Saelune said:
There's a difference. Think about it this way; Harry Potter is fantasy. But if you replaced their wands with Star Trek Tricorders, its Science Fiction. They're still casting spells, summoning ghosts, flying around on broomsticks, talking to giant spiders, morphing bodies, time traveling, you name it. They're just using technology to explain away the magic.
The Martian does not. The science is all possible using physics and technology even if as a story its fictive.
And yes, all fictive stories are fictional, but its kinda' a moot point. Saving Private Ryan didn't actually happen, it was a movie, but I'd maintain its more realistic and plausible than say...Aeon Flux or War of the Worlds. They're all fictions, but at no point does Tom Hanks cast Bullet Time using his alien compass to dodge Nazi rockets.
But to answer your question, yes, if we could prove and replicate all of the Star Trek's world, including technology and the aliens races and everything, then yes, it would become 'Hard Sci Fi'. It would still be Sci-Fi in that Jean Luc Picard is still a character, as is Kirk and Spock and Janeway and Data. All characters played by real people. But the technology and setting behind it would be grounded in reality. It'd be a fictional story, set in for lack of a better term, 'our world' because 'our world' would be Star Trek.
