9.1 KiB
To the Stars: Puella Magica Ad Astra (HSF + Magical Girls)
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Author: u/PeridexisErrant put aside fear for courage, and death for life*
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URL: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FanFic/ToTheStars
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Score: 13
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Created: 2014-09-12T06:10:08
Post:
Comments:
u/rationalidurr [+8] If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight! (24 minutes later)
Just to give prospective readers an idea of how long it is, the first 100K words alone cover just the first 24 hours of the story.
Welp, time to quit my job and move back to the basement.
u/Escapement [+7] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (5 hours later)
While I have many complimentary things to say about this story, I would not ever classify it as 'hard' science fiction by any possible stretch or measure.
u/GeeJo [+5] Custom Flair (6 hours later)
I think "Space Opera" was the phrase needed. It's most certainly that, at least.
u/rumblestiltsken [+3] (2 months later)
Really? They have relativistic space combat! No scifi ever has relativistic space combat!
Just because they have FTL travel is a pretty poor reason to ignore the sheer sciencyness of this work. FTL isn't disproven either, and no scifi ever has been able to get away without some handwaving.
The way I see it, the story explicitly asks you to suspend disbelief about magic, FTL and incomprehensible alien tech (which I suspect is because magic), and everything else is thoroughly hard scifi, meaning extrapolable based on modern science. Not only that, it sets hard rules about the limitations of technology and then follows them scrupulously.
The equivalent to my mind is saying Blindsight isn't hard scifi because Vampires.
Both stories are about as hard as modern scifi can get. 4 Mohs
u/Escapement [+3] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (2 months later)
No scifi ever has relativistic space combat!
There's kind of a lot of SF that has done this, particularly various military SF.
Basically, if you have to take all the magic that is at the core of the story, all the FTL, and all the incomprehensible alien tech, and all the elements where the "soul" and "mind" are tied to magic gems and happiness and the like (not a result of physical and chemical processes in neurons but instead magic)... and you label that all "not really part of the story in spite of being core conceits of the story" then what remains is, indeed, medium-hard science fiction. However, if you take all the FTL teleporting and time-travelling dragons and psionics out of McCaffrey's Pern what you have left is also 'hard sci-fi'. And if you take all the bene-gesserit and future prediction and FTL travel and magic forcefields which turn into nukes if hit by lasers and the like out of Dune, you have a 'hard sci-fi' book. And if you take all the capsaicin out of chili peppers then the peppers aren't spicy. By this sort of metric we can easily place anything as hard science fiction, by deciding that the stuff that is soft doesn't count.
This is a fundamentally unhelpful way to think about things. Stories are not defined as sciency because everyone obeys the universal laws of gravitation and because nobody violates the laws of thermodynamics; they are defined as not sciency by the presence of not-sciency elements, not by the addition of sciency elements. Almost all elements of almost all stories will always follow science because science matches up to inherent expectations of the universe - 95%+ of stories involve humans that obey the rules of chemistry and biology, for example, but the fact that the humans have the Krebs cycle occuring in all their cells and stuff gets you no credit at all when you have the humans in question use soul-based magic to travel back in time to do a groundhog day scenario to attempt to rescue their friend from a magic immortal alien ferret's machinations.
Hardness of science fiction cannot be logically assessed or measured by presence of science-based stuff because 99%+ of all background stuff in all worlds is science based; only the absence of science-violating stuff makes sense as a metric.
u/rumblestiltsken [+1] (2 months later)
Definite 4 Mohs rating. The only things you need to accept is the Madoka setting magic, and FTL.
Two lies. That is it. And even those lies are made internally consistent.
u/Escapement [+1] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (2 months later)
All you need to accept Harry Potter is the wizard's magic, and the magical creatures in the world. Two lies, that's it. Harry Potter is a hard sci fi setting.
u/rumblestiltsken [+2] (2 months later)
Exactly. Harry Potter is set in a realistic modern world if you accept the single lie. It isn't actually sci-fi at all, but if it was it would be 5 on the Moh scale.
I think we are at the agree to disagree stage of this disagreement.
u/PeridexisErrant [+2] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (7 hours later)
Even without the magic, that's fair. I guess I was thinking more of the post scarcity and transhumanist elements, which I associate with HSF.
u/Escapement [+3] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (12 hours later)
I personally usually use the word 'hard' in relation to science fiction to describe fiction that more closely obeys the laws of physics as we know/understand them today, or when breaking those explains a lot of the physics it's breaking and how it does so in some sort of manner. For example, a work where everything obeys lightspeed limitations and relativity and works within those restrictions to achieve interstellar travel by generation ships or cryosleep or bussard ramjets or digitization and transmission to be rebuilt by civilizations at another star or the like is 'harder' SF than one where people go to Warp Speed and FTL by pulling a big red lever labelled FTL with no explanation.
TVTropes backs me up in this interpretation.
There's a lot of really good science fiction that has been as soft as butter (e.g. Dune, Hyperion, etc); hardness is no real indicator of quality.
u/PeridexisErrant [+1] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (19 hours later)
Agreed, agreed, I don't really know why I described it as HSF when it clearly isn't.
u/comport [+5] (15 hours later)
Superstimulus warning, dungeon keeper Ami level of addictiveness after about 1.5 chapters.
u/skwint [+1] (15 hours later)
A new chapter of that has just appeared too.
u/bbrazil [+3] NERV (42 minutes later)
Great story, takes a lot of the aspects of PMMM to their logical conclusion in a military setting.
u/GeeJo [+3] Custom Flair (3 hours later)
I enjoyed it a lot on my first read-through, but I'm finding that with new chapters I've forgotten not only what was going on but who everybody is and what their relationships to one another are.
Maybe I'm just getting old.
u/PeridexisErrant [+5] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (5 hours later)
Maybe I'm just getting old.
Maybe you need a
Taccomppersonal assistant! I hear the new models are almost human...Or if you don't want to wait for the 2460 release, check the (incomplete) relationships chart. There's a whole lot more bonus material over here too, which might be more helpful.
u/Calsem [-1] (27 minutes later)
This has been posted already:
http://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/1xo0ej/dc_hsff_to_the_stars_by_hionym_an_epic_puella/
It's not a bad story though, so I don't mind the repost.
u/PeridexisErrant [+5] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (2 hours later)
Sidebar:
Because of reddit's ranking algorithm, there's no way for users to bump old posts to the front page. For this reason, reposts are not only allowed but explicitly encouraged!
This is mostly because (a) there's a shortage of good rational stories, and (b) the sub is still pretty small but growing. Post anything relevant!
u/Bobertus [+3] (7 hours later)
I would have prefered the poster to wait until the next new chapter and link to that, though. No need to get anyone's hopes up needlessly.
u/PeridexisErrant [+2] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (19 hours later)
Don't despair, there is always Hope. ^for ^a ^new ^chapter
u/PeridexisErrant [+2] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (2 days later)
I told you so!
New chapter :^)
u/Bobertus [+1] (2 days later)
Haha, thank you! Might not have noticed the new chapter as soon without your hint.