Hard Science Fiction Research Articles

Exploring Chinese Characteristics in Science Fiction Films: A Case Study of 'Wandering Earth'

Chinese science fiction films were first created in the 1930s, but few outstanding works appeared until the beginning of the 21st century. With the appearance of Wandering Earth in the 2019 Spring Festival, Chinese science fiction films entered a new stage of development.This paper, using the 'Wandering Earth' series as a blueprint for research, first summarizes the development of Chinese science fiction films. Secondly, it focuses on analyzing why 'Wandering Earth' can be considered a genuinely Chinese hard science fiction film.Finally, through the analysis of the Wandering Earth series, we will summarise the future creative direction of Chinese sci-fi films and the experience that can be learnt from it, so as to accumulate creative experience for building domestic sci-fi film IP in the future.

Interstellar exploration: From science fiction to actual technology

The technology for even the most advanced missions in the solar system doesn't need advances in basic science. Traveling through the solar system can be described through what is called ‵hard science fiction’, i.e. science fiction strictly based on scientific knowledge. Interstellar exploration is a completely different matter. Robotic flyby missions to the nearest stars using nanoprobes can be performed using technologies based on known science, while anything beyond this requires advances which we don't know how to implement, or even we are not sure whether they are possible at all. The point applies not only to the technological aspects but even the scientific bases on which the relevant technologies may rest. The missions requiring less scientific-technological advances, are slow missions, like space arks (generation ships) or missions based on hibernation with travel times up to hundred years. To implement both, the uncertainties are more related to the advances in space medicine and biology than in propulsion and physics. The fastest travels allowed by the current interpretations of the relativity theory are relativistic missions in which the time contraction at speeds closing the speed of light is exploited to decrease the travel time for the astronauts, although the travel time seen by those who remain on Earth is close, in years, to the distance traveled expressed in light years. However, the energy required for this type of missions is large and grows drastically with the increase of time contraction.Faster than light travel, which seems to be possible following some interpretations of relativity involving either wormholes or some sort of warp drive, requires substantial advances in fundamental physics. A symptom of this is that the novels dealing with interstellar travels belong more to the space opera – which doesn't follow strict scientific credibility – than to the hard science fiction subgenre. No novel of this kind explains details about how the relevant machinery works, and even less scientifically realistic are the movies, TV series, and videogames of this kind. Moreover, to achieve a travel time allowing to reach distant star systems in reasonable times using warp drives, the authors of Star Trek had to resort to the Warp Factor which is essentially a nonlinear scale. This makes the requirements for FTL travel even more difficult to achieve.

Popularization and scientization in terminology translation

Abstract San Ti (Three Body, better known to English readers as The Three-Body Problem) stands out as the most successful Chinese literary work introduced to international audiences through translation. Previous studies have primarily focused on translating culture-specific terms and fictive terms in the work, arguing that the strategy of foreignization alongside occasional footnotes significantly contributes to its tremendous success. Techno-scientific terms, on the other hand, have received relatively little attention because their rendering seemed to be a straightforward matter of back translation. However, our case study reveals that the source-text-oriented translation strategy for culture-specific terms and fictive terms presents only a partial picture of the science fiction (SF) terminology translation in San Ti. It demonstrates that translating techno-scientific terms needs to be considered alongside culture-specific and fictive terms. Moreover, it provides proof that translating techno-scientific terms cannot be simplified to a process of back translation only. The translator sometimes deviated from the principles of equivalence, resulting in three different types of interlingual terminological shifts, which are discussed and analyzed in the current study. Given the heterogeneity of the target readers and the interesting paradox of San Ti as hard SF, these different types of deviation serve two divergent purposes: popularization and scientization. In addition to explaining the success of San Ti in the English-speaking world, the findings of this case study also provide insights into the unfaithful facets, contextual factors and research scope of terminology translation in this specific genre.

Tasting Light: Ten Science Fiction Stories to Rewire Your Perceptions

Reviewed by: Tasting Light: Ten Science Fiction Stories to Rewire Your Perceptions April Spisak Cappetta, A.R., ed. Tasting Light: Ten Science Fiction Stories to Rewire Your Perceptions; ed. by A. R. Capetta and Wade Roush. MITeen, 2022 [320p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781536219388 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781536227093 $9.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R* Gr. 8-12 Hard science fiction is relatively rare in YA literature, which is unfortunate considering how well suited it seems for teen readers. By its very nature, adolescence is a quest beyond the familiar boundaries of childhood, a search for a unique identity formed from what was and what is. Hard science fiction uses that same model of combining known and not quite realized technology into speculation that pushes the world forward. This sublime collection highlights those parallels with both wit and wisdom, and the stories affirm how impactful and memorable this sub-genre can be. Editors Capetta and Roush deploy the short story format with precision and purpose; the stories are distinctly beautiful, immediately engaging, and relentlessly provocative. The connective tissue is the meaning and significance of identity—who we are, who we can never be, or who we can, with a healthy dose of luck or grit, become in the swirl of time, place, situation, and cultural moments. Each story here is intentionally, effectively diverse, and each celebrates the quest to create labels that actually fit individual identities, rather than choosing from suffocating frameworks that earn legitimacy only by their familiarity. Concepts of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and even humanity itself are challenged and redefined with a fearlessness and brash disregard for tradition that is reserved primarily for the young. "Melantis" by Junauda Petrus-Nasah is an instant classic, examining the political and cultural fallout of an expensive drug used by pregnant mothers to boost the intelligence of (almost exclusively white) babies. Years later, an unexpected side effect emerges: those children and teens are now experiencing a change in their melanin production, causing uproar about how their privileged selves are being treated now that they are perceived as Black. Similarly, K. Ancrum's "Walk 153" is immediately powerful—masked walkers roam cities with cameras on their chests, paid to essentially be proxies for their customers and send their anonymous perspective to people who can't or won't leave their homes. This premise pushes the limitations and dehumanization of gig culture out to an extreme degree before looping back to humanity after two people risk breaking the rules to make an actual connection. A.S. King's final story, "Smile River," wraps up the collection in stunning fashion, offering a tale that may feel startlingly familiar to readers who have been told to "just smile" all their lives. As the narrative jumps between different generations of one family, readers track how the societal emphasis on happiness (and control) [End Page 39] leads to the development of a neural implant that forces someone—most often, a woman—to smile. It is a sickeningly small leap to this future where smiling is compulsory and medically enforced for women from a present that has yet to fully recognize a woman's autonomy. The story makes a worthy finisher, as the clever and harsh critique of the whole darn time continuum and how women fare on it ultimately gives way to a hopeful, perhaps even quietly empowering, closing note. Science fiction is all about the "what ifs," but hard sci-fi with protagonists as bold as these becomes something more about how to get to a better future rather than wondering whether that future is possible. These characters are running full speed away from social limitations and toward entirely new models that could still exist within the known world. Teens who are very much living in a world that is on the brink of both disaster and possibility (in not always equal measures) will connect with the urgency in these stories. Such is the magic of hard science fiction, and these editors have found an impressive range of authors to explore the next possible steps, both dire and hopeful. Copyright © 2022 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Here Be Dragons: The Evolution of Cyberspace from William Gibson to Neal Stephenson

Abstract The article focuses on the evolution of cyberspace from a myth-critical perspective: the presence of irrational and fantasy elements in seemingly rational and scientific cyberpunk as a subgenre of hard science fiction. Our research primarily focuses on two significant works: William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy (1984-1988), an icon of early cyberpunk, and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992), a switch to postcyberpunk. Moreover, we consider the other works of a broad genre of cyberpunk including The Matrix movies and conclude that the cyberpunk of the 1980s and 1990s presented cyberspace as an enchanted Terra incognita and blurred the line between rationality and irrationality, technology and magic. Emerging as a way of escaping the real world, as hope for immortality, transcendence or transgression (Foucault), the cyberpunk ‘matrix’ followed in the footsteps of fantasy, myth, religion, and utopia. In our view, the postcyberpunk ‘Metaverse’ of the 1990s is more ironical and ‘realistic’ as it appears, and the more familiar and routine the cyberspace became to people, the less romantic and mysterious it turned out to be. Nevertheless, the nostalgic attempts to return to the old, fantasy model of cyberspace were made in postcyberpunk almost immediately after its emergence.

Escenarios del descubrimiento extraterrestre: los discursos de la ciencia de la conquista en ficciones audiovisuales recientes

2002, Elon Musk founds SpaceX, a company whose mission is to send the first manned rocket to Mars. Fourteen years later, National Geographic launches Mars, a series that alternates between documentary and hard science fiction to wonder about the problems that the first earthly settlers would have to overcome in their Martian journey, at the same time, that exposes the progress of humanity to achieve this goal. Consequently - and from the perspective of the humanities (the history of science in particular) - in this article, I will analyze the narrative tensions that surround the founding scenario on which the imminent company of colonization of Mars is articulated. According to Diana Taylor and Juan Pimentel, I will break down how, through the administration of the idea of ​​fascination, science and scientists became the protagonists on the scene of the discovery and conquest of new territories. Simultaneously –and in dialogue with Face to Gaia, by Latour– I will inscribe the conflicts that the Martian conquest supposes in a genealogy that relates it to the figurations of the Antarctic travels of the first modernity and the colonization of America. From the Antarctic mirror, this text predicts the fate of the Martian illusion.

Hōchi’s Strange Rumors: Tales of the Floating Castle: A Critical Reading of an Early Japanese Hard Science Fiction Novel

ABSTRACTYano Ryūkei’s novel Hōchi’s Strange Rumors: Tales of the Floating Castle (hōchi ibun: ukishiro monogatari) was published in 1890 and remained popular until 1945. Japanese and western scholarship often refer to it as the first Japanese novel with hard science fiction characteristics and, sometimes, as a novel expressing the doctrine of territorial expansion to the south (nanshinron). However, the novel is only mentioned in passing, perhaps because it does not belong with those science fiction works that have challenged scientific paradigms in an original way and perhaps also because it is problematic from today’s postcolonial perspective. And yet, this nearly forgotten novel is a landmark of cultural history. This article uses literary, political, and sociocultural contextualization in a close reading of Tales of the Floating Castle to explore the origins of Japanese science fiction, its relationship with western and local literature, and its early stages of development. Through this inquiry into how a member of Meiji elite wrote about his world, we get an intimate glimpse into early modern intellectual salons in Japan and on the complex process of Japan’s modernization, while also learning about the inherently political nature of science fiction.

Posthuman Reconstruction of the World as a Simulation in Charles Stross’ Accelerando

In this paper my aim is to analyze the theme of simulation in Charles Stross’ hard science fiction novel titled ‘Accelerando’ (2005). The discussion shall start by pointing out the enormous significance of the ideas of simulation both in the world of pure science as well as in the fields of philosophy, arts and literature. We shall show by adopting an informational approach and by using the theoretical framework of Baudrillard’s ‘Simulacra and Simulation’ that science fiction novels like Charles Stross’ ‘Accelerando’ treat simulation not just as an abstract mathematical entity existing independently of human beings; rather they treat simulation as an indispensable step for mankind in their journey of ascension to the Posthuman plane of existence. This paper will also try to prove that Stross’ ‘Accelerando’ not only relies upon the description of the effects of use of many incomprehensibly powerful simulation technologies in various forms to produce the effect of estrangement upon the readers but it also implies that the very fabric of reality which deem to be real is composed of binary oppositions between different strands of contradistinctive signs and symbols which in a posthuman world will crumble together to give way to a Posthuman world replete with endless possibilities. This novel like many other contemporary hard science fiction novels implies that the reality is essentially indistinguishable from the simulation once the influence of human perception or consciousness is deducted from the equation and then the entire Universe can be interpreted as one gigantic computational entity consisting of myriads of quantum informational field operators through the manipulation of which we can derive a semblance of power indistinguishable from the actual one.Keywords: Science Fiction, Posthumanism, Simulacra and Simulation, Quantum Nature of Creation, Portrayal of Future

A dialogue regarding "The material co-construction of hard science fiction and physics"

Science fiction and the ‘technofantasies’ of the future that it provides may attract some students to study physics. The details and assumptions informing these ‘imaginaries’ may, on the other hand, be unattractive to other students, or imply that there is not a place for them. This forum discussion complements Cathrine Hasse’s paper discussing the ways in which gender and other interests interact in the ‘entanglement’ of physics and science fiction. The conversation interrogates some of the issues in Cathrine’s paper, and brings in complementary literatures and perspectives. It discusses the possibility of a ‘successor science’ and new, more inclusive ways of imagining and constructing our possible futures.

The material co-construction of hard science fiction and physics

This article explores the relationship between hard science fiction and physics and a gendered culture of science. Empirical studies indicate that science fiction references might spur some students’ interest in physics and help develop this interest throughout school, into a university education and even further later inspire the practice of doing science. There are many kinds of fiction within the science fiction genre. In the presented empirical exploration physics students seem particularly fond of what is called ‘hard science fiction’: a particular type of science fiction dealing with technological developments (Hartwell and Cramer in The hard SF renaissance, Orb/TOR, New York, 2002). Especially hard science fiction as a motivating fantasy may, however, also come with a gender bias. The locally materialized techno-fantasies spurring dreams of the terraforming of planets like Mars and travels in time and space may not be shared by all physics students. Especially female students express a need for other concerns in science. The entanglement of physics with hard science fiction may thus help develop some students’ interest in learning school physics and help create an interest for studying physics at university level. But research indicates that especially female students are not captured by the hard techno-fantasies to the same extent as some of their male colleagues. Other visions (e.g. inspired by soft science fiction) are not materialized as a resource in the local educational culture. It calls for an argument of how teaching science is also teaching cultural values, ethics and concerns, which may be gendered. Teaching materials, like the use of hard science fiction in education, may not just be (yet another) gender bias in science education but also carrier of particular visions for scientific endeavours.

Herbe, Sarah. 2012. Characters in New British Hard Science Fiction with a Focus on Genetic Engineering in Paul McAuley, Alastair Reynolds and Brian Stableford

Article Herbe, Sarah. 2012. Characters in New British Hard Science Fiction with a Focus on Genetic Engineering in Paul McAuley, Alastair Reynolds and Brian Stableford was published on November 1, 2012 in the journal English and American Studies in German (volume 2012, issue 1).

Paranormality: Science Fiction's Holy Grail

At the time of the rise of the physical sciences and their cold equations, the paranormal emerged in France as a Cartesian reaction to this invasion of "res extensa", which threatened to sweep away the privileged role of mind as opposed to matter. From Mesmer's famous bucket and Balzac's fascination with magnetism, to Maupassant at the other end of the century, paranormal powers are seen as forces emanating from the realm of mind. Despite the fact that common wisdom sees American, indeed Anglo-Saxon, culture as non-Cartesian, rooted in a materialist world view, there has been a strong renewal of interest, in recent SF, in such matters as telepathy and telekinesis, supported by developments in the neurosciences. Neuroscience, in seeking to 'explain' telepathy by attributing it to material forces, in a sense resurrects the paranormal as a sort of holy grail for modern science. Anglo-Saxon SF, it seems, in the age of multidimensional physics and neuroscience, has followed suit. This paper examines the role of the paranormal in examples of recent hard science fiction.

Warm Worlds and Otherwise , and: Star Songs of an Old Primate (review)

MR Lost Classic Warm Worlds and Otherwise by James Tiptree, Jr. Ballantine, 1979 (reissue—paper) Star Songs ofan Old Primate by James Tiptree, Jr. Ballantine, 1978, 270 pp. (paper) Like many of the unforgettable characters created by the late science fiction writer James Tiptree, Jr., Delphi has a problem. Her brain, or at least the brain that controls her nimble little body, actuaUy belongs to a shambling hulk of genetic mismatches known as Philadelphia Burke, "The Girl Who Was Plugged In." In Tiptree's early story, "Fault," MitcheU and his wife begin to experience some provocative difficulties with time management. Dr. Aaron Kaye wants "A Momentary Taste of Being" from the sessUe aUen in the scout ship's hold but fears, rightfully, for his connection to his sister and for his Ufe. Then there's the Ul-fated crew of the Sunbird I, three men who find themselves unprepared for survival among the ostensibly more evolved human beings of Tiptree's masterpiece, "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" The stories in Warm Worlds and Otherwise and Star Songs of an Old Primate, Tiptree's second and third short- story collections, give us a teeming world of desperate characters in dire situations but very little of their author. Now and then we get a glimpse of the wizard behind the curtain, but mostly Tiptree preferred to stay weU hidden. According to friend and coUeague Ursula Le Guin, that's why Tiptree withdrew "The Women Men Don't See," from the 1974 Nebula race. He'd won the previous year for "Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death" and worried that the high profUe of a second win, especiaUy with an overtly feminist story such as "The Women Men Don't See," would raise questions he wasn't prepared to answer—because Tiptree was, in real Ufe, a woman. The creator of the fictional persona James Tiptree, Jr., and the author of "his" work was Atice Bradley Sheldon , a woman whose many talents and occupations included painting and graphic design, photo intelligence work for the army, a two-year stint as one of the founding members of the CIA, doctoral work as an experimental psychologist and, finally, writing. Tiptree went on to winthree Nebula awards, two Hugos and a Jupiter award given by the Instructors of Science Fiction in Higher Education. AU but one of those award-winning stories come from either Warm Worlds or Star Songs. When Arkham House brought out a best-of coUection in 1990, Her Smoke Rose up Forever, eleven of the seventeen stories were from these same two remarkable books. What we get in these two volumes is an artist at the dizzying height of her considerable powers, a writer whose legacy is of central importance to science fiction as a genre. "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" presages cyberpunk as a subgenre. Tiptree's influence on feminist genre work has been so powerful that the award for "fantasyorsciencefiction thatexpands or explores our understanding of gender" bears her name. Her unique blend of hard science fiction—technical stuff with spaceships and gadgets— 212 · The Missouri Review and soft science fiction—stories that ponder the philosophical, psychological and sociological implications of technology—pushed the limits of the genre in ways that writers such as Octavia Butler, Marge Piercy and Douglas Adams have buUt on with great success. Including posthumous work, Tiptree published three novels, more than seventy short stories, a coUection of poems and numerous essays, aU in less than twenty years. Ofthat rich cache of work, what remains in print and easily avaUable is her second novel, Brightness Falls from the Air, and Jeffrey D. Smith's Meet Meat Infinity, a coUection that reprints eight of Tiptree's previously uncoUected stories and the noveUa "The Color of Neanderthal Eyes," along with a wide-ranging selection of her published nonfiction. The award-winning stories and some of the others Uve on, scattered through anthologies, but not together in one place. This dearth ofin-print material makes teaching or studying Tiptree a difficult venture. A full-length biography of Tiptree by writer and scholar JuUe Phillips is due from St. Martin's Press in the spring of 2004. Here...

Cosmic engineers: a study of hard science fiction

The first comprehensive critical study of hard science fiction, this book reveals how the term hard science fiction originated, and how arguments about its range and nature have unfolded. Westfahl shows that hard science fiction is generally characterized by the author's extreme concern for scientific accuracy and logic. Identifying two characteristic forms of hard science fiction, Westfahl closely examines several representative works: Arthur C. Clarke's A Fall of Moondust, Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity, and Charles Sheffield's Between the Strokes of Midnight. This book offers new insights into hard science fiction and provides a wealth of information about what members of the science fiction community have said about this relatively recent genre.

Reflections on the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the Fourth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts , and: Storm Warnings: Science Fiction Confronts the Future , and: Imprisoned in a Tesseract: The Life and Work of James Blish (review)

Reviewed by: Reflections on the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the Fourth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, and: Storm Warnings: Science Fiction Confronts the Future, and: Imprisoned in a Tesseract: The Life and Work of James Blish Donald M. Hassler Michael R. Collings , ed. Reflections on the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the Fourth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. Westport: Greenwood, 1986. 124 pp. $29.95. George E. Slusser, Colin Greenland, and Eric S. Rabkin , eds. Storm Warnings: Science Fiction Confronts the Future. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1987. 289 pp. $29.95. David Ketterer . Imprisoned in a Tesseract: The Life and Work of James Blish. Kent: Kent State UP, 1987. 410 pp. $29.50. As Michael Collings, one of the most prolific recent critics of the genre, emphasizes in his Preface, efforts of academics to broaden the scope and the appeal of work on what some prefer to label "fantastic fiction" have been intense in the Eighties. Far too often, however, these efforts have tended more to the "clubbable" and social than to the scholarly. Modern academics, especially those working on science fiction and fantasy, are apt to forget that Dr. Johnson not only talked a lot but also worked long hours in the garret—and with a tortured sense of reality that always feared "diseases of the imagination" or wishful thinking. In the lead essay from the collection of papers delivered at the Fourth International Conference on the Fantastic held in Florida in 1983, Brian Attebery makes the distinction that fantasy awakens desire rather than satisfies any exigencies in reality; and although his theoretical writing is usually hardheaded, I cannot help but sense the aura of the poolside party and the clubbability of like-minded fans (or fanatics) placing a definite restriction on Attebery's essay as well as on the others in this collection. The contributions are still conference papers. There are too few of them. There is not enough development; and, finally, I think, the assumptions about fantasy remain too complacent, not examined enough. Attebery's piece, for example, short as it is, represents essentially an attack on Wells in favor of undeveloped bows to modern conservatives such as the Inklings Lewis and Tolkien. But the alignment of Christianity with fantasy is a horrendous historical mistake going back, at least, to the Enlightenment. In spite of Wells's puckishness, it has proved a much better experiment for hope and desire to align themselves with some modicum of hardheadedness, such as exists in science fiction, rather than to curl complacently back in upon themselves. There is not enough reality itself, if one defines that as scholarly development, nor respect for reality in this thin volume of enthusiasm for the fantastic. The Eaton Conference, which has flourished during roughly the same recent time period as the Conference on the Fantastic, must be a more sober meeting of minds if one can judge from the essays collected from their 1984 conference at the Eaton Collection of the University of California, Riverside, in conjunction with a London meeting also honoring Orwell's ominous year soaked in reality. There are more essays here, and more of them are developed as essays rather than left to remain conference discussions. My preference for what is valuable in this collection over the proceedings from the other conference, however, comes down to matters of importance, depth, and meaning for our time. A number of essays here, notably those by Frederik Pohl, who is himself a rigorous writer of hard science fiction, Colin Greenland, and John Huntington, explore the many and varied reactions to Orwell's message for our time. Furthermore, many of the essays not about 1984 or other Orwell texts address the theoretical possibilities, often toyed with in modern science fiction, for hardheaded extrapolation from [End Page 325] plausible realities. Stanislaw Lem, in particular his key novel Solaris (1961), provides grist for this finely ground, and grounded, work in a long piece by Bradford Lyau, echoed in a later essay by Kenneth Bailey. As with the fans of the fantastic, the question is miracles; but for the scholars and for the subjects they write about at the Eaton Conferences, miracles must...

Aspects of Fantasy: Selected Essays from the Second International Conference on the Fantastic in Literature and Film , and: Erotic Universe: Sexuality and Fantastic Literature , and: Hard Science Fiction (review)

Aspects of Fantasy: Selected Essays from the Second International Conference on the Fantastic in Literature and Film , and: Erotic Universe: Sexuality and Fantastic Literature , and: Hard Science Fiction (review)