I think Bush used, to some extent, his family's connections to get in the Guard instead of active duty. In the same situation, I would have done the same. Many, many people did the same. Many also evaded the draft/war in ways that did *not* serve their country at all -- Guard service is military service.
Bush fulfilled his duties well until given the opportunity to work on campaigns for and with his father. That, combined with the phasing out of his preferred plane, led to him asking for transfers and exclusions from required service.
Obviously, from the scarcity of documents, possibility of forged documents, and conflicting reports, Guard units didn't keep meticulous records. Remember that this was before electronic filing and e-mail, so there were ample opportunities for situations where Bush asked one officer for a postponement of a drill or physicial, the request never got formalized, the commanding officer didn't know about and wrote him up, he found out later and the problem was solved.
I say the above because I have several friends who served in the guard in Alabama (non-wartime). Missing drill, bad communication between staff, etc. were very commonplace and no big deal. I also have at least one friend who moved, requested a change of base for his drills, and found out that the local base didn't have a unit with his speciality, and wound up with an excuse to miss monthly drills and just do his two weeks in the summer. Then again, I know someone else who was AWOL for nearly a year and got a general discharge instead of a dishonorable, but it required a lot of butt-kissing across several ranks and offices. Rules were quite loose.
If Bush were up for dishonorable or even general discharge and someone pulled strings to change it honorable, I think we would have heard that accusation already as that is a bigger deal than someone pulling strings to get into the Guard in the first place. Remember that almost all military academy admissions are based on recommendations from congressmen and other politicos -- that is the way it business is done.
Actually, I *think* that line is on the surround sound tracks and got dropped on the first VHS releases. I know the "I think we took a wrong turn" "...a wrong turn" echo had the same thing happen to it.
You know, the problem with this whole discussion is that if Lucas *did* decide to release the "original" versions, we would still expect him to cleanup the matte lines, fix the light sabre glows, digitally clean-up the prints, tweak the soundtracks, etc., so they wouldn't really be the "original" versions.
Of course, replacing actors with their prequel equivalents, making Han shoot first, changing bad songs to even worse ones (ROTJ), and adding more burping and farting creatures goes a bit beyond cleanup and director's cut land.
To some extent, the only reason to release the really original release (which would still need a great deal of digital restoration as the film stock has aged) would be as an illustration of film history. All of those ground-breaking, breathtaking special effects that look a bit cheesy now will be lost. In 20 years, it will be nearly impossible to go back and see what state of the art effects were in 1977, or what Tatooine looked like when the cinematography was based on what cameras, filters, and lenses were used instead of what digital post-processing can do.
These are the reasons I want *both* versions. I don't really want to watch the originals for entertainment and be distracted by David Prowse's eyes in the Vader mask, the bounding boxes and matte lines, or Vader's sometime's white lightsabre. I would like to have them to show my kids what I watched in 1977 and as nostalgia.
In the original release, Han is presented as a tough, ruthless mercenary. When confronted by Greedo in the cantina, he acts cool and unconcerned by the blaster Greedo has pointed at him, while, under the table, he is pulling his blaster out. After a pointed threat from Greedo, Han blows him away in cold blood. While Greedo is clearly threatening him, it seemed apparent at the time that Greedo wasn't going to kill him on the spot.
In the new release, Lucas evidently decided, in his confused sense of morality (see David Brin and Orson Scott Card's analyses of the Star Wars series for more details), that Han shouldn't be a ruthless, cold-blooded killer, so he changed the scene slightly so that, after the pointed threat, Han ducks to the side, Greedo shoots wide, and Han shoots him in self-defense.
In itself, it isn't that big of a deal, but many people (myself included) thought that part of Han's coolness was his handling of the situation and that changing it to self-defense was a major wimp-out that was symptomatic of Lucas' weird attempt at making the series more kid-friendly (or something -- the more you think about the ethics of the entire trilogy, the creepier it gets. See below). Similar to Spielberg's digital removal of guns in his ET re-release.
The reason this is weird in contrast is that Lucas attempted to write the series as a textbook myth, literally following Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces pattern. What he ended up with was a series about a genocidal pyschopath who we should feel sympathy with because he was a cute kid; a supposedly revered mystical sect of warrier priests who believe that taking children from their parents and forbidding them to love or marry makes them better people; an incestuous love triangle; and a convoluted way of telling the story so that the climactic presentation of the series (Episode III) will have to resolve unbelievably divergent plot holes and involve the rise of an evil empire, the physical and psychological maiming of the main character, and the deaths and exile of most of the other main characters.
Despite this, I'm not bitter:-)
Actually, I am a bit bitter, but, like the obediant Star Wars fan and mindless consumer I am, I have already pre-order by DVD set...
In the high school I went to 20+ years ago, a small county school, we did indeed have teachers who were way out of line in promoting religion (at least two science teachers who didn't believe in evolution), blind patriotism (two total ignoramous history teachers who knew nothing of history, but proceeded to tell us that the United States was God's own chosen land and could do no wrong). But, you know what? The majority of the students hated these teachers and scoffed at everything they said.
Now, my wife teaches as a large city school that fits more closely with the model described by the parent post and I hope that a majority of the students approach the material with the same degree of skepticism. My two kid's teachers in elementary and middle school are a mixed bag, idealogy wise, but they seems to average out and, most importantly, promote thinking. Of course, we moved across town to pick the schools our kids go to as they are among the top 5 or 10 in the state.
The trouble with extremes on either side is that, most often, the truth and real life lie somewhere in the middle.
A friend of mine just upgraded his GPSr. The new one had USB cables instead of old serial, but at least two pieces of mapping software he was using only looked for GPSrs connected to COM ports. You can get a Serial-to-USB cable, but not a USB-to-serial or, evidently, a drive that lets you see a USB device as s COM port (I may be wrong about that).
My new Toshiba laptop has no serial ports or PS/2 ports. I love me old Microsoft Natural keyboard (the one that slants backwards), but I had to go buy a USB keyboard since the PS/2 to USB cable I bought didn't pass the Ctrl-X and Ctrl-V combos correctly.
So, I agree there needs to be a market for interfacing "obsolete" technologies, and, from what I've seen, it doesn't get it right very often.
It took me over a year to realize that one of my computers didn't *have* a floppy drive. I never checked until I needed to load an old driver that came on a floppy.
Illium is one of those books that tosses off ideas in a few pages that most authors would write entire books about. I, too, would like to have some idea where it is going, but I enjoyed more than just about anything I've read in a while.
Hyperion is one of my favorite books, despite the fact that I didn't really care for the series as a whole. Strangely enough, I think I would like Hyperion just fine by itself without the rest of the series, even though it doesn't "end".
I played a dozen or so Infocom games, IIRC Starcross was the only one I finished (once I figured out that the reason the gun misfired the first time was that there was a needed silver rod stuck down the barrel -- Aaargh! Thanks for reminding me).
I read an interesting article on Neal Boortz' site after Charlie (so sue me, I read his program notes online). He said that Disney World is definitely the place to weather a hurricane (no pun intended).
They evacuated the park, but allowed resort guests to stay. They brought free flashlights to everyone in case the power went off (it didn't), played free Disney movies on the in-house TV systems, had a free midnight buffet once the worst of the storm had passed (the restaurants had been closed for a while in the evening), and by morning, the only sign the hurricane had gone through were tree stumps where they had already trimmed the fallen trees and removed the debris.
Well, you also have to remember that SETI looks hardest at the hydrogen absorbtion band, so the likelihood of finding a false positive in this band is higher because that's where they're looking.
I read really fast. I also read quite a bit of fantasy and science fiction. I have noticed the effect that weird alien and fantasy names (N'kalogh or Xyztle) are like driving over speedbumps. The higher the density of unfamiliar and nearly unpronounceable names, the more likely I am not to finish the book (or even pick it up).
"N'kalogh leapt onto his mighty huyloch and rode across the plains of V'looth'u". Next please.
This paper gives a convincing pyschological model about why this occurs and it is pretty much what I had surmised on my own.
So, from now on, please name all of your aliens Bob, Larry, Bubba, or Charles.
I'm using Snapstream and it does work fine. I use it as a PVR and TV viewer. It will stream live TV to a laptop (I'm using 802.11g) and it will allow you to change channels.
Of course, it is a single tuner, so if you are recording a show or someone is watching TV on the computer, the remote channel change is disabled.
One feature I like about it is the ability to schedule shows to record from their website, so if I think about taping something, I can set it from work.
One feature I don't like is that, without converting the show to Windows Media (which it can record in or do batch conversions), it can't stream a recorded show -- you must download it instead. I use Hauppage's MediaMVP to watch recorded shows on my TV downstairs (also over 802.11g) and it *doesn't* support Windows Media, so without conversion, I can't watch a show via TV or laptop, I have to choose one or the other (and TV usually wins).
I agree. I bought the VHS 20th Century Fox version for my kids when they were little and we've watched it probably over 50 times. My daughter is 13 now and when we saw the DVD on the sales rack, she made me buy it, even though we're waiting for the Disney widescreen/re-dub/subtitled version next year.
You hit the nail on the head about the violence and conflict. It amazes me that this is a kid's movie that doesn't bore them (or any adult that I have met) despite the fact that it has no (a) slapstick humor, (b) fart jokes, (c) violence of any kind, (d) bad guys of any kind. Even in the bad Fox pan-and-scan dub, it is a beautiful film.
BTW, if you haven't seen it, Best Buy and Wal-Mart currently have the Fox DVD in their bargain bins for approximately 5 bucks.
Yor: Hunter of the Future inspired one of my favorite "Who's on first?" type routines with my dad (as far as I know I never watched the movie). He rented it and couldn't remember the title, I'd never heard of it and thought someone had made a straight to video version of the John Norman Gor books, so the conversation went like this:
Me: "Whadya get at the video store?" Dad: "Yar" Me: "Yar?" Dad: "Yar" Me: "Gor?" Dad: "No, Yar" (looks at box)"No, not Yar, Yor" Me: "Gor?" Dad: "No, not Gor or Yar: Yor" Me: "Oh, Yor. Why didn't you say so?"
I agree with you 100% *except* that SETI is also operating under the assumption that ETs want to talk to someone, or at least broadcast "We are here!!".
I don't think anyone expects us to pick up scrambled Vogon ship-to-ship transmissions.
If this is an actual quote from your science book, I would sue if I were you...
The moon is tidally locked with the *Earth*, not the sun. The dark side is the side the Earth never gets to see, but it is fully illuminated by the sun once a month.
I tried really hard when house hunting to find a house that had a suitable room for a front projection theater, but wasn't able to find one that had that, plus all the other things I wanted in a house.
My big living room in my new house is great for my 42" rear projection CRT, but has a bunch of openings and nice windows that prevent me from even thinking about a projection system. My fantasy system included a nice gaming/computing command recliner parked in front of an 80-100" projection system with rotatable gaming controls (steering wheel, flight yoke, pedals, joystick, throttle controls, etc.).
Having said that (which nobody probably cares about), I recalibrated my RP CRT after a month or two of usage using a calibration disk and some useful info I found online and I am very happy with the overall quality.
Hmmm, I'm being misunderstood. Asimov, for the most part, bores me. Lem is indeed of the best SF writers and I do completely appreciate the concepts, human aspects, and the idea of the unknowable expressed in Solaris.
My single point was that examinations of the unknowable, unless grounded it extrapolation of quantum mechanics or chaos theory, are *not* part of *hard* SF, which I consider (as others have pointed out) to be exemplified by Asimov, Sheffield, Robinson, et al. An advocate of hard science (fiction or otherwise) would certainly dispute the idea of the futility of space travel or the abandonment of the same because of the discovery of something as alien as Solaris. Lem is a visionary, literary writer, but the passages of scientific jargon in Solaris seemed more apropos of Doris Lessing (or Barbarella). IMHO, Solaris is one of the best examples of so-called soft SF, where the interest is more in examination of the human condition and psychology.
I'm sorry to ramble, I don't have time to make this more concise. Basically, in hard SF, given our currently knowledge of science and technology and extrapolating it to the best of our ability, what happens in the book should be basically plausible. For example, Red Mars is hard SF, The Martian Chronicles never was.
Maybe I should re-read Solaris. I did just re-read I, Robot because I figured the movie would suck and I wanted ammunition for criticizing it, but I found that I, Robot was a lot better when I was 12 years old than it is now. I figure the movie can do whatever it wants...
Slashdot Mirror
Here is my personal take.
I think Bush used, to some extent, his family's connections to get in the Guard instead of active duty. In the same situation, I would have done the same. Many, many people did the same. Many also evaded the draft/war in ways that did *not* serve their country at all -- Guard service is military service.
Bush fulfilled his duties well until given the opportunity to work on campaigns for and with his father. That, combined with the phasing out of his preferred plane, led to him asking for transfers and exclusions from required service.
Obviously, from the scarcity of documents, possibility of forged documents, and conflicting reports, Guard units didn't keep meticulous records. Remember that this was before electronic filing and e-mail, so there were ample opportunities for situations where Bush asked one officer for a postponement of a drill or physicial, the request never got formalized, the commanding officer didn't know about and wrote him up, he found out later and the problem was solved.
I say the above because I have several friends who served in the guard in Alabama (non-wartime). Missing drill, bad communication between staff, etc. were very commonplace and no big deal. I also have at least one friend who moved, requested a change of base for his drills, and found out that the local base didn't have a unit with his speciality, and wound up with an excuse to miss monthly drills and just do his two weeks in the summer. Then again, I know someone else who was AWOL for nearly a year and got a general discharge instead of a dishonorable, but it required a lot of butt-kissing across several ranks and offices. Rules were quite loose.
If Bush were up for dishonorable or even general discharge and someone pulled strings to change it honorable, I think we would have heard that accusation already as that is a bigger deal than someone pulling strings to get into the Guard in the first place. Remember that almost all military academy admissions are based on recommendations from congressmen and other politicos -- that is the way it business is done.
Actually, I *think* that line is on the surround sound tracks and got dropped on the first VHS releases. I know the "I think we took a wrong turn" "...a wrong turn" echo had the same thing happen to it.
You know, the problem with this whole discussion is that if Lucas *did* decide to release the "original" versions, we would still expect him to cleanup the matte lines, fix the light sabre glows, digitally clean-up the prints, tweak the soundtracks, etc., so they wouldn't really be the "original" versions.
Of course, replacing actors with their prequel equivalents, making Han shoot first, changing bad songs to even worse ones (ROTJ), and adding more burping and farting creatures goes a bit beyond cleanup and director's cut land.
To some extent, the only reason to release the really original release (which would still need a great deal of digital restoration as the film stock has aged) would be as an illustration of film history. All of those ground-breaking, breathtaking special effects that look a bit cheesy now will be lost. In 20 years, it will be nearly impossible to go back and see what state of the art effects were in 1977, or what Tatooine looked like when the cinematography was based on what cameras, filters, and lenses were used instead of what digital post-processing can do.
These are the reasons I want *both* versions. I don't really want to watch the originals for entertainment and be distracted by David Prowse's eyes in the Vader mask, the bounding boxes and matte lines, or Vader's sometime's white lightsabre. I would like to have them to show my kids what I watched in 1977 and as nostalgia.
Well, someone has to do it...
:-)
In the original release, Han is presented as a tough, ruthless mercenary. When confronted by Greedo in the cantina, he acts cool and unconcerned by the blaster Greedo has pointed at him, while, under the table, he is pulling his blaster out. After a pointed threat from Greedo, Han blows him away in cold blood. While Greedo is clearly threatening him, it seemed apparent at the time that Greedo wasn't going to kill him on the spot.
In the new release, Lucas evidently decided, in his confused sense of morality (see David Brin and Orson Scott Card's analyses of the Star Wars series for more details), that Han shouldn't be a ruthless, cold-blooded killer, so he changed the scene slightly so that, after the pointed threat, Han ducks to the side, Greedo shoots wide, and Han shoots him in self-defense.
In itself, it isn't that big of a deal, but many people (myself included) thought that part of Han's coolness was his handling of the situation and that changing it to self-defense was a major wimp-out that was symptomatic of Lucas' weird attempt at making the series more kid-friendly (or something -- the more you think about the ethics of the entire trilogy, the creepier it gets. See below). Similar to Spielberg's digital removal of guns in his ET re-release.
The reason this is weird in contrast is that Lucas attempted to write the series as a textbook myth, literally following Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces pattern. What he ended up with was a series about a genocidal pyschopath who we should feel sympathy with because he was a cute kid; a supposedly revered mystical sect of warrier priests who believe that taking children from their parents and forbidding them to love or marry makes them better people; an incestuous love triangle; and a convoluted way of telling the story so that the climactic presentation of the series (Episode III) will have to resolve unbelievably divergent plot holes and involve the rise of an evil empire, the physical and psychological maiming of the main character, and the deaths and exile of most of the other main characters.
Despite this, I'm not bitter
Actually, I am a bit bitter, but, like the obediant Star Wars fan and mindless consumer I am, I have already pre-order by DVD set...
"I'm sorry, but I'm not allowed to discuss details about former employees, but if I were allowed to say something, it would rhyme with 'mazy loron'"
Dogbert, evil HR director (paraphrased, as I'm sure someone will point out)
Wow, great post, but I'm out of mod points.
In the high school I went to 20+ years ago, a small county school, we did indeed have teachers who were way out of line in promoting religion (at least two science teachers who didn't believe in evolution), blind patriotism (two total ignoramous history teachers who knew nothing of history, but proceeded to tell us that the United States was God's own chosen land and could do no wrong). But, you know what? The majority of the students hated these teachers and scoffed at everything they said.
Now, my wife teaches as a large city school that fits more closely with the model described by the parent post and I hope that a majority of the students approach the material with the same degree of skepticism. My two kid's teachers in elementary and middle school are a mixed bag, idealogy wise, but they seems to average out and, most importantly, promote thinking. Of course, we moved across town to pick the schools our kids go to as they are among the top 5 or 10 in the state.
The trouble with extremes on either side is that, most often, the truth and real life lie somewhere in the middle.
And, for the record, I blame this new POS USB keyboard for all of the typos in the above post.
A friend of mine just upgraded his GPSr. The new one had USB cables instead of old serial, but at least two pieces of mapping software he was using only looked for GPSrs connected to COM ports. You can get a Serial-to-USB cable, but not a USB-to-serial or, evidently, a drive that lets you see a USB device as s COM port (I may be wrong about that).
My new Toshiba laptop has no serial ports or PS/2 ports. I love me old Microsoft Natural keyboard (the one that slants backwards), but I had to go buy a USB keyboard since the PS/2 to USB cable I bought didn't pass the Ctrl-X and Ctrl-V combos correctly.
So, I agree there needs to be a market for interfacing "obsolete" technologies, and, from what I've seen, it doesn't get it right very often.
It took me over a year to realize that one of my computers didn't *have* a floppy drive. I never checked until I needed to load an old driver that came on a floppy.
Great points in parent, and I agree with the Economist suggestion.
Also, you can just do what I do: watch CNN, watch Fox, listen to NPR, listen to Hannity/Rush/Boortz, read/watch Michael Moore/Al Franken/etc.
Average all of the above and make your own decisions.
Illium is one of those books that tosses off ideas in a few pages that most authors would write entire books about. I, too, would like to have some idea where it is going, but I enjoyed more than just about anything I've read in a while.
Hyperion is one of my favorite books, despite the fact that I didn't really care for the series as a whole. Strangely enough, I think I would like Hyperion just fine by itself without the rest of the series, even though it doesn't "end".
I played a dozen or so Infocom games, IIRC Starcross was the only one I finished (once I figured out that the reason the gun misfired the first time was that there was a needed silver rod stuck down the barrel -- Aaargh! Thanks for reminding me).
I read an interesting article on Neal Boortz' site after Charlie (so sue me, I read his program notes online). He said that Disney World is definitely the place to weather a hurricane (no pun intended).
They evacuated the park, but allowed resort guests to stay. They brought free flashlights to everyone in case the power went off (it didn't), played free Disney movies on the in-house TV systems, had a free midnight buffet once the worst of the storm had passed (the restaurants had been closed for a while in the evening), and by morning, the only sign the hurricane had gone through were tree stumps where they had already trimmed the fallen trees and removed the debris.
Well, you also have to remember that SETI looks hardest at the hydrogen absorbtion band, so the likelihood of finding a false positive in this band is higher because that's where they're looking.
I read really fast. I also read quite a bit of fantasy and science fiction. I have noticed the effect that weird alien and fantasy names (N'kalogh or Xyztle) are like driving over speedbumps. The higher the density of unfamiliar and nearly unpronounceable names, the more likely I am not to finish the book (or even pick it up).
"N'kalogh leapt onto his mighty huyloch and rode across the plains of V'looth'u". Next please.
This paper gives a convincing pyschological model about why this occurs and it is pretty much what I had surmised on my own.
So, from now on, please name all of your aliens Bob, Larry, Bubba, or Charles.
I'm using Snapstream and it does work fine. I use it as a PVR and TV viewer. It will stream live TV to a laptop (I'm using 802.11g) and it will allow you to change channels.
Of course, it is a single tuner, so if you are recording a show or someone is watching TV on the computer, the remote channel change is disabled.
One feature I like about it is the ability to schedule shows to record from their website, so if I think about taping something, I can set it from work.
One feature I don't like is that, without converting the show to Windows Media (which it can record in or do batch conversions), it can't stream a recorded show -- you must download it instead. I use Hauppage's MediaMVP to watch recorded shows on my TV downstairs (also over 802.11g) and it *doesn't* support Windows Media, so without conversion, I can't watch a show via TV or laptop, I have to choose one or the other (and TV usually wins).
I agree. I bought the VHS 20th Century Fox version for my kids when they were little and we've watched it probably over 50 times. My daughter is 13 now and when we saw the DVD on the sales rack, she made me buy it, even though we're waiting for the Disney widescreen/re-dub/subtitled version next year.
You hit the nail on the head about the violence and conflict. It amazes me that this is a kid's movie that doesn't bore them (or any adult that I have met) despite the fact that it has no (a) slapstick humor, (b) fart jokes, (c) violence of any kind, (d) bad guys of any kind. Even in the bad Fox pan-and-scan dub, it is a beautiful film.
BTW, if you haven't seen it, Best Buy and Wal-Mart currently have the Fox DVD in their bargain bins for approximately 5 bucks.
Yor: Hunter of the Future inspired one of my favorite "Who's on first?" type routines with my dad (as far as I know I never watched the movie). He rented it and couldn't remember the title, I'd never heard of it and thought someone had made a straight to video version of the John Norman Gor books, so the conversation went like this:
Me: "Whadya get at the video store?"
Dad: "Yar"
Me: "Yar?"
Dad: "Yar"
Me: "Gor?"
Dad: "No, Yar" (looks at box)"No, not Yar, Yor"
Me: "Gor?"
Dad: "No, not Gor or Yar: Yor"
Me: "Oh, Yor. Why didn't you say so?"
I agree with you 100% *except* that SETI is also operating under the assumption that ETs want to talk to someone, or at least broadcast "We are here!!".
I don't think anyone expects us to pick up scrambled Vogon ship-to-ship transmissions.
Well, if I was being pedantic about it, I would say the light side is the one the sun is shining on and the dark side is the one where it isn't.
Seriously though, I've always assumed that the dark side was the far side, whether it was actually dark or not.
If this is an actual quote from your science book, I would sue if I were you...
The moon is tidally locked with the *Earth*, not the sun. The dark side is the side the Earth never gets to see, but it is fully illuminated by the sun once a month.
Uh, right?
I tried really hard when house hunting to find a house that had a suitable room for a front projection theater, but wasn't able to find one that had that, plus all the other things I wanted in a house.
My big living room in my new house is great for my 42" rear projection CRT, but has a bunch of openings and nice windows that prevent me from even thinking about a projection system. My fantasy system included a nice gaming/computing command recliner parked in front of an 80-100" projection system with rotatable gaming controls (steering wheel, flight yoke, pedals, joystick, throttle controls, etc.).
Having said that (which nobody probably cares about), I recalibrated my RP CRT after a month or two of usage using a calibration disk and some useful info I found online and I am very happy with the overall quality.
As I mentioned in the above reply, saying "ramblings" may have been too hard on Lem -- I was just pointing out that, IMO, he isn't "hard" SF.
Hmmm, I'm being misunderstood. Asimov, for the most part, bores me. Lem is indeed of the best SF writers and I do completely appreciate the concepts, human aspects, and the idea of the unknowable expressed in Solaris.
My single point was that examinations of the unknowable, unless grounded it extrapolation of quantum mechanics or chaos theory, are *not* part of *hard* SF, which I consider (as others have pointed out) to be exemplified by Asimov, Sheffield, Robinson, et al. An advocate of hard science (fiction or otherwise) would certainly dispute the idea of the futility of space travel or the abandonment of the same because of the discovery of something as alien as Solaris. Lem is a visionary, literary writer, but the passages of scientific jargon in Solaris seemed more apropos of Doris Lessing (or Barbarella). IMHO, Solaris is one of the best examples of so-called soft SF, where the interest is more in examination of the human condition and psychology.
I'm sorry to ramble, I don't have time to make this more concise. Basically, in hard SF, given our currently knowledge of science and technology and extrapolating it to the best of our ability, what happens in the book should be basically plausible. For example, Red Mars is hard SF, The Martian Chronicles never was.
Maybe I should re-read Solaris. I did just re-read I, Robot because I figured the movie would suck and I wanted ammunition for criticizing it, but I found that I, Robot was a lot better when I was 12 years old than it is now. I figure the movie can do whatever it wants...
Lem would not be "hard" SF in my book either. I love Solaris, but it has huge streams of pseudo-scientific ramblings.