Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness: Difference between revisions

{{tropeUseful Notes}}

{{quote|''"The fun, and the material for this article, lies in treating the whole thing as a game. I've been playing the game since I was a child, so the rules must be quite simple. They are: for the reader of a science-fiction story, they consist of finding as many as possible of the author's statements or implications which conflict with the fact as science currently understands them. For the author, the rule is to make as few such slips as he possibly can."''|'''Hal Clement''', ''Whirligig World''}}

[[Speculative Fiction]] fanatics are always raving about how "hard" the science is in various stories—but it's not like you can rub ''a story'' with a piece of quartz and see if it leaves a scratch on ''the plot''. So what is "hardness" in SF? Why do people want it? And [[Sorting Algorithm of Tropes|how do we put a number to it]]?

Unfortunately for analytical purposes, this pattern is not universal - hard SF stories can skip over the details as long as the basic explanation is correct [[Magic A Is Magic A|given what's been established so far]]. Therefore, regardless of the [httphttps://web.archive.org/web/20091216091121/http://www.shrovetuesdayobserved.com/flight.html typical stylistic flourishes] of hard SF, the only way to define it is self-consistency and scientific accuracy.

''Note 4:'' There are sometimes in the news reports of studies which would reassign many works on the scale—for example, tropers might claim [https://web.archive.org/web/20131026114308/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8782895/CERN-scientists-break-the-speed-of-light.html the September 2011 OPERA experiment which measured faster-than-light travel by neutrinos] can raise works whose [[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness/One Big Lie|One Big Lie]] is [[FTL Travel]] to the [[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness/Speculative Science|Speculative Science]] category. There are three reasons to be cautious about making such alterations: first, because mass media reporting of scientific results is often inaccurate due to the difficulty of presenting technical results to a non-technical audience; second, because revolutionary new results (and results in the ''news'' are generally new) are far more likely to be overturned than they appear (indeed, the OPERA anomaly seem to have been [https://web.archive.org/web/20120225003818/http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/02/breaking-news-error-undoes-faster.html caused by faulty equipment]); and third, for purposes of the Scale, the yardstick of scientific plausibility is what the science said ''at the time the work was written'', not what [[Science Marches On|scientists discovered later]].

''Note 5:'' As far as this wiki is concerned, [[Tropes Are Not Good]] and [[Tropes Are Not Bad]]. "Hard" and "soft" may be considered as denotations of the quality of the story by those who prefer one over the other. We don't hold to that here, as each category has readers who find it "[[Goldilocks|just right]]".

''Note 6:'' [[All The Tropes:Examples Need Context|Examples Need Context]]. When adding this trope to a work page, don't simply put down the number and leave it at that. This would require a troper to visit this page to learn more about it. That's fine if the troper is interested, but if they are already working their way down the work's page (And only at the M's) they probably don't want to wander off on a [[Wiki Walk]]. You can say the number, but please go on a bit explaining what the number is. for instance:

* Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness: 5. This work leans heavily into [[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness/Speculative Science|Speculative Science]] - the science of the tale is (or was) genuine speculative science or engineering, and the goal of the author to make as few errors with respect to known fact as possible.

# '''[[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness/World of Phlebotinum|World of Phlebotinum]]:''' The universe is full of [[Applied Phlebotinum]] with more to be found behind every star, but the Phlebotinum is dealt with in a [[Magic A Is Magic A|fairly consistent fashion despite its lack of correspondence with reality]] and, in-world, is considered to lie within the realm of scientific inquiry. Works like E. E. "Doc" Smith's ''[[Skylark Series|Skylark of Space]]'' and ''[[Lensman]]'' series, ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'', and ''[[StarcraftStarCraft]]'' fall in this category.

# '''[[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness/Physics Plus|Physics Plus]]:''' Stories in this class once again have multiple forms of [[Applied Phlebotinum]], but in contrast to the prior class, the author aims to justify these creations with [[Shown Their Work|real]] and [[Minovsky Particle|invented]] natural laws—and these creations and others from the same laws will [[Chekhov's Boomerang|turn up again and again in new contexts]]. Works like ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'', David Brin's ''[[Uplift]]'' series, and [[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined(2004 TV series)|the 2003-2009]] ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined'']]'' fall in this class.

# '''[[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness/One Big Lie|One Big Lie]]:''' Authors of works in this class invent [[The "Unicorn In The Garden" Rule|one (or, at most, a very few)]] counterfactual physical laws and writes a story that explores the implications of these principles. [[David Weber]]'s ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' series, most works in [[Alan Dean Foster]]'s ''[[Humanx Commonwealth]]'' series, and [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s ''[[Farnham's Freehold]]'' fall in this category. This class also includes a subclass (4.5 on the scale) we call ''One Small Fib'', containing stories that include only a single counterfactual device (often [[FTL Travel]]), but for which the device is not a major element of the plot. Many Hal Clement novels (e.g. ''[[Mission Of Gravity]]'', ''Close to Critical''), ''[[Freefall]]'', and the ''[[Alien (franchise)|Alien]]'' series fall within the subclass.

[[Category:Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness{{PAGENAME}}]]