Opinions! What are the most realistic Science fiction storie

[Dr Roberts]

In any media form apart from Radio.

Could you also please give a small summary of it or link to it's wiki.

[Ahriman238]

Well, what do you mean by most realistic? Best conformity to actual science? Most realistic characters and character growth/decisions?

[SpaceMarine93]

In any media form apart from Radio.

Could you also please give a small summary of it or link to it's wiki.

Nearly everything by Arthur C Clarke?

[Lord of the Abyss]

Near-future hard science ones. Far future hard science ones are pretty much unrealistic by nature, since in the far future we'll almost certainly have technology based on principles we haven't discovered yet and therefore can't predict. Barring post-apocalyptic ones where the technology is no better than our own, of course.

[Stark]

Well, what do you mean by most realistic? Best conformity to actual science? Most realistic characters and character growth/decisions?

There are some pretty hard scifi stories that are incredibly stupid or retarded in plot, so this is an important distinction. This is assuming he cares about anything beyond whether or not the technobabble driving the plot is 'real' or not, of course.

[the atom]

In any media form apart from Radio.

Could you also please give a small summary of it or link to it's wiki.

Nearly everything by Arthur C Clarke?

More or less this. Clarke managed to take the boring realities of space travel and turn it into something truly gripping again and again.

[Shroom Man 777]

Yes, I think Clarke's story wherein the spaceman in his very hard sci-fi realistic rendition of the starship encounters a great black monolith near Jupiter, and is then exposed to vistas incomprehensible to the human mind and is transformed into something greater that transcends all of mortal man's limitations and returns to his homeworld as an entirely changed being beyond humanity, is indeed the most realistic science fiction.

I think it realistically depicted a journey into unknown, and realistically depicted an encounter with fictional sciences so vast and amazing and advanced that our own understanding of the universe - that has allowed us to reach into the heavens - still cannot even make heads or tails or any remote sense of it.

I find the notion of the future conforming to the obsolete past's conception of realism to be unrealistic. Science fiction, and even science, is meant to challenge and transcend current notions of what is and should be.

[Shroom Man 777]

Okay, I'll bite. I recommend Isaac Asimov's Foundation, the first one.

Wherein during and after the fall of the Galactic Empire, a group of scientists on a fringe world are tasked with preserving all human knowledge of science and technologies. As civilization around them disintegrates, they encounter degenerate warlords of the peripheral provinces formerly of the Empire. These warlords wield remnant weaponries from the old Imperial militaries - great mighty warships with impenetrable shields, durable armor, and impressive weapons yields capable of devastating worlds.

These fearsome militarists and post-imperial technoimperialists come for our society of scientists on their undefended world, seeking to strongarm them into sharing their secret repositories. Yet our scientists prevail, not through strength of arms, not through combat or contests of weapons yields, but through guile and knowledge - and in applying the soft power their information gives them through a variety of diplomatic means to secure their place in the galaxy after the empire, for knowledge is power and it is they who are its keepers.

[evilsoup]

See I love the Foundation books, but I'm not sure if I'd call them 'realistic'. I mean there's no real reason given for the technological regression of the empire, it just sort of happens as a necessary backdrop for all the Hari Seldon psychohistory stuff.

[Shroom Man 777]

The technologies, methodologies and stuff in those novels were not realistic, they're all backdrop anyway. But the characters, the minimal prose, the way the stories were done without great gunfights or combat, their actions and how things were resolved via unconventional means, those are what I found "realistic". Or, if not realistic, then awesome.

[evilsoup]

I think I'd go with 'awesome', realism in scifi is overrated anyways.
And the Foundation books are certainly awesome. Hey I guess we've found a subject for when we're done with Gattaca.

[Shroom Man 777]

I think I'd go with 'awesome', realism in scifi is overrated anyways.

This ties in to what Strakkers said quite well.

Well, what do you mean by most realistic? Best conformity to actual science? Most realistic characters and character growth/decisions?

There are some pretty hard scifi stories that are incredibly stupid or retarded in plot, so this is an important distinction. This is assuming he cares about anything beyond whether or not the technobabble driving the plot is 'real' or not, of course.

It would be very unfortunate if the bolded was true.

[evilsoup]

Well I guess, all other thing being equal, I would prefer for the technobabble to be realistic or grounded in real science? Or course this is way way way down on the list of priorities for a scifi book.

[Nephtys]

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is pretty darn scientifically accurate. It's about a revolution on the moon against an administrative authority, and it's technical aspects are more or less entirely correct. The sole jump is on a computer becoming self-aware because enough processing power was added on to it. Which my be okay, if not understandable for Heinlein using a few way lowballed numbers on storage and processing capacity, the book being written in the 60s or early 70s..