Soft science fiction

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Soft science fiction, or soft SF, is science fiction whose plots and themes tend to focus on human characters and their relations and feelings, while de-emphasizing the details of technological hardware and physical laws. In addition, "science" in soft science fiction often falls into the realm of things which current scientists consider impossible or at least highly unlikely (telepathy is a common example). It is called soft science fiction by analogy to hard science fiction and because soft science fiction is often based around the 'softer' sciences (such as philosophy, psychology, political science, anthropology, and sociology). "Soft SF" is also used as a synonym for the "New Wave", a movement which emerged in the 1960s and 70s.

Soft SF is much less a defined subgenre than its counterpart, hard science fiction. The term is sometimes used in a pejorative fashion when it is implied a given science fiction story is not rigorous enough in its application of science or is not "proper" science fiction. Contrariwise, patrons of soft SF may claim that their preferred works have stronger portrayals of societies, more deft characterization and better-developed plots.

One could classify Isaac Asimov's Foundation series as part of the "soft" subgenre, since the series focuses on the vast sociological movements of the dying Galactic Empire. Asimov places little emphasis on the specifics of his fictional technologies. It is enough that the Foundation is technologically superior to the "barbarian" planets around it; the details of nuclear power plants don't matter, as long as the Foundation is the only one to possess them.

However, one of the most frequent comments made about Asimov's work is that his stories lack description, and that there are few sharply memorable characters scattered throughout the whole Foundation epic; this would seem to go against the grain of the argument that soft SF necessarily has deeper characterization. Asimov's fictional science of psychohistory is a mathematical way of encapsulating the "human texture" of his sociological story, that applies statistical probability in order to predict future events. Thus although borrowing from a "soft" science, the work generally tends to take from the more rigid, quantitative side that is based on positivism.

This contradiction occurs because the distinction is over-simplistic. Here, it doesn't take into account the scale of the story. Some SF is very individualistic, and focuses almost exclusively on the experiences of an individual, whilst some is more about grand events involving entire peoples, planets and things on even greater scales. Much falls between these extremes, of course.

An example of a soft SF writer is Ray Bradbury. Asimov himself used Bradbury to typify the "emotional" style of writing he seldom employed; for examples of this usage, see the correspondence collection Yours, Isaac Asimov. In Bradbury's short stories, such as those collected in R is for Rocket and The Martian Chronicles, he takes common themes in Hard SF, like rocket travel or Mars colonies, but focuses on the feelings and human responses those themes evoke. In 1955, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges pinpointed this function of Bradbury's Chronicles, observing that

In this outwardly fantastic book, Bradbury has set out the long empty Sundays, the American tedium, and his own solitude, as Sinclair Lewis did in Main Street.

Perhaps "The Third Expedition" is the most alarming story in this volume. Its horror (I suspect) is metaphysical; the uncertain identity of Captain John Black's guests disturbingly insinuates that we too do not know who we are, nor what we look like in the eyes of God. I would also like to note the episode entitled "The Martian," which includes a moving variation on the myth of Proteus.

Taking a similar approach was Philip K. Dick, whose Hugo Award-winning novel The Man in the High Castle was set in a circa 1962 United States defeated by the Axis Powers in 1947. Since then, the novel has been cited as a seminal work in the genre of alternative historical fiction (sometimes loosely grouped with SF proper). Plot developments were strongly influenced by his use of the I Ching, and as the years progressed Dick's oevure would consistently rely upon pseudoscientific concepts (namely telepathy), Judeo-Christian archetypes, Gnosticism, and Eastern philosophy--all the while never straying from a mildly postmodern setting within the confines of Earth or the solar system. Ironically, Dick's final novel--the posthumously published The Transmigration of Timothy Archer was initially contracted as a non-SF work of mainstream fiction but marketed as science fiction.

Many of Robert A. Heinlein's novels fell into the realm of the less pejorative social science fiction, although his 1973 book Time Enough for Love was lambasted in some quarters for being "soft". A collection of novellas detailing the history of Lazarus Long, the universe's oldest living man in Heinlein's Future History series, a number of the stories bore only a tangential relation to science fiction, with two of the most notable set in the western and military fiction genres. It could be argued that these were criticisms not leveled at the quality of the fiction per se but Heinlein's controversial portrayal of incestuous relationships in the novel.

Frank Herbert's Dune arguably falls into this category, though its fans are quick to deny any pejorative implications of the usage. Dune generally maintains scientific and technical plausibility, as long as the reader is willing to accept that there are many principles of the universe humanity is currently unaware of. Examples would be Suspensor fields (to alleviate heavy weight using ambient, subatomic energy fields), energy shields (to repel incoming physical objects utilising ambient subatomic energy), and FTL space-folding (all of which are based on a physical phenomenon Herbert calls the Holtzman Effect). Additionally, prescience is available to some humans, and is inferably based on quantum effects (which, as such, may have something to do with the Holtzman-effect as well); none of these technologies have ever been proven possible, although none have yet been proven to be impossible, as well (''largely due to the contemporary lack of a Unified Field Theory).

Another author often placed in the category is Ursula K. Le Guin. Her Ekumen series rarely has any technology more complex than that which exists today, and has the focus on human feelings and characterization typical of soft SF. Le Guin has often acknowleged that her popular Hugo and Nebula Award winning 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness, fourth in the Ekumen series, was strongly influenced by Dick's contemporaneous works.

Soft science fiction

See also