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Lurker, you're wrong, the genres haven't shifted that far
Most of the stuff that straddles the divide is written by women who don't care about science (there are exceptions, some damn good hard sf written by woman, but its the exception) and just want to play with the setting box and mix it with their fantasy. The stuff that intentionally mixes scifi with fantasy is far and between (like the novels I take my moniker from) and often comes from an RPG background (Shadowrun, Warhammer). But the majority of either genres is very clearly either scifi or fantasy
Years ago, I diagrammed a plot tree for a KotOR TC mod. It was going to be called "Leisure Suit Jedi" and was mostly a drinking and whoring game, but would have elements of harder sci-fi (drug building mini-game, in-game lore and experimentation with reagents) as well as some traditional Star Wars fantasy. As with most large ideas of modding, this never went further, but it would have been fun I think. Anyways, that's a digression.
I enjoyed reading Piers Anthony as a boy and young man. He was cheesy in a way that delighted me, punny and sexist and just enough philosophy to keep my brain involved. The Incarnations of Immortality series did a nice job of blending sci-fi and fantasy, with real elements of both schools.
My rambling TL;dr - I would like to see a game writer with some balls, make a cheeky game with a heavy dose of humor, somehow working some actual sci-fi and/or fantasy elements, in the style of Piers Anthony or Al Lowe.
Yeah, shame about the Forge(even though most of it's units looked a little bit uninspired, still more intereseting than the elementals)
People definitely liked to mix Sci-FI with fantasy, judging by the old fantasy artworks. I don't know why people are avert about adding spaceships into their fantasy rpgs now.
Goddamn I just want oldschool fantasy-scifi combinations back, like the early Ultimas, the later Wizardries (6-8), pretty much all the Might and Magics, Albion, etc.
Those games had such cool, whimsical, and fantastic settings because they didn't let arbitrary genre definitions restrict what they put into the game. Fantasy world with magic, but there's also spaceships and laser guns? HELL YEAH GIMME THAT SHIT
Something like that with modern technology would look absolutely stunning and could be awesome to play.
Sounds like something i would enjoy
I myself can also recommend the K.E. Wagner's bloodstone, if we're talking about the old-school mixing of genre elements.
Come to think of it, i now recall a few "recent" games that did this too, like Heroes of the Annihilated empires or the relatively new Lost Technology. Strange that the latter one doesn't have a thread in the jrpg forum.
I think the one of the main things that tends to distinguish magic in fantasy stories from imaginary pseudo-science in a sci-fi stories is that with "magic" the moral qualities of an action are relevant to their physical consequences. Whether you serve light or darkness, or law or chaos, or whatever, is important to what you are able to do. In some cases one's magical powers might come from gods or elementals or other entities whose desires or intentions have to be taken into account to use the powers they provide to best effect. In a sci-fi story, or for that matter any story that comes to mind other than fantasy, the moral qualities of actions are relevant only indirectly, insofar as they are part of characters' motivations.
The stuff that intentionally mixes scifi with fantasy is far and between (like the novels I take my moniker from) and often comes from an RPG background (Shadowrun, Warhammer). But the majority of either genres is very clearly either scifi or fantasy
Seconded. Also, Darkwar is awesome in part because it seems like pure fantasy at first and only gradually introduces you to all of the science fiction elements. The magical surfboard space program is one Cook’s coolest ideas.
Someone should make the mods change self-eject to Kalerhag.
Instead you are told that some gifted individuals can use it through training and force of will and that it's mostly a mystery. That's fantasy. Except in Episode I, where it's mentioned that affinity to the force is related to the amount of midichlorians in the user's blood. That's sci-fi.
This would mean that many popular science fiction properties, such as Star Wars, don't qualify as sci-fi (I'm aware that SW sometimes isn't considered science fiction, but it's never on these grounds, and the average person on the street would consider SW science fiction) Additionally, the background history of the setting is often superficial to the main plot, themes, and worldbuilding of a given setting. Sure, SF is mostly ostensiby set in the future, but I would say that's more a function of writers' motivations for writing SF and readers' motivations for reading it rather than an essential component of it.
I think bringing up Star Wars in these discussions is often not very useful. A space opera setting that doesn't have Earth heritage as parts of its myth or still existing star system is extremely rare, to be honest except Star Wars is the only I can name right now that does something like that.
It would be much better to bring up something like Star Gate to show that there's a lot of science fiction set in the present, so while future speculation is part of the genre, it's far from the only one.
For me, the only fiction that really makes it hard to categorize is an ostensibly fantasy setting where all of the characters use the scientific method or scientific exploration to further their world view and explore. It fantasy on the surface, but the main plot construction is definitely science fiction IMHO. Can't name anything right now, as I've seen it mostly done in short fiction, and I can't remember the names, but some of those are more complicated than just having aliens, robots and magic.
I was about to say, Star Wars is not really science fiction, it’s a mashup of samurai movies, westerns, World War Two pilot movies, Flash Gordon, and fairy tales. A space opera is not necessarily sci-fi. George Lucas agrees.
From the annotated screenplays:
“I knew from the beginning that I was not doing science fiction. I was doing a space opera, a fantasy film, a mythological piece, a fairy tale. I really thought I needed to establish from the start that this was a completely made up world so that I could do anything I wanted."
Well, that actually cuts to the core issue, what's science fiction. There's lots of crime fiction, adventure fiction, military fiction, even romance, that uses scifi as a setting, but does not inherently have scifi as a core plot. Then there's the mixture, say Barrayar, where science fiction isn't the core, but it's so much a part of the setting and the different cultural norms that its hard to take out the scifi and have anything meaningful left.
And then you have science fiction where both setting and plot structure is all about doing science, exploring the universe. Basically everything from Greg Egan. Many of the hard sf writers.
You could go super-granular and then try to exclude all the stuff that doesn't fit a very narrow definition of scifi, which I don't because I don't find it useful, but I understand if some people want to do it, but on the other hand if you include everything that has even an inkling of scifi then the genre categorization loses any meaning.
Most of the stuff that falls easily into scifi by dint of setting, like military SF, crime SF, romance SF, etc. is scifi in my book if there's no reason to exclude it. For edge cases I usually do it on a case-by-case base. E.g. Warhammer and Star Wars are not scifi in my book, despite all the setting tropes, but Shadowrun is due to its approach to developing science as part of how the setting is set up.
Lurker, you're wrong, the genres haven't shifted that far
Most of the stuff that straddles the divide is written by women who don't care about science (there are exceptions, some damn good hard sf written by woman, but its the exception) and just want to play with the setting box and mix it with their fantasy. The stuff that intentionally mixes scifi with fantasy is far and between (like the novels I take my moniker from) and often comes from an RPG background (Shadowrun, Warhammer). But the majority of either genres is very clearly either scifi or fantasy
Because I tend to notice this the most in RPG games. I think RPG games are also a lot better for these genres compared to other mediums and I want to talk about this in how it specifically relates to the kind of stories I've seen over the years.
Well, that actually cuts to the core issue, what's science fiction. There's lots of crime fiction, adventure fiction, military fiction, even romance, that uses scifi as a setting, but does not inherently have scifi as a core plot. Then there's the mixture, say Barrayar, where science fiction isn't the core, but it's so much a part of the setting and the different cultural norms that its hard to take out the scifi and have anything meaningful left.
And then you have science fiction where both setting and plot structure is all about doing science, exploring the universe. Basically everything from Greg Egan. Many of the hard sf writers.
You could go super-granular and then try to exclude all the stuff that doesn't fit a very narrow definition of scifi, which I don't because I don't find it useful, but I understand if some people want to do it, but on the other hand if you include everything that has even an inkling of scifi then the genre categorization loses any meaning.
Most of the stuff that falls easily into scifi by dint of setting, like military SF, crime SF, romance SF, etc. is scifi in my book if there's no reason to exclude it. For edge cases I usually do it on a case-by-case base. E.g. Warhammer and Star Wars are not scifi in my book, despite all the setting tropes, but Shadowrun is due to its approach to developing science as part of how the setting is set up.
I think it could be also put that labels fantasy and sci-fi have become to mean so vague that they don't really mean anything any more. It's very true that mere existence of spaceships (Star Wars) can't be used to classify works, be those films or games. At the same time people who like sci-fi and fantasy are among target groups.
There used to be this thing called 'Science-fantasy'. IIRC it originally covered sort of comics published in Heavy Metal magazine. What was posted earlier is pretty good example:
People definitely liked to mix Sci-FI with fantasy, judging by the old fantasy artworks. I don't know why people are avert about adding spaceships into their fantasy rpgs now.
I think perhaps digging up some of these definitions would be good. At least for giving people who are making new products and perhaps fresh ideas to finally to kill Star Wars / Trek, easy way to define and market their ideas/works even when they fall between supposed hard sci-fi and fantasy.
While your approach works it sort of also has to because how I see it, there's no real alternate. At least what comes to novels, there appears to be a lot of different sub-genres and also lot of overlap within these sub-genres. It also looks like every second author and publisher out there tends to maximise products visibility by pushing it in as many categories as possible. So in the end also these sub-genres are more or less useless for finding anything.
But I don't think this is really a good thing. It makes finding new works difficult and I'm not sure if it's always the best for the the authors / studios either.
I don't know, I think it was on some DVD extras on James Bond DVD's how carefully creators of that franchise were to define it first and foremost not action, but fantasy.
Wait, I don't see any fantasy elements in Dune. Would you mean that the navigators of the guild are magicians ? It's more like a blend of altered consciousness and cybernetics (in the sense of enhancing and programming the brain, spiced with some hardcore eugenics).
You know what kind of RPG I want? An RPG that combines scifi and fantasy to achieve the same kind of atmosphere that is exuded by the artworks of people like Luis Royo and other classic art dudes.
Awesome shit.
Fuck off with that generic elf and dwarf shit that's already gotten stale 20 years ago, give me some cool stuff like this instead!
It's supposed to be fantasy! Make it fantastic! Do something cool with it!
Peoples' constant insistence that science fiction must necessarily be fiction about science in this thread is almost as stupid as people on Reddit insisting that RPGs must be games about roleplaying.
I think it could be also put that labels fantasy and sci-fi have become to mean so vague that they don't really mean anything any more. It's very true that mere existence of spaceships (Star Wars) can't be used to classify works, be those films or games. At the same time people who like sci-fi and fantasy are among target groups.
There used to be this thing called 'Science-fantasy'. IIRC it originally covered sort of comics published in Heavy Metal magazine. What was posted earlier is pretty good example:
Disagree, I think most people still have very clear idea what scifi or fantasy means. Edge cases have been there since the beginning of both genres, but that doesn't mean that definitions that touch on what makes each genre distinct are useless. As for science fantasy, I don't think it was ever that big in terms of output and mostly a genre definition that deep insiders used, the casual reader probably didn't have much of a clue what it exactly meant (same problem speculative fiction has as a term, the New Wave tried to push it, but most fans, unlike writers, never got warm to it)
Wait, I don't see any fantasy elements in Dune. Would you mean that the navigators of the guild are magicians ? It's more like a blend of altered consciousness and cybernetics (in the sense of enhancing and programming the brain, spiced with some hardcore eugenics).
Seriously? One could easily argue that it doesn’t matter if the “magic” in Dune is done with drugs and selective breeding and weirding modules, but that’s not really the point I’m making.
By fantastic elements, I mean that within the first three pages of Dune, an old witch comes to the Atreides castle on Caladan and tells Paul that he’s the chosen one. He can sense when someone else is lying (intoduced a few pages later in chapter 1), as if by magic, and this is how Herbert’s style describes it, like he’s receiving a revelation. He can go into a trance to predict the future; this has the same explanation as a similar ability in R. Scott Bakker’s The Prince or Nothing series. A powerful enough mind can take in all the data to make accurate projections. Bakker is fantasy with science fiction elements, Dune is sci-fi or space opera with fantastic elements.
What else? In Dune, the weirding way is literally just magic. “Focus real hard, discipline your mind and your mind can overcome the laws of physics” is sorcery by any definition you might care to name. That’s fantastic. Obviously science fiction often flouts the laws of physics, but how an author breaks them seems like it should matter. Warp speed/hyperdrive/any other kind of FTL: science fiction. Using your mind to rewrite reality, magic. Even within Frank Herbert’s world this kind of mind over matter is taken as a given—it’s a hallmark of the Dune universe. Much like the force.
Another classic example would be Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light (incidentally this is Tim Cain’s favorite book). The ruling caste on a colony world uses their control of technology to turn themselves into gods (for all intents and purposes) and make the normals worship them; everything has a pseudo-scientific explanation but the book is written in a mythic tone. Yet at the same time, the central conflict is entirely about technology—who gets access to it and who doesn’t. Very hard to categorize: sci-fi written as fantasy; sort of thing was more common among new wafe SF writers in the 60s and 70s.
If any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, then stories about any sufficiently advance technology can easily frame themselves as fantasy. The more I think about it, the more I suspect that it’s a matter of tone as much as tropes. Going back to Dune, when you read the first page, you know you’re in a fairy tale (not that this is a bad thing, Dune is great, but it’s very far from pure sci-fi).
Here’s how the story kicks off:
In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul.
It was a warm night at Castle Caladan, and the ancient pile of stone that had served the Atreides family as home for twenty-six generations bore that cooled-sweat feeling it acquired before a change in the weather.
The old woman was let in by the side door down the vaulted passage by Paul's room and she was allowed a moment to peer in at him where he lay in his bed.
By the half-light of a suspensor lamp, dimmed and hanging near the floor, the awakened boy could see a bulky female shape at his door, standing one step ahead of his mother. The old woman was a witch shadow - hair like matted spiderwebs, hooded 'round darkness of features, eyes like glittering jewels.
"Is he not small for his age, Jessica?" the old woman asked. Her voice wheezed and twanged like an untuned baliset.
Paul's mother answered in her soft contralto: "The Atreides are known to start late getting their growth, Your Reverence."
"So I've heard, so I've heard," wheezed the old woman. "Yet he's already fifteen."
"Yes, Your Reverence."
"He's awake and listening to us," said the old woman. "Sly little rascal." She chuckled. "But royalty has need of slyness. And if he's really the Kwisatz Haderach . . . well . . ."
Within the shadows of his bed, Paul held his eyes open to mere slits. Two bird-bright ovals - the eyes of the old woman - seemed to expand and glow as they stared into his.
"Sleep well, you sly little rascal," said the old woman. "Tomorrow you'll need all your faculties to meet my gom jabbar."
The fairy tail/fantastic tone, mixed with the sci-fi setting, is among the things that make Dune so good.
Edit: But this stuff stands out precisely because, as Grauken noted, it’s pretty rare.
You know what kind of RPG I want? An RPG that combines scifi and fantasy to achieve the same kind of atmosphere that is exuded by the artworks of people like Luis Royo and other classic art dudes.
Awesome shit.
Fuck off with that generic elf and dwarf shit that's already gotten stale 20 years ago, give me some cool stuff like this instead!
It's supposed to be fantasy! Make it fantastic! Do something cool with it!
It's a sad thing when stoner-doom, heavy metal and prog are the only forms entertainment that still consistently supply this kind of aesthetic style and setting in concept albums.
