So You Want To/Write a Hard Science Fiction Story With Space Travel: Difference between revisions

{{How-To Guide}}

{{quote|''"Did you ever notice when you're jacking off, that it's more of a turn-on to fantasize about the girl next door than it is to fantasize about a supermodel? Because with the girl next door, you're thinking, hey, ''this could really happen!''"''|'''[[George Carlin]]'''}}

 

Carlin's observation evokes one of the core appeals of [[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness|hard science fiction]]. A sufficiently hard science fiction story, even if it's set in another star system, could ''really happen'' -- or at least, it should be very difficult for the readers to come up with ways that it ''couldn't'' happen.

You wouldn't set a story in the Sahara Desert and have your hero go swimming in one of the "numerous lakes" there. You wouldn't set a car chase in downtown Florence, Italy and then make up the street names and city layout. Similarly, don't set your story on Mars and have your hero swelter in the unbearable heat<ref>I'm looking at ''you'', [[Babylon 5]] novel #1 "Voices" by John Vornholt!</ref>, or put an Earthlike planet in orbit around Alpha Centauri without at least mentioning the bright "B" star that should be visible from time to time in the sky. Making up details about places we ''don't'' have strong data about is one thing, but making up details about places where our existing data would make those details flat-out impossible is quite another.

 

 

== Doing the math ==