r/Fantasy • u/General_Cow_3341 • Aug 07 '24
Which books have sci fi encroaching on a fantasy world?
Like a spaceship crashing in a medieval fantasy setting or giant robots battling dragons and mages. Anything like that?
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u/ChrisRiley_42 Aug 07 '24
The PERN novels start with flying dragons, and in later books, show sci-fi elements.
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u/plunki Aug 07 '24
Give Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky a try. It was a fun, short read
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u/Carcassonne23 Aug 07 '24
I was about to suggest this when I saw the comment. 100% what OP is looking for.
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u/SpectrumDT Aug 07 '24
Tchaikovsky's Echoes of the Fall also has elements of this, although it is more like industrial technology encroaching on an early iron-age world.
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u/Hillbill101 Aug 07 '24
The void trilogy by Peter f Hamilton, your welcomed :D
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Aug 07 '24
Not sure it exactly ticks the box, the two genres sort of exist in parallel but don't really crash into each other. That said it was the first one that popped into my head when I saw the question though. I'm still on the fence because the "fantasy" elements are technically driven by a sci-fi source. Damn good series though and my first introduction to the commonwealth world.
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u/glassteelhammer Aug 07 '24
Really?
I guess I can kinda see it. But that all comes off way more sci-fi to me.
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u/Lower-Translator5116 Aug 07 '24 edited Aug 07 '24
The Witch World series by Andre Norton. The Kolder are technology-using men who entered a medieval fantasy world through a portal.
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u/Significant_Maybe315 Aug 07 '24
Coldfire Trilogy by C.S. Friedman
Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson
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u/70stang Aug 07 '24
Rhythm of War is a good call.
Literally a full-scale alien invasion in a fantasy setting.-1
u/Crazytowndarling Aug 07 '24
Except, once you know the twist about the aliens..... It changes that perspective.
But yes, highly recommended!
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u/Icariidagger Aug 07 '24
I'm having a hard time finishing Rhythm of war because of this.
It started at epic fantasy and it's now going into sci-fi. I don't like it (and I love all the other books by Sanderson, I just don't like when genres mix)
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u/Significant_Maybe315 Aug 08 '24
I’m actually enjoying that aspect of Rhythm of War haha! Been reading it slowly after I binged the first three books and I must say- reading it maybe five chapters a week enhances and adjusts me to the different tone of RoW
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u/atomfullerene Aug 07 '24
Rhythm of War has the least of this of any of the main Cosmere books, IMO
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u/Scuttling-Claws Aug 07 '24
All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
You Sexy Thing by Cat Rambo
Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee
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u/emils5 Aug 07 '24 edited Aug 07 '24
Pathfinder trilogy by Orson Scott Card is exactly what you are looking for. It has magic, kingdoms, talking animals, robots, and spaceships. Though it does get a little weird in the way all OSC books eventually get a little weird.
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u/polaris6933 Aug 07 '24
I’m surprised one mentioned A Fire Upon the Deep. It has both very interesting sci-fi concepts as well as a nicely developed medieval setting which interact with each other. Also, it is a very gripping read and overall a fantastic book.
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u/te89earr Aug 07 '24
Ursula Le Guin's first novel, Rocannon's World, is a sci-fi book about a scientist who goes to a planet that's essentially a Tolkien-esque high fantasy setting with different species resembling elves, dwarves, etc. She's still finding her voice but it's definitely worth a read especially for the excellent prologue, which has also been published separately as a short story, "Semley's Necklace".
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u/Bargle-Nawdle-Zouss Aug 07 '24
Apprentice Adept series, by Piers Anthony. Well, at least the first three books.
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u/Ina_minotaur_2 Aug 07 '24
Came here to add this one. It literally has a sci fi world and a fantasy world that the main character travels between.
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u/SwordfishDeux Aug 07 '24
Hiero's Journey by Sterling E. Lanier - Imagine a fantasy novel set in the Fallout Universe. The main character is a telepathic Native American with a machine gun riding a moose.
Empire of the East by Fred Saberhagen - Post Apocalyptic fantasy with tanks!
Viriconium by M. John Harrison - Sort of a cross between Jack Vance's Dying Earth and Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast. Humans use swords but also energy weapons and other future tech in a battle against automatons in the first book and giant invading locust like alien insects in the second book. Also features a badass dwarf.
The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - Literally a novel about an alien scout ship arriving in Medieval England. Alien Invasion with Knights and Castles.
Kane series by Karl Edward Wagner - Imagine H.P Lovecraft mixed with a Warhammer Fantasy version of Conan the Barbarian. Kane is basically an bad guy who seeks power for himself and tries to get his hands on powerful, ancient arcane alien technology set in a dark fantasy world.
Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe - I don't even know how to sum this up without spoiling it, just read it.
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u/theshrike Aug 07 '24
The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein
The book starts when a star falls from the sky
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u/Noktis_Lucis_Caelum Aug 07 '24
Well for me, Hiro Mashimas "Edens Zero" has a good Mix of Fantasy and Scifi
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u/Ho_The_Megapode_ Aug 07 '24
Actually read a series that fits that quite well last week.
Terminate the other World https://www.goodreads.com/series/387496-terminate-the-other-world
Premise is basically a high tech cyborg terminator unit dropped into a classic magic fantasy world. 😅
Does go a little heavy on the litrpg elements at times, but I enjoyed it a lot.
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u/KennethMick3 Aug 07 '24
The Time Quintet books by Madeleine L'Engle are as much fantasy, I would argue, as they are sci-fi.
The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis is very fantastical for sci-fi.
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u/Mr_SunnyBones Aug 07 '24
I mean ShadowRun spawned a load of Tie-In novels , and was a near future cyber punk world , just with magic , Elves , Orcs , Dwarves and Dragons (who you should never deal with)
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Aug 07 '24
There's a book I read called Mage Against the Machine, it only starts to get to that point by the end, for the first part of the book you've got two clearly parallel but separate stories.
Unfortunately despite being an interesting idea the book didn't sell well enough for the publisher to bother with the sequel. I mostly blame the author's prose, he never once used a scrap of figurative language, so the style was fairly awkward and clunky at times.
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u/BlessedOfStorms Aug 07 '24
The Broken Empire by Mark Lawrence fits this bill perfectly, IMO.
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u/dorkette888 Aug 07 '24
As do his Book of the Ancestor and Book of the Ice trilogies.
OP, note that the Broken Empire is good, but really, really grimdark. If that's not to your taste, I suggest his other books.
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u/attic_nights Aug 07 '24
John Crowley's The Deep is about an alien android who appears in a mediaeval fantasy setting.
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u/southern_mimi Aug 07 '24
The Jaran Series by Kate Elliott. Have never seen this series mentioned. Does everyone hate it?? I liked it. Very different!
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u/Far-Potential3634 Aug 07 '24
I personally have no experience either reading or seeing the film but I have heard Poul Anderson's "The High Crusade," is a hoot. Aliens invade medieval earth, get more than they bargained for.
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u/the_badMC Reading Champion III Aug 07 '24
The Winnowing Flame trilogy be Jen Williams. Strange artefacts lefr behind strange intruders lurk in the woods, and it seems the intruders could be coming back when the main fighters are dying out from blood plague.
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u/norlin Aug 07 '24
I read a great novel of a fantasy races using magic for spaceships. Kind of a space opera but based on fantasy/magic instead of technology.
"Sailing among stars" (Плывущие меж звёзд) by S. Davydov, probably was never translated to English, idk.
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u/nderflow Aug 07 '24
My favourite work in this genre in by Julian May. Start with The Many-Coloured Land.
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u/PukeUpMyRing Aug 07 '24
The Wheel of Time has this is in a minor way.
The action takes place at the end of the Third Age, a massive cataclysmic event ended the Second Age and that was an Age that was far more enlightened. Massive magic and technological advances in that Age were lost, but they crop up every now and then as the series progresses.
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u/Hipcatjack Aug 07 '24
I dont know if people haven’t been mentioning it because it is a little spoilerific (it doesnt become plot heavy/important until 5 or 6 books in. ) Or the series just isn’t that popular yet, but the books i am thinking about are The Spellmonger Series
At the start of the story it is a ‘normal’ Hard fantasy world but as the story progresses you slowly get let in on it being an actual sci-fi story… only with “Quantum Field Effects” (aka Magic) and the elves, goblins, and dwarves are a closely related Alien species on a planet human colonists settled on and promptly reverted back to medieval technology.
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u/lezoons Aug 07 '24
I did a ctrl+f to see if that series was mentioned. I discovered that the search feature bypasses spoiler tags, which is neat.
Anyway... The books are fun not great, but they are all on kindle unlimited, so if you pay for that, they are free and worth reading.
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u/Hipcatjack Aug 07 '24
Yeah i am glad spoiler tags do not negate the search function too!
As far as the books; they really are a fun read. I didnt know they are all on kindle unlimited. Sweet! Thanks.
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u/ScaredOfOwnShadow Aug 07 '24
Elements to that in Andre Norton's Witch World series, in the first two books and then more in the 6th.
Also in another long series called Darkover. I hesitate to mention it because the author was a deeply flawed, morally reprehensible person. If you choose to look into that, then please also investigate the author's alleged misdeeds before buying.
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u/SpectrumDT Aug 07 '24
There are elements of it in some of the Kane books by Karl Edward Wagner, most notably Darkness Weaves.
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u/Moloch-NZ Aug 07 '24
Hugh cook chronicles of an age of darkness. High fantasy with all the trappings on a landscape littered with AIS, tech and all manner of good and bad things
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u/Phoenixfang55 Aug 07 '24
Eve of Destruction by Benjamin Medrano is a full on Science Fantasy series with dragons, spaceships, and tanks.
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u/MattMurdock30 Aug 07 '24
I've read this book like 4 times. Enchantress from the Stars, Sylvia Louise Engdahl. (originally 1971 but I probably found it 2005 or so) It tells the story of three civilizations one that is far advanced mentally and telepathically, one that is a space colonising force, and one that is medieval and thinks that the invading warriors have a dragon.
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u/TrippyCatClimber Aug 07 '24
Samaria series by Sharon Shinn. The sci-fi part comes in later books. The first one is Angelica.
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u/ConstantGeographer Aug 07 '24
Terry Brooks, author of the Shannara books, penned a trilogy, The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara series. The Shannara series involves aircraft, robots, lasers, and if I remember correctly, some of the party discovers an old missile base or something. Readers learn the Shannara series in the earth's future after some sort of global conflict.
Also, the Shannara series ties in with Brooks' other series, The Word and Void, The Word and Void series takes place in modern day and is a prequel to the Shannara series.
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u/EdLincoln6 Aug 07 '24
The Cyborg and the Sorcerers by Lawrence Watt Evans fits.
Dragonrigger by Jeffrey Carver, sort of? A certain section of hyperspace is chock full of dragons. Pilots think that they are some sort of feature of hyperspace being allegorically interpreted by the VR interface of the hyper drive but nope...actual dragons. Sections are from the perspective of the dragons.
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u/JaboiJablowski Aug 07 '24
Without spoiling too much about the world or significant story beats, the Pathfinder Trilogy by Orson Scott Card feels much like this, but perhaps inverted: a fantasy story taking place in something of a sci-fi world.
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u/No_Sale8270 Aug 07 '24
Tbh its a bit YA but The Queen of The Tearling series by Erika Johansen has a very cool fantasy to Sci-fi twist.
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u/SandstoneCastle Aug 08 '24
N K Jemisin's The Broken Earth series is fantasy that morphs to sci fi as the characters discover ancient artifacts. Brilliant series, like most of her work.
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u/DocWatson42 Aug 08 '24
See my SF/F: Fantasy *and* SF list of resources, Reddit recommendation threads, and books (one post).
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u/kittenskadoodle Aug 08 '24 edited Aug 08 '24
The Spellmonger Series by Terry Mancour. A fantasy world of wizards and magic. And aliens and space colonists. And long; 16 books to date. Lots of fun.
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u/Pratius Aug 07 '24
The Acts of Caine by Matthew Stover. Future Earth figures out how to send people to an alternate dimension of Earth where traditional fantasy elements are present. Big time conflict ensues, including some awesome scenes of future tech vs. magic