# How to Merge  Fantasy With Science Fiction



## Lancasrer (Oct 5, 2020)

How to put the 2 together in a happy marriage?


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## CupofJoe (Oct 6, 2020)

I think Star Wars does it fairly well.


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## Kasper Hviid (Oct 6, 2020)

Also, post-apocalyptic stuff like Mad Max.


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## skip.knox (Oct 6, 2020)

What do you have in mind? There are hundreds of examples. What do you regard as a successful melding?


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## Vaporo (Oct 6, 2020)

The difference between science fiction and fantasy is that science fiction is based on principles established by real world science, and fantasy is based on principles the author made up. Either way, the unorthodoxed concepts used in the story must at some point be established and explained to the reader. The only difference is that in science fiction you can often get away with a bit less explaining since the reader will probably already be marginally familiar with the "magic system" in a science fiction work. By some definitions, science fiction can be considered a subset of fantasy.


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## S.T. Ockenner (Oct 6, 2020)

Do a world that has spaceships AND magic!


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## Eduardo Letavia (Oct 6, 2020)

Vaporo said:


> The difference between science fiction and fantasy is that science fiction is based on principles established by real world science...


Not always Vaporo , for instance we don't know how to make teleportation true, but you can find it in Star Trek. Or how to make a true lightsaber, following the Star Wars reference. And no, science fiction is certainly not a subset of fantasy, unless we use the term _fantasy_ in one of its most broad senses:


> From the Collins dictionary: "You can refer to a story or situation that someone creates from their imagination and that is not based on reality as fantasy."


Fantasy, scifi, horror and other related genres all fall under the broad categorization of Speculative fiction, therefore what you can call them is siblings of each other.

And now, regarding the question of Lancasrer :

Sure, there are infinite ways to do the merge, but I think it depends on how you play with your reader's perspective. Reflecting on this, I cannot help but notice how fantastic or magical elements usually remain vaguely defined. For instance, the magic in the Lord of the Rings saga is just used, never fully explained at all, and the same can be said about the Force in Star Wars. In contrast, scientifical elements, artifacts or ideas tend to be more solid both physically and conceptually. In other words, fantasy tends to keep the mistery and its wonder by remaining, at least, cryptic to the reader; meanwhile, science fiction tends to explain to the reader, in some form or other, the concepts and artifacts used in it's stories. This is just a (my) rule of thumb, but realize that, in this train of thought, the reader's knowledge is the one that concedes, to some extent, the fantasy or scifi (or whatever) vibe to a speculative fiction story.

Think about when Jules Verne published it's famous Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, most people in the world had never seen or even heard of submarines at all (although they had been around for a while already). To the mind of those who weren't in the known, the Nautilus would surely have seem like pure fantasy. In the book, Verne gives some technical explanations about the submarine, but if you take those out and just leave the adventure, the ship would probably look more magical rather than what it was: a product of known cutting edge science of its time.

So, what I'm trying to say here is that what it seems magicalish or scientificalish in a speculative fiction usually comes down to what the reader knows and what you, as the writer, allow them to know about the elements you're using in your story. Being aware of this I think will help you find the ideal degree of merging you want to achieve in your story.

Finally, I'd like to point out some other examples you can draw inspiration from:

Most american superhero comics are essentially fantasies spiced up with some scifi trappings.
The japanese are very experienced in combining fantasy with high-tech elements. For instance you could check out the following:
*Silent Mobius*: anime series in which a special police unit fights some entities from another reality using paranormal abilities. The settings of story happens in a settings with futuristic tech and a very scifi-looking skyline.
*Akira*: a comic series first, and a famous anime movie later, in which you have a post-apocalyptic, scifi, high-tech settings combined with touches of horror, gore and psychic powers.
*Phantasy Star*: a videogame RPG saga in which you play epic adventures traveling to different planets and fight all kinds of creatures with both magic and scifi weapons.
*Code Geass*: another anime saga in which high-tech and some sort of magic are combined in the story.
I could go on and on, but just be aware that, in merging fantasy and technology in fiction, the japanese are quite natural at it.

Under the *steampunk* genre you'll find quite a number of stories in which they end using magic on their steam machines, and for other purposes. Not surprising, since the steam engines are not exactly the best for far too many uses (like travelling to another planet, for instance).


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## Vaporo (Oct 6, 2020)

Eduardo Letavia said:


> Not always Vaporo , for instance we don't know how to make teleportation true, but you can find it in Star Trek. Or how to make a true lightsaber, following the Star Wars reference. And no, science fiction is certainly not a subset of fantasy, unless we use the term _fantasy_ in one of its most broad senses:



So Star Trek's teleportation is a fictional effect, purely a product of the author's imagination. Doesn't that, by definition, make it fantasy? The characters step onto a circle in the middle of the room and are instantly transported to a distant location. From a narrative perspective, it makes little difference if it's the result of high technology or a magic spell.

You're right, though. There is a blurry gray area in science fiction where the technology and concepts  presented aren't known to be possible, just not proven impossible. Does that make it fantasy? I don't know. It's blurry.


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## Eduardo Letavia (Oct 6, 2020)

Vaporo said:


> So Star Trek's teleportation is a fictional effect, purely a product of the author's imagination. Doesn't that, by definition, make it fantasy? The characters step onto a circle in the middle of the room and are instantly transported to a distant location. From a narrative perspective, it makes little difference if it's the result of high technology or a magic spell.
> 
> You're right, though. There is a blurry gray area in science fiction where the technology and concepts  presented aren't known to be possible, just not proven impossible. Does that make it fantasy? I don't know. It's blurry.



Again, I think you're using the term fantasy in a broad sense, not referring to the genre itself which has a certain set of recognizable traits. But I understand where you're going.

Usually, the common trick in scifi is that it's usually set in the future, in a time in which certain new science has been developed and has made certain technologies possible, like the teleporter. It is just a more advanced science than our current one, and from our point of view could look magical, but then again this is just a matter of the reader's perspective and knowledge. Of course, it also depends on how the creator presents the science: in Star Trek everything seems to have some sense of reality, to be grounded on some science or technique, whereas magic is just hocus pocus and voilà it works just because.

Thinking about this in a different direction, and this is something I've already said somehow in some other thread here on mythic scribes, magic only seems magical *from the outside*: a sorcerer, wizard or necromancer knows quite well what's going on. They have studied their craft for years, they have tried and tested their so-called _magical_ techniques to understand them (and they even keep on investigating)... What is this if not science? Following this train of thought, we could say that ALL fantasy is just unexplained science fiction!


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## Aldarion (Oct 7, 2020)

Lancasrer said:


> How to put the 2 together in a happy marriage?



Most science fiction is basically fantasy - _Star Wars_ and _Battlestar Galactica_ are very definitely fantasy, _Star Trek_ also has _huge_ fantasy elements as does _Babylon 5_, and of course there is obviously _Warhammer 40 000_ which is fantasy masquerading as sci-fi... in fact, it is much more difficult to find "pure" science fiction than it is to find a sci-fi/fantasy mix.


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## Malik (Oct 7, 2020)

Eduardo Letavia said:


> magic only seems magical *from the outside*: a sorcerer, wizard or necromancer knows quite well what's going on. They have studied their craft for years, they have tried and tested their so-called _magical_ techniques to understand them (and they even keep on investigating)... What is this if not science? Following this train of thought, we could say that ALL fantasy is just unexplained science fiction!



*"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."* - Clarke's Third Law

There's also Gehm's corollary: *"Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."*

My current series is a portal fantasy that relies heavily on technology and science to explain the differences between the secondary fantasy world and our own. I wrote them in third omniscient using a fictional narrator who understands the technical aspects and used Clancy/Crichton-style narrative asides. I also carry those scientific and technical elements into the plotlines. The first book in my series, for instance, has a pivotal element involving a Viking-era steelmaking technique and the resultant effects of the iron trade on military preparedness across kingdoms. 

My new series is about a secret government program exploring the world from my first series, and it's much more technical, delving into both ancient and current weapons and advanced desert warfare techniques. However, it also has elves, gryphons, trolls, and magic. What's fun--getting back to a happy marriage between the SF and fantasy--is lensing the fantasy world that I developed through the first three books through the eyes of two intensely scientific MCs: a former commando turned professor of Norse anthropology and an archaeometallurgist who specializes in medieval weapons. They see the elves and trolls as aliens--after all, they're on another planet--and keep looking for scientific explanations for the magic. Sometimes, they find one.


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## A. E. Lowan (Oct 7, 2020)

We write urban fantasy, so we're totally cheating. We use a little 5 minutes-into-the-future to have technical items that are a) not yet in existence but will be soon, like a phone app for the deaf that accurately transcribes talk to text, or b) powered by magic itself, such as named weapons and things that come from other realms.


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## S.T. Ockenner (Oct 7, 2020)

The definition of Fantasy is fiction with magic. The definition of sci-fi is fiction with futuristic elements. Boom. Easy as pie.


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## Steerpike (Oct 7, 2020)

Dark Lord Thomas Pie said:


> The definition of Fantasy is fiction with magic.



Except for all of the fantasy works that have no magic in them at all...


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## S.T. Ockenner (Oct 7, 2020)

Steerpike said:


> Except for all of the fantasy works that have no magic in them at all...


then it wouldn't be Fantasy.


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## Steerpike (Oct 7, 2020)

Dark Lord Thomas Pie said:


> then it wouldn't be Fantasy.



That may be your view, but it is not one I share (nor one shared by the marketplace, apparently, since these works are shelved and sold in the fantasy section).


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## S.T. Ockenner (Oct 7, 2020)

Steerpike said:


> That may be your view, but it is not one I share (nor one shared by the marketplace, apparently, since these works are shelved and sold in the fantasy section).


Example?


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## Steerpike (Oct 7, 2020)

Dark Lord Thomas Pie said:


> Example?



Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast books.
Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan
KJ Parker, The Company (and some other KJ Parker books, for that matter)
Swordspoint, Ellen Kushner (and Privilege of the Sword, set in the same world)

I can probably name a few others when I get home and look at my shelves.


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## Steerpike (Oct 7, 2020)

It's hard to argue that books set in an entirely made-up world, which fall squarely into secondary world fantasy (like KJ Parker's books) suddenly are no longer fantasy if the author doesn't put magic in them.


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## Malik (Oct 7, 2020)

Dark Lord Thomas Pie said:


> Example?


Off the top of my head, K.J. Parker's _Fencer_ trilogy, and _The Traitor Baru Cormorant_ by Seth Dickinson. I could be wrong, but I don't remember magical elements in either. They certainly don't revolve around traditional, high-fantasy magic tropes and IIRC, there is very little magic mentioned in them, if any.


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## Svrtnsse (Oct 7, 2020)

Malik said:


> *"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."* - Clarke's Third Law
> 
> There's also Gehm's corollary: *"Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."*


...and any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.


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## S.T. Ockenner (Oct 7, 2020)

Gormnghast is considered Horror
The Lions of Al-Rassan is historical fiction
I can't find much of anything on The Company 
Swordspoint is Fantasy Of Manners, which has no or few supernatural elements, nor does it have anything that couldn't be in the real world, so it's not even Speculative Fiction.


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## S.T. Ockenner (Oct 7, 2020)

If Fantasy didn't have magic/supernatural elements, it would be Historical Fiction or Alternate History.


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## Steerpike (Oct 7, 2020)

Dark Lord Thomas Pie said:


> Gormnghast is considered Horror
> The Lions of Al-Rassan is historical fiction
> I can't find much of anything on The Company
> Swordspoint is Fantasy Of Manners, which has no or few supernatural elements, nor does it have anything that couldn't be in the real world, so it's not even Speculative Fiction.



Gormenghast is not horror.

Lions of Al-Rassan is not historical fantasy--it's set in a made up world, along with many of his other books, that are analogs of the real world. Some people have invented the phrase 'historical fantasy' for this kind of work--distinguished from historical fiction by use of the word 'fantasy.'

Your statement about Swordspoint doesn't even make any sense. It's set in a made-up world. One of the sequels was nominated for the Mythopoeic Award, which is a fantasy award.

Kushner is the one who first called her work a "fantasy of manners," and she considers the book series fantasy.

Not to mention, again, that these are all shelved in the fantasy section at the bookstore. They're not in general fiction, which is where historical fiction is found.

Wherever you're getting your information from is incorrect.


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## Eduardo Letavia (Oct 7, 2020)

Oh my! This thread has turned into some sort of battle about what's and what's not fantasy or scifi, although it's understandable given the gray areas that these two _speculative genres_ share. This problem is aggravated by the particularities of science fiction, a genre that has itself proven to be so fluid, so adaptable, so _anything_ that it's the only literary genre (as far as I've seen) that has an exclusive article on Wikipedia just about its definition! And not a short one, mind you, although mostly full of writers quotes. From the ones listed there, there is one from Norman Spinrad that I found quite charming:


> There is only one definition of science fiction that seems to make sense: 'Science fiction is anything published as science fiction.'


(This is a longer version of the Spinrad's quote that I've found here)

I think there's another like-minded quote which says something like _"Science fiction is what my editor says is science fiction."_, but I neither remember who or when it was said (I think it comes from the classic golden era of scifi but I'm not sure). So, trying to set in stone what these two genres are or are not is like trying to clip their wings instead of allowing them to keep on evolving, as they've been doing through the years.

So, I think that, in the end, the only possible answer to your question, Lancasrer , is to play the merge following your instinct, knowledge and personal taste, while paying attention to the feeling or vibe you want to give to your story with such merge. Although bear in mind that everything in this universe and in any other is physics, even when things look really twisted and strange to us.


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## Prince of Spires (Oct 8, 2020)

The thing to remember about genre is that genre is mainly a marketing tool. It's the shelve a bookstore puts the book on, it's the section a buyer browses. This means that a genre is not a clearly defined thing but belongs in the "you know what it is when you see it" group of things. It also means that it's fluid and changes over time. What's even more, a lot of (smaller) bookstores don't actually distinguish between SciFi and Fantasy, but rather they have a SciFi & Fantasy section, making the difference meaningless.

Going with "you know what it is when you see it", I get the following genre definitions:
Fantasy: uses magic or an alternate world with a historical technology level.
SciFi: uses futuristic technology.

Yes, there's a lot you can argue over in those definitions. About how the central question in the genres is different. Or about when something is technology or magic and so on. But that's details in my opinion. For me it's simpler. Take a random person in the street. Tell them you have a book about spaceships and they'll assume it's SciFi. Tell them there is magic in it and they'll assume it's fantasy. And since genre is a marketing tool, that's what's important, what that random person looking for a book thinks the genre is.

How does that play into the OP question about how to mix the two. Well, in my opinion, just do it. As has been mentioned, Star Wars is the best and most well known example. And it's popularity shows that there is demand for these kinds of tales. So how to do it, put your magic in a futuristic setting with spaceships. If magic exists in your universe, and space travel is scientifically possible in your universe, then just roll the timeline forward to a point where you have both.

After all, technology (and history) doesn't stop at a medieval level just because magic exists. It just follows a different trajectory. And you will still get to spaceships and aliens and all that.


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## ThinkerX (Oct 10, 2020)

I went back and forth over magic and science fiction in my worlds for a long, long time.  I was trying to account for things like 'humans on other planets' without resorting to parallel evolution or divine activity - and for having cultures comparable to those in earths past.

Finally settled on the 'ancient aliens' gimmick - multiple tens of thousands of years ago, technologically advanced aliens terraformed a number of worlds, then went and imported 'humans and others' as servants, test subjects, and 'zoo specimens.'  Over time, the aliens numbers decreased, so they started to shift more tech work onto their imported subjects - which is where the magic comes in.

The aliens were psi sensitive, and much of their tech required psi ability to properly operate.  So, for their favored servants to operate said devices, they needed to be psi sensitive as well.  Quite a few test subjects later, they had an assortment of humans, goblins, and others with psi ability hardwired into their genome.  The aliens continued to import humans and others right up until the last of their civilizations imploded - call it 1700 years ago.  By then, those with psi ability were considered 'magicians.'  

As wizards go...the mages of my worlds are not that awesome.  They can do what we'd term 'remote viewing' (scrying), have various forms of telekinesis, influence minds (telepathy), and pull off a sort of 'faith healing' thing.  The more powerful display pyrokinesis and teleportation. Summoning monstrous entities from alien dimensions is possible - but is also exceedingly foolish.   Half remembered and creatively reassembled bits of alien lore form the basis for 'rune magic.'   Shape shifting requires a master mage to make happen. 

Though the aliens are mostly gone, quite a bit of their tech remains, much of it inoperable or semi functional. Yes, functional potent weapons and wondrous machines do turn up now and again...but one can't count on them remaining functional, and repairing them ranges between 'difficult' and 'impossible.'  Probably there's a fair pile of these devices secreted away in a top secret warehouse on Malik's world, but those poking at them might not have figured out that psi ability is needed to make them work...


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## Ned Marcus (Oct 11, 2020)

Dark Lord Thomas Pie said:


> Do a world that has spaceships AND magic!



One of my favourite types of story!


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## TWErvin2 (Oct 11, 2020)

I did it with my post-apocalyptic fantasy series, _First Civilization's Legacy_. 

One of the things I did was to begin, starting with the 2nd chapter, and on to about the 28th chapter, what I called a Chapter Start. It told the story (present day) of events that led to the world as it became in the series. The Chapter Starts ended when they merged with the current plot/action within the first novel. The Chapter Starts were mainly 2-8 paragraph snippets of a sequence of events (sometimes a little longer), set off by italics.


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## S.T. Ockenner (Oct 13, 2020)

Steerpike said:


> Your statement about Swordspoint doesn't even make any sense. It's set in a made-up world. One of the sequels was nominated for the Mythopoeic Award, which is a fantasy award.
> 
> 
> 
> N


It being in another world if there is no magic would make it alternate history, not fantasy.


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## Steerpike (Oct 13, 2020)

Dark Lord Thomas Pie said:


> It being in another world if there is no magic would make it alternate history, not fantasy.



That doesn’t make sense at all, in my view. We will have to agree to disagree. I’ll stick with where the market places such works, which also happens to feel logical to me.


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## S.T. Ockenner (Oct 13, 2020)

Steerpike said:


> That doesn’t make sense at all, in my view. We will have to agree to disagree. I’ll stick with where the market places such works, which also happens to feel logical to me.


Seems fair.


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## angelleaping (Oct 15, 2020)

There is a difference between dystopian worlds and a fantasy world. Star Wars is a dystopian world. I studied Ray Bradbury for fantasy worlds and Ken Follett for historical fiction when I began writing "Einstein's Compass a YA Time Traveler Adventure". I researched young Albert Einstein who in his biography, written by Walter Isaacson received a compass from his father when he was six years old. I wondered what if the compass given by his father was supernatural? Since Einstein lived during the horse and buggy days when the light bulb was first invented, how did he come up with his theories of light and time? What if he was from Atlantis and was trying to remember what he did back then? The fantasy world I created came from forty years of mystical training. I gave Albert my experiences of traveling the inners worlds of light. I layered the story beginning with the history, then added the characters, and finally the mystical worlds. Check out my multi-awarding winner novel www.einsteinscompassbook.com.


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