Does hard sci-fi even exist in hollywood? discusssion

[Sketcher]

I've been toying with the idea of making a short film revolving around realisic space combat. Sort of a cross between 2001 and Das Boot. How interesting that could be to a general audience is up for debate.

 

[RoJoHen]

But really, the first point should be enough. When mods have said—repeatedly—not to do it, that should be enough of a reason, yes?

Rules do not exist merely for the sake of exerting authority, but for the sake of serving the good of the board and its members. Rules are a means to an end, not an end in themselves, and thus they need to be flexible.

Sounds like a topic for the "Questions, Suggestions & Feedback" forum.

If it's a super long thread and no good discussion is being added by resurrecting it, it should be avoided.

This thread only had like 10 posts in it when it was brought back, making it pretty easy to dive in and get caught up.

 

[TerraNovan]

Rules do not exist merely for the sake of exerting authority, but for the sake of serving the good of the board and its members. Rules are a means to an end, not an end in themselves, and thus they need to be flexible.

Sounds like a topic for the "Questions, Suggestions & Feedback" forum.

If it's a super long thread and no good discussion is being added by resurrecting it, it should be avoided.

This thread only had like 10 posts in it when it was brought back, making it pretty easy to dive in and get caught up.

Lol I spent hours looking for existing threads.

They even have a sticky saying people should try to condense threads instead of creating new ones.


Anyway I think the problem with hard sci fi, is many find the genre far to limiting, as it reqires a fluency in history and technology that many lack.

For those of us who fixate on specific details, its second nature.

 

[Silvercrest]

Rules do not exist merely for the sake of exerting authority, but for the sake of serving the good of the board and its members. Rules are a means to an end, not an end in themselves, and thus they need to be flexible.

Beware! Too many callbacks to "Justice" and you'll lose ground.

 

[Christopher]

I've been toying with the idea of making a short film revolving around realisic space combat. Sort of a cross between 2001 and Das Boot. How interesting that could be to a general audience is up for debate.

That would be an interesting experiment, and you'd need to really know your physics and be well-read in military hard SF. But it could be worthwhile. There's rarely been any filmic depiction of plausible space combat; usually it's just treated like either naval warfare (the Star Trek model) or aerial combat (the Star Wars model), neither of which makes much sense in space. Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda made a good attempt at it in its first couple of seasons, when it was run by producers who wanted to do hard SF (although the third-season episode "Point of the Spear" was a really solid space-combat episode too), but they still compromised by doing unrealistic FX shots of spaceship interactions.

The problem with showing space combat is that the ships would generally be way too far apart to ever appear in the same frame as more than points of light and moving way too fast to be visible if they did pass each other closely. Ironically, the 1960s effects of TOS, which never showed two battling ships in the same frame, were more realistic than the more sophisticated effects of the later shows and films. (I always found The Wrath of Khan particularly ludicrous on this point, showing the ships moving at, like, 30 MPH and passing within a few feet of each other.)

I've often thought a hard-SF space combat movie should be handled like the movie Fail Safe -- instead of action shots of model ships (physical or digital) swooping around each other and making pew-pew noises, make it a more suspenseful tale of people watching distant events unfold on a big master display, aware of how little power they have to control the situation and fend off impending disaster.

 

[Neroon]

What's so wrong with resurrecting old threads? If something new is being contributed to the discussion, why not continue it? And it's only a 2-year-old thread, and a fairly short one, so it's not that hard to read through the previous posts. I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be revived.

Sounds like a topic for the "Questions, Suggestions & Feedback" forum.

If it's a super long thread and no good discussion is being added by resurrecting it, it should be avoided.

This thread only had like 10 posts in it when it was brought back, making it pretty easy to dive in and get caught up.

Lol I spent hours looking for existing threads.

They even have a sticky saying people should try to condense threads instead of creating new ones.


Anyway I think the problem with hard sci fi, is many find the genre far to limiting, as it reqires a fluency in history and technology that many lack.

For those of us who fixate on specific details, its second nature.

Anyhow thinking about it further Im gonna throw in Caprica.

As hard science fiction? I don't think so. The BSG/Caprica universe is a magic-realist one where divine forces manifestly exist and involve themselves in human life, where humans originated on a distant alien world and had a very North America-like civilization 150,000 years ago somehow, and so on. There's a lot about it that's totally fanciful, despite the facade of naturalism.

But really, the first point should be enough. When mods have said—repeatedly—not to do it, that should be enough of a reason, yes?

Rules do not exist merely for the sake of exerting authority, but for the sake of serving the good of the board and its members. Rules are a means to an end, not an end in themselves, and thus they need to be flexible.

Rules do not exist merely for the sake of exerting authority, but for the sake of serving the good of the board and its members. Rules are a means to an end, not an end in themselves, and thus they need to be flexible.

Sounds like a topic for the "Questions, Suggestions & Feedback" forum.

If it's a super long thread and no good discussion is being added by resurrecting it, it should be avoided.

This thread only had like 10 posts in it when it was brought back, making it pretty easy to dive in and get caught up.

That is a matter for the admins to decide, though. If anyone here has are any further concerns on this subject, please take them to the QSF forum or we can discuss them privately. From here on out let's return to the topic of the thread, please.

 

[theenglish]

Would Gravity not be considered?

 

[Christopher]

Would Gravity not be considered?

I believe I mentioned it earlier in the thread. It's mostly a hard-SF film, one of the most solid ones ever made, though it takes enormous and somewhat ludicrous liberties with the depiction of orbital collision hazards. But then, hard SF is allowed a certain amount of reality-bending for the sake of the story as long as it's in a mostly realistic and scientifically informed framework. The movie may exaggerate the hazard of orbital collisions to a degree that borders on the comical, but at least it's a genuine, real-world hazard rather than an invasion of space monsters or something. So yeah, it's essentially hard SF.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Gravity is science fact.

Every thing that happened in that movie could happen today.

Except George Clooney spending that much time talking to an age appropriate woman.

 

[theenglish]

Would Gravity not be considered?

I believe I mentioned it earlier in the thread. It's mostly a hard-SF film, one of the most solid ones ever made, though it takes enormous and somewhat ludicrous liberties with the depiction of orbital collision hazards. But then, hard SF is allowed a certain amount of reality-bending for the sake of the story as long as it's in a mostly realistic and scientifically informed framework. The movie may exaggerate the hazard of orbital collisions to a degree that borders on the comical, but at least it's a genuine, real-world hazard rather than an invasion of space monsters or something. So yeah, it's essentially hard SF.

You mentioned it, but well before the film was released. It seems that the issue of orbital collisions was part of the plot that was not touched upon fully. I took it that for years space junk had basically built up so much that it hit a tipping point, similar to an avalanche or a landslide. Within a few hours or days nothing would be able to remain in orbit intact.

That part of the movie was a commentary about pollution. Exaggerated perhaps, but effective on a fictional level.

 

[Australis]

Gravity is science fact.

Every thing that happened in that movie could happen today.

Except George Clooney spending that much time talking to an age appropriate woman.

Guy, sometimes you really do bring the funny.

 

[Christopher]

You mentioned it, but well before the film was released. It seems that the issue of orbital collisions was part of the plot that was not touched upon fully. I took it that for years space junk had basically built up so much that it hit a tipping point, similar to an avalanche or a landslide. Within a few hours or days nothing would be able to remain in orbit intact.

That part of the movie was a commentary about pollution. Exaggerated perhaps, but effective on a fictional level.

It was very exaggerated. Orbital space is not that cluttered. Yes, a cascade reaction of that sort is a real risk, but it would be a high risk that a single high-velocity particle might strike a satellite or station and do serious ballistic damage to it -- not that the entire chain-reacting cascade of orbital debris would be clumped together within a few cubic kilometers, tear apart entire space stations in seconds, and actively hunt down Sandra Bullock like a killer in a horror movie. Not to mention the implausibility that all three different space facilities would be orbiting at the same altitude and at such relative proximity to one another. Basically the movie hugely compressed the scale of Earth's orbital space.