I think to be hard science fiction, the work has to explore its conceits

Can you go into more detail about that? I don't see why a fantasy piece that goes into detail about the world's structure or posited magic would become hard sci fi, inherently. Or could it be both simultaneously?

My bookclub is doing all apocalypse and post-apocalypse theme books next year! I'm very excited. I love apocalyptic stories!

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Sci-Fi Writer Attributes Everything Mysterious To 'Quantum Flux'

I love that The Road is first. That book is good but BLEAK.

I love that The Road is first. That book is good but BLEAK.

I loved it but am wondering if I want to read it again. Oh! Maybe I'll just watch the movie. I never did get around to seeing it.

I'm glad we are reading the Stand. I never have and have been wanting to. It's like 1400 pages long, though, so I should probably start it soon!

Or could it be both simultaneously?

Yes, I think so.

I tend to think that fantasy is set in a world that never has been like our own, while science fiction springs (or sprang, sometime in the past) from our own human society, but even that's not true. I've read books I'd consider science fiction that don't have a single human character and do have things we'd consider to be magic, but the characters in the book don't see them as magical and approach them as if they are normal aspects of their existence and/or technology. I think it's all about style.

Hard science fiction explains. The Archangel trilogy by Sharon Shinn is an interesting series to try to explain what I mean. The first book is a work of fantasy - there is a land with human (or human-like creatures) as well as angels, essentially super-strong humans with wings, who can fly in to the air and sing beautiful songs to make things happen - they can change the weather, or bring down food, or even summon lighting. The entire thing is treated mystically - there's no explanation beyond saying it's all God's (the call him Jovah) divine will that the angels have this power. The angels don't understand it, the humans don't understand it, it just is.

The second book crosses over into science fiction near the end, when a character begins to work on the reasons behind it - give explanation for the powers. The explanation given is not scientific or believable according to modern science, but since it is an explanation it, in my opinion, becomes SF. There happens to be space travel involved, which is a trope that certainly puts things squarely in the science fiction camp, but I don't think the space travel would be necessary. I think the explanation is enough. Maybe we would call it "hard fantasy," but I really don't think that exists - you might have a hard SF tale with fantasy tropes, but it's still hard SF. The more detailed and consistent the explanation, the harder it is.

A lot of "urban fantasy" is, in my opinion, really sci-fi. Feed is an excellent example: sure, zombies, but they're explained. Any vampire book that explains vampirism as a weird virus or parasite is hard sci-fi. The more it sticks to its explanation and uses that explanation to drive the story, the harder it is. If the evil vampires are defeated by exploiting some aspect of their virus explanation, then the story is harder than if the explanation is just thrown in on the third page and then ignored, but if the explanation exists at all I think it becomes SF.

If Lord of the Rings opened with "A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far away..." then explained Gandalf's magic as a normal trait of the Wizard species, then it would be sci-fi, and no less believable than Star Wars.

Hmm, does that fact that Tolkien does explain Gandalf's magic as a normal trait of the Wizard species in the backpages mean that LotR is really science fiction?

I was going to say, sumi. Gandalf's a Maia. It's totally a normal trait of his species. What were you thinking of it as? Just like elfy things are normal traits of them being elves, etc. I never got the impression they didn't understand it, just that we don't.

What would Harry Potter have to do in order to be hard sci fi (in my head, that's totally impossible, but I'm curious about your filing system)? It's clearly a studiable discipline where you can create new magic results based on established and tested principles. There are rules, and classes, and labwork.

I seem to be seeing a lot of overlap in these sorts of discussion between what we don't understand (a whole lot) and what the characters understand.

I understand that I have a device that can conjure up my sister's face if I follow the right incantation. It's just it's Skype, not a Tarantir. And I don't know that much about the specifics of how Skype works, although I assume it's a combination of functionality I kinda understand. Then again, my scientist PhD mother just went "If you say so" when I tried to explain you can't translate the information contained in a spherical representation of earth into a 2D one, so map projections are as magic to her, despite almost an hour of heated demonstrations and analogies from me.

She does magic, though. She splices genes. I ain't never going to understand that shit. Although double helices are darned pretty.

I misread and thought you said Gandalf was mafia. I knew "I am Gandalf the White!" was kickass, but I didn't think it was gangsta!

Again I think precise definitions based on content don't work for this. Hard science fiction is a style. If not why is time travel usually hard sf but ghost normally fantasy horror? Style. (And before jumping in with counterexamples, please note the use of the word "usually".) Same thing about my earlier example of inherent abilities vs. learned. Plenty of counterexamples, but former is more common in fantasy, the latter in hard SciFi.