Sean William has some interesting thoughts about the term "hard fantasy," that bring it more in line with my conception of "science fantasy" than the definitions of hard fantasy I've come across previously (which were more like those SAT correlary questions, "hard sf is to sf, as hard fantasy is to fantasy," meaning that it was fantasy that indulged the tropes of epic fantasy to the same exaggerated degree as actual science is indulged in hard sf).

Paragaea is very intentionally written using a lot of the furniture of fantasy stories--talking trees, ancient wizards, hidden underground kingdoms--but recast in terms of plausible scientific rationalizations, which I'd always thought of as a type of "science fantasy." Whether that means it falls under Sean's definition of hard fantasy or not, I'm not sure. I do know, though, that his comments make me more eager than ever to check out The Crooked Letter.