Blending Fantasy and Science-Fiction

[Mallus]

I’m basically looking for people’s thoughts and suggestions on such crossovers.

Read China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, Fred Saberhagen's Empire of the East, Julian May's Saga of the Plioscene Exile, Stephen Donaldson's Mirror books, and M.A.R. Barker's Tekumel novels...

...and Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter...

 

[I'm A Banana]

Much of my games have a bit of Sci-fi-ish stuff injected into them. Mostly because they're inspired by Final Fantasy...

So you'll have a tower in the desert that has robots and warmechs and contains a time loop, and a spaceship can travel to the moon, and you've got a robot buried beneath a mountain, but the world is 90% sword-and-sorcery.

Or you'll have a world where technology has superceded magic (which is just being discovered again) making something Steampunk-like with spells and swords.

Or a world that's almost completely 'modern' except there's magic and monsters thrown into the mix -- there exists documentaries on the ecology of the Chimera on the Discovery Channel (and you thought Walking with Dinosaurs was cool!).

Or a world where genetic experiments and magic go hand-in-hand as technology overwhelms the natural world (Manapunk).

Or a world that's mostly rennaisence-style, with Shakespere being able to cast cantrips.

The mix makes some great combos, fer sher.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Re: Re: Blending Fantasy and Science-Fiction

Read China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, Fred Saberhagen's Empire of the East, Julian May's Saga of the Plioscene Exile, Stephen Donaldson's Mirror books, and M.A.R. Barker's Tekumel novels...

...and Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter...

Or the Pern novels.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Whenever I think of Sci/Fi and Fantasy crossovers, I think of the movie Krull. I like the idea of a setting where one world (advanced tech.) invades another (medieval/magical). However, I think the thing with this Sci-Fi/Fantasy combination is that magic usually seems like just another form of technology or vice versa. From a player's standpoint, if the laser blaster does as much damage as a blast from a wand of fireballs, then the mystery and wonder quickly leaves.

Was it Aasimov, or Arthur C. Clarke, who said that technology, at sufficiently high levels, becomes indistinguishable from magic?

 

[NPC]

Although it's a pretty common idea, I like the idea of a post-apocalyptic world where technology is ancient and magic has preeminence.

I always liked the cartoon, Thundar the Barbarian. Ukla(sp?) the Moc(sp?) rocked. That cartoon world had a great combination of science and fantasy.

From a gaming perspective, I will sometimes transport a "modern" NPC into a DnD game I'm running just to add a bit of spice. Side note: now that D20 Modern is out, this is a lot easier.

I guess one concern for me in this kind of mixing is that there's a balance between the science fiction and the fantasy, so that one doesn't overshadow the other.

Although it might be interesting to play in a milieu where one was overshadowing the other . . . Do you develop your character a certain way knowing that she could be obsolete in the future?

 

[Goobermunch]

Was it Aasimov, or Arthur C. Clarke, who said that technology, at sufficiently high levels, becomes indistinguishable from magic?

Clarke's Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

--G

 

[Methuslah]

Although it might be interesting to play in a milieu where one was overshadowing the other . . . Do you develop your character a certain way knowing that she could be obsolete in the future? [/B][/QUOTE]

That is a very interesting idea - a sorceror in a world where magic is dying (perhaps modelled on some of Niven's fantasy stories), or a technologist on a world where the forces that power technology are fading...

There's meat for an article or a short story there - anyone wnt to submit it for Almanac or Lenurian Dreams?

Richard Tongue,
Transfinite Publications,
http://www.transfinitepublications.com
Methuslah@tongue.fsnet.co.uk

 

[mmadsen]

A lot of science-fiction is almost indistinguishable from fantasy, including some early, extremely influential sci-fi, like Edgar Rice Burrough's John Carter of Mars (Barsoom) stories. Star Wars is basically fantasy. Post-apocalyptic stories are often fantasy (Gamma World, Thundarr, etc.).

Try running a low-magic D&D game without telling the players it's post-apocalyptic Earth.

 

[BlackMoria]

A more recent Sci-Fi meets Fantasy adventure than Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is 'The Tale of the Comet'.

Crashed spaceship....sort of a Terminator / Borg / Stargate mishmash of elements. But fun in it own way.

 

[Desdichado]

Many have already chimed in, but I'm curious where you fall out on the "lumper" vs. "splitter" spectrum in terms of genre definition. At one end, we have the libraries, bookstores and publishers that lump all of it together under "science fiction." At the other end, we have folks that talk about highly specialized sub-genres as discreet entities.

There's some other muddying points: by fantasy and science fiction, do you mean traditional fantasy and hard science fiction, for instance? There are some works that really blur the boundaries -- Anne McCaffrey's Pern books are science fiction works with traditional fantasy trappings, while Star Wars or Dune are fantasy works with traditional science fiction trappings.

Or do you just mean, what do I do personally? I've been all over the spectrum in terms of trappings, although at heart, I tend to lean more toward science fiction. I only invoke the truly fantastic and unexplainable when there's a really compelling reason to do so, and I also tend to even regulate stuff like magic into a pseudo-scientific system.