Game programmer, designer, director; retired quadball player; antimeme; radical descriptivist; antilabel; Moose;
Working at Muse Games. Directed Embr, worked on Wildmender and Guns of Icarus, Making new secret stuffs
Opinions are everyone else's
The term "sci-fi" has many definitions, and arguing over them is somewhat of a passtime among the fans. I judge a definition of "sci-fi" based on one criterion: whether your Star Wars counts as science fiction.
To be perfectly clear: It's not.
Star Wars is harder sci fi than Star Trek
WRT hard vs soft sci-fi: i personally like when soft sci-fi wears hard sci-fi as a skinsuit
Science fiction is at its best when the science can't be cleanly removed from the story. Fantasy stories wearing the trappings of science fiction are cool, but the science is purely aesthetic. That's the problem I have with a lot of soft scifi. I don't care that it's unrealistic, I care that the science isn't cool. Star Wars is an example of the latter, Jurassic Park is an example of the former. If you swapped out the genetic engineering for magic that created the dinosaurs, it would be a completely different story. But you can basically set Star Wars in a fantasy world, and it'll be the same.
