Technical Difficulties

torrilin and pnh have taken me to task for, well, sloppy synechdoche and lousy genre theory.

It is the case that there is a corner of the vast and sprawling genre of science fiction that self-identifies as "hard sf" that does, in fact exhibit the characteristics I describe. It is not, however, the ONLY corner that self-identifies as "hard sf," nor (at this time) the most influential of those corners, nor should I have lumped them all cavalierly in together--nor implied that one of that constellation of characteristics inevitably and invariably brings the others along with it.

It is also the case that I, personally, have a somewhat uneasy relationship with hard sf--in the broad sense of science fiction which grounds itself in the hard sciences--due in part to my even more uneasy relationship with the hard sciences themselves. Personal unease and uncertainty lead (as ever) to overgeneralizations, and if I didn't want to unpack what I meant, I shouldn't have gotten in the ring.

("Illegitimate sf" is a piece of personal shorthand--invented here--and I shouldn't have used it without defining it, either.)

Sometimes nothing can save me from myself.