They really aren't all that different from each other. One is imaginary things that might one day be possible, and the other is imaginary things that won't ever be possible.
And even then, that can swap between the genres. Scifi often contains FTL tech, which from what we know is almost certainly impossible so it's actually more like fantastical magic. Meanwhile, fantasy can have hard rules for its magic, in which case it acts more like technology that we haven't discovered yet. I haven't read it yet myself, but I've heard of Wizard's Bane, where a programmer is transported to a magical land and becomes really powerful because he treats the magic system like a new programming language.
Other things I've noticed is that scifi tends to involve spaceships and is more mystery oriented, whereas fantasy tends to take place on the ground and is more hero's journey oriented. But even these aren't defining traits. Plenty of scifi books involve investigating alien planets and many contain the hero's journey (including the original Star Wars if you count that as scifi). Meanwhile plenty of fantasy books are on some sort of ship (Narnia - Voyage of the Dawn Treader) and many are more mystery oriented (Harry Potter for example).
Personally, I think a better line of division is hard vs soft. Was the world created first with actual rules and the characters molded to fit the world (Dune, Lord of the Rings)? Or were the characters created first and the rules are bent to create the story that is being desired to tell (Star Trek with its technobabble, Star Wars's prequels and sequels, the entire universe of Harry Potter)?
They are different if you like sci-fi and dislike fantasy which OP apparently does as do I, on the grand scheme of things not a big deal but it does get in the way when specifically looking for new sci-fi to read.
To be fair, that's a subjective difference in opinion, not an objective difference in type. Many people like "hard" sci-fi but not "soft" sci-fi, but that doesn't make them fundamentally distinct genres.
By the numbers, Star Wars is far more grounded as science fiction that Star Trek, but people will insist the former is at best merely "science fantasy." It's really all just vibes.
> By the numbers, Star Wars is far more grounded as science fiction that Star Trek, but people will insist the former is at best merely "science fantasy." It's really all just vibes.
I agree to an extent but they are usefully kept somewhat separate. The introduction to the great "Encyclopedia of Fantasy" put this well. Re: Fantasy :
"Its roots go much deeper into history, and its concerns are more archetypal" [1]
There can be a lot of cross-over of course. Right now, "fantasy" (perhaps of the "romantic" variety) seems to be a juggernaut and is taking over.
It's not on the quality level of these books, but the Off to Be the Wizard series of books are humorous programming-as-magic tales that skirt the sci-fi/fantasy line. [The fulcrum of the story is that there is a computer file "out there" that reflects reality; those who find it can edit it to do all kinds of "magic". Hilarity ensues.]
I never find it helpful when people say they aren't that different from each other.
Sure there may be some similarities if you want to take an analytical view of the genres, but there's an awful lot of people who like one but not the other.
The problem is once you look at the definitions it's actually quite hard to exactly define what's Fantasy vs Sci-fi. It's more a venn diagram, than strictly separate genres and everyone has their own definition of which is which. So when someone likes one but not the other, it's hard to discuss books because what one person considers sci-fi, another may consider fantasy pretending to be sci-fi, thus the complaints of the original commenter.
There are definitely things that blur the line and cross genres, or things that may meet one person's definition but not another's.
I do agree it would be impossible to provide an entirely objective division that everyone would go along with.
Even so, I'd love it if all the "medieval dragon witch ghost magic spirit quest" stories could be placed on a different shelf of the bookshop to the "black hole generation ship dark forest faster than light" ones :)
The Pern novels by Anne McCaffrey feature noble warriors riding genetically-engineered telepathic fire-breathing dragons in a feudal society protecting an alien planet's human space colony from toxic spores. Which shelf do I put them on?
"The Cyberiad" by Lem is full of "medieval dragon witch ghost magic spirit quest" stories, but most of the characters in it are robots, and they travel through space.
"Inversions" by Banks is "just" a medieval quest story with magic unless you know The Culture stories, in which case is a interstellar politics story with high tech.
So even those categorisations aren't that straightforward (I would put both in the SF category, but Inversions is tricky - someone unfamiliar with Banks could read it as a straight-up fantasy novel, and if you don't like fantasy it might feel tedious)
I'm good with a few weird edge cases. Just let me find the majority of sci fi books without having to trudge through vast numbers of definitively fantasy books!
The thing is, it's not a "few weird edge cases". But this seems like an odd "problem" to me anyway - I must admit I've never been in the situation of having to trudge through vast numbers of definitively fantasy books to find SF books anywhere...
The majority are really not that hard to categorise.
In the UK at least, fantasy and sci fi occupy the same shelving. Takes me ages pulling books out of the shelf, and immediately rejecting because they are fantasy.
The majority of the books are fantasy, not sci fi. Fantasy seems to have a much bigger audience in the UK anyway.
Fiction is a huge, unwieldy word that's mostly useful as the converse of non-fiction. It communicates virtually nothing useful to a potential reader, which is the entire purpose of genre categorizations.
That's inaccurate. SF/Fantasy contains elements which are not possible under the laws of physics, not anything imaginary. Literary fiction is also imaginary, but taking place in "our world".
(The lines get blurrier when talking about imagined historical fiction, or even things like alternative fiction.)
Strictly speaking you don't have to have elements not possible under the laws of physics. I would definitely call The Martian science fiction, but it doesn't really try to break any physical laws.
Even things like Tau Zero are using relativistic time dilation as the plot driver.
I agree, and sometimes the line is drawn between SF being "things that are theoretically possible" vs. Fantasy where things are impossible. But then you have things like Egan's Clockwork Trilogy, which is "what if the laws of physics actually worked a bit differently in this specific way" but which I assume anyone would consider SF. As opposed to Brandon Sanderson's books, which could be described in a similar way, but are usually categorized Fantasy.
At the end, it's mostly a marketing and feeling thing. As one of my favorite authors put it, the different between SF and Fantasy sometimes comes down to - are you putting a tree or a spaceship on the cover of your book?
I think some books can cross the threshold and be both, but the majority fall into one or the other category pretty easily. That would seem to apply to the linked authors' books from a cursory glance.
What would you say is the reason for categorising works differently? Can you see differences there or do you also think it's mostly marketing?
Sure, but my point being that saying SF/Fantasy contains elements that aren't possible is a too restrictive constraint - a whole lot of SF would fall outside of that category.
While Tau Zero that was mentioned elsewhere is believed to not match the laws of nature now, the science the entire plot rests on was considered scientifically plausible at the time it was written.
It was speculative, but it explicitly did not set out to make up a world in which some scientific law is different.
In other words, that isn't a defining factor of SF.
The speculative nature of it is closer to it - hence the shared label of speculative fiction often used to group SF and fantasy.
A common sf theme is "here is this change to the laws of physics, what would our universe then look like". Eg Arrival (and the story it's based on), tons of books by Egan, any book with FTL.
Which, let's be fair - most science fiction does to some degree.
Even the "hard" sci-fi tends to comprise of the author's one area of expertise or hyperfixation while everything else is nonsense. You'll have descriptions in intricate detail of how the spacecraft are engineered down to the self-sealing stembolts, but biology is basically magic.
And even then, that can swap between the genres. Scifi often contains FTL tech, which from what we know is almost certainly impossible so it's actually more like fantastical magic. Meanwhile, fantasy can have hard rules for its magic, in which case it acts more like technology that we haven't discovered yet. I haven't read it yet myself, but I've heard of Wizard's Bane, where a programmer is transported to a magical land and becomes really powerful because he treats the magic system like a new programming language.
Other things I've noticed is that scifi tends to involve spaceships and is more mystery oriented, whereas fantasy tends to take place on the ground and is more hero's journey oriented. But even these aren't defining traits. Plenty of scifi books involve investigating alien planets and many contain the hero's journey (including the original Star Wars if you count that as scifi). Meanwhile plenty of fantasy books are on some sort of ship (Narnia - Voyage of the Dawn Treader) and many are more mystery oriented (Harry Potter for example).
Personally, I think a better line of division is hard vs soft. Was the world created first with actual rules and the characters molded to fit the world (Dune, Lord of the Rings)? Or were the characters created first and the rules are bent to create the story that is being desired to tell (Star Trek with its technobabble, Star Wars's prequels and sequels, the entire universe of Harry Potter)?