A friend responded to this by noting a long-running home-brew FRP game he had seen at MIT, “in which player characters have to contend with the malnutrition that comes from spending too long eating just waybread, the most common miracle worked by priests is the cure of infection, bimetallism is alive and well with silver being ten times more valuable than gold (for reasons left as an exercise for the reader), orcs are believed by some players to have two Y chromosomes and no X, and, yes, horses make aging rolls.” My friend went on to point out that the game “was once accurately, if impolitically, termed ‘the favorite FRP game of those who can stand it at all.’ ”

A conclusion, I think, which can be applied more generally to the entire hard vs. soft fantasy debate.

Just discovering this site, too, BTW, and I like what I see so far. Nice!

Tom Godwin, “The Cold Equations”, perhaps epitomizes the hard-SF story. The rubric isn’t just a constraint — it’s the McGuffin. Conversely, despite all of the references to physics and physical constants (particularly Planck’s Constant… which contemporary research indicates may not be a constant), Dan Simmons’s excellent Hyperion Quarto is not “hard SF,” because the characters simply are not constrained by any consistent rubric.

Ursula Le Guin’s short fiction set in Earthsea is an excellent example of “hard fantasy,” even though the rules themselves are not what a scientist would accept as sufficient. However, carefully examining the rigor underlying Le Guin’s works (and it’s merely more apparent in the short fiction) shows that it qualifies as “hard.” Conversely, and to use a purposefully annoying example, Bewitched is not hard fantasy.

Or maybe it’s just “hard” if it has math in it.

— CEP

hard superheroes: Watchmen, where Dr. Manhattan destabilized the Cold War balance of power through his alliance with the US, and had revolutionized the world economy through synthesizing lithium for electric vehicles. (The *science* is beyond ’soft’, but given the power it had an effect beyond the plot of the week, or using Superman as an airstrike on Libya.)

Eliza — “real consequences for choices” applies to any fiction, regardless of genre; I’d say it becomes specific to sf and fantasy when the choices in question are sfnal or fantastical. Which is why it’s science in the SF and worldbuilding (not necessarily just the magic) in fantasy, because those are places the story becomes differentiated from mainstream fiction.

Of course, writing like that is hard to find. George R. R. Martin is brilliant, and I think now I’d add Patrick Rothfuss to the list. I’d love to achieve that sort of depth in my own writing.