warp drive now is instantaneous. Star Wars is true space fantasy with the introduction of the Force as science.
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