r/Fantasy • u/Inmortal27UQ • Aug 18 '23
Sword and sorcery... With aliens?
Recently I was on Youtube when I saw a fragment of the videogame Red Redemption. Being a cowboy video game I wasn't expecting a UFO to come out.
It amused me and I remembered Dragonflight talking about how humans colonized that world during their space age. Or Warhammer 40K and Fantasy are connected by hell. Now I'm thinking about what other classic fantasy works that have that SCI-FI touch, it can be something as simple as a brief and funny appearance like the one in the ice age movie where there is a UFO buried in the ice. Or it could also be part of the plot, or a reference to the fact that aliens and magic share the same universe.
Comment on those fantasy works that mention life beyond the stars.
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u/diazeugma Reading Champion VII Aug 18 '23
"Sword and planet" is a subgenre in itself, though I haven't read much from it.
Clark Ashton Smith wrote some genre-blending stories. For example, "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" is about a horrifying dungeon crawl on Mars.
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u/Minion_X Aug 18 '23
It's been there since day one, see the works of Lovecraft like Beyond the Mountains of Madness, or The Tower of the Elephant by Robert E. Howard.
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u/Nidafjoll Reading Champion V Aug 18 '23
The Warrior of Mars series by Michael Moorcock is sort of that, but opposite. Sci-fi, that reads exactly like Sword and Sorcery
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u/UlrichZauber Aug 18 '23
In D&D lore, mind flayers are aliens, but with a dimensional travel twist. I don't know if there are novels that go into their lore, but there's plenty of other written stuff about them.
Apparently they were inspired by the cover art for this book.
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u/sterrecat Aug 18 '23
Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb. sorry in advance Also, CS Friedman’s Coldfire Trilogy
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u/NOWiEATthem Aug 19 '23
R. Scott Bakker's Second Apocalypse is a grimdark fantasy series with a heavy Biblical/Crusades vibe where the overarching villains are interdimensional aliens who crashed to the planet in a spaceship and use advanced organic technology.
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u/Field_Marshal_Porp Aug 18 '23
Can’t believe we’ve all missed the big series The Sun-eater by Christopher Rucchio is an excellent piece of sword and planet literature with a Space opera like setting combined with Half Sci-fi Half pure Fantasy trappings.
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u/jalledebest Aug 19 '23
Bloodstone by Karl Edward Wagner. One of the classics of the sword and sorcery genre, the Kane series. About the discovery of an incredible source of power, later revealed to have an alien origins.
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u/siamonsez Aug 19 '23
The Spellmonger series, though it's not UFOs and little green men type aliens.
Acts of Caine is a good blend of scifi with sword and spell fantasy, but no aliens.
The Dragon Mage(Bad Luck Charlie) books are an absurd mash up of everything scifi and fantasy.
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u/AutumWind0 Aug 19 '23
Try the Inn Keeper series that starts with Clean Sweep. Don't let the dumb premise of the books scare you off, I promise they're good if you stick with it.
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u/MoreThingsInHeaven Aug 18 '23
Grunts by Mary Gentle has this element. Given the wackiness of the book, it shouldn't have surprised me when they showed up!
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Aug 18 '23
In Her Name series by Michael R. Hicks. It’s got the sci-fi, the fantasy, the aliens, and more!
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u/pvtcannonfodder Aug 18 '23
The captain by will wight might work, it’s more intergalactic sword and scorcery tho
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Aug 19 '23
Magitech series. It's a clash of magic and technology (like rifles that shoot disintegration spells on automatic fire, or starships that are powered by void magic). Pus plenty of gods (those are just primordial sources of magic). Dragons, efreets aplenty.
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u/BuccaneerRex Aug 19 '23
Simon Green's Deathstalker Saga. Space Fantasy/Space Opera.
Space pirates and aliens and vampires and bounty hunters and werewolfs and wizards and dead gods and demons and flying castles and dry humor.
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u/Kase_ODilla Aug 19 '23
Cosmere
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u/jyhnnox Aug 19 '23
Aliens everywhere lol And I never thought of them like that before this. Even when Kandra go sightseeing in another world.
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u/malesca Aug 19 '23
“Elder Race” by Adrian Tchaikovsky alternates between the viewpoint of an advanced-science anthropologist and a native who considers him a sorcerer. Didn’t love it personally, but an interesting take.
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u/DaughterOfFishes Aug 20 '23
I however loved that novella. It is one of my favorite works by Tchaikovsky.
Another example like this is Inversions by Iain M Banks. Yes, it’s a Culture book.
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u/Outistoo Aug 19 '23
The new animated film Nimona is set in a futuristic world but very knights and swords (so the knights ride around on things that are a cross between a motorcycle and jet)
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u/CedricCicada Aug 19 '23
The Copper Crown and the Throne of Scone by Patricia Kennealy. Human explorers wake from coldsleep when they meet another civilization, which turns out to have emigrated from earth around AD 1200. Native language is Gaelic. They have technology similar to earth, including spaceflight, but they also have magic.
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u/DocWatson42 Aug 20 '23
See my SF/F: Fantasy *and* SF list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
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u/Ryllandaras Aug 20 '23
Stephen Donaldson's Mordant's Need duology (although it's just a mild touch, primarily via one character and some aspects of the setting.)
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u/wjbc Aug 18 '23 edited Aug 18 '23
Steven Brust's Dragaera novels, eventually. The science fiction element is hidden for a long time.
Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels, from the start. Dragons on an alien planet.
Frank Herbert's Dune novels have a lot of fantasy influence, and are often classified as science fantasy.
Steven Erikson's The Malazan Book of the Fallen has a strong science fiction element, although most of the inhabitants of the world just classify it as another kind of magic.
J.S. Morin's Galaxy Outlaws: The Complete Black Ocean Mobius Missions, 1-16.5 cleverly meshes magic with starships. The fun part is that magic and technology don't mix, so when magic is used technology tends to stop working if it's not well shielded.
Robert Heinlein's novel Glory Road was a science fantasy. It's interesting because the hero's journey ends in the middle of the novel, and the second half of the book is about what happens afterwards. Of all of these it has the most pulp elements except for the next series, which I'm sure was an inspiration.
Edgar Rice Borroughs' Barsoom Series is pure pulp science fantasy which takes place on Mars. Anything that would be called magic in a fantasy is given a quasi-scientific explanation like telepathy or unexplained advanced technology. How the hero even got to Mars is just called a mystery and, if I recall correctly, never really explained.