Is hard sci-fi really appropriate as a rpg genre?

[Sebastian Francis]

I understand your appreciation for the great variety that SF offers, but I think you might have got a little bit carried away with your rhetoric, because there are certainly things that are known to be impossible.

For example, we will never come across a race of primitive giants using 100-kg disks of pure U-235 as coins. Organisms that reproduce with no trace of inheritance are equally impossible. Ditto for flat planets, systems in which the sun goes around the world, and self-reproducing solar-powered nano-robots that could terraform Venus in a fortnight.

Based on what we know about the universe now, those things are impossible. Who's to say what we'll discover in the future?

"Heavier than air flying machines are impossible." --Lord Kelvin, 1895

 

[DMScott]

Given what we know about biology, tough, and what we believe is necessary to sustain life, wouldn't it actually make sense that, were life to evolve on another planet, that it would probably be pretty similar to earth?

Not really. What we know about biology says that life is opportunistic and adapts to all sorts of different niches; slightly different conditions often result in completely different creatures exploiting those niches. And one of the major conditions is the performance and adaptability of all the creatures filling "adjacent" niches. Change in one area has a ripple effect through the whole network. It'd be pretty surprising if an alien ecosystem even had the same sort of environmental niches as we do, let alone similar creatures exploiting them.

At least, isn't that not so much of a handwave, in a way? Isn't that actually a bit more "realistic" than silicon life forms or sentient balls of energy?

If by "pretty similar" you just mean carbon-based life, then almost certainly we'll find aliens pretty similar to us. Not quite as similar as sponges or turnips, though. But I think we'd still expect to find vastly different forms from our own. Just looking at Earth's history tells us this - there appear to have been six major extinction events in the past (and possibly a seventh ongoing now); after each of the first six, when life diversified again, the Earth was populated with completely different creatures and plants in the niches cleared by extinction. Considering how different and weird life gets on our own planet, aliens that look only a little different from us are a bit hard to swallow.

 

[buzz]

Considering how different and weird life gets on our own planet, aliens that look only a little different from us are a bit hard to swallow.

Understood. Still, I've often heard that evolution tends toward necessity. E.g., there's a reason why we have five fingers and not three or seven, two eyes and not one or three, two ears and not one or three, etc.; there's something about these combinations that make less or more redundant or inadequate. Despite many variations among the species on our own globe, we see these patterns repeat themselves over and over again.

Granted, I'm no biologist; I'm just theorizing based on bit and pieces stored in my fuzzy ol' brain. Nonetheless, it's these ideas that keep me from getting too bent out of shape about "forehead ridge" aliens.

Not to mention, the point of aliens in SF isn't always to explore biological theories, but also psychological and sociological themes. E.g., the "culture aliens" in many Trek episodes, or all the "aliens" in Transhuman Space that also happen to all be human.

 

[DMH]

Regarding Jellyfishes: Again it is a matter of probability. There is no reason, why there couldn't be a similar organism on a different planet, though you'd be right to be amazed if you found it as the probability would be astronomically small.

I meant jellyfish in space (ie a vacuum). They can not exist because of the pressure differences.

there's a reason why we have five fingers and not three or seven, two eyes and not one or three, two ears and not one or three, etc

Because we evolved from organisms that had 5 fingers, 2 eyes, etc. There are mammals on Earth that don't have 5 toes and there are organisms that have more or less than 4 limbs. Just because we are the current major intelligent species on Earth doesn't mean that they do have have the potential as well.

This is my first and last statement that sort of bends the rules here- I don't like the idea of humans and human like aliens because it smacks of intelligent design. We are most likely not the end all or be all of the universe. If we are, I hope to be dead before that discovery.

 

[Aesmael]

Rhetoric much?
I'll hazard a guess that this Aslan race provides the 'lion men' referenced earlier.
It seems once again Umbran essentially speaks for me.

But to attempt to actually contribute, let's see what throwing out random advice will get me.

I recommend that the virtues of not allowing faster-than-light travel be considered, and cite the novels of Alastair Reynolds as recommended reading on that subject. As he says, it opens up as many potential storylines as it closes off. Especially if you are still colonising other systems waiting for advice or orders becomes a matter of years, and decades-to-centuries out of contact allows for whatever wierd (or not) cultures you may want to have develop on outlying colonies (or back home).

Then also there was (in these novels) the development of a culture of 'ultras' (ultranauts), people who spent their entire lives travelling from star to star in multi-kilometre long 'lighthuggers'. Time dilation made the planetbound as mayflies to them, while the cultures of each ship steadily became increasingly divergent from 'normal'. If you want something resembling cthulloid horror, try placing the characters as passengers (or even crew) on a vessel such as the Nostalgia for Infinity or the Gnostic Ascension. Can you tell I yearn to run such a campaign myself?

Further, I advocate pragmatism. Decide what is allowable and what is not. Do not attempt to design the machinery of the future yourself, unless that is what you enjoy. By this my intended message is along the lines of Umbran's concerning scanning. Unless you want the campaign to play like one of Stephen Baxter's NASA novels some handwaving will almost certainly be required, so don't sweat it if your game is not an accurate vision of things to come. Probably be frightened if it is, not just because you were right, but also because of what the players will likely get up to in their pursuit of entertainment.

Here is a list of what I consider to be 'safe' choices with the goal of making the setting 'harder'. Feel free to disregard any or all of these. I assure you some and possibly all will turn out to wrong guesses. A good case can be made for the inverse of any as being acceptable.

- No faster than light travel or communication
- No aliens. If you do use alien life (term life as opposed to intelligence), making it largely similar to earth life violates no laws of physics, although it may be considered implausible. Again wert cthulloid (anyone want to offer an alternative/better spelling/word) horror, I suspect that greater (surface?) similarity lends itself to greater potential creepiness.
- My only advice wert handling alien intelligence is to make them as alien or familiar as suits your purposes. I personally would be inclined (at the time of posting) to use humans, even if no longer recognisable as such, in most positions where an alien would normally be called for.
- Make planets as common and of whatever kind best suits you. So long as their arrangement around the parent star is at least reasonably simliar to something we know, your crimes have been committed against plausibility, not physics.
- I can not speak to what shape future societies may take, but my impression is that most novelists seem to go the route of either excessive bureaucratisation and regimentisation (often as something to rail against/oppose, with a correspondingly 'free' colonial region) or to drift towards some kind of feudalism. In either case there is often a central government that is stagnant and must be overthrown.
- Finally, a lot of purportedly hard science fiction stories boil down to puzzle solving, at their core (the remainder are concerned with social issues, apparently). It may or may not be useful to bear in mind that much of hard sci fi is essentially a riddle phrased and answered in terms of current scientific knowledge. From what I recall of the opening post that may not be a helpful statement.

I suspect my list has mutated somewhat as it grew (and isn't that just what you expect in the sci fi arena?), but hope something I have typed will be of use.

 

[DMScott]

Understood. Still, I've often heard that evolution tends toward necessity. E.g., there's a reason why we have five fingers and not three or seven, two eyes and not one or three, two ears and not one or three, etc.; there's something about these combinations that make less or more redundant or inadequate.

Sure, but what I'm saying is the conditions that make those combinations better are largely dependent on what other organisms are capable of. And that part of the conditions will be unique for every world.

Despite many variations among the species on our own globe, we see these patterns repeat themselves over and over again.

On a relatively small scale that's true, but on a geologic scale it isn't really. You can easily find billions of years of life during which none of them applied.

Not to mention, the point of aliens in SF isn't always to explore biological theories, but also psychological and sociological themes. E.g., the "culture aliens" in many Trek episodes, or all the "aliens" in Transhuman Space that also happen to all be human.

Aliens certainly need to fill some plot purpose in a fictional setting. I'm just saying that in a hard sci-fi setting - where consistency and plausibility are presumably important goals, else why play hard sci-fi? - the humans-in-makeup approach to intelligent aliens is something you have to account for. Transhuman Space does that by making all the "aliens" descended from humans; that's a perfectly plausible hard sci-fi way to do things so long as you propose a reasonable rationale for the modifications and spend some time exploring the ramifications, and TS certainly isn't the first or only setting to do so. Star Trek does not aspire to be hard sci-fi, so they've got a different set of priorities when creating aliens, and rely on a big handwave to explain the similarities (IIRC, that some ancient starfaring species modified the genetic code of primitive life on a bunch of planets so that relatively similar intelligent species would ultimately arise billions of years later), which then is never examined again.

At heart, what I'm saying is that using a giant handwave on some basic scientific issue and then never exploring the ramifications is contrary to the hard sci-fi genre. It can work just fine in other forms of sci-fi, there's no law that says all sci-fi must be hard.

 

[buzz]

Sure, but what I'm saying is the conditions that make those combinations better are largely dependent on what other organisms are capable of. And that part of the conditions will be unique for every world.
...
On a relatively small scale that's true, but on a geologic scale it isn't really. You can easily find billions of years of life during which none of them applied.

Gotcha. But what if the basis of one's setting was the idea that there are *not* a myriad different ways life can evolve, but rather a narrow grouping of circumstances that produce similar results? Is that a means to explain the handwave in way that a hard SF setting could handle? Just thinking out loud.

Maybe that's a possible definiton of hard SF: you can do what you want, as long as you can explain it in a way that doesn't strain credibility based on current theory.

I'm babbling. Up way too late partying. All I know is, I got a bunch of Transhuman Space books on sale yesterday, and man does it rock.

 

[Christian]

This thread reminded me of a SF mini-campaign I developed once upon a time. Never actually ran it, but still have it sitting in my files ... Here's the campaign intro handout (in MS-Word format) for anyone who wants to give me feedback ...

 

[DMScott]

Gotcha. But what if the basis of one's setting was the idea that there are *not* a myriad different ways life can evolve, but rather a narrow grouping of circumstances that produce similar results? Is that a means to explain the handwave in way that a hard SF setting could handle? Just thinking out loud.

It's a postulate that's directly contradicted by what we see in Earth's history (traits that are likely to form the basis of a technologically advanced species - tool use, communication and coordination, problem solving, etc. - are found in all sorts of non-human-like Earth species). So it'd take a more detailed handwave to make it work in a hard sci-fi setting, IMHO.

Maybe that's a possible definiton of hard SF: you can do what you want, as long as you can explain it in a way that doesn't strain credibility based on current theory.

Sure. I'd say that's pretty much spot-on for the definition of hard sci-fi as practiced by the best authors - they take big ideas and run with them.

I'm babbling. Up way too late partying. All I know is, I got a bunch of Transhuman Space books on sale yesterday, and man does it rock.

Yup, it's a great setting. At the time, it went in a different direction than most well-known sci-fi. Wikipedia has a nice reference on Transhumanism, with links to good web references on the topic for ideas.

 

[bolen]

It seems to me that although the transhuman space/ "hard science fiction" makes for fun reading. I don’t know how fun it would be for a long time game.

I could see running a spy type game set in the future where you replace the guns for super high tech stuff.

What other types of adventures would one have?

But wouldn't it just devolve into a lecture from the GM about why this or that is plausible. But I teach physics so maybe its just me that would do that