Review is kinda irrelevant though it references a few books but peep:

"Maybe this represents some sort of watershed in the development of hard SF: Arthur C. Clarke’s famous and annoyingly overquoted dictum that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic has given way to ‘‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature’’ (italics mine). That comes from Peter Watts’s Echopraxia, where he attributes it to Stella Rossiter, but exactly the same thought appears in Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Causal Angel (‘‘sufficiently advanced technology should be indistinguishable from nature’’). Likely a coincidence, unless they talked on the phone before coming to school, but it’s an interesting shift. Clarke’s quip seemed to give hard SF license to go wonky whenever it felt like it, including Clarke’s own occasional fits of reluctant mysticism...

"What I think is particularly interesting about that magic vs. nature question is that it may help explain why so many of us get tangled up when trying to even decide what hard SF is: we’ve almost always tried to discuss it solely in terms of its conceptual parameters rather than by how it works as fiction. Theoretically, those parameters are, simply, nature – physics, astronomy, biology, etc. – suggesting that Watts and Rajaniemi’s formulation is closer to the mark than Clarke’s. But in practice, almost since the beginning of SF, that ‘‘sufficiently advanced technology’’ rubric has served writers as a Get Out of Jail Free card not all that far removed from Clarke’s magic, so the argument becomes circular: we can’t distinguish advanced technology from a natural process, and we can’t distinguish an unknown natural process from magic, so we’re back to square one.

Except for one thing: replacing magic with nature substantially reduces the degree of pure handwaving permitted in hard SF, and as a result writers have for the past few decades been developing strategies for incorporating cutting-edge science and technology into their narratives, making them part of the aesthetic fabric, and that takes us back to that question of how this all works as fiction. In addition to the traditional weaving of character, plot, setting, style, etc., the literary hard SF writer needs to weave information into the fabric as well, and how they do this looks very much like a set of artistic decisions.

By coincidence – and in fact what set off this ramble – three of the works we’re looking at this month represent three distinct such artistic strategies. Nancy Kress’s Yesterday’s Kin follows the more traditional Heinleinian model, offering just enough science to power the issues she wants to address – mostly evolutionary biology – while pretty much ignoring less relevant questions (such as how her alien spacecraft operate). Peter Watts, on the other hand, is fascinated by the science behind all aspects of his constructed world in Echopraxia, and wants you to sit still for some dauntingly dense asides about it, almost as the price for getting to enjoy what turns out to be a pretty solid space adventure. Hannu Rajaniemi’s strategy in The Quantum Thief trilogy is to work out all that science and information theory, pack it into an initially bewildering array of neologisms and images, and then explain nothing at all, lest it slow down the kinetic pace of what is at heart a romantic adventure tale.

Put another way, Kress’s scientific rhetoric is in support of her plot, Watts’s is in dialogue with his plot, and Rajaniemi’s is the backdrop of his plot. Which is the more effective strategy is at least partly a function of how much work the reader is willing to put in, but all are good examples of how the rhetoric of science becomes part of the rhetoric of fiction in a way that is unique to hard SF"

****

Reading this was interesting to me of primary interest because of the breakdown of categories. I haven't read any of the books but I think it's always interesting thinking about the perspective of the reader in this. And while it says just Hard SF I think it's a good break down for sf in general. And i think a lot of authors and writing get judged based on that.

There's also a male female thing (and i think minority too) with this where inevitably female and minority writers automatically start out in the 'scientific rhetoric' side of things. This in a lot of circles leads to the dismissiveness of the writers as serious sf writers. More like writers obssessed with their own issues (race, gender, etc) throwing them in a science fiction context.

But is science fiction really about the science... is it really.

Labels

Also magic, mysticism etc. Thin lines all around.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."