Note: I would consider this series science fantasy, not science fiction. I had to kind of unfocus my critical perspective to enjoy it, but I really did enjoy it.
In science fantasy, the author glosses over the explanations and just shows you the effects.
In fantasy, the author doesn't care about how it violates known science.
(Technically, fantasy is the root of all literature, but these are the marketing categories we have today.)
I like to think of scifi as stories that are fundamentally about how a new development in science leads to changes in the world. It could be far-future questionably possibly supertech (The Expanse). It could be near-future changes in social science (1984). It could be future regression of current technology (The Windup Girl).
I think an Expanse author once commented that he'd never really thought about how the fusion drive thingies were supposed to work.
> How does the Epstein drive work?
> It works very well, thank you very much.
I'm not really a big believer in the 'science' part of 'hard science fiction' - for me, you can basically divide sci-fi into two traditions. The first is based on the old sci-fi magazines that published short stories. Short stories, being characterized by the exploration of a remarkable idea, therefore produces sci-fi that's basically about examining some imagined change, usually scientific, but it could also be social (The Dispossessed, etc). The second is based on old sci-fi comics, serials and pulp novels - and is about characters. It doesn't matter how lightsabers work because Star Wars is entirely about characters. So for me, the Expanse would be in the tradition of Star Wars, while something like Yoon Ha Lee's stuff would be in the magazine tradition, even though it's basically magic with spaceships.
SF, fantasy and all the rest are marketing categories, and so they cannot be depended on in the slightest.
No CGI, no special effects - just Good writing, good acting, and good camera work
I'm more confused about it then before.
Logically I get Star Wars/Dune is science fantasy but wouldn't that make Star Trek also science fantasy as wrap drive is never explained (and when it is its not rooted in reality) and how teleport-er is using magic to reassemble atoms at another location? I get it that Expanse and Three Bodied Problem are SciFi but how can the the two categories be quantified in to words?
This is way off topic and i'll stop here. thank you for sending me down a rabbit hole.
Science Fiction / Hard Magic:
The rules are clear and well established. The fantastical elements become almost like characters in the story and have an impact on society and individuals living within the world. The reader can develop a clear understanding of these rules through the writing, and can creatively participate in problem solving using these rules similar to how the character would. You don't need a plausible sciency explanation for how a teleporter works for it to be science fiction versus science fantasy. You need consistent rules on how they are used that the reader can understand and reason about. But when your science officer can pop open a panel and make it do things it's never done before because the plot needs something to move it forward, you're moving towards science fantasy.
Science Fantasy / Soft Magic:
Magic and technology are just plot devices used to move the story forward and less integral to the world setting. Need your short little friends to get out of a dicey situation? Oh yeah, I just so happen to know a spell to summon giant eagles to give us a ride. We haven't talked about it at all before, and you'd have no reason to know it exists. But let's sprinkle a little deus ex machina on this because I'm trying to tell a story not build a coherent world and magic system. Star Trek and Star Wars are both science fantasy because the rules are never consistent and you're constantly running into exceptions for how things work. You as a reader can never fully understand the setting because there's always something fantastical waiting around the corner which breaks the rules and changes things.
Most fiction exists somewhere along a spectrum with authors like Brandon Sanderson and Andy Weir falling more on the hard magic / science fiction side and George Martin and Ian Banks being more soft magic / science fantasy. Are the fantastic elements there as a mechanism to allow cool shit to happen, or are they actually parts of the world for the characters to interact with and overcome with influences shown across society.
Science fiction is a genre that explores the social consequences of technological advancement on humanity.
Science fantasy is a genre where futuristic technology just serves as a backdrop.
Star Trek at least somewhat delves into the social implications of technological advancement (although less than many other works of sci-fi).
The reason that people get bogged down into discussions of "hard" and "soft" sci-fi here is because hard sci-fi, being more grounded in reality, might have more predictive power in its social commentary.
There are arguments to be made for Star Wars and Star Trek as either science fiction or science fantasy, depending on how you slice them. Both are fantasy in that they primarily focus on drama rather than speculative science (Star Trek may have the superficial trappings of "science" but they're really morality plays that just "tech the tech") and include pseudo-mystical elements (The Force/Jedi vs. the Q, telepathy, many of Star Trek's weird space anomalies might as well be magic,) and both are science fiction in that they take place in a universe with "futuristic" elements like spaceships, computers, robots and aliens. One could even argue that Star Wars is the harder of the two settings, as far as sci-fi goes, simply by virtue of leaving more explanation to the imagination, and having more variety in alien design.
But really it's up to you.
Science fiction can be about something entirely possible today that hasn't been done (and could just focus on the social change or response to it, black mirror sometimes opts for this), but often incorporates at least a few giant leaps to help focus us on the parts the fiction is interested in. For example, faster than light travel to allow us to better explore galactic empires and what it means to not have constrained space for nations again.
Science fantasy is the other end of the spectrum, where explaining how something is accomplished or linking it to our current understanding of science is inconsequential. Star Wars is the popular example of this, where generally the explanation of "the force" is so irrelevant that they don't even bother to give it a name beyond the pseudo-descriptive one used. You could replace it's occurrences in the script with "magic" and our understanding and assumptions about it wouldn't change much. In these stories the "science" in science fiction usually signifies it's in space or has aliens, which people associate with the sciences when it involves people out in it.
This is also called hard vs soft sci-fi where very soft is fantasy.
Fantasy incorporates elements that go beyond any known physics. Sometimes they are explained in world with invented physics like Star Trek, and sometimes they are alien and not explained like the stuff the protomolecule can do in The Expanse.
If it’s alien it’s playing with “what if we met someone WAY more advanced than us?”
It’s not a binary thing. Some stories are super far out in fantasy like Star Wars while others try to be very scientifically accurate like For All Mankind, Gattaca, or most of the human tech in The Expanse.