Rediscovering Hard Science Fiction — and Why Science Fantasy Scratches a Different Itch
For a long time, I drifted away from hard science fiction—or, more precisely, from the kind of science fiction in which a speculative idea is not merely part of the scenery but the engine of the story. Then, in 2024, I picked up Greg Egan’s Permutation City , and something clicked back into place. The same part of my brain that lit up when I was young and reading Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey or Rendezvous with Rama suddenly woke up again. There is nothing quite like that particular flavour of science fiction: big ideas, unnerving thought experiments and stories in which the central engine of wonder is thought itself. Charles Stross’s Glasshouse gave me that feeling. So did Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief . Plenty of other books marketed as science fiction were enjoyable, but they were asking something different of me. They offered space wizards, interstellar empires or fantasy tropes wearing chrome-plated armour. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of th...