I got that part. I still have no idea what he's on about.
I'm not sure even who it's directed at, but there's a fairly common claim that Marvel's Asgardians aren't "gods" or magic or whatever, but are actually scientifically advanced aliens. In the movies and sometimes in the comics too.
Doesn't match my understanding of them and I certainly wouldn't call it hard SF, but it does keep coming up.
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Krensky wrote: Joynt Jezebel wrote: Hard Science fiction is Science Fiction with where science and scientific possibility and ideas are important. The complete opposite of Star Wars. Also in hard sci-fi the science and technology are the or at least a driving factor in the plot. There is some debate is 'soft' sciences like psychology, sociology, or economics qualify. Foundation (although not all of the series) or Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, for instance.
It's also important to recognise that the plausibility and science needs to be judged based on the time the work was written. Also, special dispensation regarding FTL communication and travel is usually given. If it doesn't conform to what's either known or at least laid down in theorectical science, then it's not Hard SF. But truth be told,the "hardness" of any particular SF piece isn't that important.
Robert Forward probably writes some of the "hardest" sf, I've ever read. Just everything he writes is at least theoretically feasible, given sufficient engineering advancement. But his characters all tend to be rather boring and cardboard.
My priorities have now changed that the first thing I look for in science fiction.... is good fiction, the characters, the story. If it doesn't meet those criteria, I couldn't care less how well it scores elsewheree.
Bjørn Røyrvik wrote: Sheffield is great. "Between the Strokes of night" was semi-hard but I don't really see how the Heritage universe could be seen to be hard.
I guess people just have a slightly more generous definition of 'hard SF' than I do.
Fair enough. It's been a while since I've read them, but as I recall the Heritage books started out fairly hard but got progressively worse from book to book, and even within each book.
Joynt Jezebel wrote: Hard Science fiction is Science Fiction with where science and scientific possibility and ideas are important. The complete opposite of Star Wars. Or as a counter-example, "2001" was pretty hard Sci-Fi aside from the monolith and the psychedelic bits at the end.
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Did someone say psychedelic? Now that's my kind of science!!!
TarSpartan wrote: Joynt Jezebel wrote: Hard Science fiction is Science Fiction with where science and scientific possibility and ideas are important. The complete opposite of Star Wars. Or as a counter-example, "2001" was pretty hard Sci-Fi aside from the monolith and the psychedelic bits at the end. That's an interesting approach, used in a few other places as well - where the Earth tech is hard science - fairly near modern or within our theoretical understanding, but then there's an alien contact and they use stuff that's way beyond what's normally considered hard SF, but it still seems to stay in that subgenre, because the characters are as baffled by it as we are.
thejeff wrote: TarSpartan wrote: Joynt Jezebel wrote: Hard Science fiction is Science Fiction with where science and scientific possibility and ideas are important. The complete opposite of Star Wars. Or as a counter-example, "2001" was pretty hard Sci-Fi aside from the monolith and the psychedelic bits at the end. That's an interesting approach, used in a few other places as well - where the Earth tech is hard science - fairly near modern or within our theoretical understanding, but then there's an alien contact and they use stuff that's way beyond what's normally considered hard SF, but it still seems to stay in that subgenre, because the characters are as baffled by it as we are. Most of Clarke's work is like this - Even his 'sufficiently advanced' technology in the monoliths or the Rama megastructures obey the big laws (Relativity and the Conservation laws, for instance), even if they have engineering leaps that may or may not turn out to be impossible.
But then it turns out that Rama was working for God and it's one of those things that makes you like three prior books less.
Ross Byers wrote: thejeff wrote: TarSpartan wrote: Joynt Jezebel wrote: Hard Science fiction is Science Fiction with where science and scientific possibility and ideas are important. The complete opposite of Star Wars. Or as a counter-example, "2001" was pretty hard Sci-Fi aside from the monolith and the psychedelic bits at the end. That's an interesting approach, used in a few other places as well - where the Earth tech is hard science - fairly near modern or within our theoretical understanding, but then there's an alien contact and they use stuff that's way beyond what's normally considered hard SF, but it still seems to stay in that subgenre, because the characters are as baffled by it as we are. Most of Clarke's work is like this - Even his 'sufficiently advanced' technology in the monoliths or the Rama megastructures obey the big laws (Relativity and the Conservation laws, for instance), even if they have engineering leaps that may or may not turn out to be impossible.
But then it turns out that Rama was working for God and it's one of those things that makes you like three prior books less. The monoliths seemed to cheat a bit, depending on exactly what happened to Dave at the end.
Krensky wrote: I got that part. I still have no idea what he's on about. I was referencing a debate that went over in the Agents of Shield thread where several people were quite intent on proving to me that the society and military technology of Asgardians in the MCU is reasonable and not comic-book levels of Rule Of Cool driven fun nonsense, where you seemed quite amused by my notion that alien races in Mass Effect are more believable than Asgardians.
Looking back over there, though, I see that you are not one of the people who actually claimed that Asgardians make sense, so I guess my potshot misfired. Still curious why you consider the believablity of the aliens in Mass Effect as so laughable, BTW. Sure, they are somewhat simplified and one dimensional at times, but overall I find them acceptable.
In the context of this discussion, by the way, Mass Effect is the closest to hard SF that I encountered in a computer game, though most of the "hard" parts of it come from reading the codex, as the game itself can be understood perfectly without them, but there is an element of speculation in it - most of the futuristic technology is based on the existence of element zero, which has well defined applications from which the incredible capabilities of technology are all derived. It's not quite there, but it's close.
What happened to Dave is not all that weird in the book. In the movie, it gets weird because he has nobody to talk to.
Sissyl wrote: What happened to Dave is not all that weird in the book. In the movie, it gets weird because he has nobody to talk to. It's been a long time but the whole "'It's full of stars' - pulled through the monolith to another solar system, comes back as the Star Child" thing is in the book, right?
That's the part where we go beyond "hard sf".
Lord Snow wrote: Krensky wrote: I got that part. I still have no idea what he's on about. I was referencing a debate that went over in the Agents of Shield thread where several people were quite intent on proving to me that the society and military technology of Asgardians in the MCU is reasonable and not comic-book levels of Rule Of Cool driven fun nonsense, where you seemed quite amused by my notion that alien races in Mass Effect are more believable than Asgardians.
Looking back over there, though, I see that you are not one of the people who actually claimed that Asgardians make sense, so I guess my potshot misfired. Still curious why you consider the believablity of the aliens in Mass Effect as so laughable, BTW. Sure, they are somewhat simplified and one dimensional at times, but overall I find them acceptable.
In the context of this discussion, by the way, Mass Effect is the closest to hard SF that I encountered in a computer game, though most of the "hard" parts of it come from reading the codex, as the game itself can be understood perfectly without them, but there is an element of speculation in it - most of the futuristic technology is based on the existence of element zero, which has well defined applications from which the incredible capabilities of technology are all derived. It's not quite there, but it's close. Because nothing works like that in reality.
The Raknai would collapse under their own weight (giant insect problem). Asari reproductive biology is ludicrous. The basic fact that they're pretty much all humans in funny masks.
As for Eezo? Yeah, really well defined. It does whatever the writers need it to. It is pure, absolute, space opera.
Hard science fiction doesn't sell well in video games, but it's been done. See the two Gateway games, either of the Rama games, heck, Half-Life 2 or Parasite Eve (the first one) are more hard sci-fi than Mass Effect.
I loved the trilogy and am waiting excitedly for more info on 4, but there's nothing hard about Mass Effect.
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thejeff wrote: Ross Byers wrote: thejeff wrote: TarSpartan wrote: Joynt Jezebel wrote: Hard Science fiction is Science Fiction with where science and scientific possibility and ideas are important. The complete opposite of Star Wars. Or as a counter-example, "2001" was pretty hard Sci-Fi aside from the monolith and the psychedelic bits at the end. That's an interesting approach, used in a few other places as well - where the Earth tech is hard science - fairly near modern or within our theoretical understanding, but then there's an alien contact and they use stuff that's way beyond what's normally considered hard SF, but it still seems to stay in that subgenre, because the characters are as baffled by it as we are. Most of Clarke's work is like this - Even his 'sufficiently advanced' technology in the monoliths or the Rama megastructures obey the big laws (Relativity and the Conservation laws, for instance), even if they have engineering leaps that may or may not turn out to be impossible.
But then it turns out that Rama was working for God and it's one of those things that makes you like three prior books less. The monoliths seemed to cheat a bit, depending on exactly what happened to Dave at the end. Keep in mind that Clarke's story pretty much begins and ends with the discovery of the Monolith on the Moon, from a short story known as "The Sentinel". The rest is pretty much Stanley Kubrick as well as Arthur Clarke. You can see the similarities to Kubrick's style in his other movies.
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thejeff wrote: Sissyl wrote: What happened to Dave is not all that weird in the book. In the movie, it gets weird because he has nobody to talk to. It's been a long time but the whole "'It's full of stars' - pulled through the monolith to another solar system, comes back as the Star Child" thing is in the book, right?
That's the part where we go beyond "hard sf". Going from the successive books, what comes back through the gate isn't David Bowman, but the Deep Space Monolith's recording of him. In 2010, the Jovian Monolith also at Bowman's request, records the personality of HAL 9000 just before the Discovery is destroyed. By the time of Odyseey 3001, the two have fused to become Halman.
The Jovian Monolith also records the personality of Heywood Floyd, the original being unaware of this event. Apparently that recording no longer exists in the last Odyssey book.
Matt Filla wrote: Baxter is fantastic, as is the late lamented Iain Banks. I was not aware that he had passed away, this saddens me greatly.
His novels are great though, they involve (or are adjacent to) a post-scarcity space empire (for lack of a better term) known as the Culture. The Culture is essentially an anarchy guided along by minds, which are unfathomably intelligent AI. The Use of Weapons, Player of Games, and Matter are probably my favorites.
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LazarX wrote: thejeff wrote: Sissyl wrote: What happened to Dave is not all that weird in the book. In the movie, it gets weird because he has nobody to talk to. It's been a long time but the whole "'It's full of stars' - pulled through the monolith to another solar system, comes back as the Star Child" thing is in the book, right?
That's the part where we go beyond "hard sf". Going from the successive books, what comes back through the gate isn't David Bowman, but the Deep Space Monolith's recording of him. In 2010, the Jovian Monolith also at Bowman's request, records the personality of HAL 9000 just before the Discovery is destroyed. By the time of Odyseey 3001, the two have fused to become Halman.
The Jovian Monolith also records the personality of Heywood Floyd, the original being unaware of this event. Apparently that recording no longer exists in the last Odyssey book. Well, technically, each Odyssey novel takes place in it's own parallel universe.
Krensky wrote: Lord Snow wrote: Krensky wrote: I got that part. I still have no idea what he's on about. I was referencing a debate that went over in the Agents of Shield thread where several people were quite intent on proving to me that the society and military technology of Asgardians in the MCU is reasonable and not comic-book levels of Rule Of Cool driven fun nonsense, where you seemed quite amused by my notion that alien races in Mass Effect are more believable than Asgardians.
Looking back over there, though, I see that you are not one of the people who actually claimed that Asgardians make sense, so I guess my potshot misfired. Still curious why you consider the believablity of the aliens in Mass Effect as so laughable, BTW. Sure, they are somewhat simplified and one dimensional at times, but overall I find them acceptable.
In the context of this discussion, by the way, Mass Effect is the closest to hard SF that I encountered in a computer game, though most of the "hard" parts of it come from reading the codex, as the game itself can be understood perfectly without them, but there is an element of speculation in it - most of the futuristic technology is based on the existence of element zero, which has well defined applications from which the incredible capabilities of technology are all derived. It's not quite there, but it's close. Because nothing works like that in reality.
The Raknai would collapse under their own weight (giant insect problem). Asari reproductive biology is ludicrous. The basic fact that they're pretty much all humans in funny masks.
As for Eezo? Yeah, really well defined. It does whatever the writers need it to. It is pure, absolute, space opera.
Hard science fiction doesn't sell well in video games, but it's been done. See the two Gateway games, either of the Rama games, heck, Half-Life 2 or Parasite Eve (the first one) are more hard sci-fi than Mass Effect.
I loved the trilogy and am waiting excitedly for more info on 4, but there's nothing... I would grant that Asaris being able to mate with anything doesn't make any sense, as for rachni I have very little knowledge in bug physiology so I don't know about that... but yeah, the aliens are essentially humans who look funny and have a strong tendency to one archtypical human behavior. That still leaves them as much more convincing than Asgardians to me, if only because they are willing to not talk, dress and behave like people who never heard about any analog to an Earth technology later than that of the 12th century. Even Krogans, the "unbeatable physically menacing alien race" has adapted to technology in its own way.
Element Zero is pretty well defined, I'd say. What it does is create mass effect fields, and what they do is manipulate mass. Pretty much everything technological that uses element zero is some trick that's based on that. Biotics are a step too far in my estimation and a harder SF story would have dispensed with them.
Call it "soft hard SF" or "hard space opera" if you will, but it really has many of the important hallmarks - the scientific speculation makes a serious attempt at consistency and the mass effect is at the core of the game's story. You would not find a lot of detailed physics in there, but technology plays an important role and is given a lot of space to show, which is unusual for a space opera.
Lord Snow wrote: Krensky wrote: Lord Snow wrote:
I was referencing a debate that went over in the Agents of Shield thread where several people were quite intent on proving to me that the society and military technology of Asgardians in the MCU is reasonable and not comic-book levels of Rule Of Cool driven fun nonsense, where you seemed quite amused by my notion that alien races in Mass Effect are more believable than Asgardians.
Looking back over there, though, I see that you are not one of the people who actually claimed that Asgardians make sense, so I guess my potshot misfired. Still curious why you consider the believablity of the aliens in Mass Effect as so laughable, BTW. Sure, they are somewhat simplified and one dimensional at times, but overall I find them acceptable.
I would grant that Asaris being able to mate with anything doesn't make any sense, as for rachni I have very little knowledge in bug physiology so I don't know about that... but yeah, the aliens are essentially humans who look funny and have a strong tendency to one archtypical human behavior. That still leaves them as much more convincing than Asgardians to me, if only because they are willing to not talk, dress and behave like people who never heard about any analog to an Earth technology later than that of the 12th century. Even Krogans, the "unbeatable physically menacing alien race" has adapted to technology in its own way.
Element Zero is pretty well defined, I'd say. What it does is create mass effect fields, and what they do is manipulate mass. Pretty much everything technological that uses element zero is some trick that's based on that. Biotics are a step too far in my estimation and a harder SF story would have dispensed with them.
Call it "soft hard SF" or "hard space opera" if you will, but it really has many of the important hallmarks - the scientific speculation makes a serious attempt at consistency and the mass effect is at the core of the game's story. You would not find a lot of detailed physics in there, but technology plays an important role and is given a lot of space to show, which is unusual for a space opera. The Asgardians make perfect sense - if you don't consider them technological space aliens. (Well, other than the language patterns. I'll give you that.)
Obviously not hard SF, but they're not supposed to be. They're Norse gods.
Quote: The Asgardians make perfect sense - if you don't consider them technological space aliens. (Well, other than the language patterns. I'll give you that.)
Obviously not hard SF, but they're not supposed to be. They're Norse gods.
I know. Me mentioning them here is strictly within context of an argument in another thread, that was about the MCU version of them (where they are described not as gods but as an advanced alien race), where I claimed they don't make any sense whatsoever and others claimed they do. I thought Krensky was one of them, I was wrong about that. That's pretty much what there is to this.
Cleanthes wrote: I haven't seen anyone mention Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars novels. I thought the first one, Red Mars, was best of the bunch, but he had interesting stuff going on in all of them, and in some ways they get even more science-y as they go. I was about to mention those, although it was a bit of a struggle for me to finish "Blue Mars
Lord Snow wrote: Quote: The Asgardians make perfect sense - if you don't consider them technological space aliens. (Well, other than the language patterns. I'll give you that.)
Obviously not hard SF, but they're not supposed to be. They're Norse gods.
I know. Me mentioning them here is strictly within context of an argument in another thread, that was about the MCU version of them (where they are described not as gods but as an advanced alien race), where I claimed they don't make any sense whatsoever and others claimed they do. I thought Krensky was one of them, I was wrong about that. That's pretty much what there is to this. Even there, unless I've missed something specific, "described not as gods but as an advanced alien race", is reading a lot into very little evidence.
thejeff wrote: Lord Snow wrote: Quote: The Asgardians make perfect sense - if you don't consider them technological space aliens. (Well, other than the language patterns. I'll give you that.)
Obviously not hard SF, but they're not supposed to be. They're Norse gods.
I know. Me mentioning them here is strictly within context of an argument in another thread, that was about the MCU version of them (where they are described not as gods but as an advanced alien race), where I claimed they don't make any sense whatsoever and others claimed they do. I thought Krensky was one of them, I was wrong about that. That's pretty much what there is to this. Even there, unless I've missed something specific, "described not as gods but as an advanced alien race", is reading a lot into very little evidence. Is it? near as I recall, the Asgardians being hyper advanced aliens rather than gods it like the first thing we are told in the first Thor movie. Like, literally the elevator pitch of the movie. And the fact is referenced about as often as the race is mentioned, both in the Avengers movies and in the Agents of Shield show.
I mean, look at the plot for Age of Ultron -
Lord Snow wrote: thejeff wrote: Lord Snow wrote: Quote: The Asgardians make perfect sense - if you don't consider them technological space aliens. (Well, other than the language patterns. I'll give you that.)
Obviously not hard SF, but they're not supposed to be. They're Norse gods.
I know. Me mentioning them here is strictly within context of an argument in another thread, that was about the MCU version of them (where they are described not as gods but as an advanced alien race), where I claimed they don't make any sense whatsoever and others claimed they do. I thought Krensky was one of them, I was wrong about that. That's pretty much what there is to this. Even there, unless I've missed something specific, "described not as gods but as an advanced alien race", is reading a lot into very little evidence. Is it? near as I recall, the Asgardians being hyper advanced aliens rather than gods it like the first thing we are told in the first Thor movie. Like, literally the elevator pitch of the movie. And the fact is referenced about as often as the race is mentioned, both in the Avengers movies and in the Agents of Shield show.
I mean, look at the plot for Age of Ultron -
** spoiler omitted **
Mass Effect isn't hard in the slightest. Is pure Space Opera. Considering that you thought Hamilton, one of the leaders of the British Space Opera Revival a hard science fiction author I can see why you make that mistake.
There are some complications, but the primary distinction is in hard sci-fi the science and tech drive and determine the plot. In space opera the needs of the story and characters drive and determine the science and tech.
For instance, look at Weber's Honor Harrington books or Drake's RCN books. The nature of space travel, weapons, etc in both are intended solely to support the Hornblower/Nelson and Aubry/Mauterin in space conceit that the respective authors wanted. The spend time explaining and working hard to keep it consistent, but it's driven by the needs of the story not the other way around.
Compare that to Godwin's The Cold Equations or Niven's The Neutron Star or The Jigsawman.
I really enjoy Hal Clement and Cliff Simak. The stories of both are rather dated (products of their time), but those guys could do wonderful things with hard science, particularly Clement. It might be difficult to find their stuff. Iceworld was one of the first SF books I ever read, and I've been in love with Way Station and The Big Front Yard since grade school.
You might also try some of the older Hugo collections. They had great stories, some of which were pretty hard. It's a good place to dabble around in the old-timey authors and see what you like.
Golden Age SF is always worth a look, soft or hard.
Krensky wrote: Mass Effect isn't hard in the slightest. Is pure Space Opera. Considering that you thought Hamilton, one of the leaders of the British Space Opera Revival a hard science fiction author I can see why you make that mistake.
There are some complications, but the primary distinction is in hard sci-fi the science and tech drive and determine the plot. In space opera the needs of the story and characters drive and determine the science and tech.
For instance, look at Weber's Honor Harrington books or Drake's RCN books. The nature of space travel, weapons, etc in both are intended solely to support the Hornblower/Nelson and Aubry/Mauterin in space conceit that the respective authors wanted. The spend time explaining and working hard to keep it consistent, but it's driven by the needs of the story not the other way around.
Compare that to Godwin's The Cold Equations or Niven's The Neutron Star or The Jigsawman.
I only read Fallen Dragon by Hamilton, and I really wouldn't classify that one as space opera.
I have not read his longer series, but I sort of assumed they are stylistically similar.
They are.
Because they're all space opera.
The Commonwealth and Night's Dawn universe have some parts that are like fantasy, I like them, but it's far from hard sf.
Krensky wrote: They are.
Because they're all space opera.
So you also consider Fallen Dragon a space opera?
I don't have a lot of experience with hard SF, as my opening post for the thread would tell you, but I would put anything by Alastair Reynolds in the same category as Fallen Dragon.
I'm only really familiar with Revelation Space and I've only read some of the short stories, but that setting is space opera. I can't speak to his other works.
Robert Forward's "Dragon's Egg", Niven's and Pournelle's "A Mote in God's Eye", and the "Lost Fleet" series by Jack Campbell are great starts.
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Bjørn Røyrvik wrote: How hard is 'hard'? because Asimov wrote a lot of stuff I wouldn't consider hard, including Foundation.
Correct, both Psychohistory, and The Three Laws of Robotics, are essentially magic gibberish in scientific clothes.
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Robert Forward is considered pretty good on the tech side of hard science, but his characters are pretty flat and the stories themselves unegaging aside from the very good descriptions.
I don't normally consider Niven "hard" SF, though he does often have around with interesting ramifications of common SF tech. As much as I love the Moties, the science isn't hard. And I really dislike the "feudal hereditary empire in space" thing that it's set in. OTOH, Moties are cool and the gradual revelation of their history and nature works very well.
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thejeff wrote: I don't normally consider Niven "hard" SF, though he does often have around with interesting ramifications of common SF tech. As much as I love the Moties, the science isn't hard. And I really dislike the "feudal hereditary empire in space" thing that it's set in. OTOH, Moties are cool and the gradual revelation of their history and nature works very well.
Niven pretty much agrees with you. At some point, he realized what corner he had painted himself into with Known Space and Teela Brown, and wrote a last satirical short story about what happens when everyone on Earth has the Teela Brown luck gene, as Lous Wu predicted in "Ringworld".
The Motie stories take place in Pournelle's CoDominium universe, not Niven's Known Space.
Niven and Pournelle are... let's say hard sci-fi adjacent most of the time. They used to be firmly classified as hard, but the genre definition has drifted away from them over the decades.
Also to jeff, the Second Empire of Man in the CoDominium world isn't a feudal empire, it's constitutional monarchy. It's not really well defined and it's politics aren't usually a focus for Pournelle so he doesn't much go into the nuts and bolts of how it functions, but it doesn't fit the definition of feudalism.
I like Niven because he can competently handle a variety of genres.
The "Gil the ARM" stories are sci-fi, sociological, and are also well-plotted mystery stories.
The "Beowulf Shaeffer" stories are straight sci-fi.
The "Warlock" stories are exemplary fantasy.
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Kirth Gersen wrote: I like Niven because he can competently handle a variety of genres.
The "Gil the ARM" stories are sci-fi, sociological, and are also well-plotted mystery stories.
The "Beowulf Shaeffer" stories are straight sci-fi.
The "Warlock" stories are exemplary fantasy.
I can't see how magically hard transparent space hulls that are absolutely invulnerable would register to anyone as "hard sci-fi".
Because the definition of hard sci-fi has changed somewhat from when Niven wrote Ringworld.
Krensky wrote: Because the definition of hard sci-fi has changed somewhat from when Niven wrote Ringworld. In which direction? Now it's hard sf? Or it was then?
I wouldn't have placed it as hard when I first read it.
LazarX wrote: I can't see how magically hard transparent space hulls that are absolutely invulnerable would register to anyone as "hard sci-fi". I said "stright sci-fi." I never characterized his scifi as being especially "hard."
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Kirth Gersen wrote: LazarX wrote: I can't see how magically hard transparent space hulls that are absolutely invulnerable would register to anyone as "hard sci-fi". I said "stright sci-fi." I never characterized his scifi as being especially "hard." Then what exactly is "straight sci-fi"?
Khouri wrote: The debut novel of Andy Weir - The Martian - is supposed to be very good hard sci-fi as well. It's the next book on my reading pile, looking forward to reading it. It's about an astronaut who gets left behind on Mars and his attempts to survive and get home. The research and depth of the novel are reportedly very good, with a strong basis in science.
I'm partway through "The Martian" and *LOVE* it. As an aside, my day job is designing and building science cameras for spaceflight projects, so I know quite a bit of the "inside baseball" talked about in the book. The only minor quibble I've found so far is that RTGs have flown on manned missions (including Apollo 13, where the RTG re-entered and sank to the bottom of the Pacific). The swearing gets a little strong in places, but who wouldn't swear if they were hopelessly stranded on the surface of Mars?
LazarX wrote: Then what exactly is "straight sci-fi"? See the other examples I listed. Context clues are your friends.
Stright sci-fi doesn't include a locked-room mystery.
Straight sci-fi doesn't include genies and wizards.
A number of Niven's other stories do include those things.
Krensky wrote: Also to jeff, the Second Empire of Man in the CoDominium world isn't a feudal empire, it's constitutional monarchy. It's not really well defined and it's politics aren't usually a focus for Pournelle so he doesn't much go into the nuts and bolts of how it functions, but it doesn't fit the definition of feudalism. That's probably more accurate, but the feel is more feudal than what I think of as constitutional monarchy. The monarch still seems to wield a lot of authority. Hereditary nobility still runs things, by virtue of their positions.
Not like the current UK constitutional monarchy, but closer to earlier British systems, with the monarch constitutionally bound, but still very dominant.
At least, that's what I remember from my fairly brief and long ago readings in that setting, which as you said doesn't usually go deep into the socio-politics of it all. Doesn't really change that I'm not a big fan of the "port the British Empire into space" trope, however you tweak it or whichever time period you're lifting it from. The trappings annoy me.
Works better if you're using it as the enemy to rebel against. Less as "the way things are". All IMHO, of course.
It depends why is being done. I've only really read the Motie books (as opposed to skimming) but I never got a good sense of why either Empire of Man in that were conditional monarchies with strong aristocracies.
On the other hand, because I reread them recently, Weber's Honorverse and Drake's RCN work because they're explicitly doing Hornblower/Nelson and Aubrey/Mauterin in space. Weber also goes a good bit into why the hereditary executives (Manticore, Grayson, Anderman, Torch, the first version of Haven, the Detweiler conspiracy ) are that way and the problems that it can cause. Same with the great 'democracy' of the Solarian Union.
Similarly, the Terran Empire in Weber's In Fury Born is strongly required because the villains plot doesn't work that well without it and, more importantly, the main character does not work without being in service to the Emperor personally.
Similarly Weber and Ringo's retelling on Anabaxis (March Upcountry and its sequels) on a heriditary executive for the plot to work.
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Just a few female SF authors and key works:
Nancy Kress: BEGGARS IN SPAIN and its (increasingly unnecessary) sequels. This book was based around what happens when you genetically engineer people to survive without sleep, and the unexpected consequences of that.
C.J. Cherryh: DOWNBELOW STATION is a political-military SF thriller set on a space station caught between two warring factions. There are many, many prequels and sequels set in a complex shared universe.
Ursula K. LeGuin: THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS is about a planet with gender-changing aliens and challenges gender assumptions. THE DISPOSSESSED is a (slightly) more traditional story about politics and cold wars between two neighbouring planets.
Jaine Fenn: PRINCIPLES OF ANGELS and several sequels are set in a coherent future universe full of bizarre technology and various alien threats. The first book is the best, coming off as China Mieville-lite, but the sequels are a bit more traditional.
Connie Willis: THE DOOMSDAY BOOK is a time travel story in which a research travels back to Medieval England during the Black Death whilst the society she travelled back from is battling its own futuristic plague.
I haven't read them, but Liz Williams and Elizabeth Moon seem to be well-regarded.
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