A thin line indeed, and one that I think earlier generations didn't worry themselves about as much as some readers/writers do today. Is Pern SF or fantasy? Does it matter? Just write the story that needs to be written with the elements necessary to tell the story. Got faeries? Cool. Got skyships? Cool. Got faeries that pilot skyships? Cool. No matter what the intentions of the author are, readers may or may not receive the work if they have preconceived notions about what constitutes "fantasy" and "science fiction." Their loss. I never considered my WIP trilogy fantasy per se, but I'm told my style, worldbuiling, character-driven plot, and lack of "space/tech stuff" will make marketing it as fantasy a better choice. Okay, I guess. I guess I had better get used to those reviews that I see on other people's second world/soft SF/science fantasy books: "this really isn't fantasy because there's no magic system/Elder Races/dragons," etc. Yawn.
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Science Fantasy - How to get the perfect balance?
- Thread starter Writer’s_Magic
- Start date
A thin line indeed, and one that I think earlier generations didn't worry themselves about as much as some readers/writers do today. Is Pern SF or fantasy? Does it matter? Just write the story that needs to be written with the elements necessary to tell the story. Got faeries? Cool. Got skyships? Cool. Got faeries that pilot skyships? Cool. No matter what the intentions of the author are, readers may or may not receive the work if they have preconceived notions about what constitutes "fantasy" and "science fiction." Their loss. I never considered my WIP trilogy fantasy per se, but I'm told my style, worldbuiling, character-driven plot, and lack of "space/tech stuff" will make marketing it as fantasy a better choice. Okay, I guess. I guess I had better get used to those reviews that I see on other people's second world/soft SF/science fantasy books: "this really isn't fantasy because there's no magic system/Elder Races/dragons," etc. Yawn.
ImaginationGoneWild
Scribe
I call my current world building project a 'science fantasy' because it features elements that come from both genres. It has the typical 'fantasy' races, magic, gods, etc... but it also has space travel, and magitek, and travel to other planets, etc...
So that's how i see the science fantasy genre, it simply features both elements. but i doubt there's a 'balance', i just went with which side i wanted to lean towards more; I went with fantasy. so you'll see more fantasy than science in the world.
So that's how i see the science fantasy genre, it simply features both elements. but i doubt there's a 'balance', i just went with which side i wanted to lean towards more; I went with fantasy. so you'll see more fantasy than science in the world.
DragonOfTheAerie
Vala
Isn't the boundary between them a little blurry anyway? In softer sci fi it might as well be magic.
S.T. Ockenner
Istar
Orc Knight It is possible to have a science fantasy world that is hard science fiction, if the magic has clear rules, it is clear how it works despite disobeying a few laws of
science, and as long as it is otherwise grounded firmly in science.
science, and as long as it is otherwise grounded firmly in science.
Malik
Auror
My second series is a science-fiction series set in the same world as my first series, which is portal fantasy. The main difference is the perspective of the characters. The MCs in the first series are fantasy nerds, and they grok the vagaries of the world immediately: castles, elves, knights, magic.
The second series MCs are scientists brought in to examine a rift to another world that the US government is studying, and several elite Special Operations Forces troops who accompany them on an exploration through the rift. They don't see the world as a fantasy world; they see it as an alien world. They see beautiful, pointy-eared aliens in a pre-industrial society, not elves. They see alien structures, not castles. They beat their brains in looking for technological explanations of the magic they experience. But it's a fantasy world; anyone who reads fantasy will recognize the tropes.
To shake this up a bit, I set the second series in a corner of the world that the MCs from the first series didn't get to, a backwater canyon in a waste desert on the fringes of a country that's only mentioned in the first series. So, the warfighting tech is different, the castles look different than they would on Earth, and so on. Alien. But also fantasy.
Anyway, the point of this second series is to write a series of books in which fantasy and sci-fi are merely a matter of perspective. I did this in no small part by building the major plot points from tropes that span genres. If I do this right, SF readers will see them as SF, and fantasy readers will see them as fantasy. And if I'm really on the ball, military adventure and technothriller fans will see them as military adventure and technothriller novels, respectively.
It's also possible that I'm an idiot and this will never work. There's at least a moderate probability that I've written such a confusing, rambling disaster that my structural editor hires someone to kill me.
The second series MCs are scientists brought in to examine a rift to another world that the US government is studying, and several elite Special Operations Forces troops who accompany them on an exploration through the rift. They don't see the world as a fantasy world; they see it as an alien world. They see beautiful, pointy-eared aliens in a pre-industrial society, not elves. They see alien structures, not castles. They beat their brains in looking for technological explanations of the magic they experience. But it's a fantasy world; anyone who reads fantasy will recognize the tropes.
To shake this up a bit, I set the second series in a corner of the world that the MCs from the first series didn't get to, a backwater canyon in a waste desert on the fringes of a country that's only mentioned in the first series. So, the warfighting tech is different, the castles look different than they would on Earth, and so on. Alien. But also fantasy.
Anyway, the point of this second series is to write a series of books in which fantasy and sci-fi are merely a matter of perspective. I did this in no small part by building the major plot points from tropes that span genres. If I do this right, SF readers will see them as SF, and fantasy readers will see them as fantasy. And if I'm really on the ball, military adventure and technothriller fans will see them as military adventure and technothriller novels, respectively.
It's also possible that I'm an idiot and this will never work. There's at least a moderate probability that I've written such a confusing, rambling disaster that my structural editor hires someone to kill me.
