Ironically, Star Trek is considered “hard sci-fi”, even if there are other shows/books that are harder. The hardness of science fiction isn’t related to how plausible the science backing it is, but how much effort the story puts into explaining the “science”, and how internally consistent that explanation is. Trek spends a fair amount of effort into technobabble, and had dedicated technobabble writers whose job was to try to maintain consistency with those explanations.
Compare this with something like Star Wars (the movies, not third party novels), where nearly zero effort is put into explaining how magical Force powers work or why laser swords have a fixed length.
Hard sci-fi says “this is how this works”, even if it’s complete bullshit. Soft sci-fi says “just accept that these things work, so we can use them as plot devices”.
That’s more or less how I always took it, not necessarily to the accuracy of the science so much as consideration of the “science” with the closer to real life science being harder. That said star trek is still squishy but it’s actually sci-fi, whereas star wars by contrast is just fantasy in a space setting, not at all sci-fi whatsoever.
Ironically, Star Trek is considered “hard sci-fi”, even if there are other shows/books that are harder. The hardness of science fiction isn’t related to how plausible the science backing it is, but how much effort the story puts into explaining the “science”, and how internally consistent that explanation is. Trek spends a fair amount of effort into technobabble, and had dedicated technobabble writers whose job was to try to maintain consistency with those explanations.
Compare this with something like Star Wars (the movies, not third party novels), where nearly zero effort is put into explaining how magical Force powers work or why laser swords have a fixed length.
Hard sci-fi says “this is how this works”, even if it’s complete bullshit. Soft sci-fi says “just accept that these things work, so we can use them as plot devices”.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/MediaNotes/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness
On a 1 - 6 scale, Star Trek scores 2, squishy soft.
First time ever hearing that explanation, doubt many people share that view.
That’s more or less how I always took it, not necessarily to the accuracy of the science so much as consideration of the “science” with the closer to real life science being harder. That said star trek is still squishy but it’s actually sci-fi, whereas star wars by contrast is just fantasy in a space setting, not at all sci-fi whatsoever.
That’s a nice list…
Star Wars is off the scale, it’s not sci-fi at all (There’s no “sci” part in it).
It’s fantasy.