Sci-fi vs Fantasy

As far as I know, I can't get an actual, working faster-than-light starship drive on this planet - and maybe in this part of the multiverse. So anything I write using one is a fantasy. My 'science fantasy', 'sword & planet' space operas may be dressed up in a few cosmological and physics terms, but they are very much non-realistic fantasy.

My agent just calls it all 'fantasy' when I send her the mms.

Actually something I've wondered, couldn't a story have sliding scales between hard science and social science. Like some stories seem technologically inaccurate, yet socially could in fact theoretically happen.

Books like Mark Twains Kid In King Arthur's court seem to have a fantasy base. Yet it is definitely a critique of specific social norms he was acquainted with.

As to Magic Realism, I thought the point was subtlety in a way where the impossibly extraordinary was rendered un-magically ordinary? Other than the Latin American/Italian nuance.

Logically, the distinction is clear. If your universe has magic, it's fantasy. If there is none but scientific discoveries and technology are an important part of your story (even if they are unlikely), it's sci-fi.

Practically, there are lots of gradations between the extreme ends of fantasy vs. science fiction. In queries to agents you may want to leave out a label of what you've written and let them decide what they want to call your book when they market it.

Or you can say something like "XX is a 116,000 word science fiction novel with a fantasy feel" or some such.

My own take on it is that sci-fi is what 'feels' futuristic and fantasy 'feels' like the past (but not on Earth). I'm not into things like urban fantasy so I don't care that I'm leaving it out of my personal definition. I know it when I see it. Someone on the first page said they weren't sure if Dune was fantasy or sci-fi, but to me it was clearly sci-fi. Same with Star Wars. I don't care if it has fantasy elements; it's still 'futuristic' in feel even if it was 'a long time ago'.

I forget who it was that said, "Science fiction is what we point to when we say 'science fiction'," but it seems appropos here. As several people have already remarked, there's a large fuzzy grey area rather than a nice bright dividing line between science fiction and fantasy. Anyone who thinks otherwise should be forced to poll people on the classification of books like Melissa Scott's Five-Twelvths of Heaven, with its magic-powered spaceships, until they scream for mercy.

The thumbrule I use is Fantasy outright changes the world in some way. Science Fiction stretches our world.

Highly subjective on when something is "merely" changed versus extended. And just as fuzzy as anything else mentioned so far. Works for me, though.

JustSarah said:

Books like Mark Twains Kid In King Arthur's court seem to have a fantasy base.

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I know this is nitpicky and immaterial to the subject at hand, but my internal editor won't let me rest until I make this correction. Mark Twain actually wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

A Kid in King Arthur's Court was a 1995 movie loosely based on/inspired by Connecticut Yankee.

Alexys said:

Anyone who thinks otherwise should be forced to poll people on the classification of books like Melissa Scott's Five-Twelvths of Heaven, with its magic-powered spaceships, until they scream for mercy.

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Fantasy. If it’s got magic, it’s fantasy.

Eventually a magically based world is going to discover things, too. They’re going to invent a better loom and kick off disruptions in the economy. They’re going to build better ships and encounter lesser or more developed beings in other parts of the world. They’re going to want to go to the moon. They’re going to wonder if there is life on Mars and how are asteroids made and can they land a probe on a potato-shaped comet.

Some H G Wells of their world might write War of the Worlds.

Magic, to them, is just as commonplace as aqueducts, water wheels, steam engines, automobiles, airplanes, rockets and knitting cables. (That is, too, magic!)

If magic is the physics of that universe then it works all over the place (or it doesn’t and that makes an interesting story, too).

God powered spaceships (The God Engines by John Scalzi) or Magic powered spaceships are normal outgrowths, or they should be, of curious beings. There’s nothing inherent in magic qua magic that says it must keep orcs, dwarves, humans, elves, fairies, kobolds, firespiders, etc. in a pre-industrial age.

zanzjan said:

Academics consider Science Fiction to be a subset of Fantasy, with Fantasy being all fiction that is non-mimetic, ie, not attempting to accurately mimic real life.

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Right. So almost all fiction (epics, myths and so on) is
fantasy. It's really mimetic fiction that is a relatively small and recent development.

Sci-fi wasn't originally marketed as anything other than fantasy and in fact it is a logical subset of fantasy. So unless an author makes a big effort to get some "science" into the story it is going to be fantasy.

Maxx said:

Right. So almost all fiction (epics, myths and so on) is
fantasy. It's really mimetic fiction that is a relatively small and recent development.

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I would submit instead that the general perception of what constitutes real life and realism has changed.

For example, magic realism has a lot in common with folk tales and mythology and is still a kind of realism.

kuwisdelu said:

I would submit instead that the general perception of what constitutes real life and realism has changed.

For example, magic realism has a lot in common with folk tales and mythology and is still a kind of realism.

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Yes, something has changed in the general perception of where the real is and in many ways fantasy reveals more of one's personal experience of the real than science does.

But this is also true in other areas -- the image of science as it was in say 1935 when Science fiction solidified into a genre looks very limited -- though that might be why earlier Sci Fi has an air of excitement and later sci-fi seems to despair a bit of ever regaining that original excitement.

In my writing, I prefer to cut to the excitement and follow the ways of myths and stories into the realm of fantasies that reveal reality as it is experienced as something exciting -- rather than something known.

Once! said:

... my working definition is this: science fiction at least tries to explain how something happens. .

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Teaching science at the college level has forced me to realize that most people think knowing science is about knowing facts or theories, and that science is manifest in the form of technology.

But that is not so. Despite the word's origin in meaning "knowledge", science is about how we figure things out, not what we know. All national science standards in the USA over the past 20 years have tried vainly to move the public needle in that direction.

Thus for me, a story becomes science fiction when there is an effort either by the characters, or by the underlying background society of the world, to understand how things work and why they work that way. A couple of other folks have already suggested similar ideas in this thread.


The presence of technology is not different from the presence of a magic wand. If it's used without any background understanding, simply as a tool or backdrop for the story, then it's not science fiction. On the other hand, if there is an effort in the story (or implicit in the society behind the story) to understand how things work, or how they got to be the way they are, then that is SF, even if it involves what appears to be magic, or magical SF elements like time travel or FTL travel.

My science-education-biased two cents!

Hmm. That's an interesting thought., but I'm not so sure that it works. Science is both the knowledge and understanding of what is currently known plus the drive to make new discoveries. So while there is often a questioning or exploration element in science fiction, it doesn't have to be there. Some science fiction can be perfectly comfortable within its technology, even if that technology appears magical to us.

A good example would be the culture novels of Iain M. Banks. These are set in a far distant future when much science is established and known. The technology is a given, unlike "younger" scifi where the tech is new.

For me, a magic wand is totally unlike a piece of technology. Take the Millennium Falcon. I don't know how it works and none of the characters express any interest in knowing how it works. It is a tool. But we accept it as a piece of technology because it works like a machine. We see Han and Chewie fixing it with things that look like spanners. It has engines. It uses some form of fuel. That makes it close enough to machines that we do know to make it science fiction.

A magic wand works because ... because it is a magic wand. And whether anyone questions why it works or not, it will always be a magic wand. That's fantasy.

FTL travel is not magic as long as it involves the use of a machine with recognisable machine-characteristics - a control panel, the need for fuel and some oily doohickeys that need to be fixed with a spanner. Okay, so it looks to be impossible to us. But the premise is that eventually we will invent a machine to do all that.

Once! said:

Hmm. That's an interesting thought., but I'm not so sure that it works. Science is both the knowledge and understanding of what is currently known plus the drive to make new discoveries. So while there is often a questioning or exploration element in science fiction, it doesn't have to be there. Some science fiction can be perfectly comfortable within its technology, even if that technology appears magical to us.

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I agree with this. People will usually be comfortable with whatever technology is common to their time, regardless of what we think about it. Someone said my book blurb should include some of the tech I have in my sci-fi, but I don't see why. Would a story set today have to mention the internet and mobile devices? No, because it's part of our everyday life and we don't really have to think about them, so it's no different for my characters in 2138.

Once! said:

Hmm. That's an interesting thought., but I'm not so sure that it works.... Take the Millennium Falcon. I don't know how it works and none of the characters express any interest in knowing how it works. It is a tool. But we accept it as a piece of technology because it works like a machine. We see Han and Chewie fixing it with things that look like spanners. It has engines. It uses some form of fuel. That makes it close enough to machines that we do know to make it science fiction.

.

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Yeah, my definition for science fiction isn't the one that presently defines the genre-differences between fantasy and SF. Alas. So applying my definitions to stories that have been classified by a different definition set will clearly lead to mismatches.

However, note in your examples from Star Wars that there is an implied underlying understanding, or desire to understand. They are fixing things--imply understanding of how it works. It needs fuel--implying a need to understand that there are real and natural constraints on how it works.

I think that one definition at work in SF is that it involves technology (which, to me isn't the same as science, but....alas) and that technology is sufficiently similar to technology that we understand today that our cultural expectations of cause and effect, and how things work, is accepted within the context of the story. We recognize it as something derivative from our modern science and so the "explanation of how it works" is baked into the story by our knowledge of how science works today.

Concerning the magic wand--yes, it's a magic wand because it's a magic wand. Any effort to understand how it works is pointless because it works because it's a magic wand. I think this is the point that I am making--that is what distinguishes fantasy from SF--In SF there is an explanation of how it works whether made explicitly or implicitly.

GeoWriter said:

We recognize it as something derivative from our modern science and so the "explanation of how it works" is baked into the story by our knowledge of how science works today.

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I have a minor nit about that, though. While it's certainly descriptive for hard sci-fi, not all sci-fi is too concerned about discussing how their technology actually works. In fact, there are tropes of science fiction which are so highly improbable — if not entirely disproven — that it may as well be magic. I don't care so long as the story keeps the pages turning.

I mean, consider Ender's Game, a well-regarded and lauded piece of science fiction, in which travel is relativistic while communication is instantaneous (recycling ULG's ansible). In scientific terms, this is practically contradictory. There's nothing to distinguish the idea from magic. Working through it at this very moment, though, I suppose it's because it's presented in the context of science and technology that makes it science fiction.

Which brings me around to Star Wars. I choose to see it as a science fiction story because its presented in the context of a technological society. At the same time, it has magic, which is an element of fantasy, so if people want to argue, perhaps controversially, that it's a fantasy, then go for it. I don't care. It was still a great story that Lucas took a giant crap on.

We are straying into a classic debate - can science fiction show technology that we currently believe to be impossible?

There are several points of view here. Some will argue (including me) that anything is fair game as long as we go at least some way to show how it might actually happen. Fr'instance we currently believe that faster than light travel is physically impossible. But FTL travel it is a mainstay of much science fiction, whether this is by some form of warp travel, wormholes, stargates, whatever.

The premise is that we don't know how to do it yet, but it is possible that we might invent technology that would allow us to do it. That, for me, is the essence of science fiction. It shows us something which isn't possible now and may never be possible, then it whispers seductively that we might be able to do it if (when) we had the right gizmos.

FTL travel with engines is not magic. A wizard snapping his fingers to teleport himself at FTL speeds is magic.

Teleportation from a spaceship to a planet is patently impossible. You might call it magic. Star Trek only did it because they couldn't afford model shuttle craft. But we accept it because it is based on a machine with a control panel. A machine that needs fuel to make it work. A machine that anyone can operate without special powers.

Okay, but what about the Heisenberg uncertainty principle? That's okay - we'll write a Heisenberg compensator into the mechanism. And when the program makers were asked how the Heisenberg compensator works, they replied "It works just fine, thank you."

That for me is the difference between scifi and fantasy. The Heisenberg compensator.

Star Wars? For me it's both science fiction and fantasy. It's science fiction when it is showing us x-wings and droids. It is fantasy when it talks about the force and the prophecy.

But I wouldn't say that George Lucas took a giant crap on it. He had the original vision - he created the story, the world, the ideas. He has a very visual approach.

But he was not the world's greatest writer, especially of dialogue. It took a very good editing team to turn his great ideas into great cinema. We needed both - Lucas's original ideas plus the editing.

As Carrie Fisher said: "You can type this stuff but you can't say it."

Once! said:

But I wouldn't say that George Lucas took a giant crap on it. He had the original vision - he created the story, the world, the ideas. He has a very visual approach.

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What I meant by saying that is that Lucas had a hand in creating something early on which quickly entered the lexicon of geekdom, and then proceeded to make three very inferior movies that tie into it, and modify his long-existing work in order to make them all tie together. People were digitally added to replace original actors, scenes were grafted onto it that weren't actually necessary, and music which was perfectly fine was replaced to suit this adapted storyline. I'd have been fine if he had just made three crappy movies to follow up on three very good movies, but in so doing, he also made three very good movies crappy. Henceforth, I have always referred to the modification of published story as "Lucasing" a work. Basically, fame, technological progress, and ego gave Lucas the ability to be a kid in a candy shop when it came to how he could modify his original creation. Where he might have simply decided to remaster a few shots in order to clean up the original, he started gluing new things all over it like some sort of schizophrenic decoupage.

Maybe. I think time will be kinder to the three prequels that we might expect. A proportion of our antagonism to the second batch of three comes because we have deep affections for the first three. The next generation will be less precious about episodes IV to VI and be a little more charitable, I think.

Once! said:

Maybe. I think time will be kinder to the three prequels that we might expect.

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Oh, I can only hope not.

Once! said:

Maybe. I think time will be kinder to the three prequels that we might expect. A proportion of our antagonism to the second batch of three comes because we have deep affections for the first three. The next generation will be less precious about episodes IV to VI and be a little more charitable, I think.

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I'm less antagonistic to the prequels than I am to Lucas making compromising changes to the original three in order to accommodate the prequels. I'm perfectly fine ignoring the fact that the prequels ever existed.

Locke said:

I'm less antagonistic to the prequels than I am to Lucas making compromising changes to the original three in order to accommodate the prequels. I'm perfectly fine ignoring the fact that the prequels ever existed.

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Lots of the changes he made have nothing to do with the prequels. He screwed that up before they even existed.

Fair point

Star Wars is a story for kids that adults remember fondly. Quite probably a little too fondly. The next generation of kids will get excited by stuff that we consider to be childish.

Yes, including Jar Jar bloody Binks.

As an experiment, I asked my 14 year old son for his five favourite scenes from Star Wars. Any film. His pick?

1. AT-AT battle on Hoth, the Empire Strikes Back.
2. Ewoks versus storm troopers from Return of the Jedi.
3. Darth Maul from Phantom Menace
4. Obiwan versus the Fett family in the asteroid field
5. Luke versus Daddy "No, Luke, I am your father" from Empire.

That's three scenes from the original films and two from the prequels. Thankfully no Jar-Jar, but we do have Ewoks in there.

Once! said:

Maybe. I think time will be kinder to the three prequels that we might expect. A proportion of our antagonism to the second batch of three comes because we have deep affections for the first three. The next generation will be less precious about episodes IV to VI and be a little more charitable, I think.

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I agree. I mostly like episodes II and III.

What ruins the first one for me is not Jar Jar but Jake Lloyd.

And that's because we went to the same high school.

He got expelled for trying to start a fight club.