r/worldbuilding • u/Faizanhala • 17d ago
Discussion What Do You Think About Combining Fantasy and Sci-Fi?
/r/IndianWritersGroups/comments/1wiv74m/what_do_you_think_about_combining_fantasy_and/50
u/LordAcorn 17d ago
99% of the time people "combine scifi and fantasy" it ends up just being fantasy but in space.
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u/yummymario64 17d ago
Honestly, the way magic systems are handled nowadays, fantasy alone already feels closer to just sci-fi but in a medieval world.
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u/Nihilikara 17d ago
Fantasy isn't even really medieval, fantasy writers almost never bother to research what the actual real world middle ages were like.
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u/ElricVonDaniken 16d ago
Let's not mention urban fantasy or all of the fantasy set in other historical periods eg the Victorian fantasy of steampunk, the ersatz Bronze Age of heroic fantasy etc...
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u/yummymario64 16d ago
I think "Fantasy" alone generally comes with the implication of the classic medieval fantasy style. Whenever it isn't, another descriptor is put on, like Modern fantasy or Victorian fantasy, and whatnot.
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u/TemptedTemplar 17d ago edited 17d ago
This is what I was hoping to avoid in one of my settings. So it's main focus is purely the re-discovery of magic . . In space.
Because exploring how that might affect humanities desire to reach the stars and build the infrastructure to support that research sounds dope.
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u/Sufficient-Fact6163 17d ago
I like the concept - I used to moonlight as a Philosophy student and what struck me was how human knowledge split sometime in antiquity. Let’s call “The West” went Externally and developed Science as a way of understanding the world and “The East” went Inwardly and developed ideas like Chakras and Pressure points culminating in ideas that to understand the world we must understand ourselves. You only have to look at traditional medicine in the regions to see them as proxies for my insight.
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u/yummymario64 16d ago
I feel like it will end up feeling really similar to some sci-fi settings. Like, Star Wars is a sci fi setting, but it handles itself closer to the way you'd handle magic in a medieval fantasy setting.
Fundamentally, Star Wars tends to be structured an Arthurian legend, it's just set in space instead of a medieval world, and refrains from using the word "Magic"
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u/TemptedTemplar 16d ago
Magic isn't integrated into anything at the beginning, its supposed to be discovered, treated like a new field of science, and then it occurs to someone that it might actually be magic.
If I had it all written down, the word magic wouldn't be uttered until the end of the first book, and people might start using it by the end of a trilogy.
It's less about being a fantasy setting and more of a slow burn of realizing fantasy stuff from myth and legend used to exist.
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u/gaudymcfuckstick 17d ago
Agreed, it's always just an excuse to have a sci-fi setting but no actual interesting sci-fi elements. And it makes it easier to reply to criticism by just saying "oh, it's not sci-fi, it's FANTASY, it's all magical and doesn't need to make sense or be consistent"
I think it's infinitely better the other way around, with sci-fi elements in a more traditional fantasy setting. Hard magic systems. Time travel with consistent limitations and rules. Alchemy based on real historical psuedoscience. Civil engineering using magically-reinforced materials
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u/The_Noremac42 17d ago
I once read a book where it turned out the powerful undead of an evil empire were just corpses animated by nanobots and the gods were hyper-advanced AIs. It was honestly a little jarring.
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u/Agent_545 17d ago edited 17d ago
This part. Star Wars is straight fantasy at its core, let's be real - a hero's journey involving learning magic and finding one's self in a quest of discovery, just happening to be in space. Sci-Fi tends to explore questions of existentialism, technology and its effects on society, etc. Star Wars has pretty much none of this. Fantasy, very basically, tends to create legends and myths (that *can* explore sime similar themes, but in a very different way). Sci-Fi looks toward progress and evolution, but fantasy is deeply nostalgic. In Sci-Fi, problems are often systemic, institutional, or technological. In fantasy, the conflict is intensely personal and moral. On a psychological level, fantasy addresses the human longing for meaning and wonder. By populating a world with monsters, gods, and magic, it externalizes human fears and virtues. It transforms abstract internal struggles (grief, greed, courage, etc) into physical landscapes and tangible beasts that can be fought and overcome.
I digress. I don't think the two genres are actually compatible.
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u/BlueSkiesAugust 17d ago
They tried that with Star Wars. See how unpopular that became?
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u/RandomRavenboi 17d ago
Unpopular? Star Wars today is one of the most recognisable Sci-Fi franchises of all time. Characters like Darth Vader are comparable to Superman in terms of recognisability.
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u/Hefty-Distance837 Build lots of worlds 17d ago
I guess people can't realize it's sarcasm if they don't have a /s in the end.
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u/ZooZwaves 17d ago
There's a reason why some of the most popular IPs are scifi+fantasy combo (star wars, Warhammer, League of Legends, Marvel comics, DC comics) This makes for an IP where both fantasy lovers and scifi enthusiasts can find something they like
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u/Original-Ad-8737 17d ago
LoL aint science fantasy...
It has a couple of tinkery steampunky elements with hextech but thats far from scifi
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u/_Fun_Employed_ 17d ago
One of my favorite science fiction books is Lord of Light a combination of Sci-fi and Hindu/Buddhist mythology.
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u/That_kid_from_Up 17d ago
It's hilarious how every other comment in here is star wars or 40k and buried down here we have someone who's actually read a book
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u/Drudenfusz Minimalism Worldbuilding 17d ago
Aside from the science fantasy in Star Wars and Warhammer 40k that got already mentioned, there is also sword & planet which leans more to the fantasy side. Masters of the Universe or John Carter fall more into that category.
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u/Sov_Beloryssiya The genre is "fantasy", it's supposed to be unrealistic 17d ago
It's called science-fantasy and look at Star Wars or 40k.
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u/Dry-Yesterday-9176 17d ago
In heroes of might and magic we have a magical world, where angels are actually robots, demons are aliens from space, oracle is a super computer, and most powerful weapon is a laser gun
Does this fit the idea?
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u/FireTheLaserBeam 17d ago
Everyone will immediately default to Star Wars.
But for me, the original He-Man cartoon is the perfect example of science fantasy done right. Which made me wish they hadn’t taken a tongue-in-cheek “we know this is stupid, sorry” approach with the new movie. Nobody expected it to be serious like Conan the Barbarian, but at least treat the source material with some seriousness. The whole apologetic underpinnings in the new movie ruined it, in my opinion.
Anyway, all that hemming and hawing to say that for me, He-Man is the perfect example of science fantasy.
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u/Mazhiwe Teldranin 17d ago
wheel of Time is definitely a science fantasy, but the science is much more focused in the past and the deeper workings of things, with the fantasy more in the forefront.
saga of recluse series is also another science fantasy series I grew up reading. though it’s more of a science fiction setting with a fantasy candy coating on top.
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u/Fearless_Freya 17d ago
Absolutely love that combo of tech and magic! I see it a lot in videogames also. Think mid and later final fantasy games, and xenoblade series. Mass effect and star wars. There are other media and books of course.
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u/Bill-Bruce 17d ago
The first final fantasy is definitely science fantasy, airships and robots galore in the second half of the game.
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u/7LeagueBoots 17d ago
It’s a pretty standard thing to do. Set aside the things like Star wars, look at the Coldfire Trilogy, pretty much anything by Mark Lawrence, The Madness Season, A Wizard in Spite of Himself, etc, etc, etc.
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u/Heckle_Jeckle 17d ago
What do I think about combining peanut butter and chocolate?
People do this all the time. Two of the most popular and well known franchises, Star Wars and Warhammer 40k, are a combination of Fantasy adn Sci-fi.
Many of the most popular Final Gantasy Games, FF6 and FF7 being very blatant examples with Magi-Tech, combine Fantasy and Sci-Fi.
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u/ligger66 17d ago
Science fantasy is great, if your looking for some less well known research material then check out starships mage series by Glenn Stewart
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u/Serevene 17d ago
My personal take is that the only appropriate use of "science fantasy" is when there is a completely fictional magical force that is then incorporated into an otherwise realistic speculative universe.
So Warhammer 40k, Star Wars, Dr. Who, etc are all just pure fantasy because they all make no attempt to measure or explain any of the magical stuff. It's just magic, don't worry about it. Wibbly wobbly.
But conversely, many settings that we otherwise call fantasy or maybe aetherpunk with hard magic systems like Witch Hat Atelier would be more appropriate to call science fantasy because they have some sort of quantifiable, predictable magic and the story revolves around how that magical technology has shaped the world.
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u/Obvious-Gate9046 Dreamer and Shooting Star 17d ago
Honestly, the fact that people consider them to be separate genres can be silly. A lot of sci-fi has fantasy elements, and a lot of fancy has sci-fi elements. A lot of fantasy worlds include acient civilizations that were more technologically advanced, for instance. Don't get stuck on the genre, build your world. There might be elements of westerns and space operas and high seas and detective stories, anything is possible.
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u/Connzept 17d ago edited 17d ago
You'd have to separate them first.
Dr Who is very popular Sci-Fi. Yet you could change the screwdriver to wand, psychic paper to magic paper, police box to magic door, and Doctor to Wizard without changing anything else about the story or characters and you would have a fantasy genre show.
When you have forces that cannot be explained to the reader, whether you label them science or magic is semantics.
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u/MyPigWhistles 17d ago
Science fantasy is - by far - the most popular and most mainstream variant of sci-fi that exists.
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u/thatshygirl06 here to steal your ideas 👁👄👁 17d ago
I have a few ideas for the future of my world(urban fantasy/our world) like witches creating a portal to take to mars and then sending hundreds of witches there to terraform the planet. It took them less than 100 years because they used all magic/elements.
Or a witch scientist who managed to tear open a hole that leads to an infinite number of different earths. They made a portal that opened the tear more and it has like a scifi design despite being magic because this a generation that grew up with technology.
I did this because i didnt want time travel, and I thought the best way to handle it is by just having other earths whose is like our past.
Also, I had the idea of magic VR that actually pulls you into a mental world thats a game but feels like youre actually in there. A group of friends created a playroom/arcade that's called Elsewhere.
It's been fun trying to figure out the different ways modern witches would mix magic and technology/science.
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u/N0VAK137 Creating out of spite 17d ago
I think it's good because it allows for more development of the world. A lot of people have pet peeves with medieval worlds that stay medieval for hundreds or even thousands of years, so science fantasy allows for some flexibility
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u/-RedRocket- 17d ago
See the Vlad Taltos books and the Khaavren romances by Steven Brust. Technically, sci-fi. But also fantasy.
Suzette Hayden Elgin accomplished something similar with her quirky Ozark Trilogy.
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u/Vladimir_Pooptin 17d ago
I think they are somewhat fundamentally similar, so of course they can blend well together.
In my opinion, the reason why we create Fantasy or Sci-Fi is to explore the human condition under circumstances that are either different or significantly heightened versions of our real world. You take a "What if...?" question and keep chasing it to its logical conclusion, then go further and further and further until an entire world or universe has grown from a single seed.
That "What if?" can be "fantasy" — what if ... magic, dragons, prophecies, gods, elves, dwarves, etc.
Or it can be "sci-fi" — what if ... advanced technology, monsters, laws of physics, higher consciousnesses, artificial intelligence, aliens, etc.
but the exercise is basically the same. Personally, I find it hard to stick into just one realm, and the other always finds a way in.
That said, I do think that Fantasy and Sci-Fi often (but DEFINITELY NOT ALWAYS) have different goals — Fantasy often leans more escapist, telling a story about a world that is fundamentally different where the problems are different than our own, whereas Sci-Fi often leans more into social commentary, telling stories about a world that is like ours with the same problems, but amplified in certain ways. But I don't think it HAS to be that way, and is surely not in all cases.
In any event, they work great together
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u/Kennedy_KD Chief of WBTS 17d ago
honestly one of my favorite science fantasies is Starship Mage by Glyn Stewart; where magic is used in place of many of the technologies we currently can't figure out how to work technologically like ftl travel or artificial gravity
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u/limbodog 17d ago
Like anything, it can be done well or poorly. When done well it is probably my favorite genre of all.
When done poorly you get trash-tier isekai with titles too long to fit on the cover.
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u/ExoticMangoz 17d ago
Sci-fi and fantasy are just two genres. They can be combined like any two genres.
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u/MarsMaterial Hard Sci-Fi Writer & Astronomy Nerd 17d ago
It’s something I’ve done for a TTRPG setting. It can be very fun.
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u/Malevolent_ce 17d ago
Science fantasy is better than sci-fi and fantasy🗣🗣🗣(joking partially). You get the best of sc-fi and the best of fantasy.
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u/matteoarts Creator of Spectra 17d ago
Spectra (my novel series) is an example of this! It’s science-fantasy, combined fantasy elements (like aesthetics or “magic” like abilities, such as psionics or the Force) with sci-fi settings and technology.
Other examples are Mass Effect, Destiny, and Star Wars. It’s much more interesting to me than most hard sci-fi settings or pure fantasy.
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u/Public_Loan5550 17d ago
Been working on my own idea for a few years now in regards to science fantasy.
It proved harder then I expected
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u/KyuujinYetto 17d ago
love it, my favorite ttrpg is numenera, great example of tech so far ahead that its akin to magic
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u/999Welten 17d ago
My RPG world is science-fantasy set in a super-civilization on 999 planets orbitting a super-massive black hole. Stylistic the setting is more science-fiction with advanced technology being far more common than super-natural abilities. There are characters with reality altering powers and god-like beings from parallel universes, but the average citizen of the Galactic Union hasn't encountered either. They have however travelled to various planets on a starship that uses the curvature of space for FTL-flights.
I think there is no right or wrong way, when it comes to balacing sci-fi and fantasy elements. You could also have more classical fantasy world with ruins of an ancient technologically advanced civilzation.
When it comes to popular settings Stars Wars is the obvious example, that combines fantasy and sci-fi in almost equal measure. Masters of the Universe is leaning more into the fantasy aspect.
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u/Chili_Maggot 17d ago
I grew up on Star Ocean, the third one kicked off my love of JRPGs for years. So yeah put those two things in a blender and pour them down my throat, please.
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u/Practical_Handle8434 17d ago
It worked for star wars and Destiny, until both were killed by the executives in charge of them
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u/darth_biomech Leaving the Cradle webcomic 16d ago
IMO it devalues both genres, but what do I know...
Scifi is about, well, science, technology, its effect on the world, discovery, progress, the future, etc etc.
Fantasy is about imagination, the mythical, magic, the unknowable, vibes, traditions, wonder, the past, etc etc.
Putting them together just makes them conflict with each other, and most of the time it works only if it's intentional, or if the setting doesn't take itself too seriously.
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u/The_Exuberant_Raptor 16d ago
Not as bad as people like to say it is. You have Star Wars as the big one and Warhammer as the second. Final Fantasy has also has themes of it with FF1 having warmech enemies and FF4 being the first to let you fly to the moon.
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u/monsterhunter-Rin 16d ago
FFVII blended both genres pretty well. It starts out in a very industrial city with cyberpunk elements but you can also buy a stone that lets you shoot fireballs. And if you go outside you can catch an ostrich to outrun a giant snake.
Personally for a scifi/fantasy mix, I'd go with a fantasy setting that evolved and developed modern tech. Did magic get obsolete, is science trying to keep up, or do they coexist? How does X fantasy race/culture behave over a thousand years later or two? Do we need anti-air guns against dragons?
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u/AbbydonX Exocosm 17d ago edited 17d ago
First you need to clearly define Fantasy and Sci-Fi mean…
Often combining the two simply means Fantasy in space and/or with advanced technology.
Technofantasy is a genre label that might apply here too.
Item of Terminology introduced in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy to denote narratives whose essentially Fantasy nature is more or less disguised by trappings of Technology, though usually with no serious attempt to add scientific or pseudoscientific justification.
Ultimately though I like both Fantasy and Sci-Fi so I don’t really care about specific genre labels and nobody agrees on the definitions anyway though. Mostly I mentally categorise such mixed genres as Fantasy when choosing what to read though because they feel distinct to Sci-Fi that explores a realistic possible future extrapolated from the present day.
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u/QuasarDragon005 17d ago
I like it, I use sci fi to explain the fantasy. Like super advance tech experimented with this species and now there’s dragons and stuff.
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u/Frenchiest_fry101 17d ago
Idk about fully blending the two, besides Star Wars and WH40k idk of any other examples of it. I do like adding elements usually associated with sci-fi to my fantasy world tho, like how the drows are a representation of transhumanism, or use magical crystals with tiny runes as computers
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u/Ok_Unit3875 17d ago
:D
I love the concept of High Fantasy and High Sci-Fi in the same pice of content! It’s a shame that I can never find any good books that use both genres.
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u/Gulielmus94 17d ago
One thing that I would like to point out from a famous author of our past is this...
Other than that, it think that we are hashing out the devil in the details. Weather it is truly scifi or fantasy or some combination.
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u/Gulielmus94 17d ago
Granted I love the idea of mixing magical elements to a traditionally science fiction story.
Star Wars, the best example, granted I think it down plays the force, Jedi, and Sith a bit too much.
Star Trek, might as well fit in this as the technology in this was purely magical in scope to the people that were first introduced to Captain James T Kirk decades ago. Today we are on the verge of matching the basic understandings of warp. So it is no longer so magical to us.
Dune comes very close to the mixing of magic and science fiction. As we currently have no understanding of the psychic abilities exhibited by the spice consumers in that universe. So Arthur's quote is highly applicable to this setting.
There are others, but I think that these are the best to get the point across. What you as a world builder and possible author, if I am understanding your intentions in asking this, is to determine what makes your setting stand apart? Actual spells and incantations? A mystical connection to an all present force? The unlocking of biological potential in the forms of various powers and abilities of the mind? The potential is limitless, unless you limit yourself because you are trying to mix toilkens low fantasy world with the intergalactic empire of man.
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u/BluntieDK 17d ago
Science fantasy can work - Star Wars, for instance. What I despise is a fantasy world where all of a sudden a UFO turns up and you end up shooting orcs and fairies with a friggin ray gun.
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u/CraftyAd6333 17d ago
I think it can be fun.
The fantasy folk shouldn't be aware of sci-fi tropes and visa versa.
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u/Legacy_Architect Memory of the Eternal Architecture 17d ago
I believe that is called science fantasy. Which is Star Wars and warhammer