How hard is that sci-fi?

Many have heard of the Mohs scale of mineral hardness. But did you know that there’s a similar scale for how “hard” a given piece of science fiction is?

Friedrich Mohs anchored his scale with talc (softest, 1) and diamond (hardest, 10). Students of Mineralogy are usually taught to assign hardness based on which of the standard 10 minerals mark the new one, and which don’t. There is also a device called a sclerometer (I’ve never seen one) which employs a diamond head and determines how much pressure is needed to create a visible scratch, or alternatively uses a fixed amount of pressure and measures the width of the resulting scratch.

But now, there is also a scale of science fiction hardness! This page also includes examples of movies that fit at every level of the scale, which ranges from 0 (Barbarella, MST3K, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) to 8 (Real Life). If I were to rate the last few books we read in my sci-fi book club, I’d choose (note the caveat that harder doesn’t equal better!):

  • The Handmaid’s Tale: about 7.5, but is this really sci-fi? Technology isn’t really a player, except as an evil shadow lurking in the past.
  • The Shockwave Rider: a 7; no FTL or broken laws of physics, and eerily prescient about today’s (and tomorrow’s) computer networks.
  • The Atrocity Archives: about 2. There’s no actual space flight, but there are demon-spawned gates to permit travel to other planets (and universes?), with some handwavy handling of pressure differentials and energy conservation. Physics is pretty much entirely broken by the integration with pentagrams and the occult. But hey, it’s fun!
  • Bones of the Earth: right about a 1. Not only does time travel exist, but there’s also a “paradox detector” (never explained).
  • Metatropolis: varied, but about a 7 once you take today and add in various bits of technology and virtual reality overlays. All reasonable extrapolations, without any laws of physics being broken.
  • The Demolished Man: about a 4, if you consider telepathy to be breaking a law of physics. Tenser, said the tensor!

The sci-fi hardness scale page also puts Contact, Avatar, and Ender’s Game at a 3, and Rainbows End and Cryptonomicon at a 5. I’d put Anathem at a 5, too.

How hard is your sci-fi?