OK, I removed the adjective "hard". I'm not sure what I was thinking, using such a nebulous term. If you ask nine people the difference between "hard" and "soft" scifi, you'll get ten answers. And the vast excluded middle threatens to dwarf the two complementary categories anyway. I meant merely to differentiate those examples of scifi that go beyond "then they pressed the warp drive button and warped across the galaxy", to consider how humans might travel very fast. In the perhaps poorly chosen example of the Hyperion sequels (if any category would fit them, it's probably "kitchen sink"), bodies were reconstructed by a cruciform "symbiont" that restored recent snapshots. I imagine that instead, whatever cellular processes tardigrades exhibit might be somehow induced in humans.
OK, I removed the adjective "hard". I'm not sure what I was thinking, using such a nebulous term. If you ask nine people the difference between "hard" and "soft" scifi, you'll get ten answers. And the vast excluded middle threatens to dwarf the two complementary categories anyway. I meant merely to differentiate those examples of scifi that go beyond "then they pressed the warp drive button and warped across the galaxy", to consider how humans might travel very fast. In the perhaps poorly chosen example of the Hyperion sequels (if any category would fit them, it's probably "kitchen sink"), bodies were reconstructed by a cruciform "symbiont" that restored recent snapshots. I imagine that instead, whatever cellular processes tardigrades exhibit might be somehow induced in humans.