This is becoming strange.... I really have nothing interesting to post here, but I still feel obligated to put something up.... It's like my blog has become another friend, who gets lonely if I don't talk to it. So, to help make my blog feel better....

It's a rare science fiction author who can balance science and characters to make a believable world. Too often, you get authors like Robert J. Sawyer, who ends up writing the same character in every book, or Anne McCaffrey, who writes amazingly, but really doesn't have more than a passing relationship with actual science.

Hard science fiction has gained a reputation for being unreadable. Largely, this is because for a long time, it was unfashionable in the sf (not sci-fi. Sci-fi is what Hollywood makes) community to really concentrate on getting the science aspect right. The so called 'new wave' authors got into it because sf was what was selling, and a great deal of them didn't have a science background.

Now, however, this is starting to change. There's a whole generation of authors who have been raised on well written sf, and have a strong back ground in science. Authors like Greg Bear, Tad Williams, Kim Stanley Robinson are really making hard science fiction popular again. We're going through a golden age for the genre, and it couldn't come at a better time. Already, technology is changing so quickly that no one individual can keep track of it, let alone understand how it could affect them. Hard sf explores this, in ways that no other thing can. It lets us explore the idea of what it means to be human in a changing world. Perhaps more importantly, it can teach people what actually is involved in science, and it removes the mystique behind science. A basic understanding of science is going to be absolutely vital for anyone in the next century, and people who can explain it effectively are going to be in huge demand.

Well, this post really rambled a great deal, without actually saying anything. Ah well, not like my posts make a great deal of sense anyways....