On Feb 1, 3:56*pm, Paul Schlyter wrote:
On Fri, 1 Feb 2013 08:11:49 -0800 (PST), RichA
wrote:

I dream of the day when a good scifi is produced (in this century,
that is) that does not stray from science fact or possibility and is
still entertaining.

In any kind of fiction, including science fiction, you ARE allowed to
stray from fact. That's the very purpose of fiction....

Yes, but his sense ought to be quite understandable: "that does not
stray too far from science fact or possibility"... after all, the
typical romance novel manages without having to bring in werewolves or
zombies or vampires as characters (although, come to think of it,
romance novels that *do* do this are having an upsurge of popularity
at present)... so what's wrong with hoping that hard SF might make an
appearance in Hollywood?

The thing is, though, that when hard SF does make it to the silver
screen, it often isn't recognized as hard SF.

Some of the James Bond movies almost qualify. What about _Marooned_?
Colossus: The Forbin Project, although a bit optimistic about progress
in Artificial Intelligence, could be considered pretty close to hard
SF as well.

The thing is, though, that generally speaking, since intelligent life
on Mars is now ruled out by what we know of the planet, what the
general public thinks of when it thinks of science fiction involves
one of two elements that belong to the soft SF category: time travel
or FTL spaceflight.

So the genre was defined by H. G. Wells - science fiction is basically
bounded by The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. (Wells didn't
use FTL, of course, but as noted, our new understanding of our solar
system has made FTL an apparent necessity for encountering intelligent
aliens.)

Jules Verne, on the other hand, has stayed in the "period piece" area,
his works being pillaged for steampunk.

John Savard