Some fictional inventions become the underpinning of the narratives that introduce them. One could make an entire sci-fi franchise by simply examining the societal effects of some incredible technological innovation. However, other narrative inventions simply exist within countless worlds, providing narrative justification for a specific capability or aesthetic the creator wants to introduce. That’s the fate of hard light, which pops up all over the place for various reasons.
Not every sci-fi story puts science at the forefront.Soft sci-fi authors oftenuse technology the way that fantasy authors use magic. That allows for tons of examples of incredible scientific advancements introduced without the slightest hint of explanation. They’re just fun toys for the author to use and the audience to enjoy.
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Hard light is luminous energy given physical mass. It typically comes in one of two forms. Either light functions as a building material that can beused to create constructsor some form of three-dimensional projection that acts like real physical matter. In the former case, the constructs almost always look like regular objects that have been built out of lasers. In the latter, the work is dealing with physical holograms. Fictional examples allow users to do anything from building incredible superstructures to reanimating the dead. Hard light is often used as a lampshade explanation for any givenact of techno-wizardry, but the concept does have some fairly fascinating implications.
Scientifically speaking, light does enact force upon the physical objects it hits. The heat generated by direct exposure to a great deal of light is essentially identical to the kinetic energy of that object being struck, but it doesn’t have the same reaction. Laser cutting is fairly common, using machines like CNCs. Most examples in real lifecome closer to lightsabersthan anything else. The closest real-world application is probably optical tweezers. They’re a scientific tool that uses a laser’s infinitesimal amount of attractive or repulsive force to counter gravity, allowing biologists to levitate and manipulate individual atoms. Recent scientific advancement has introduced the idea of photonic molecules. To massively oversimplify, a pulsing laser fired into a cloud can be cooled enough to slow down and act like physical matter. That incredibly cool real-life concept also has an extremely long history in fiction.
The earliest example of hard light in fiction is the Bifrost, the rainbow bridge from Norse mythology. If one wanted to travel from Midgard, the plane of reality that Earth resides upon, to Asgard, they’d have to make the long journey across the rainbow bridge. Marvel’sThorfranchise depicts it as both a bridge and a sort of warp tunnel, at leastuntil the fourth entry, in which they more directly show off a hard light bridge. The Bifrost is hard light in a fairly literal sense. It’s a rainbow given physical form by magic, allowing it to act as a bridge. Other translations suggested that the bridge merely shimmered with the light of a rainbow, or that part of the bridge was constructed from fire. The Bifrost is scheduled to shatter when the fire giants of Muspelheim ride it down to Earth and burn the world to the ground. This predecessor to the hard light concept doesn’t have any actual explanation, but it’s the building block that would form later examples.
It’s hard to find a sci-fi or science-adjacent franchise that doesn’t use hard light in one way or another. Marvel has the aforementioned Bifrost, but, they also gaveKamala Khan hard lightmanipulation powers, rather than her usual stretching abilities for theMs. Marvelseries. DC Comics has Green Lantern, the Lantern Corps, and the multicolored rainbow of related characters, who all create hard light constructs with their rings.Tron’s tech uses hard light in just about every structure. The work of science fiction that coined the term isRed Dwarf. The British comedy series introduced Rimmer,a virtual ghost whoremains in the story through the hard light drive. He’s a holographic version of his former consciousness that can still interact with physical matter. The character sees his new lease on life as an upgrade, as he’s much tougher to kill, immune to age, and free to go on living as long as his battery holds out.
Hard light is a very simple concept that can be expanded to explain almost anything. From the ancient mythology that inspired so much of modern storytelling to the future of real-world science, mankind has been fascinated by the idea of light with mass. Sometimes sci-fi creators want to examine the scientific benefits of creating matter from nothing, but other times they just want to justify whyeverything in the future glows. Hard light can be the source of a superhero’s power, the method an entire civilization uses to get around, or the most important innovation of a future world. It’s just simple enough to fit anywhere.
