The reader must have equal opportunity with the main character for finding a solution to the problem. All rules and the magic system must be plainly stated and described.

No willful tricks or deceptions may be placed on the reader other than those played legitimately by the world on the protagonist himself.

The challenges must be overcome via the actions of the main character—not by accident or coincidence or deus ex machina.

The challenge must be overcome by means strictly understood by the reader. A reader has a chance when matching his wits with the rationalistic protagonist.

The truth of the problem and the solution must at all times be apparent—provided the reader is shrewd enough to see it. By this I mean that if the reader, after learning the solution to the problem, should reread the story, he would see that the solution had been, in a sense, obvious the whole time. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

The rules of the fictional world are sane and consistent. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

I absolutely agree that the genre of like "rational fiction" or "sciencey competence porn" is often done wrong, and is really quite terrible when it is done wrong. Having non-main characters hold the idiot ball is bad. Focus on the intellectual in a way that sacrifices the emotional might be interesting in some sense--maybe for making a point about being cold and alone-- but is often bad. And, yes, specifically in the case of whimsical fantasy, taking away that whimsy is bad because a lot of the reason we read something is just for the whimsy.I don't think this means that all "rational fiction" is bad though. I mean, I definitely agree that fiction where people hold the idiot ball, emotions are subsumed by logic in a bad way, or removing a sense of whimsy is terrible. However, a science-focused competence porn hyper-realistic fic where the main character's defining traits are competence and intelligence can still be quite enjoyable! For example, The Martian by Andy Weir is really good! I really liked it! It's probably one of my favorite books. It was adapted into a movie, too, so clearly someone else likes it at least. I also like Exhalation by Ted Chiang amazon link ) which is a story about a scientist facing the truth etc. So there are clearly some examples of non-terrible rational fiction.Now, you could argue that The Martian isn't rational fiction of course. Or that Exhalation isn't sufficiently rational. And if you do that, I respect your argument, but in my opinion it is absolutely rational fiction. And it shows us that despite the weaknesses of the genre, there is a possibility for really good stuff. It's definitely true that there's a bunch of crappy stuff that calls itself rational fiction. But there's also good stuff that is goodof it being rational fiction, rather thanof it. So there must be some good to the genre.This is also how I feel about vampire novels, regency romances, and thrillers. There's a lot of crap out there, and it's really bad, but as we know, ninety percent of everything is crap anyways. Obviously your time is your own, and you should spend it how you want, but I think if you read The Martian by Andy Weir you would change your mind on all rational fiction being bad.Hope this helps!Edited to add:Okay, everyone, you can rest easy. Why is that? It is because Blazinghand has returned with r/rational fiction definition part two, son of r/rational fiction. Yes, my new year's resolution is to hit the gym more to work out my massive back because I have returned to carry the thread!!!!1. This definition needs to primarily define things that are upvoted by r/rational and considered on-topic there. Whether we call it a "genre" or a "category" isn't important, so we will stick with "category" for this.2. It doesn't need to be a definition that automatically includes or excludes things based on a checklist. It might, for example, be a collection of traits associated with things that fit in the category.3. It should apply to both fanworks and original fiction. People who say it can only apply to fanworks are incorrect, if only because r/rational seems to spend most of its time upvoting original fiction.So, let's start with the "upvoted by r/rational" part and work out from there. We'll also want to include those bullets in some way, obviously in an improved and better way. Here we go!is a category of fiction. Fiction in a variety of genres might be in this category.In addition to simply being appealing to the r/rational community, r/rational fictional generally has some or all of the following characteristics. These characteristics are only associated with r/rational fiction, and are not individually necessary or sufficient to be r/rational fiction.The levers of physics are visible to the reader, and should there be unseen action, it is itself internally consistent. We wish to distinguish, for example, a character like Sherlock Holmes whoto solve his problems cleverly from a character like Dominic de Luca from Shadows of the Limelight who solves his problems in a way that we the audience can appreciate and anticipate. We analogize this to a couple of rules from Van Dine's Twenty Rules for Detective Stories which @all fictions brought up regarding 19th century French realism and its subset, a literary genre called naturalism . These are obviously mystery-focused guidelines, but they strike a chord with both the r/rational reader and the critic seeking to understand him. How might we rephrase some of these in a way to fit into our first requirement for r/rational fiction? Let's explore one possible rephrasing:An interesting set of statements, one that I think applies quite a bit to r/rational fiction! All these bullets are therefore ALSO part of our definition as subcharacteristics. Again, these chracteristics are notnor are they alone, but they arewith r/rational fiction. Just reading these, however, we stumble upon a basic unspoken characteristic of r/rational fiction right away, one that isn't on r/rational and isn't really a strict rule but is more like a commonality. I phrase it like this:Even leaving fallow the fertile fields of modern mystery novels, there are many modern novels set in a normal world that naively might seem r/rational but somehow aren't considered for r/rational in any significant way, as @keios has pointed out. This doesn't completely rule out non SF&F, but take a look at this bullet from the r/rational sidebar:This bullet shows an underlying assumption that there is a world with rules that need to be made sane and consistent. You don't specify a bullet like this unless you have a lot of S&SF in your category, after all. If we're going to hang out and primarily write detective mysteries or period romance novels or police procedurals, we would never need a bullet like this. Now, this doesn't mean that r/rational fictionbe S&SF, but I think this reveals thata characteristic of r/rational fiction is some kind of supernatural element, and that further, this supernatural element is systematized or predictable in some way. Although this isn't, it's common enough we should try to work it into the defining characteristics. Three times is enemy action, as they say!So I've covered bullets 1, 3, and 4 from the definition of r/rational with these two rules, I think #2 has to do with the motivations of characters. I think this one is less important, but it's followed by a lot of r/rational fiction so it might as well be rolled into this list of characteristics:Although this is also commonof r/rational fiction, the inverse (factions driven into conflict by pure good/evil) is rare enough in r/rational fiction we can define it as a characteristic.I also want to specifically address what @huhYeahGoodPoint and @EarthScorpion brought up about verisimilitude because I think this cuts right to the heart of what people talk about when they talk about r/rational fiction. So it's not merely the presence of verisimilitude that is important, here, but the main character's exploitation thereof. We can say that this builds off of the first and second characteristics and is just an extension of them, but it's fine to make it its own characteristic:This also makes it even more clear why SF&F are particularly popular genres to have the r/rational category. It's a lot more interesting to write an exploration of a verisimilitudinous world when that world is significantly different from our own. And it's important to bear in mind it's not just about a main character doing well in a fictional world based on that world's rules, but about the rules themselves having some kind of internal logic that is sensible to the reader.I think it is reasonable to add If we pay attention to the fact that r/rational fiction often has a characteristic of "SF&F setting" of some sort, perhaps we may be tempted to say "r/rational fiction is a SF&F setting plus munchkinry" and leave it at that. But I think we need this idea of systematic predictability and we can't just toss it out, so I'd like to bring up a counterexample of a fantasy/sci-fi setting with some munchkinry that I would argue isr/rational fiction. I am of course, talking about one of my favorite fanfictions here on SV, With This Ring by MrZoat. MrZoat goes through great efforts to show parts of his adapted YJ DC Universe interacting in realistic ways, and of course his protagonist, Paul, is a very clever character who applies his intellect and his power ring to solving problems. There seem to be some rules (like demons can only be killed with this one sword or gun) but they don't seem to run on something predictable or some kind of unified magic system in an understandable way. All this despite the fact that some characters seem to act fairly reasonable. And, bear in mind: I don't think With This Ring would be improved by MrZoat building some kind of grand theory of unified magic/tech system. It's actually much better to just have a bunch of quasi-interacting magic systems as DC has it and leave it at that. MrZoat correctly (for the purposes of making a good fanfiction) just focuses on the task at hand.This is because r/rational fiction and good fiction are not literally the same thing. I think the lack of some kind of systematic predictability (or foreshadowing) coupled with the truly massive and not always interacting in sensible ways DC universe magic system / tech system means you can't really call this a r/rational fic. Though it got some upvotes on r/rational, from the lack of enthusiasm about it we can declare it an edge case, and surely r/rationaling it further would only serve to hurt the fiction.In this context, "r/rational fiction" includes Mother of Learning, Shadows of the Limelight, Marked for Death, The Metropolitan Man, and yes, even HPMOR or luminosity. A broader view of this definition might or might not include The Martian, and it's totally arguable. (see! people on both sides can have it their way!!) Bear in mind that this is just a set of characteristics, not a checklist, and not an exhaustive one, and one of the parts of the definition is "popular on this one subreddit" so.... yeah. And this is different than just "is good" as can clearly be seen. This definition would exclude works that are good for unrelated reasons, like JJBA or Hamlet or The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. This definition would INCLUDE bad works, too, like HPMOR, or bad fics that come out of or are aimed at the r/rational community.For the purpose of this definition, we need to know what's popular on r/rational. As a little appendix, here's a list of the most popular links on r/rational.