scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/6gd97l.md

[META] The Definition of [RT]

• Author: u/Soren_Tycho Clothing-optional Spacetime*

• URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/6gd97l/meta_the_definition_of_rt/

• Score: 26

• Created: 2017-06-10T03:43:06

Post:

What do we actually mean when we tag a story [RT]?

Several hundred days ago I showed this subreddit to my partner who is a professional writer, and she objected to [RT] as being indistinguishable from just "good fiction" as understood by the present academic literature establishment. This has been bugging me since then, because it seems to me that as a community we mean something more than the four points listed in the sidebar when we tag something [RT] - or even claim it's appropriate for this subreddit overall.

Personal reflection reveals to me that I do and that I'm unsure how to articulate it.

So, in more detail, if we taboo the four sidebar points or any reformulation thereof, what do we mean when we tag a story [RT]?

Comments:

u/ketura [+50] Organizer (47 minutes later)

"It makes some goddamn sense for once and tries to make this the one thing that can't be compromised."

Star Wars is great fun and a favorite of mine, but holy shit is it not rational. The first movie's sense of pacing is very much something to be emulated, and the overarching plot, actions, and characters are all classic for a reason. Nevertheless, there is a gap between such "good fiction" and rational fiction. If you scrutinize it, there are plot holes, character/group motivation issues, and inconsistent setting problems, all of which are exacerbated with the addition of each new film.

"Rational fiction" and "good fiction" are not the same thing. You can have a rational fic that is boring, poorly written, with awful pacing, wooden dialog, unsympathetic characters, and all sorts of other blights upon literature, while still technically fulfilling all of the things in the sidebar. And on the flip side, fiction can have the opposite of all those things and still be missing the Rational moniker.

I mean, come on, there aren't many who would claim Harry Potter is "bad fiction", and yet Methods of Rationality simply took that work, filled in the holes, and gave it a new spin. It managed to add "rational" to the work without taking away too much from the part that made it "good".

I think what happens when people make the "rational fiction is just good fiction" argument is, they see the four things on the sidebar and don't have anything to compare it to. There's no /r/good_fiction that has a sidebar with eight bullet points that constitutes What Makes Good Fiction. They don't feel the need to make such a list! Surely they're no monkey and they know what they like.

So rather than comparing those eight imaginary points to the four that are here and noticing the differences, they get lost in the vague software in their brain that identifies good fiction, and can't see any discrepancies, so they assume we're talking out of our ass.

Part of the problem is, this is not authoritative. It is not based on some empirical natural law, that a book with so many R-particles is rational fiction. This definition arose after people read Methods of Rationality, and Luminosity, and other related "fix-fics", and tried to put their finger on what exactly made those pieces of fiction desirable that James Bond somehow lacks.

And then we wanted more of it and fiction writers who came after have this list in the back of their mind, and what do you know, having the list around produces stuff that, by and large is compatible with the tastes of those of us who came here because of Metropolitan Man or Methods. If someone comes along with an existing work and finds it fits the bullet points, chances are there's a good number of us that are going to like it.

That means there's something there. Maybe we're missing a bullet point or two, or maybe we've fundamentally missed what exactly is appealing about these works, but the fact is that we are served better by using the sidebar than not using it. Those who think it's not describing a distinct class of work either haven't read any of the perennial examples, or didn't care for them and so don't value the things that we think we've identified as the lowest common denominator.

/rant

u/Kinoite [+22] (30 minutes later)

She objected to [RT] as being indistinguishable from just "good fiction" as understood by the present academic literature establishment.

That definition seems at odds with my understanding of literary fiction.

Gabriel García Márquez has a Nobel prize in literature. But A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings is very much not [RT]. Magical realism is excluded, almost by default.

I think it's useful to categorize genres based on their "payoff". That's the aspect of the book that readers are really looking forward to, and leaves them drooling.

In a romance genre, the key "payoffs" seem to be notable b-plots, and exceptionally good reconciliation scenes. Authors can hit those points hard to make their books stand out within the genre.

In speculative fiction, the key "payoff" is the world-changing idea that an author's exploring. Characters might be good. But it's sense of "if I were in that world, I'd ..." that makes books stand out in that sense.

In much of literary fiction, the "payoff" is an author doing interesting things with our expectations around the structure of a story, or even the physical layout of the book.

Other literary fiction seems to have a "payoff" focused around really building a sense of empathy with one or more characters. I think this might be what your friend is referring to. The idea is that a character who does stuff for no reason would break the reader's empathy and pull us out of the story.

Rational fiction seems to differ in two key ways. The big one is that the "payoff" is the feeling of a really clever plot-resolution. Characters need to be smart enough that the resolution is satisfying. But we don't really need to get into their head.

The second way is that, in my opinion, literary fiction allows for some kinds of 'stylized' secondary characters (read: the incurious idiots who populate magical realism) that are excluded from RT fiction.

u/Timewinders [+6] (10 hours later)

I agree. Academic, literary fiction is almost never rational, in my experience. Often the characters don't even think like real people. The emphasis is usually more on high-quality, lyrical prose than on good writing the way we would think of it.

u/bassicallyboss [+3] (12 hours later)

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings is very much not [RT]. Magical realism is excluded, almost by default.

Interesting. I know that magical realism is sort of unpopular around here, but I've always considered it to be fairly rational. It generally fulfills bullet points 1 and 2, and I usually get the impression that it fulfills 4. (An important caveat to points 1 and 4 is that, just because things that happen need reasons, and the world has consistent rules, doesn't mean that the readers need to know what those reasons or rules are. A lack of self-contradiction is enough, so long as convenient coincidences are kept to a minimum.) A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings seems to meet this standard, though I agree its not at all what we mean when we talk about rational fiction.

On the other hand, M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water is magical realism that meets bullet points 1, 3, and 4 of rational fiction (and 2, too, I think; I forget whether the "monsters" in it are agents of an enemy state or just dumb beasts that like the taste of Narf, but neither is evil in the sense of "wants bad outcomes for no good reason). It doesn't have much in the way of munchkining, slow growth of power, a puzzle-solvable plot, or other characteristic rational tropes, but I think it's not crazy to call it rational.

Magical realism isn't opposed to rational fiction any more than ordinary realism is. I think it's just that authors in both genres are not really interested in telling the kinds of stories that rational fiction readers want to hear.

u/Kinoite [+4] (a day later)

Interesting. I know that magical realism is sort of unpopular around here, but I've always considered it to be fairly rational.

Rationalist fiction is about worlds that change themselves in response to the events in a story's premise.

Magical Realism, in contrast, is about blending fantastic elements into our world in a way that leaves our world fundamentally unchanged.12 More, the magic remains unexplained, and uninvestigated.3 4

Magical realism has the genre-convention that the world stays the same in response to events that should change the world. This violates rule 1.

The authors explicitly avoid constructing consistent rules for their fantastic elements. And characters are, by genre convention, forbidden from getting curious about those rules or trying to investigate them. This violates rules 3 & 4.

Magical Realism and [RT] are diametrically opposed on the axis of, "how do people respond to the fantastic?" This is so core to each genre, that I'd see Magical Realism as one of the only genres that can't be [RT].

u/Sagebrysh [+7] Rank 7 Pragmatist (a day later)

Desire to write an RT deconstruction of Magical Realism rising.

u/bassicallyboss [+5] (a day later)

Magical Realism and [RT] are diametrically opposed on the axis of, "how do people respond to the fantastic?"

Put that way, I think I agree with your assertion a lot more. I still wouldn't say that magical realism can't be [RT], or vice-versa; I think you could probably introduce a limited enough magic, and accomplish enough tone-setting through description and such to end up with a story that is recognizably both [RT] and magical realist. I'll concede, though, that any such story would necessarily be a non-central example of both categories.

u/GaBeRockKing [+17] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (45 minutes later)

Despite a few arguments I've made before, it's not entirely possible to define rational fiction as "fiction where a reader can make accurate predictions about the story, its characters, and its universe from information previously given in the story." While that definition holds for much of any particular story, it doesn't cover the base case of recieving no information, and thus it doesn't cover any new exposition.

Instead, I think an exclusionary definition is superior-- that either information, once given, isn't contradicted (so, for example, if a character is established as being able to use "x" and "y" skills, and is established as using ONLY "x" and "y" skills, then they don't have a "z" skill) OR that if the information is contradicted, then the reader can see that the information wasn't actually trustworthy to begin with, and therefore reveals not a contradiction, but how the story was all along (so, for example, if the character suddenly reveals that they had a "z" skill, then you can look back on the text and see that skill "z" was conspicuous in its absense-- both that skill using skill "z" wouldn't have been superior to using skill "x" or "y", but also that there were absolutely no situations where the use of skill "z" was warranted and they didn't use it.)

So from the perspective of character action,

1. You can predict the actions they WON'T take by examining their internal motivations and the resources available to them.
2. You can predict what internal motivations they DON'T have by examining the actions they took given the resources available to them.
3. You can predict what resources AREN'T available to them by examining the actions they took given their internal motivations.

And from the perspective of setting details and mechanics,

1. You can predict the details and mechanics that DON'T exist by the path the plot has currently taken,
2. You can predict the paths the plot WON'T take by the revealed details and mechanics of the setting.

Now, in the end, this ends up looking like a fair play whodunnit because a reader can generally look at the plot, eliminate a bunch of obviously and less-obviously specious predictions, then from the remaining solution space, make on-point predictions.

That being said, while all of this means that "good writing" and "rational fiction" do tend to intersect, this definition of rational fiction leaves plenty of space for bad writing.

Take an portal fantasy story where a normal person wakes up in fantasyland. In good fiction, the author is expected to either treat the story as actually being real, or provide enough foreshadowing that it was a dream so readers don't feel like they're being shafted. In rational fiction, the author can wake them up with no warning in chapter three and write the rest of the story using a lorem ipsum generator because by the established rules of the text, the events in the fantasy world being a dream couldn't ever be ruled out as a possiblity.

So the tl;dr is that to be rational fiction, a work must take great pains to avoid plot holes of any sort, even the plot holes that most people don't usually contextualize as plot holes (for example, how most in most fiction, "munchkining the everloving shit out of new abilities" isn't the norm), which makes rational fiction more likely to also be good fiction in that it avoids a common pitfall of bad fiction, but doesn't actually make the fiction good in and of itself.

Do note that, just like how even good fiction isn't always flawless, rational works don't tend to be entirely rational, sacraficing rationality at the altar of either "being narratively satisfying" or the altar of "authors aren't perfect."

u/talks2deadpeeps [+2] The Culture (an hour later)

I like your definition the most, I think.

u/seylerius [+17] Lord Inquisitor (an hour later)

I think it can be broken into two major groupings: aspects of good fiction that we insist on (though others let them slide), and features above and beyond the requirements for good fiction.

Key aspects of good fiction:

• Coherence: The rules stay the same throughout the story, unless a specific, rules-governed mechanism is used to change them. Further, they don't contradict each other. In short, this is a setting that can be reasoned about, even if the geometries are strange and the physics deliberately and openly runs on metaphor and rule of cool (as Pandemonium's does).
• Fully-Dimensional Characters: The simplest thing here is that no one carries an idiot ball. It's deeper, though: each character ideally has their own unique set of terminal values feeding their utility function, and their own personal set of biases and available information. They reason, they try, they strive, they fail, they succeed.
• Only & Always In-Story Explanations: Everything that happens occurs for an entirely in-setting reason. If the cavalry arrives, the cavalry existed before their arrival, even if they were entirely off-screen. Their lives and training and gear had impacts and costs. Likewise, there's more than just the one bar that the MC goes to, and those other bars have their own patrons. The pub-goer you need to talk to about the MacGuffin might frequent a different bar. The world needs to be better specced—a setting, not a set.

Steps Beyond Good Fiction:

• Give the Readers the Tools: At no point should the MCs use something the readers don't have access to in their reasoning process. If they're using the knowledge that Vile-Land is to the north, and Vile-Land has been mentioned before, it probably should have been described as being north of Protagonistia. Ideally, the readers should be able to figure things out just before the MCs do if they work at it. Even if they don't, they should be able to look back and see the clues.
• Independently Motivated Evil: No one is evil for evil's sake. Either the villain values something alien to the protags, the villain and the protag have access to different information, or one of them is just plain wrong (this should have painful consequences for someone). The point of this is that they're motivated by actual goals, not t3h evuls.

These are just a few ideas, riffing on the general concept.

u/Noumero [+12] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (7 hours later)

The main characteristic of rational fiction is widespread employment of Level One Intelligent characters; that is, in rational fiction, every character with a plot-relevant goal makes a honest effort towards achieving their goal, instead of being a plot device of any kind.

• It's not about consistency: the world could be internally inconsistent to the point of ridicule, but as long as the characters recognize and take into account (and possibly exploit) the inconsistency, it's fine. (Which, naturally, implies that the author must be aware of the inconsistency, or it should be completely plot-irrelevant.)

• It's not about moral conflicts: the characters could be Evil because they want to be Evil, but as long as they have valid reasons for having that goal (even if the reason is, a Random Omnipotent Being made it that way), and use valid methods to achieve it, it's fine.

• It's not about intelligence: the characters could be stupid and win through power instead of intelligence, but as long as they still pursue their goals in a reasonalbe manner, and win without reality warping to help them, it's fine.

• That means Deus/Diabolus Ex Machinas are prohibited, unless their appearances could be predicted and exploited by the characters. (The hero doesn't get a convenient power-up because the villain is about to defeat him, but the hero could base his plan on getting a power-up at the most desperate moment if he has reasonable evidence that he would get it.)

• Worldbuilding could be nonsensical, but the author must choose: either they model every background human in the history of the world as honestly pursuing their goals (and so having wizards take over the muggle world thousands of years ago), or they imagine an inconsistent world and have the characters notice the inconsistency (“are the wizards idiots, or something powerful stops them?”, they would be asking).

The main point is, rational fiction is about characters and conflicts between characters, not about showing one virtue or another, inspiring one emotion or another. It's closer to a quest or a roleplaying campaign than normal fiction.

Another way of looking at it is, it's a different approach to writing fiction: a normal author sits and writes a satisfying story; a rational fiction author figures out which characters in which situations would weave a satisfying story, then writes it, and can't use divine interventions or contrived coincidences to nudge the plot the desired way.

Rationality won't necessarily make a story satisfying: “a Random Omnipotent Being manipulated everything to be so” would turn any story into a rational one, but it won't be satisfying in the least.

The trick to writing rational fiction is striking a balance between how you want the world to look like, how much of the world and plot premise you want to rationalize, ensuring Suspension of Disbelief, and telling a satisfying story.

u/LupoCani [+5] (10 hours later)

I appreciate that work through, in some detail, the exceptions and buts to the go-to hallmarks of [rt], such as consistency and intelligence.

Though, if I may remark with regards to your first point- a world whose inconsistency is exploited, is a world whose inconsistency exists in-universe, as opposed to author error. If the inconsistency exists, keeps doing so, and is acknowledged, I would argue we really only have a consistent world, the first rule of which is that the other rules can and do change.

u/Noumero [+1] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (10 hours later)

That is a very good point. Added.

u/eaglejarl [+4] (3 days later)

can't use divine interventions ... to nudge the plot

I would argue that it's fine for gods to nudge the plot as long as they are characters in it. Their motivations should be comprehensible, their powers at least somewhat circumscribed, and their knowledge limited. In other words, an [RT] story can contain Greek gods but not the Abrahamic one.

u/alexanderwales [+11] Time flies like an arrow (41 minutes later)

/u/DaystarEld and I have an episode about this on Rationally Writing.

The short answer I usually give is that rational fiction is "thinky" in some way. It's steeped in thought and meant to be consumed with thought in mind, rather than just passively consumed. That leads to a bunch of knock-on effects, like a lack of artistic license, more fleshed out characters, more introspection, more consistent rules, etc., but I consider those necessary but not sufficient (and actually, not all that necessary so long as the central focus of the story is on thought in one form or another). I guess it's also important to distinguish between 'thought as superpower' and actual inner workings of thought, since I think it would be pretty easy to have the facade of thought without actually displaying (or creating) the meat of thought for the reader.

u/Agnoman [+7] (5 hours later)

One of the common threads here seems to be 'there's no formal definition here, [RT] is whatever everybody says is [RT]' which makes sense in the context of this community being relatively new, relatively small and relatively decentralized. We all just showed up one day with our own idea of what it means and there hasn't been time to really hash out a common definition, and there's no one up at the top to really lay down the law. I imagine that in time we'll develop a clearer explanation.

Personally, I think of rational fiction as fiction which is trying to be good in certain ways.

There's more of an emphasis in ironing out certain wrinkles with the end goal of making sure that there are no holes in the worldbuilding or character motivations or whatever. Rational writers are trying to create a certain type of good story with certain desirable traits.

Given that most stories are trying to be ‘good’ across the board in every aspect, I think a key aspect of it is the priority given to those traits.

So, a writer might have the goal of, say, set up an interesting dynamic between two characters, but there's also a different goal that everything makes sense and lines up neatly. Wherein a ‘regular’ writer might decide to gloss over some minor hole in character motivations for the sake of doing something cool (maybe giving some cursory explanation that doesn’t hold up to proper scrutiny), a ‘rational' writer is going to find that that second goal takes priority and just steer clear of the whole situation.

u/everything-narrative [+8] Coral, Abide with Rubicon! (6 hours later)

Rational fiction is a genus (a taxonomic step above genre) of written works, on the same level as Literary fiction.

Literary fiction lives in extensive metatextuality, high-effort language, and deconstruction. Literary fiction signals "I am smart and classically educated."

Rational fiction lives in extensive realism, high-effort complexity, and Socratic exploration. Rational fiction signals "I am smart and STEM educated."

u/InfernoVulpix [+3] (56 minutes later)

I've seen this topic come up before, and as far as I know there's no real consensus on what makes rational fiction.

The best way I have to frame it, which is sort of a non-answer but still sounds helpful, is that we consider a fiction [RT] when it fits the /r/rational zeitgeist. The zeitgeist includes the obvious like HPMOR or The Metropolitan Man, but also things like UNSONG, Mother of Learning, or Worm. Really, this pushes the question into 'what defines the /r/rational zeitgeist?', but it helps with a few points:

• In broad strokes, the zeitgeist encompasses fiction we all enjoy, which biases towards good fiction. This can create the not entirely untrue impression that we consider works [RT] when they are good fiction, but it would be more accurate to say it is rare for bad fiction to be [RT].

• Due to the zeitgeist of /r/rational being largely derived from the rationalist community, there are themes that are common in [RT] fiction, and there are also themes that are very rare in [RT], so the zeitgeist is not purely 'good fiction'. An example of this is Doctor Strange, which had a thread a while back about it being the furthest thing from rational, and having watched it I can confirm that it espouses themes that few here would agree with, but it is still good fiction.

• What is and isn't [RT] is hard to define not because we have trouble deciding what is and isn't (more than normal, that is), but because the zeitgeist is a nebulous thing composed of intricate facets related to our common ideals, preferences, and knowledge bases. The best simplification is that [RT] is 'what /r/rational likes', but that's not quite accurate as it implies subjectivity, as if /r/rational were a book club making recommendations, where what is and isn't [RT] is something that, in theory, can be objectively evaluated without bringing /r/rational into the mix. Still, without a proper description of the zeitgeist, it's the non-answer that's most accurate.

What we see on the sidebar derives from that last point. The sidebar describes a few traits or themes often seen in rational fiction, but it's not definitive because we don't know everything that makes up the zeitgeist, why a world as insane as UNSONG is part of it but Doctor Strange is not, why Worm is on the edge but Mother of Learning is fully part of it, and so on and so forth. We're working from induction here, the best we can do is take what we know is part of the zeitgeist and dissect it, comparing and contrasting to other works in and out of the zeitgeist, and hope we can gleam a bit more of what it is that make us 'know' that a story belongs here.

We can still probably do a better job on the sidebar, though, or at least make it look more like the pieces of a larger jigsaw puzzle that it is.

u/LupoCani [+2] (10 hours later)

but it's not definitive because we don't know everything that makes up the zeitgeist, why a world as insane as UNSONG is part of it but Doctor Strange is not,

Um, yes we do? Between the characters' thoughts and actions, the detail and consistency of the world, the kind of actions said details encourage, and more vaguely the theme and subject matter, there are a great number of concrete traits of [rt] that UNSONG has and Strange hasn't.

u/ben_oni [+2] (16 hours later)

I've also had trouble trying to explain what [RT] is. Even with the sidebar as a guide, it doesn't come across as being particularly distinguished. Allow me to add a few ruminations.

Personally, I would add a point to the sidebar definition: Inexploitability. That is, if a character finds an exploit in the setting, there has to be a really good reason why no one else has found it before; and once known, it should be exploited to the maximum. This probably falls under the "consistent rules" clause, but I feel it deserves it's own point.

Lately I've been listening to The Wheel of Time. It's a bit dated, I know, but my sister is reading it, and I never finished reading it back in the day, so I'm taking the opportunity now, while I have someone to talk to it about. The contrasts with [RT] are quite stark. It should be noted that the series is an important influence for the fantasy genre as a whole.

It did some things that were unique within the genre at the time, and does have some [RT] elements. Characters have unique motivations which draw them into conflict with one another (which is super annoying because these characters are on the same side of the main good/evil conflict). What magic can and cannot do is fairly well circumscribed as the series progresses (there is a significant tonal shift after the third book, where the bounds of magic start to solidify).

But on the whole, this is not an [RT] work. From the very first book, the rules are laid out: the plot weaves as the plot wills. It is very explicit that the plot does what it wants without rhyme or reason. On the smallest pretext characters will stop what they are doing (things that seemed very important), and begin doing something else, or making decisions that are ridiculous on the surface simply because the author needs them somewhere else now. Also, the overarching conflict, which is very much simply "good vs. evil" is quite removed from [RT]. The very idea that men need to be subservient to some greater evil in order to go bad, or if not, that evil must be quantifiable and leave some imprint on the world -- these are all left over ideas from a previous era of fantasy writing (though I still find it showing up with disturbing regularity).

And then there's the idiot ball. Everyone takes their turn carrying it, and mostly for plot purposes, but if I'm being honest, that's how people are in real life. Real people are idiots. We all make what was in hindsight, a really dumb decision for really dumb reasons.

I've also been watching a bit of Doctor Who lately. And while I quite enjoy it, it's very far from [RT]. Even when it's trying its hardest, it still has quite a ways to go. There was this exchange last season between Clara and Missy (in The Witch's Familiar): "Why does the Doctor always win?" ... "Because he knows there's always a way out. And he keeps searching until he finds it." Needless to say, this isn't [RT]. There isn't always a way out. Why should there be? You can go for the Hail Mary play when your options are closed off, but it's called that for a reason. Most of the time, it won't work and you just lose.

I was once listening to David Brin talk about writing, and he said something about how every author should write a murder mystery. Some kind of fair-play whodunit. It doesn't matter the genre, or the setting. It doesn't need to be a detective story. There has to be a mystery, and the audience should be able to figure out the solution a few paragraphs before the reveal. He said this is an important skill for writers to master, because even if they aren't writing a murder mystery, their stories should have mysteries and questions for the reader to answer, and things should come together at just the right moment. I think this is something we value in [RT] stories.

u/PM_ME_EXOTIC_FROGS [+3] (an hour later)

Wh-what? Your partner is just wrong.

The way I'd broadly define rational fic off the top of my head is that it is reductionistic. Settings have inviolable laws, which can be tested and defined. Magic A is Magic A. Causality always ensues.

So that's basically just hard science fiction.

But fiction posted in this subreddit generally include one or more of the following characteristics, and through them and a few others ratfic can be classified as a subgenre of hard sf:

One or more of the central characters are mentally superior to the others, usually in the form of being more intelligent or having a better grip on logic. Expect them to have weak abilities such as bug control or mental opacity but accomplish the impossible through ruthlessness and wicked cleverness.

The magic system is shamelessly cheated or exploited. One trivial example is using a network of masochists to circumvent the cost of an exchange system which transmutes pain into wishes.

Popular fiction or fictional concepts are rationalized: underlying rules are devised post hoc that make an irrational setting or idea actually sensible.

A focus on utilitarian, transhumanist, and other rationalist ideas.

u/Sailor_Vulcan [+1] Champion of Justice and Reason (9 hours later)

Would it make sense to say that hard science fiction is actually just rational fiction in the scifi genre? Or perhaps that rational fics with fantasy settings are just hard scifi set in universes with different rules than our own?

u/bassicallyboss [+3] (23 hours later)

hard science fiction is actually just rational fiction in the scifi genre

I wouldn't agree with this. Sci-fi is hard if it is compatible with the physical laws of our universe. It does tend to be rational, because that's how its writers tend to think. But rationality is neither necessary nor sufficient for being hard sci-fi.

rational fics with fantasy settings are just hard scifi set in universes with different rules than our own

This actually seems like a pretty great characterization, and I plan to use it next time I have to explain to someone.

u/Escapement [+1] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (16 hours later)

My favourite definition of science fiction is Damon Knight's, loosely paraphrased as:

Science fiction is what we point to when we say science fiction.

I think the obvious parallel extensional definition for rational fiction is more useful than a more rigorous intensional definition.

u/Sagebrysh [+2] Rank 7 Pragmatist (a day later)

Agree completely.

u/ArisKatsaris [+1] Sidebar Contender (a day later)

'Lord of the Rings' is excellent fiction, but not Rational Fiction. In crucial parts, some of its crucial plot points is the existence of divine providence. E.g. that the ring reached Bilbo (rather than a more convenient-for-the-ring orc), that Gandalf was resurrected...

Unlike the requirements for RT the rules there are not clear, because at the bottom line God intervene, whether directly or more subtly, and he intervenes as he pleases without this being predictable by the characters or the readers.

u/notmy2ndopinion [+1] Concent of Saunt Edhar (2 days later)

If I went to a librarian, I'd ask for [RT] recommendations by saying "I want to read fiction that makes me smarter about real life stuff."

Hm. Now I need a new library card because I want to actually do this and see what happens!

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