Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness/Science in Genre Only

Science in Genre Only: The work is unambiguously set in the literary genre of Science Fiction, but scientific it is not. Applied Phlebotinum is the rule of the day, often of the Nonsensoleum kind, Green Rocks gain New Powers as the Plot Demands, and both Bellisario's Maxim and the MST3K Mantra apply.


 * Mystery Science Theater 3000: Stuff happens. Don't think too much how. Characters breathe in space on at least two occasions. Artificially intelligent robots built entirely out of random spare parts. A VW Microbus converted into a spaceship. As the theme song says: "It's just a show. You really should relax."


 * Futurama: Chock full of every single popular science fiction trope, often with intentionally silly Reverse the Polarity style answers to justify them. Only "harder" than Mystery Science Theater 3000 because there's no MST3K Mantra in the opening and the occasional legitimate maths and science appears as a Genius Bonus. Just for starters, there's a ship that once made the entire universe move around it, while the ship itself lay still, making the ship work at triple capacity.


 * Mazinger Z: The show has elements of World of Phlebotinum, since it tries to be consistent with the rules and physics of its own world, but often real world physics are overruled by Rule of Cool and Rule of Fun. And thus, you have eighteen-meters-tall robots are surprisingly fast and agile for its size, run on Phlebotinum and are Made of Indestructium.


 * Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: The universe is not run not by the laws of physics, but by the Rule of Cool. While the show remains relatively non-screwing with physics in the first arcs, the latter one more than makes up for it.


 * The DC and Marvel universes, which in some ways resemble sci-fi versions of the Fantasy Kitchen Sink, will occasionally make weak, palsied gestures in the direction of verisimilitude and then follow that with a two-page spread that violates every rule of physics yet discovered, except the most important one.


 * Asura's Wrath, which in spite of the fact that the power source, Mantra, is similar to Minovsky Particles to power robots and machines, still has many of the characters breath in space, are several hundreds of thousands of years old, and fight against beings that come from the planet itself, as well as being more of a Fantasy Kitchen Sink in this way.


 * The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Packed full of all kinds of bizarre nonsense -- for example, the fastest mode of travel through the universe is by bistro, as in "place you eat in" or "second most overworked word in food marketing after new, and the second fastest mode is a drive runs on the power of improbability -- but the stories are fully aware of how absurd it is, and the reader is encouraged to think about it. It Runs on Nonsensoleum was clearly a favorite, if not the favorite, trope of creator Douglas Adams.


 * Warhammer 40000: Chainsaw swords, psychic spacemen, elves in space, orcs in space, undead robots, planet-eating bugs, three-hundred-metre-tall millennia-old walking battle cathedrals, soul-eating space stations and vehicles that travel faster because they're painted red (justified, Sort Of...), and that's just scratching the surface. The primary means of FTL is flying through Hell. In 40k, Rule of Cool is physics. As is Rule of Scary.


 * Power Rangers in its more scientifically themed seasons (more magical seasons usually make a token gesture towards this with giant robots, but aren't close enough to trying to qualify). Even when they get their powers from a government research lab, the morphing is still a mix of phlebotinum and handwaves, the sources of energy are either phlebotinum or not mentioned at all, faster than light travel and humanoid aliens are the rule, sparks shoot out of weapons and struck objects entirely at random irregardless of object composition and the kind of weapon in question, there's never an equal and opposite reaction for most actions, and the square-cube law is in the corner rocking back and forth in the fetal position muttering about giant robots, giant monsters, and the impossibilities of the human shape on the kaiju scale.


 * The Giver: We never get any scientific justification whatsoever for...well, anything, really. Not the psychic transmission of memories, not the total control kept over every aspect of the Community,  The focus is more on human nature.


 * Bionicle. The story begins with a Patchwork Map island in the middle of a Single Biome Planet, inhabited by Cyborg Hobbits who live like primitive humans. They are joined by a Six Man Band of cyborgs with superpowered masks and Elemental Powers. Although many of the initial mysteries have been resolved, and the series went through a drastic shift from mystical to semi-sci-fi, there is almost no explanation of how anything actually works. Also, creator Greg Farshtey has the MST3K Mantra in his sig on the fansite BZ Power.


 * Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2: Even softer than Mystery Science Theater 3000. Not only does stuff happen and things run on nonsensoleum but the depicted reality contradicts what we are familiar with in everyday life. Planetary systems and galaxies twirl around one another, and everything has a near-Earth gravity. The protomatter of stars help you launch from place to place and ludicrous speed travel between the loosely defined galaxies are a must. Shiggy believes in putting fun before everything else, including basic logic. Also, Mario can breathe in space.


 * Asterix and the Falling Sky: In what is usually a mundane/fantasy-ish classical antiquity setting, we have a science fiction-esque plot. There are two alien races shown, one of them have tin-can rats as soldiers while the other have Superman clones. Both have spaceships (one had a rocket while the other had a flying saucer) and came from places light-years away from Earth, only coming to the Gaulish village to fight over the iconic magical super potion that said village have.


 * Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: Even if you accept the premise of water molecules turning into food molecules via atom rearrangement - this movie will challenge your Willing Suspension of Disbelief by throwing anything resembling logic out of the window to replace it by Rule of Fun. See the main entry for more details. The original book (and its sequel) did this too.


 * The original 1978 Battlestar Galactica: They cross interstellar -- or maybe intergalactic, even they're not sure -- distances in a matter of days. Spacecraft move like airplanes, unless they're big spacecraft, in which case they move like ocean ships. Guns fire "lasers" that move more slowly than bullets, with Cylons shooting blue and Vipers shooting red. A city's stockpile of "Tylium" catches fire, and then blows up the entire planet. The Artificial Gravity that keeps them right-side-up doesn't even merit a mention, as it's questionable whether the writers even knew that people on space ships experience zero gee.


 * Star Wars -- at least the films -- tends to run on the Rule of Cool. Space Is Noisy, there's Old School Dogfighting between space fighters, Artificial Gravity is so ubiquitous that it doesn't even bear mention, an Earth-sized planet is blown up with such force that the debris rushes outward faster than the speed of light, etc.. (The Star Wars Expanded Universe tries to be a little more restrained, and probably belongs in the next harder category.)


 * Warehouse 13: stuff was owned by famous people or was present at famous events. Stuff somehow gains -- and exaggerates -- a property associated with said person or event. Don't think about it too hard.


 * Doctor Who: Anything and everything can be Hand Waved by either Sufficiently Advanced technology, Rule of Cool, Rule of Scary, the Timey-Wimey Ball, or some combination thereof.


 * Phineas and Ferb: There's no explanation for, well, anything. Everything happens in Cartoonland Time and is run by either Rule of Cool, Rule of Funny, Cartoon Physics, or a mixture of the aforementioned, and platypi are blue.

Back to Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness.