Sci-fi and sci-fantasy share many things – but differ in key ways.
At nearly 5 years old, in May of 1977, my parents took me to see a movie that would shape my life in a lot of different ways. The opening theme boomed, the famous text crawl scrolled up, and then a ship came flying in – blasting away at a bigger ship in pursuit.
I am, by no stretch of the imagination, the only one on whom Star Wars made a lasting impression on. It not only sparked my love of sci-fi – but opened me to a greater sense of creativity.
Over the years I got to see even more cool sci-fi on the small screen. Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Babylon 5, and Star Trek: TNG and Deep Space Nine. These, and then later sci-fi shows like Farscape, Firefly, and The Expanse, continued to fuel my love of this genre.
As I began to write my own works of sci-fi (and fantasy), I started to become aware that there are two primary divisions of sci-fi. Sci-fi and sci-fantasy
Specifically, sci-fi is futuristic stories with plausible technology employed to explore, colonize, and experience space. The various Star Treks, Babylon 5, The Expanse, and Firefly live here, as they look at a future ideal for humankind and employ tech that’s not beyond plausibility.
Then there is sci-fantasy. Sci-fantasy is futuristic, space-going stories that mix plausible technologies with fantastical notions. Star Wars, Farscape, The Fifth Element, and Dune live here. That’s because they add elements of fantasy like lightsabers, Jedi (space wizards), implausible faster-than-light travel like hyperspace and starburst, powerful superhuman beings, and so on.
I love both of these variations. As a writer, I use both.
Let’s break down how they differ.
Elements of sci-fi
As I wrote above, sci-fi involves plausible futuristic technology.
The Martian, excellent both as a book and a movie, is super-realistic. The science is legitimate, and I am pretty sure most of what they employ getting to, from, and living on Mars is already utterly plausible.
This is sci-fi at its best in many ways. Almost nothing about the story and the way it is told strays from credulity. Additionally, the book and film are both very immersive for the reader/viewer.
The Expanse takes a lot of realistic issues of space travel into account. Without rotation, ships have no gravity and people employ magnetized boots to stick to the deck. There are realtime communication issues thanks to distance. All travel (in the beginning) is in this solar system.
While The Expanse touches on sci-fantasy later, (i.e. the protomolecule and the ring), it still maintains credible realistic potential. What’s to say alien discoveries wouldn’t match this?
The various Star Treks start to bridge the line between sci-fi and sci-fantasy. They have artificial gravity systems, faster-than-light travel via warp speed (which is plausible, save the power it requires) – but they also have offered real ideas for tech that have been applied (if you are reading this on a tablet, that was inspired by Star Trek).
But they do move into sci-fantasy. Everything having to do with Q, the mirror universe, and time travel, for example.
Many other books and movies meet the sci-fi notion because of their plausibility. Most of what they focus on is technologies that are not impossible to conceive of becoming real.
Space travel used to be sci-fi – now we have an International Space Station orbiting the Earth. Many ideas for a worldwide network of information were sci-fi staples – we have the internet.
Elements of sci-fantasy
One of the key things sci-fantasy does is toss out certain, cumbersome issues. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, lack of gravity, life-support, and other questions of plausibility tend to be ignored for the story.
Star Wars is an excellent example of this. Misuse of a parsec as a measure of time, inexplicable hyperspace travel, fires in a vacuum, and unremarked upon artificial gravity are just the beginning. Lightsabers, Jedi, lasers capable of destroying planets, and clones all made off a single being take it way outside plausibility.
And I love it. The stories are still great stories to be told.
Many other sci-fi books, movies, and TV shows are also more sci-fantasy than sci-fi. Farscape, Dune, The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, and more are great entertainment – even if they lack plausibility.
In a lot of ways, it makes sense that fantasy would go sci-fi. If you think about it, a lot of fantasy stories take place on other worlds and feature “aliens”. But since they employ tech like swords and fantastical elements like sorcery, they are fantasy without sci-fi.
One major bridge between these genres is Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series. While it is fantasy – because dragons – they are colonists from Earth. As the series progresses, elements of sci-fi get added to the story, creating true sci-fantasy.
Sci-fantasy is often employed to play on a classic trope. A coming of age story, the hero’s journey, redemption, and so forth. There is a lot of room in sci-fantasy to tell many different stories.
Sci-fi and sci-fantasy are both awesome
I love the idea of space travel. Whether it’s the frequent launches of SpaceX rockets or Star Wars shows and movies, I am all in.
As a writer – my main fiction is sci-fi. Presently, I am working on 2 series – one that is very much sci-fantasy while the other is more sci-fi.
The Void Incursion takes place in another galaxy, mixes multiple faster-than-light travel options, includes aliens of many types and kinds, and humans not from Earth. It was very much inspired by Star Wars and the like.
Forgotten Fodder takes place in the year 2572, after humankind has colonized or terraformed nearby exoplanets – and recently fought a war employing clones as soldiers. Faster-than-light travel is via warp (based on my super-general understanding of the Alcubierre drive concept), and aliens are only mentioned – but are not part of the storyline (yet).
The idea for the clones was inspired by Star Wars (my idea of what the Clone Wars would have been when mentioned ever-so-briefly by Obi-Wan in the original first film) – but the rest involves plausible ideas for future technologies.
Since I love all this genre – I write both sci-fi and sci-fantasy. I believe there are great, entertaining stories to be told on all levels. Hence why I keep writing and sharing my imagination.
Sci-fi and sci-fantasy share many things – but differ in key ways. Both are awesome. Both provide excellent entertainment and can spark the imagination on many levels. I can hardly wait to see where these ideas take me – let alone the rest of humankind – going forward.
Thank you for being part of my ongoing journey, for joining me, and for inspiring me and my craft.
This is the one-hundred and twelfth article exploring the ongoing creative process. Please take a moment to check out the collection of my published works, which can be found here.
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