Science Fantasy...How?

[TheDarkFrontier]

I've heard a lot of people say Star Wars is Science Fantasy, whereas Star Trek is Science Fiction. Redlettermedia gave a pretty good comparison by saying in Star Trek, a lot of time was spent explaining how the warp drive engines worked, all the ins and outs of the engines, and how they propelled the ship faster than light. That's got a lot of the fiction element. As opposed to Star Wars, where the engines are just there to get from A to B, and nothing else. And then you have all the stuff with the Force too.

 

[Addison]

Star Trek, I believe, is a sub-genre called Hard Science Fiction. The part where a good part of the story is spent explaining how the science works. But you're write, the Force in Star Wars does give it a fantasy feel.

 

[Mindfire]

Hmm... science fantasy, eh? Well I guess what we'd need to do is take the old fantasy tropes and reinterpret them in a sci-fi context. Let's see.

Prophesied Hero:

Aging but Badass Mentor(s):

Spunky Princess Who May or May Not Need Rescuing:

 

[Mindfire]

Powerful Magic:

Sword >> Everything Else

Dark Lord:

Evil Wizard:

 

[Mindfire]

Faceless Mooks:

Prequels:

 

[Mindfire]

Trilogy Fetish:

"Science Fantasy?" Please, even if you could make something like that, it would never get anywhere.

 

[Devora]

why is everyone using Star Wars as the exemplar of Science Fantasy? Surely there are other examples.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

why is everyone using Star Wars as the exemplar of Science Fantasy? Surely there are other examples.

What would be a more prolific than Star Wars to use as an example?

 

[Steerpike]

Star Trek is not hard science fiction. There is too much made-up pseudo science in it.

Other examples of Science Fantasy would include the Warhammer 40K Universe, in my view.

 

[Devora]

It's just that it's becoming the Only example in this thread.. there has to be other examples of Science Fantasy.

 

[TheDarkFrontier]

It's just that it's becoming the Only example in this thread.. there has to be other examples of Science Fantasy.

Of course there are other examples, but everyone knows Star Wars, the characters, story and plot elements are so iconic that its just an easy example to use. As others have pointed out, there are a lot of fantasy tropes that are recognisable in Star Wars. If you compare those tropes to say, Star Trek, a lot of things change. I know there will be flaws in comparison, as Star Wars is a film series, whilst Star Trek is a tv series, and consequently, the two will be very different.

As for Star Trek being hard science fiction - that's debatable. There is a hell of a lot of pseudo-science in it, which started to appear in Season 7 of TNG, and pretty much completely dominated Voyager, which is why a lot of people I think regard it as the beginning of the end for Trek. More often than not, Voyager would just pad out the story with technobabble explanations, which is exactly what The Matrix sequels did - the idea of "if we just babble complicated words, people will assume we're clever and not question it". Haha. Not fooled by lazy writing The original and the first few seasons of TNG were arguably hard sci-fi, as the producers hired a team to check the latest physics reports from NASA, to ensure that it was as realistic as possible.

 

[Nameback]

In the world I'm writing right now, there's some stuff that is undeniably magic, but also what the humans worship as "gods" are really more like what we would traditionally call aliens. They're sort of Lovecraftian, monstrous horrors who are almost totally indifferent to humanity. The humans depict them and worship them as humanoid gods with names and jobs and traditional polytheistic characteristics, but in "reality" they're nothing like that.

Also I'm debating one of the characters finding out eventually that there are other worlds with human beings on them, sort of alluding to the idea that this fantasy world exists in the same universe as Earth.

Would this be "Science Fantasy?"

 

[ThinkerX]

In the world I'm writing right now, there's some stuff that is undeniably magic, but also what the humans worship as "gods" are really more like what we would traditionally call aliens. They're sort of Lovecraftian, monstrous horrors who are almost totally indifferent to humanity. The humans depict them and worship them as humanoid gods with names and jobs and traditional polytheistic characteristics, but in "reality" they're nothing like that.

Also I'm debating one of the characters finding out eventually that there are other worlds with human beings on them, sort of alluding to the idea that this fantasy world exists in the same universe as Earth.

Sounds a lot like my world...though the religion is mostly monotheistic, with the Lovecraftian things counted as 'demons' (though one or two sneak in as 'saints').

The magic is mostly PSI...the ancient aliens wanted some of their human subjects to have a degree of psi ability, so imbued a few with the talent. (much of the alien tech required psi ability to operate). Later, with the aliens mostly gone, the psi stuff became 'magic'. (this is for the more 'normal' aliens. There are also quite a few very powerful Lovecraftian entities with an interest in this world, which by human polytheistic standards, do kinda sorta count as 'gods' - and an entire subset of misguided magicians interested in tapping to the power of these horrific entities).

 

[TheDarkFrontier]

I think that could be classed as science fantasy. Mass Effect is a good example of science fantasy, the whole thing with the ... bio..whatever it is That's a sort of a force power, there's a lot of that kind of thing involved.

 

[Logos&Eidos]

The op I'd have to asks first and foremost what do you want and what do you think is cool. Once you have that clear in your mind begin following the chain of logic to arrive at the world and story that you desire.

I like swords and I like blasters and i refuse to choose between them,thus science fantasy is my genre of choice.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Science fantasy is an ill defined genre, which basically means the mixing of fantasy tropes with science fiction tropes. Star Wars fits perfectly within the genre by fairly much any definition because it is essentially a traditional fantasy story set in a science type universe without any sort of explanation. By contrast Greene's Deathstalker series is science fiction because even though its essentially a fantasy story set in a science universe, the author makes a clear attempt to ground it in some sort of logical science type jargon. He even explains the swords. Star Trek has crossed the divide - but always been wonderful. In TOS there were so many ancient Greek gods turning up and a lot of others, that you could only describe those episodes as pure fantasy. (And a desperate desire to get Shatner to take his shirt off!) But then it also tries to ground a lot of its impossible stuff in technology.

But Star Wars is far from alone.

Someone mentioned L Sprague De Camp, and his enchanter series is well and truly science fantasy (and excellent fun by the way). To that I'd add all the Gor books - pure sword and sorcery in a supposedly parallel world. McCaffrey's Pern of course. And probably a fair chunk of steam punk if not all of it.

The test I think is to ask when you read a book if the main elements of it are plausible or not. If you can reasonably conceive of a technology that can do what you need it to to make your story, then you can squeeze it into sci fi. If it's complete fantasy, well then it's fantasy. And when you mix them its science fantasy.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Hainted]

Shadowrun would fall into this category, given some of the elements of Terry Pratchett's writing I'd say some of the Discworld books would fall into this category