Hard science fiction

Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Islands of Space in Astounding Science Fiction. The complementary term soft science fiction (formed by analogy to "hard science fiction") first appeared in the late 1970s as a way of describing science fiction in which science is not featured, or violates the scientific understanding at the time of writing. The term sometimes also contrasts the "hardness" of the sciences used in the story: the "hard" sciences are quantitative or material-based disciplines, such as physics, chemistry, and astronomy; while the more "soft" sciences are social sciences, such as sociology, anthropology, or psychology. Stories featuring engineering tend to be categorized as hard SF, although technically engineering is not a science. Neither term is... full article at wikipedia