I prefer Transformers being a soft sci-fi show

 

I would vote soft sci-fi, but Transformers in its history definitely leans to sci-fi fantasy without a doubt. And that's something that can't be changed and doesn't necessarily need to change.

 

It start it out as soft sci-fi during the early Marvel comics. To tell you the truth I don’t care what genre Transformers is. All I care how good it is.

 

some were between sci fi soft and fantasy. But nowadays fantasy in the D&D sense and scifi often tend to blend together in most fictions nowadays anyway. It'd actually be interesting to see that kind of thing in transformers. Think the closest we've had so far is that ghostbusters crossover.

 

Soft sci-fi, but I'm cool with a wee bit of sci-fi fantasy as well.

 

I'd like Transformers to be a little more soft sci-fi again, like in sunbow seasons three and four and in the UT.

But I think it would be really cool to have a hard scif-fi Transformers story. Obviously nothing mainstream. Because heaven forbid Hasbro took chances with their storytelling.
But I think they might try to contract someone with vision to write a hard sci-fi Transformers novel.

 

It's never going to happen at this point, but I'd love a harder Sci-Fi show. When you read the original profiles and look at some of the early comic ideas, there's a really intriguing hard sci-fi show there, it just got diluted by a childrens cartoon and superhero writers (and publishers).

Stories about a war with powerful soldiers who have limited ammo and limited lifeblood, lost in the galaxy with no means of getting reinforcements or resupplied, and a hostile native people is a great premise. Bluestreak can easily win the fight, but it requires him using his MIRV's and he's only got 9 left. Does he spend one or two to win right away or do they try to win the hard way and perhaps take losses? Trailbreaker can hold the line himself and allow time for the wounded to escape, but that means he won't have enough fuel to head home himself. Does he make the sacrifice play and hope he'll be rescued himself? Megatron can stop the humans from Nuking his home base, but that means using his antimatter connection and either passing out or becoming weak and disorientated, will Starscream make the play or will sycophant Soundwave protect him? Then you can have moral questions, there's a way to create a better energon substitute, but it would mean taking from a proprietary business who won't deal with aliens. Do the Autobots take it and make it look like it was the Decepticons or do they make do without and hope the Decepticons don't take it themselves and gain a resource advantage? A nations military is willing to resupply a faction in exchange for their weapons technology, do either faction take the deal to get re-armed by upsetting the balance and tech levels of a native "tribe" as well as introduce humans to weapons that can harm Transformers?

Essentially Astronauts on a Caveman planet kind of premise. Energon should also be nearly impossible to find outside of Cybertron, so having to make do with substitutes and other options can play a very interesting role to the character motivations.

It would also allow them to expand beyond the good/bad faction battle. What do factions matter when you're stranded and lost on a planet? Do you work together to try to find your home in a mind boggling huge universe? Are they even in their home galaxy? Do they stay on their new planet or build a ship to leave and try to find their home or a planet that may be easier to extract resources from?

 

I voted don't care. Just give me some good character driven stories that are well written and I would be happy.

 

Fantasy

 

I would love a story like this. I've always wanted something based wholly on the techspecs. Dialogue, design, story, and powers all derived from them.

 

Transformers, like Star Wars, is fantasy in sci-fi dressing. Even at its hardest, it's going to be soft sci-fi. And I have absolutely no problem with it. Transformers as a franchise can't exist in a hard sci-fi set-up. The square-cube law alone would negate their existence as is.

Now, that isn't to say that something like @Pravus Prime's scenario couldn't exist in a softer sci-fi set-up. His take is more logistics-focused - the blasters might exist, but they don't have infinite charge, and ain't no sci-fi tech is gonna negate the problems of internal squabbling (read: Starscream) or having to establish diplomatic ties with the native civilizations.

 

I prefer Transformers to be more science fiction than fantasy, even if in execution it's only been, at most, very soft science fiction.

 

Isn't fiction and fantasy synonymous?

 

This is just beautiful, Logistics and well rounded Characters are important to good storytelling.

 

There's a spiritualism that is part and parcel of the mythos now - Sparks, ghosts, some kind of afterlife and/or the Allspark, etc. - and I, for one, would not change that. Definitely Sci-Fi/Fantasy

 

What if instead of 'sparks' in the fantasy sense, Transformers 'sparks' were characterized as a unique-to-self, blockchain encrypted, computer programs that can only be programmed by advanced relics that the Cybertronians don't know the origin of (Quintessons) like the Creation Matrix ('matrix' is really a complex mathematical process by definition) and Vector Sigma, etc.

They can't be easily copied, but they can be stored and transferred.

'Brothers' are Transformers where the Matrix or Vector Sigma creates a 'double' in a seemingly random frequency, the only way that a 'spark' can be duplicated. They are very old machines, however advanced, so maybe they 'hiccup' sometimes.

 

What exactly is “hard” science fiction?

 

Hard science fiction takes its story elements from science in a way that seems feasible. The writers usually use the physical sciences like physics, chemistry, astronomy, etc. as the basis and it's more central to the story. Think in terms of most of Isaac Asimov's work or early Heinlein. Most serious, non-space opera SF before the 1960s or so fell into this school. Soft science fiction is more fast and loose and doesn't need to be as realistic, though it generally doesn't deal with magic as anything more than sufficiently advanced science. You're more likely to have sociology or psychology used as the science element. Think of Harlan Ellison or later Heinlein, though it's probably most SF since the 60s. Soft SF started dominating because, while no writing is easy, writing a story rigorously based in hard science is really hard. Neither one is necessarily better than the other in terms of story quality, though there have always been fans on each side that can get militant about it.

Transformers gravitates to soft SF, I think, because they are mechanical beings but also living creatures. How that happens can be a little hand-wavy and it's really hard to base living constructs in hard science. Most of IDW's original continuity, for example, is very much soft SF. It took a hard turn to SF/fantasy after the "Hasbro Universe" was created, bringing in the Dire Wraiths and Visionaries.

 

Pretty much this. Something else that the hard sci-fi crowd tends to run into is that technology evolves and science marches on - the cutting-edge theories used in one story can be rendered outdated later on.

 

I love dichotomies, hard and soft science perverted into film scifi genres.
According to google, soft would deal with anthropology, sociology, or psychology. I would never put anthro with the likes of soc or psy which are dependent upon particular cultural values and norms) as opposed to the hard sciences: physics, astronomy, or chemistry. These are the sciences folks convince themselves are empirical knowledge bases and thus valid of spending their college time pursuing.
So by "popular" definition transformers fits in both categories. That's the whole reason TF introduced the idea of sentient beings as opposed to just being war mechs.
Most science fiction depends on appropriation of various cultural elements, Star Wars is a great example. Lucas borrowed Edward Burnett's hero journey and infused it with then contemporary political and spiritual issues.