Some people use hard scifi to mean consistent with its established rules, other people use it to mean consistent with our current knowledge of physics. Star Trek isn't either.

Hard Sci fi would be more like The Expanse or maybe The Martian. Trek is just regular SciFi.

The fun one is Star Wars, which is more Fantasy than SciFi

The initial world of the Expanse is definitely something I'd call hard sci-fi, but then the story happens.

Star Trek is just 1960s US jingoism wrapped up in some kind of pseudo-scientific veneer.

what's it like being the most cynical person on earth

This is a very funny way to describe TNG, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone argue that Star Trek is a hard sci-fi.

Bounce the graviton particle beam off the fuckin whatever

Oof ouch my fuckin whatever

Okay first of all, it's a graviton Lance and you're supposed to aim it into a flux ewaonarion chamber.

It's like you people don't even know basic starfleet engineering standards....

It’s simple:

The warp core is a plasma intermix reaction chamber containing a dilithium matrix that moderates matter-antimatter convergence with a flow-stabilized magnetically interlocked containment manifold that distributes warp power through plasma induction conduits to the engine nacelles and charges the main deflector with anti-protons to generate a subspace field of at least 9 mega-Cochrans whose modulated geometry envelops a stable warp bubble around a starship thereby displacing its gravitmetric frame of reference. All you have to do is modify the subspace field so that protons may pass through but the anti-protons may not, and compensate for the inverse tachyon convergence factor by raising the level of graviton flux beyond the universal gravitational constant at the sublight velocity barrier. It’s all just classic warp mechanics and subspace field theory you get at first year Starfleet academy.

Now, the transporter is an entirely different animal altogether, because as it turns out molecular pattern decoherence is a major factor in why transmitting highly localized buffered matter suffers from irreversible entropy when you try to encode it on a subspace carrier wave. The magnetic resonance of the matter being transported is encoded by rectifying the interleaved signal through an array of field-effect plasma transducers while the intrinsic field subtractor destabilizes the molecular structure into a coherent signal modulation that energizes redundant cross-connected pattern buffers continuously refreshing the resulting resonance field flux to prevent entropic pattern degradation. You certainly wouldn’t want your molecular patten to randomly decohere in the middle of the transport cycle or become interleaved with another pattern in the buffer, I can tell you that my good sir!

Now don’t get me started on the holodeck though, that thing is craaaazy. Sherlock Holmes is real now whaaaaat?

Okay first of all, it's a graviton Lance and you're supposed to aim it into a flux ewaonarion chamber.

Is this before or after you use it to boil water and make steam?

Eh, they'll just get data to do it or ramshackle something together because it sounds right.

Star trek predicted vibe coding...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm7m59l-3sE

I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone argue that Star Trek is a hard sci-fi.

It deals with technology and its repercussions, is using the future and technological advancement to examine human behaviour.

There's not so many laser sword battles.

That's a decent definition of SF, but "hard" SF means that the technology, science, and logic are accurate based on our understanding of those things. Star Trek doesn't really worry about those things, which is fine, but it's not hard SF.

That's just sci-fi. Star Wars is a fantasy set in space

Yeah but besides that, it's all hard science. There's breeding between genetically disconnected species, making new technologies by "reversing the polarity" of things, teleporting matter/life thousands of miles without any technology to rebuild matter on the other end, and inconsistently defining warp speeds where warp 10 is "infinite" velocity and causes you to devolve (into a salamander thing... which isn't a part of human ancestry) but also some ships have gone over warp 10 just casually traveling in the original series. That's some hard science there.

Excuse me that didn't devolve into salamanders they went through accelerated evolution and the only reason they didn't turn into crabs is the writers suck

There's an episode of TNG that tries to explain the inter-species breeding thing. Turns out, ancient aliens spread their DNA across the galaxy, and that's why every alien looks like a human with prosthetics added to their ears, nose, forehead, etc.

Yea, I'm aware, but evolution/genetic drift is a thing. We can't breed with even our closest terrestrial cousin species with a common ancestor from 5-8 million years ago, which would have come from that same seeded genetic line. Why would we be able to breed freely with a Klingon whose last shared genetics were this seed from 4 billion years ago?

We can’t breed with even our closest terrestrial cousin species with a common ancestor from 5-8 million years ago

... we can't?

Dammit! All that effort, all those lacerations and broken bones, for nothing!

We can breed with hamsters though. And regularly do. Which is terrifying.

We can’t breed with even our closest terrestrial cousin species with a common ancestor from 5-8 million years ago

It might be possible, but there haven't been many attempts given the obvious ethical and "what the fuck is wrong with you!?" reasons.

Who calls Star Trek hard sci-fi?

Those who gets hard watching it.

... extra points for doing it during the Kai Winn episodes.

No one calls it hard scifi

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

And just like his technology, Q's love for his receding hairline is beyond our comprehension.

"who voluntarily has a receding hairline"

Hilarious that anyone would think an ambiguisouly queer trickster God would give the slightest of fucks about human beauty standards, and doesn't just think it looks fitting for its own standards.

You know Q has a slide whistle penis. By which I mean every erection makes slide whistle sound effects

Sure a trickster god would. They'd be much fun to play with.

TIL whether something is hard sci-fi apparently has a lot to do with baldness.

It's kinda funny when people oversimplify things to black vs. white in order to mock other people and feel good about themselves.

Hard.

A sexy bald Frenchman

It's tricky because there are several potential meanings of, "hard sci fi".

Some people specifically mean that it lacks any "woke" elements.
Sometimes it means that it doesn't address any social issues and is limited to an action movie with fantasy physics.
Sometimes it's about a standard of how realistic the physics fantasy physics are.

I probably wouldn't count Star Trek as "hard sci fi" on any of these criteria and that's not a bad thing. In general, good science fiction isn't really about the science. It's about the people and the science is just a vehicle to explore questions and ideas about people.

How runny is the cheese in the fiction?

That is how I determine it

I've never, ever heard anyone use either of the first two "definitions." I read a stupid amount of SF and reviews of SF. I'm going to go out on a limb and say you've just heard some people using a term incorrectly, which doesn't constitute an alternate definition.

It's a pretty standard response from when people are trying to disguise their hatred for any hint of progressive politics. They won't say, "I don't like this show because they have a black lesbian." They'll try to dismiss it as fake sci-fi by responding with, "I only like hard sci-fi."

Ironically, a lot of hard SF is pretty progressive.

Ive never heard of anyone use the term to refer to anything but the third point so i was confused by this meme. Thank you

Your second description is literally the definition of soft scifi. No one on planet earth calls comics hard science fiction.

Anyway, Trek is a little hard in that it DOES deal with social issues, and scientific implications, and does what scifi is meant for. But it also has teleporting and magic gods.

IT'S MY FUCKING MBTI TYPE AGAIN WHAT DID I TELL YOU PEOPLE. Sorry I recently got fascinated by the connections between esoteric spirituality and Jungian psychology but when I did my mbti then looked up fictional characters they're all either trickersters or just literally Lucifer.

I’m not familiar with the characters, can some kind person provide screenshots?

Edit: TIL Picard is French

Here you go

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