Discussion Main / ScienceFantasy

Why were The Elder Scrolls examples removed from this page?

Would John Carter be a leigitmate candidate for inclusion for this page?

Someone should add The Twilight Zone to Live-Action TV section, since it blurs the line between Fantasy and Sci-fi.

Anyone agree?

Code Geass is usually the square peg tropes want to shove into all of the round tropes, so even thought it seems like it should be here, I have to wonder if there's a reason why it's not... are the mecha considered fantasy and not science-fiction?

As part of the Trope Repair Shop thread,, these items are parked in the discussion page. If you are sure that these works fit the definition of Science Fantasy, please add them to Science Fantasy.

• Dante's Divine Comedy has the distinction of having started out on one side of the line, and migrating to the other. To quote Larry Niven:
  The Divine Comedy is an immortal fantasy, but only time has made it so. It was the first hard science fiction novel! It has all the earmarks. It's a trilogy. Its scope has never been exceeded. The breadth of the author's research is very apparent: theology, the classics, architecture, geography, astrology, all of the major fields of study of Dante's day.
• The Wheel Of Time is a quite a traditional fantasy series in many ways. However, in the current stories distant past, some very obviously advanced technology was in use, e.g. cars, planes, trains. In addition, all the current evil creatures were created back then with what is quite explicitly genetic engineering, and it's arguable whether the One Power should be classed as "magic" or more of a scifi "cosmic energy" thing.
• John Ringo's "Council Wars" series is far-future science fiction; however, due to genetic engineering, computer uploading of personality, and various nanotech systems the society in very much like fantasy. Justified in this case because people deliberately made it so (such as choosing to become dwarfs, or engineering dragons or elves). And when the computer that controls it all is ordered to shut it all down by the Ruling Coucil (a group of spoiled, dilletante posthumans with various crackpot ideals they're just aching to impose on the world), the remaing Terrans (the ones with drive and ambition have long since left Earth to build their own worlds) find themselves in a sudddenly non-industrial lifestyle for which they are woefully unprepared.
• The Culture is set A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away... (the books are set between the Middle Ages and near future in Earth time, and some Culture citizens visited Earth in the 1970s), and is mostly science fiction, with aliens, spaceships, etc. However, several books in the series have characters who are nobility on Feudal Future type planets and those parts tend to have a very Medieval European Fantasy feel. The series is generally classified as Science Fiction, but is in the Space Opera sub-genre, which is generally "softer".
• R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing series features a standard fantasy milieu.... with interstellar-traveling shapeshifters being the (thus far) main bad guys.
• Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy features interstellar empires in the 26th century AD invaded by body-stealing ghosts. Generally sold as Sci-Fi.
  • If that wasn't enough, his style of science-fiction is generally very "hard" - but mixed with fantastic elements, such as the aforementioned bodysnatching souls.
• Janny Wurts's The Cycle Of Fire has psychic aliens and a human spaceship with Artificial Intelligence, but they're all marooned on an isolated planet where the humans colonists have regressed to the middle ages and the aliens are posing as demons. Generally sold as fantasy.
• Jennifer Fallon's Second Sons series, sold as fantasy but described by the author as "medieval Sci-Fi." No references to Earth or any Applied Phlebotinum of any kind; could be sold as historical fiction, but for its being set in an obviously off-world location (with two suns). The author relates an editor's comment after having read most of the first book: "You realize there's no magic in here, right?"
• The Divide features a world where the inhabitants view science about the same way we view magic, and several of the other characters are very impressed when a kid from our world figures out that the lock on their cell is actually magnetic, and opens it with science.
• C.S. Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy is a scifi series with a heavy fantasy overlay (or a fantasy series with a scifi underpinning, depending how you look at it). It's set on a Lost Colony in which the disaster that struck was the presence of an energy called the Fae, which responds to human thoughts, both conscious and unconscious, manifesting whatever was envisioned or imagined. Those with a strong will and imagination can thus do what is, for all intents and purposes, magic. And those with strong belief — or who can gather a group of believers — can perform miracles.
  • And everyone, whether they want to or not, will manifest their conscious or subconscious fears in the form of horrifying, often man-eating monsters.
• Simon Hawke's books, such as "The Wizard of 4th Street" series are mostly set in the 23rd century, after the collapse of a technology-driven society, when magic is rediscovered.
• Completely averted by Cryptonomicon, which is more "fiction about science" than "science fiction".
  • Or maybe not completely, since there is a character that dies and then comes back to life.
• The Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft tend to veer both ways, in that magic is really about math, while on the other hand science is usually wrong on the nature of Universe. There are gods, but the iconic ones, like Cthulhu, are treading the boundary of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens.
• Sharon Shinn's Archangel series starts out as fantasy but gains more sci-fi overtones as the mechanisms behind the more fantastic-seeming parts of the universe are explained.
• The Pendragon Adventure could fit into this: some parts of it could easily roll as Fantasy, like Solara or certain aspects of the time and space travel, while other parts of that could also fit into Sci-Fi, as could some of the territories.
• The novel "Tale Of The Comet" by Ronald Green has "Magic vs. Machine" as it's tagline. A group of space aliens accidentally unleash a Horde of Alien Locusts on an idyllic Standard Fantasy Setting. The chief engineer of said space aliens eventually learns a "Purify Food and Drink" spell, using the ship's technical manual as a stand-in for a spellbook.
• Jim Grimsley explores this theme over the course of three novels: Kirith Kirin, The Ordinary and The Last Green Tree. The first novel is high fantasy, although readers may feel a sense that there is a "scientific" feeling when magic is discussed in detail. The novel also has a strange set of commentaries at the end written by an author from a seemingly technological society commenting on historical events in this fantasy world. In The Ordinary, we meet the author of these commentaries and learn that the fantasy world is linked via a dimensional gateway to a hard science fiction future human colony world. Culture clash naturally ensues. In The Last Green Tree "magic" has seemingly become dominant over "science", but the question of whether "magic" is really just a kind of super-science comes into play, especially as a new enemy appears that uses "magic" but seems to refrain from window-dressing it as such.
• Haruki Murakami's Hardboiled Wonderland And The End Of The World has a science fiction and fantasy story running parallel to each other, but with the same protagonist. Only one has a happy ending.
• Nnedi Okorafor's The Shadow Speaker and Zahrah the Windseeker both are mixtures of sci-fi and fantasy, though Zahrah the Windseeker is more explicitly fantasy. Both take place in futuristic worlds that are very high tech (the former taking place in a future Earth and the latter taking place in another realm that is close to Earth) that also have various people with magical powers.
• A weird version with Octavia Butler's fantasy book Kindred, which tends to be shelved in "African-American fiction", mainly because the book deals with race relations(even though it's about a girl time traveling back to 1860s America).

Removed: Fantasy Kitchen Sink is the version of this trope without science fiction, Sci-Fi Kitchen Sink is the version without fantasy.

No, it isn't. Fantasy Kitchen Sink is where you have all kinds of fantasy from dragons to Dreamtime all in the same universe together — every legend and story from our world is coexisting in this universe.

Removing the scifi from science fantasy leaves you with regular fantasy, not a mix of every possible fantasy trope ever.