The top of hard science fiction

Hard science fiction is designated by the works of the literature of the imaginary in which fictional technologies seem scientifically credible and are described in an exhaustive manner. Often the fact of writers also researchers in physics, mathematics and/or cosmology, this current is distinguished by its desire to explain in a rational way extraordinary phenomena. Here are ten novels to deepen this style.

History of the future of Robert Heinlein (1939-1987)

With sound History of the futureRetrospective title of a series of news and novels written on five decades, Robert Heinlein wanted to draw the contours of the future of man. Imagining different events and technological progress, the author seeks above all to ensure the credibility of his story, despite the diversity of the characters mentioned and the chronological magnitude of the story. On thousands of pages, we are witnessing an American revolution, the colonization of Venus, the first interstellar trips … crossed by the idea of making his work as plausible as possible with regard to the different advances experienced by humanity during the writing of this cycle, Robert Heinlein anticipated the birth of hard science fiction.

Meet with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke (1973)

A few years after having transformed global science fiction with its participation in the script-and in the novel- 2001, the space of spaceArthur C. Clarke delivered his masterpiece by publishing Go with Ramawhich tells the visit, by a crew of astronauts, of a gigantic extraterrestrial spaceship arriving empty in the solar system in the 21st century. The mysteries surrounding this trace of an advanced civilization, the different attitudes (military, scientific, religious) of earthlings in the face of this phenomenon and the scientific and sociological credibility of the narrative made this novel a classic of hard science fiction-with a poetic tendency-crowned with the three major prices of the imaginary (Hugo, Lieu, Nebula) and which could be adapted to the cinema by Denis Villeneuve.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s Martian trilogy (1992-1999)

Hard science fiction sometimes attaches to very specific themes of astrophysics or astronautics. There Martian trilogy Signed Kim Stanley Robinson thus endeavors to describe, in three novels, the terraformation of Mars, decided by humans to colonize the red planet. A microcosm in which different visions of the transformation of this hostile world are granted to this technical feat. Politics, romance, violence, greed … This futuristic, very documented fresco succeeds in captivating chapter in chapter, according to a perfectly conducted story.

Larry Niven’s ring-world (1970)

“Tore de Stanford”, “Dyson sphere”, “Bernal sphere” … The models of artificial megastructures allowing life in space abound in speculative astronautics. Larry Niven gave a fictional version in his novel The world ringa sort of Planet Opera taking place inside a gigantic ring, built by extraterrestrials. We follow two earthlings leaving to discover this world that the author has endowed with a credible physical reality, and of which he revealed more information in three suites.

The problem with three bodies by Liu Cixin (2008-2010)

Approaching science fiction in a serious way, The three -body problem has the particularity of taking place in China, in the years following the cultural revolution. A rare political context in the SF, which is coupled with great scientific relevance: Liu Cixin imagines the reception of an extra-terrestrial signal and decoding, by the daughter of an opponent of Mao, of the intentions of the emitting civilization. In three books, the Chinese author addresses the theme of the (bellicose) meeting with an advanced civilization and digs the question in a mixture of winks to human history and hard sciences.

Isolation de Greg Egan (1992)

Fascinating branch of cosmology, quantum physics offers novelists from hard science fiction a toolbox to imagine stories based on almost “magical” properties of elements in this context. Greg Egan, in Isolationtales the quarantine of humanity, by integrating the notion of parallel reality, based here on the concept of quantum state. The author has the good idea to wrap these concepts in a futuristic thriller/thriller breathless in devil.

Blind vision of Peter Watts (2006)

Using fiction to transmit questions of science, Peter Watts has delivered, with Blind visionand its suite Echopraxis, A story worthy of appearing in the pantheon of Hard Science. Around an issuing comet of signals, which turns out to belong to a distant civilization, it is a meditation on consciousness, artificial intelligence and transhumanism that unfolds over the pages: humans of 2082, book era, a lot of humans of 2025, through this visionary novel.

In the canvas of the time of Adrian Tchaikovsky (2015)

New master of hard science, Adrian Tchaikovsky owes much of his reputation in the cycle he started with In the canvas. This first volume, striking confrontation between the last survivors of humanity and a breed of intelligent octopods occupying a terraformed planet, narrates on the one hand the rapid evolution of the extraterrestrial species and on the other the equally precipitated decay of the occupants of the Gilgamesh vessel, on the way for a world which they think habitable. Ecological, anthropological and black, the work of Adrian Tchaikovsky uses Darwinism to evoke man and his flaws in a poetic way.

Dying stars of Ayerdhal and Jean-Claude Dunyach (1999)

If France is more back on the Hard SF scene than the Anglo-Saxon sphere, that does not prevent some beautiful exceptions, as Dying starswork with four hands of two big names in the hexagonal imagination, Ayerdhal and Dunyach. A story of a distant future in which humanity was divided as it extended into the cosmos. And as the war is announced, the meeting of all around an astrophysical event could well be the last occasion of a peace … With many technological innovations, in particular linked to biology, the tandem of authors manages to mix sciences and humanism in this very original novel.

The Chicken Chicken Place (1970)

25 men, 25 women, a spaceship as a habitat, and an initial trip of 36 light years to the constellation of the Virgin. Tau zero De Poul Anderson begins like a classic spatial exploration novel. But a stellar disturbance transforms this two -year -old closed dock in the future of the universe. Classic SF, Tau zero evokes both collective psychology and cosmology (as perceived in the 1970s) during a dizzying story.