Worlds of Design: Fantasy vs. Sci-Fi Part 2

I hope I showed in my last piece that "science vs magic" is not a sufficient way to differentiate fantasy from science fiction. What about other ways?

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What about the size (and speed) of typical vehicles as a separator? Science fiction often has vast spaceships that you "never" see in fantasy, yet even fantasy can have small space-traveling ships as in the Spelljammer setting for AD&D. Games that are clearly fantasy rarely have land or sea vehicles that can travel 60 miles (100 km) an hour or more. They have nothing like airliners or container ships; rarely anything like a railroad (but some do . . .).

Benny Sperling on Twitter suggested "Low tech (fantasy) knights, wizards, kings vs high tech (sci-fi) robots, space ships, AI".

This led me to think that in fantasy the fighting is almost always melee or short range (catapults, arrows, and spells), whereas in science fiction the fighting is almost always at considerable if not immensely long (in outer space) ranges. This is a useful distinction, though with exceptions, in a fantasy video game such as Age of Wonders III, the wizards are casting their battle spells across dozens or hundreds of miles. But I can't think of a fantasy (story or game) with combat ranges longer than the size of a planet . . .

Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom stories involve both short range (sword) and longer range (the Martian warships) fighting; I'd call Barsoom more fantasy than science fiction.

"Science fiction is fantasy about issues of science. Science fiction is a subset of fantasy. Fantasy predated it by several millennia." Raymond E Feist​

The biggest typical explosions in science fiction are immensely greater than the biggest explosions one typically encounters in fantasy.

Knights? We have knights in armor riding horses, we have Jedi Knights, it's just a word. If by Knights we specifically mean armed horsemen who hold their land in fee to an overlord, then we have something that's medieval, and medieval often translates to fantasy. But that's more often because of low tech and short range fighting than because of the feudal system! We can have a fantasy such as Empire of the Petal Throne that has little resemblance to the medieval. (Though some would call EPT science fantasy, because the technology is supposedly science-based.)

Benny also mentioned Kings, but many science-fiction Empire stories involve monarchies. As for "AI", we see fantasy golems and automatons that exhibit signs of intelligence.

What is "science fantasy?" Star Wars, perhaps, but not Star Trek. Scientific trappings over what is otherwise a fantasy? I think I'll try to avoid the term.

Believability might come into all of this. Science fiction can be quite believable, whereas fantasy is almost always fantastic and ultimately unbelievable. Yet one of the most believable fictions in our genres is the Lord of the Rings, clearly a fantasy. Star Wars isn't believable (though it's enjoyable), and many would say it IS a fantasy. Fantasy elements in what is otherwise science fiction tend to break immersion (take the player out of the game), as do scientific elements in what is otherwise fantasy.

Where do we fit in alternate history - for example, Harry Turtledove's series in which the South wins the Civil War? It's no longer real, though starting from our reality, and it may be realistic. Do we just call it Alternate History and leave it at that? This is related to stories, e.g. Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, where time- or multiverse-travelers go to an earlier time(line) and use their knowledge of technology to make big changes. Fantasy? SF?

In the end, I think I have to point first to natural versus supernatural as a means of separating fantasy and science fiction. After that I focus on fighting methods, especially ranges, and to vehicle and explosion sizes. Star Wars is fantasy because of the supernatural elements, the prophecy and The Force, and somehow a lot of melee and short range combat. The Pern books are science-fiction because there is no supernatural element. And so on.

You might be able to have an interesting discussion with your players about this topic. It's an intellectual exercise in considerable part, but one that many have tried over the years if we can judge from the weight of material online.

This article was contributed by Lewis Pulsipher (lewpuls) as part of EN World's Columnist (ENWC) program. You can follow Lew on his web site and his Udemy course landing page. If you enjoy the daily news and articles from EN World, please consider contributing to our Patreon!

 

[Koloth]

IMO, the Pern series makes an excellent case study for this topic. The first two(order of writing, not chronology) books are pure fantasy. Young coming of age girl living in a feudalistic setting learns she has noble blood while she discovers she can talk to flying dragons, which can teleport and breath fire. The White Dragon book starts shifting the series to a post apocalyptic science fiction setting when they discover they are the ancestors of space faring colonists that had a small problem with volcanoes and critters falling from space. This gets repeated somewhat with the Harper set. After that, we the reader probably consider the Pern setting a SciFi setup with lots of fantasy tossed in.

The dragons do complicate the speed of travel side of things as they can teleport(between) pretty much anywhere the rider can visualize to the dragon. Even to other planets.

 

[dragoner]

Science vs magic does work in that by origin, one is natural, and the other is of supernatural origin. Looking beyond just simple effect.

 

[Ed Laprade]

I'll stick with Damon Knight's (I think he was the first to use it) definition: "Science fiction is what I point to when I say it." Every other definition I've ever heard of has exceptions.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Where do we fit in alternate history

Interestingly enough, Harry Turtledove's first entry into alt history per se was Guns of the South, which had a clear sci fi element due to time traveling South Africans. His next entry, How Few Remain, was more pure alt-history in the sense that there are no fantasy or sci fi elements per se, just history going differently than it did.

He also clearly had historically influenced fantasy in the form of the Videssos series, which was definitely fantasy, undoubtedly, but had clear parallels to the Byzantine history he had trained to study.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

I'll stick with Damon Knight's (I think he was the first to use it) definition: "Science fiction is what I point to when I say it." Every other definition I've ever heard of has exceptions.

Basically the "I give up!" definition.

This is why I said these aren't natural kinds in last week's discussion, but instead family resemblances around prototypes, and thus no airtight definition exists. That doesn't mean we can't explore what seems to characterize the prototypes, though.

 

[Hussar]

Not some bad broad brush similarities. And, obviously, exceptions do exist. The Black Company books feature airborn cavalry on flying carpets. Steven Erikson's Malazan books feature continent destructive spells. Even in D&D, we've got things like the Rain of Colorless Fire and the Cataclysm in Krynn for massive effects.

But, like you say, if we look at the stuff that lies in the center of the genres, yeah, I don't have much more than quibbles with this.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Science vs magic does work in that by origin, one is natural, and the other is of supernatural origin. Looking beyond just simple effect.

The big problem with delineating science and magic as natural/supernatural is that most magic in fiction is just a local variation on physics. Wizards understand how magic works, because magic is a natural force in their world, and it can be understood scientifically.

Worlds where magic exist outside of the local natural law, and can't be understood because no deeper explanation exists, are exceptionally rare. Moreover, a world where magic can't be understood makes for a poor game setting, since anything can happen and the players have no way to meaningfully account for it.

 

[dragoner]

The big problem with delineating science and magic as natural/supernatural is that most magic in fiction is just a local variation on physics. Wizards understand how magic works, because magic is a natural force in their world, and it can be understood scientifically.

Worlds where magic exist outside of the local natural law, and can't be understood because no deeper explanation exists, are exceptionally rare. Moreover, a world where magic can't be understood makes for a poor game setting, since anything can happen and the players have no way to meaningfully account for it.

Traditionally it was from a god or god-like beings as the source of magic, a miracle of sorts, and thus beyond simple nature. I don't think it was understood in the times when people still did believe in magic, other than as superstition. It is probably more of a modernistic viewpoint that magic has taken on the trappings of science, probably for modern people to more connect with it.

 

[barasawa]

For me Science Fiction is based on the idea of science, even if sometimes the science is speculative or even that of a different universal set.

Fantasy on the other hand employs the supernatural and magic is supernatural.

Psionics seems to be magic, but the idea that embodies it is that it is the currently not understood potential of the human mind that can direct or even create changes to itself and that which is around it. The standard basis for it is supposed to be scientific.

But writers aren't constrained by the limits of such definitions and are free to write things that embody both SF & F at the same time. Not to mention that things we may assume are one or the other, weren't envisioned as such by the author.

Don't forget these two little phrases you might have seen before...

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
&
Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science.

So at a certain point of development, there's no real reason for us to even argue about it. In general, if it feels like science fiction, call it such. If it feels like fantasy, declare it fantasy. If it seems to have both in it, just call it science fantasy.

Of course there's something easier than trying to pigeon hole everything. If you enjoy it, just call it good.