Hard Science Fiction

Hard science fiction is a subfield of science fiction, so all my comments about science fiction apply.

The difference between hard science fiction and soft science fiction is that hard science fiction is written to conform to all known laws of science, whereas soft science fiction doesn't. This does not prevent the author from extrapolating science. That is, from using "scientific facts" that are, in fact, not known.

For example, no one has visited any planets around Alpha Centauri, so an author could postulate that there is a planet, and it could have any orbit that would be stable.

However, to be hard science fiction, in my opinion, the amount of postulated science needs to be identifiable, and small. Also, the story wouldn't be all that interesting if the author just pulled new science out of a hat every time the plot called for the protagonist to get out of a jam.

In my novel, The Gustave Station, which is not yet sold, I postulated that there would be some means of transferring energy to matter, and matter to energy with relative ease. This allowed the creation of "food ports," the genome library, and a very powerful drive for the station. There is no other fictional science in the story. That is, I can tell how long it would take to get to stars using the drive I envisioned, but these times are calculated using Relativity, and existing formulas.

This possibility is somewhat dangerous. That is, if people could transform matter to energy, and back into matter of a different form, then it would be possible to make anything for free, and the economic system would be in danger of collapse. Actually, I suspect people's life's would improve, and there would not be any real adverse effects, but the economy as we now know it would be no more.

(Fear of that caused the powers that be to greatly restrict the use of the converters, and to spread rumors that the technology is dangerous. This sort of thing has happened in the past, and I think is currently happening now. For example, I've seen many people who say we cannot afford universal health care, even though it would probably cost less than the current system. [Some people have other objections, which may or may not be real, but I'm only talking of this one.])