Yeah, we're like-minded. Even in shows not-so Hard SF like Star
Trek and Doctor Who, I take what they call "technobabble" and
try to make SOME plausible scientific sense of it and make it
'ok' in my mind. As a kid, I picked up a book from L. Sprague de
Camp from a garage sale. Had a dinosaur on the front and an
explorer. Anyway, bunch of short stories. Knew noting about
"hard SF" but he was one of 'em. One of my favorites was barely
even a story per se, but a conversation between time travellers
- one middle english, one modern (for him, which was probably
1930s/40s, but not different from now at all really) and one
from the future. They all spoke English but had a hell of a time
trying to understand each other. It was great. What was
awesome is that he laboriously followed stuff like vowel shifts
and other known linguistic changes and being good Hard SF, the
information he used is *still* true today, which makes that
story still good Hard SF today. I love that kind of stuff. He
also had one (I think it was him) about plants screaming when
you hurt them. Drove a scientist who created a device to detect
their sounds, crazy after a while. His grass grew REALLY long
after that. He couldn't cut it anymore.
