Re: (ReacTor) Defining Our Terms: What Do We Mean by "Hard SF"?

On 08/08/2024 23.40, Robert Carnegie wrote:

On 06/08/2024 04:41, David Duffy wrote:

James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:

Defining Our Terms: What Do We Mean by "Hard SF"?
>
Hard SF has never been a unified subgenre. Here are five overlapping
varieties of story to which the label applies...
>
https://reactormag.com/defining-our-terms-what-do-we-mean-by-hard-sf/

>
"deliberately fudges the science...my least favorite flavor"
>
I don't mind some of these, as they are literally fictions about science,
but they have to be in the right spirit. One example I can think of
is when the Autarch in tCotA explains how a mass of antimatter iron
negates the weight of the flyer, but the lift diminishes over time due
to leakage of air via the insulation of the wires levitating
the anti-iron in its magnetic bottle. Which is why they stay in the
upper atmosphere until pulled down by a rope.

 Is this the same kind of antimatter which
converts to really quite a lot of energy when
matter touches it?  Yes, landing - or crashing -
is to be avoided.

It's a spoiler to give the title, but in one short story, some folks go into
orbit around a planet made of anti-matter. They don't know its nature, but
one talks the other out of landing just because something strikes him as a
wee bit suspicious.
<https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?54190>
--
Michael F. Stemper
87.3% of all statistics are made up by the person giving them.