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2007-07-24, 12:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
Hello, everyone. I don't post much and this is the first thread I've started, I don't even have my own avatar yet (I'm getting to that), but I just realized that this topic was not on these forums yet, and I wanted to see what all your oppinions were about it.
Is it usually a good idea to mix sci-fi and fantasy, or is it better to pick one because of the distinct feel that gets taken away when the other is added (specifically when sci-fi is added to fantasy)?
This thread actually serves another purpose; it turns out that I specifically need some advice related to this topic. I am currently writing a fantasy series that I originally intended to have the same feel as Lord of The Rings; you know, epic, medieval, realistic, etc. But now I face an issue.
I have this race all thought up called the Axel Gnomes... but they are a technological race, unlike the entirety of the rest of my world. In fact, the best thing i could say to compare them to would be gnomes in World of Warcraft, which seem to fit into that fantasy environment fine, but I'm not sure what it would do to mine. At one point in the lore, the Axel Gnomes, trying to create a portal between worlds, accidentally blew up half of the continent of Vverevar. It turns out that Vverevar had actually been teleported to another world and ocean had taken it's place, but no one could tell the difference.
Either way, the elves on the other side were pretty pissed off about this, because many of their forests stretched to the now-destroyed half of the continent. They massed armies and advanced on the gnome cities, until the gnomes, in a desperate attempt to surrender, pleaded that they could re-build the continent. The elves were confused, but reluctantly agreed, trying to decide what they could actually do. It turns out the gnomes had perfected the portal, and traveled to many worlds to gather the land, bring it back, and piece it together with alloys and titanium. After a hundred and thirty years, the landmass was completed, but the gnomes, realizing how much time they had spent on this new continent, refused to give it to the elves and kept it for their own. This resulted in a large scale war between the elves and gnomes, the lore for which i have all figured out with many twists and strategic... stuff.
Sorry about rambling there, it was just to give you guys an idea on the Axel Gnomes. So if anyone thinks either way about whether I should include this race or if it would ruin this type of fantasy, please feel free to tell me why.
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2007-07-24, 01:01 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
Well, if it's done well, it's awesome.
The books I've been trying to write for the past upteen-billion (read: I either put them off or re-write them) are a mix of sci-fi and fantasy.
Unicorns in space? Dear god, no.Avatar by Shades of Gray
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2007-07-24, 01:02 AM (ISO 8601)
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2007-07-24, 01:05 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
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2007-07-24, 01:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
I agree, if it is done well, it can be really interesting. Disbelief can be suspended for all kinds of incredible things as long as the world you create is engaging and consistent. The thing that really makes me mad is when an author creates a great fantasy world, and then ruins it by revealing some sci-fi deus ex machina. Please, please don't reveal any forgotten starships left behind by super-advanced colonists millenia before. That's all I ask.
Many thanks to Castaras for the avatar!
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2007-07-24, 02:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
If you can pull it off right, then by all means, it will work.
I've tried mixing Zerg with common medieval fantasy, magic, swords, etc. It didn't mesh well.
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2007-07-24, 02:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
It all depends.
Sometimes it can be done well. Other times(and most of the time, in my experience), it doesn't work at all.
I personally don't really like the fantasy turning into sc-fi stuff, but that's just me."I'm just going on motive and opportunity here and the fact that if the earth got swallowed by a black hole, I'd look suspiciously in your direction first."
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2007-07-24, 03:38 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
It's all a matter of presentation. I'd like to cite Arthur C. Clarke on this:
Originally Posted by Arthur C. Clarke
For example, you could write about a golem, upon which a gnome rides. It moves with tremendous speed, and it rushes forward with a constant roar, which doesn't seem to come so much from it's mouth as from its belly - in fact, it doesn't have a mouth, it resembles most closely a headless horse - that's the best comparison possible, anyway. Instead of legs, it has two circular disks of shimmering steel, inscribed with runes. Behind it, it leaves a trail of black smoke.
And you have yourself a motorbike.
EDIT: For clarification: What I mean is you could allow science and technology to exist in your world, and still maintain full fantasy atmosphere by consistently describing said technology in the way the inhabitants of your fantasy world would perceive said technology, which would be as magic. This would require, of course, that non of these gnomes would be a major protagonist (or at least not a gnome skilled in the technological ways of his/her people, which could be easily done if, for example, most gnomes considered technology to be magic as well and only Inner Circle elite gnomes understood it for what it truly is).
Concerning whether one should mix sci-fi and fantasy in general, I'd say: of course, if that's the story one wants to tell! There are no rules for imagination what works and what doesn't! If all dragons had to be like Tolkien's, LeGuin's Earthsea could not exist!Last edited by Winterwind; 2007-07-24 at 04:52 AM.
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2007-07-24, 04:26 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
Originally Posted by SweetLikeLemons
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2007-07-24, 05:37 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
So, the answer is 'maybe'?
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2007-07-24, 05:56 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
It can certainly go both ways. It's been done a lot in anime already: Vision of Escaflowne, and to a lesser extent Magic Knight Rayearth. There's also an old SNES game: Super Robot Wars Gaiden: The Lord of Elemental. The Lord of Elemental had magical mecha in a world inside the planet Earth, along with not-so-magical stuff.
The protagonist's mech is Cybuster. Pretty cool stuff.
Then there's a whole bunch of Final Fantasy games, though some are arguably more fantasy-centric.
I don't find anything really wrong with combining the two--magic could be seen as a science anyway. Of course, doing it in an original way is quite difficult.
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2007-07-24, 07:49 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
I'll throw in my hat by paraphrasing an article by, I think Asimov, regarding the difference between magic and science-fiction:
Say you have this techno-race in your fantasy universe. Heck, say there is no magic, it's all technology.
If you treat technology like you would magic, it's still fantasy. So this technology is fickle, hard-to-understand, and never explained outside of esoteric technobabble.
Now let's flip things. You have a universe with magic and mysticism, wind, fire, all that kind of thing.
If you explain this magic, giving it rules and boundaries and treating it like, essentially, technology, you're writing science fiction. You toss in enough magical diagrams, you may even be writing 'hard' science fiction.
It doesn't matter what you have in your story. It matters only how you present it.
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2007-07-24, 08:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
Pern starts off as sci-fi. The fact that it's low-tech doesn't make it any less sci-fi. From the very beginning you know that they are colonists from a distant star, many thousands of years later, and have lost their technology. Pern is not fantasy, at any point. You know from the very first book that the dragons are genetically engineered, that there's no magic.
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2007-07-24, 08:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
The Acorna series by Anne McCaffrey?
Yeah, sci-fi/fantasy mix is Anne's trademark. Pern? OMG THERE ARE DRAGONS! But in the fourth or fifth book it turns out that Pern was intended to be a pastoral retreat colony for war veterans and gypsies and the dragons were genetically engineered from mini-dragons that were native to the planet when they got there. The Rowan? TK in space. Acorna? Unicorns in space.Town Character: Delaney, The Thirteenth Gale
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2007-07-24, 08:38 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
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2007-07-24, 08:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
Funny. I knew it from the start. (And I started reading it back in the early 80's). A book or two later and it's clearly described in the prologue. The one below is copied from an exerpt from Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern in 1983. It was used previously as well.
Originally Posted by repeatedly used prologue in the seriesLast edited by Talya; 2007-07-24 at 08:50 AM.
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2007-07-24, 08:46 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
axel gnomes....led by a bard with an electric lute...that goes by the name of Axel rose...
ok...I have to cut down the chocolate supplies...
In my opinion the mix is...well.. a mix..I don't really like it. I also never liked the darkover saga, by marion zimmer bradley...(also the underlying tecnological nature of the artifacts in the avalon serie is quite "polluting" the saga, I think)
in Italy we would say it is meat nor fish...
I can understand a star trekkian style of people who get shipwrecked with their spaceship on a world where magic exists, but that's about it (and even then I notice that the analytic mind of the author tends to "explain" the nature of magic, spoiling part of the mistery)
no, I've started by reading historical adventures (Dumas, verne, Conan Doyle, Poe, and then LOTR and epic fantasy... )...mixing the "epic/sword/magic/historic" with computers, ancient highly evolved races, tecnological artifacts or steampower is simply not my taste
fantasy is fantasy, and SF is SF... Asimov rules...(I agree that "Dune" and "star wars" have many fantastic elements, but it's still SF
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2007-07-24, 08:51 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
The Spellsinger series by Allen Dean Foster also has some Sci-fi mixed into the fantasy.
At least a couple of Barbara Hambly's series do as well: Darwath and the Windrose chronicles
Star wars is a cross between fantasy and sci-fi
Robert Heinlein's Glory Road appears to be fantasy in places rather than sci-fi. Orphans of the sky is sci-fi where the characters are so regressed that they don't know it.
As mentioned, the Pern books are sci-fi that masquerade a bit as fantasy (though they are obviously sci-fi from early on).
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2007-07-24, 09:06 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
Sci-fi is fantasy.
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2007-07-24, 09:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
Generally i am all for mixing it up anyway you like, it is just unless the Gnomes have some way of holding all the elves-whoever is in your world away it is unlikely that noone would have "sold-spied-stolen" some of the information-technologi, in a world ruled by magic knowledge is power and some people go very far to get power, same in a world ruled by technology so there need to be a very solid reason for it to be only the Gnomes who have obtained this knownledge, that is where i see most "sci-fi-fantasy" stories fail is that is so unlikely that no one would investigate "ruins" or old artifacts heck we as humans do it everyday at the moment :)
If you can manage to do give a good reason then no problem at all, basicly its the same as have been said before, presentation is all.
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2007-07-24, 10:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
Hmm. If I remember correctly, the first trilogy (Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and The White Dragon) alluded if anything. Moreta, although it happened well before the first trilogy, was written/published after. Then again, my copies are packed away in my school stuff, so I can't verify it. Also, it probably helped that I read Dragonflight when I was 9 or 10, so I'll allow myself the suspension of disbelief.
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2007-07-24, 11:02 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
In general the difference between sci-fi and fantasy is that both have some sort of special power that doesn't exist in the real world and fantasy explains it as magic while sci-fi does some techno babble and hand waving to explain it as science. The special power is dangerous as anything so loosely defined often ends up becoming deus ex machina. What cheapens sci fi and fantasy is when new gadgets/spells are invented at a whim to dig your way out of a plot hole. I think it as Aasimov that said that good scifi involves throwing exactly one new premise at the reader and sticking to it.
To get back to your question, well, I don't think people should mix the two genres most of the time. If you're doing it just to see what happens, it's probably a bad idea. If you have a solid reason for it it can of course be very compelling. And of course throwing some flavor into a story is rarely a bad idea. A world with magic would probably develop some very different technologies than our world, so showing some of those would give the world flavor without taking away from the fantasy focus. I think that that's where your gnomes would fit in. Not really a mixture of sci fi and fantasy, but a little sci fi resting pleasantly in a fantasy world.If you like what I have to say, please check out my GMing Blog where I discuss writing and roleplaying in greater depth.
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2007-07-24, 12:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
I think technology and magic can be mixed, up to a point. For a particularly good example of this, I'd point you toward's Sierra's Arcanum world, combining steampunk with fantasy to create a very interesting world.
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2007-07-24, 12:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
Absolutely sure you're right about Dragonflight and Dragonquest. They certainly did slowly reveal that aspect of the setting, though. It wasn't deus ex machina, it was planned from the start. I can't be sure about White Dragon, however, despite being the third book in that trilogy, it was not the third book she wrote in that setting.
Dragonflight (1968)
Dragonquest (1970)
"The Smallest Dragonboy" (1973)
Dragonsong (1976)
Dragonsinger (1977)
The White Dragon (1978)
Dragondrums (1979)
Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern (1983)
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2007-07-24, 01:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
While more fantasy than anything, Terry Pratchett's stuff has elements of both. I think its perfectly fine to mix so long as its not two extremes, such as a spaceship full of alien wizards attempting to cascade multiple dimensions in the ultimate game of Tetris. That stuff just doesn't work, but adding subtle elements of one into a full on world of another if fine. Sci-Fi is also a very broad term, it could simply be anything to do with space, which would have very little problems adapting in a fantasy book.
Last edited by Eitel; 2007-07-24 at 01:40 PM.
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2007-07-24, 02:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
It depends, partially on what you mean by sci-fi. There's sci fi in the sense that it explores the possibilities for humanity, on what we might accomplish, where we're going, and what may be. Then there's sci-fi that's just fantasy with spaceships and ray guns instead of dungeons and dragons. Technological/social speculation probably doesn't have a place in epic fantasy, but there isn't any reason you can't include elements that might seem sci-fi-ish. The distinction in this case is mostly artificial, anyways. For example, you know how the Death Star works? Magic. Yeah, yeah, they say it's a machine and all that, but such a thing isn't even possible, and it gives no explaination on why it might be possible, so it's magic.
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2007-07-24, 02:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
Well, I was about 12 or 13 when I read them, so it is possible I missed some of the more subtle clues. I just know little 13-year-old-me felt kind of betrayed when all the wonderful long-forgotten technology started showing up. Eventually I just lost all interest in the series.
Many thanks to Castaras for the avatar!
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2007-07-24, 03:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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2007-07-24, 04:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Should people mix sci-fi and fantasy?
Last edited by Vespe Ratavo; 2007-07-24 at 04:27 PM.
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2007-07-24, 05:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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