The 8 Most Influential Soft Sci-Fi Books of All Time, Ranked

You’re welcome to find the distinction between hard and soft science fiction silly, if you want, but if you’re okay with the split, then some definitions are in order. Hard science fiction puts an emphasis on science, basically, and you get an emphasis on realism or a sense of things being grounded/speculative, as a result. If you want heavy-hitters, as far as the hard side of science fiction is concerned, you only need a look at the likes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ringworld, Contact, and The Andromeda Strain, among others.