What genre would this be?

Is it actual "magic" magic, or telepathic/psionic powers? Those seem to get a pass in some softer SF. If it's actual magic, it has to be called fantasy IMO.

Someone's going to bring up Dune and Star Wars and then there's going to be a fight, I can feel it coming...

I wrote something in which fantasy and folklore enmeshed with physics and forensics with an emphasis on plausibility, and called it science/fantasy, a sort of genre mash-up. That seemed to intrigue a few folks and satisfy most.

Don't get hung up on labelling the genre; the market will usually do that with or without your input.

PeteMC said:

Is it actual "magic" magic, or telepathic/psionic powers? Those seem to get a pass in some softer SF. If it's actual magic, it has to be called fantasy IMO.

Someone's going to bring up Dune and Star Wars and then there's going to be a fight, I can feel it coming...

Click to expand...

+1

Telepathy/psionics are acceptable handwaves for what's essentially magic in SF circles, though the the boundaries between SF and F are pretty porous; a lot of it comes down to what certain people point to and declare to be one or the other, so that's the label that sticks. So I'd say soft SF or "science fantasy"... unless you're very clear about the magic being "real" magic. In that case, as PeteMC said, it pretty much has to be marketed as fantasy because SF generally doesn't like the "M" word. Psionics and telepathy and midichlorian-generated energy fields, yes, but not magic.

And even midichlorian powered energy fields gets shoved into fantasy by some nitpicky people because The Force and its mystical elements are pretty indistinguishable from magic and Star Wars would be obvious fantasy if it weren't for the space travel and ship battles.

Science fantasy is considered a genre of its own.

On the topic of "magical" vs. "psionic", I'd view the distinction between science fiction and science fantasy based on whether there's an in-universe "science" to them. Biotic powers in Mass Effect are an understood physics phenomenon in the fictional universe, whereas the Force of Star Wars has a mystical quality to it that places it in the area of fantasy.

(And I knew someone's signature here on AbsoluteWrite summed it up perfectly for me and I was trying to remember whose signature it was, and I didn't even notice until I started searching for it that it's themindstream's signature, which is right above the reply box as I'm typing this. )

If it's got magic that is referred to and understood as such, that would make it fantasy, imo. If it's in an otherwise SF-ey setting, with spaceships and so on, then it sounds like science fantasy. Though stories categorized as space opera and softer SF can incorporate things that seem magical that are explained or framed in vaguely scientific ways (see Star Wars and the Dragonriders of Pern).

In truth, the line can blur sometimes.

Speculative fiction.

An excellent summation.

Speculative fiction is the umbrella term.

This sounds like either science-fantasy or full-blown fantasy depending on the nature of the magic (and, yes, I'm one of those who consider Star Wars fantasy).

I'm going to put in another vote for Science Fantasy for no reason other than it just sounds right to me.

I feel like you have a problem here. You say your story is centered around science and yet there's magic. Most of the successful science fantasy tends to use the science fiction stuff as more of a backdrop (think Star Wars). By focusing on the science, you'll make your readers expect one kind of story. Then you throw in magic and make a completely different kind of story. Is there some way you could come up with some "hand-wavey" scientific explanation for the magic.

Speculative. Wikipedia has a great definition.

i have a hand wavy sorta science explanation for magic llike abilities, so i consider my story as 'soft sf', or sci-fantasy

Soft science fiction generally refers to science fiction in which the science is soft - such as anthropology, psychology, etc. Hard science fiction generally refers to science fiction in which science is hard - physics, astronomy, biology, etc. Magic fits into neither, since it's not soft science or any science. So science fantasy would be a better description than soft science fiction.

I'd never heard the term science fantasy before, but it seems like a good one, for this example and my own project.

"Science fantasy" is a phrase like "diet bacon" or "racing couch". All it does is confuse and obfuscate.

Speculative fiction fits, but only because it could be used to describe ANY fiction work. What if the Downtown family built an Abbey?


Sometimes genre comes down to who wouldn't want to read your story. Many sci-fi people don't care for the sword and sorcery trappings, and if "magic" is explicit they aren't going to want to read it.

Many fantasy people don't care for the modern trappings of sci-fi, and would hate to watch something so obviously sci-fi as Star Wars just to get to a couple of weakly fantasy elements.

"Speculative fiction" seems to mainly be a term used when the events in the book are impossible in a way that can't clearly be assigned to the wonders of science or the common elements of fantasy, but also isn't "magical realism", where the magical elements aren't tools for the characters but uncanny additions to an otherwise regular world - like Kafka.


If I hear "dragon, wizard, magic, prophecy, etc" used in their most common meanings, that's going to be fantasy unless someone has a really good explanation why it shouldn't be. And if it has "space, hyperdrive, robot, laboratory, laser gun, etc" that's science fiction - no matter how sloppy of "fantastic" some elements would be.

No one mistakes Dune for fantasy, despite seeing the future, swordplay, mystical groups and magical substances because all of it is supposed to be grounded in an explainable reality that comes from our own.


If the OP wants to write something that is science fiction with magic and doesn't want it to be called "fantasy", then fantasy cue words like "magic" ought to be avoided and terms like "infinite improbability event" used instead.