Upper limits of believability

[JGregory32]

Maybe I'm weird but but I usually define hard and soft sci-fi as in how close does the author obey his own rules.
You can have esoteric stuff that really shouldn't work but if well thought out and well developed then I'm all for it. When a author starts playing hard and fast with his own rules then I start to have problems.
For example, I'm perfectly willing to let Weber get away with his "In Fury Born" work because its mostly internally consistent. I'm not willing to forgive him for some of the things in the latter Honor novels because they are just stupid and break the setting.
Hard scifi should obey the rules, even if they are the ones the author came up with, soft sci-fi is hwere the author goes "fuck the rules!"