Quote from: jeff37923;1106355She loves questions of ethics and morality in RPG form

IME I think most players enjoy these questions when they're emergent in play, and often dislike them when they're mandated by the scenario/GM. In my 'Rise of Neo-Nerath' campaign I took inspiration from the collapse of Yugoslavia and there was an emergent question of how best to deal with inter-ethnic conflict, but the PCs could have ignored the question all the way through. In practice they ignored it until it was too late, when they were looking at the blood on their hands and realising they weren't the good guys, that (as one player said) there were no good guys here.

Quote from: S'mon;1106353Yes. I would say Space:1889 is not SF, but it uses the early SF material of the era for inspiration. This is pretty common these days. A bit like how the Superhero genre is not SF but frequently takes stuff/patina from SF.

Soft SF tends to raise questions about the human condition, in relation to new technology & scientific concepts, rather than hard SF's primary focus on the tech itself. So TOS Star Trek is very much SF, as is ST The Next Generation. It's hard to see Abrams-Trek as much different from Star Wars, though, being pulpy adventure with an SF patina.

In general RPGs tend to the same approach as Abrams, being more about the patina than the questions raised by the original works. So eg Cyberpunk RPGs rarely raise any questions about the nature of humanity the way something like Neuromancer or Blade Runner does.

The original series varies a lot; all but unexplained introduction of whatever they had the props or costumes for, sometimes, and superpowers that might as well be fantasy. If the "science" is rigged to make a certain story work, then it's just patina.

SF convention panels back when had an unfortunate tendency to fall back on Star Trek episodes as examples, because everyone had seen them; unfortunately many episodes were not good SF.

(I keep reading Space:1999 instead of 1889 and then wondering what people are talking about. Probably worse in any cases where the comment still made perfect sense and I never noticed.)

Quote from: rawma;1106446The original series varies a lot; all but unexplained introduction of whatever they had the props or costumes for, sometimes, and superpowers that might as well be fantasy. If the "science" is rigged to make a certain story work, then it's just patina.

I'll disagree with that - my thinking is that non-rigged science is a feature of Hard SF, whereas rigging the science in order to address a question, eg assuming sentient androids or godlike aliens in order to address the nature of humanity, is a feature of soft SF like Star Trek and Blade Runner.

Quote from: S'mon;1106554I'll disagree with that - my thinking is that non-rigged science is a feature of Hard SF, whereas rigging the science in order to address a question, eg assuming sentient androids or godlike aliens in order to address the nature of humanity, is a feature of soft SF like Star Trek and Blade Runner.

By that definition, The Expanse is soft Sci-fi because of the Epstein Drive makes the initial setting possible and the series is mainly about political drama.

Quote from: S'mon;1106554I'll disagree with that - my thinking is that non-rigged science is a feature of Hard SF, whereas rigging the science in order to address a question, eg assuming sentient androids or godlike aliens in order to address the nature of humanity, is a feature of soft SF like Star Trek and Blade Runner.

There's a huge difference between rigging the science to pose an interesting question which is then explored and rigging the science to make a story that's just an adventure that happened. Too many original series Star Trek episodes are the latter, especially when a previous better episode already addressed whatever question you might think they are reaching for: Captain Kirk arguing yet another computer into destroying itself, the clumsy "multiple Earths" which all need Federation assistance to get them back on track, the super aliens who just need the crew of the Enterprise to bring them up to college freshman level in ethics and philosophy.

Quote from: S'mon;1106339For me HG Wells' Time Machine is notably more sciencey than almost any subsequent version, since almost all future versions simply open magic portals to a convenient time & place, whereas HG Wells' machine *remains where it is* and simply has time pass (forward or back) at a quicker rate for the machine, and the effects of this are discussed. This deals with a lot of issues time travel stories rarely address.

Wells' science may not be possible, but he definitely addresses the questions of time travel & evolution in scientific terms.

And that last part is really the crux of the question (not forgetting that we already discussed this). The more Handwavium and Unobtanium the softer the Sci-Fi. So in the spectrum where the boundaries between the types are really fuzzy some Sci-Fi can and will become Science Fantasy,

But not finished works, HGW The Time Machine is what it is, a point in that spectrum and you can't move it from there, but you can make a game/show inspired by it that starts Sci-Fi and becomes Science Fantasy.

It's not (as rawma also correctly points) if the science is valid or not it's about if the questions are being answered in a scientific manner.

Any Sci-Fi will have some Handwavium or Unobtanium, they need to in order to have a setting, but is this just to make the setting possible and the rest is scientifically minded?

Again HG Wells' The Time Machine, it's pure Handwavium, needed to make the history possible, but then the rest is logically explained trying to adhere to scientific explanations.

Where Star Wars and Star Trek both swim in Unobtanium and explain everything with Handwavium. FTL travel and communication is needed for the story, fine, but then you have green blooded Vulcans having children with Humans WTF? and then the Romulans are an offshoot of Vulcans and then you have Klingon/Human hybrids, WTF to the Nth power.

I love the series but it's not Hard Sci-Fi by any stretch of the imagination as it resorts to Handwavium constantly to push the story further. At least in Ringworld you have an explanation to all the humanoids in the Engineers, their maturation process and then evolution. But ST just says here, there's a new humanoid species and we can interbreed! And that's not the only or most egregious example of Handwavium in the series.

Quote from: rawma;1106620There's a huge difference between rigging the science to pose an interesting question which is then explored and rigging the science to make a story that's just an adventure that happened. Too many original series Star Trek episodes are the latter, especially when a previous better episode already addressed whatever question you might think they are reaching for: Captain Kirk arguing yet another computer into destroying itself, the clumsy "multiple Earths" which all need Federation assistance to get them back on track, the super aliens who just need the crew of the Enterprise to bring them up to college freshman level in ethics and philosophy.

Sounds like typical Soft SF to me! Even 'bad soft SF' is qualitatively different from pulp sci-fantasy like the Abramsverse Trek.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1106607By that definition, The Expanse is soft Sci-fi because of the Epstein Drive makes the initial setting possible and the series is mainly about political drama.

Whether hard or soft, it's definitely SF.

Quote from: S'mon;1106658Sounds like typical Soft SF to me! Even 'bad soft SF' is qualitatively different from pulp sci-fantasy like the Abramsverse Trek.

Not seeing the distinction; you just seem to have a bias against Abrams Trek versus original series. The latter can claim originality that Abrams did not demonstrate, but not in every episode where they operate off of largely the same ideas.

Quote from: rawma;1106668Not seeing the distinction; you just seem to have a bias against Abrams Trek versus original series. The latter can claim originality that Abrams did not demonstrate, but not in every episode where they operate off of largely the same ideas.

I dunno, Abrams Trek is no less SF than Buck Rogers in the 25th century after all.

Quote from: S'mon;1106669I dunno, Abrams Trek is no less SF than Buck Rogers in the 25th century after all.

But you seem to think it's less SF than TOS, but without explaining why.

Quote from: rawma;1106670But you seem to think it's less SF than TOS, but without explaining why.

TOS Trek and TNG Trek mostly tried to address questions. They're 'speculative fiction'. Abrams Trek and Buck Rogers don't do that.

Quote from: S'mon;1106673TOS Trek and TNG Trek mostly tried to address questions. They're 'speculative fiction'. Abrams Trek and Buck Rogers don't do that.

Rather a subjective assessment; I fail to see what question Space Seed addressed that Into Darkness did not, for an obvious parallel. "How well does Ricardo Montalban or Benedict Cumberbatch play a villain?" is not really an SF question.

(Movies do tend to demand more stuff happening in general with less focus on one idea, and Star Trek has accordingly done worse with movies in general and better with television episodes, but not enough to cross the SF to not-SF line. In my subjective assessment.)

Quote from: rawma;1106684Rather a subjective assessment

You are correct!

Quote from: Omega;1106271I would not even now consider Flash Gordon Science Fantasy.

It has fantastical elements. But it is all presented as some form of super-science. Same with Buck Rogers.

Problem is. There are people who dismiss ANYTHING that is not hard SF as fantasy.

Essentially, "Hard Sci - fi" do not exist and has never existed, as Asimov, Heinlein etc never were sci fi then, and as "true sci-fi" in that case would at best be "5 years into the future" ....