I'd recommend Scott Card's
How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy his first (and, I believe longest) chapter dives into the Sci-fi/Fiction boundaries with various rubrics offered. After each one he gives numerous examples that show why it is incomplete. (One without counterexamples was author preference: once an author is established enough what he writes is what he claims it is, regardless of practically any other criteria.) He then goes on to point out that it really doesn't matter. The only point at which sci-fi vs. fantasy comes into play is when sending out feelers getting published. (Many sci-fi magazines are disinclined to publish anything lacking steel and rivets.) He then offers one reason why bookstores choose to lump the two genres together and why it'd be foolish to expect them to do otherwise.
Dead Cat wrote: The Thursday Next series, by Jasper Fforde, is both science fiction and fantasy, I think. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Looks like a good candidate. The alternate universe helps explain things in a sci-fi manner, and the genetic engineering and other advanced sciences prevalent help, but it seems to me that the focus on literary characters coming to life, influencing and being influenced by the protagonist is why it gets labeled as part of the fantasy/alternate history category.
The first sci-fi/fantasy combo to my mind is Piers Anthony's
Apprentice Adept series. That's a bit of a cop-out as the entire series is based on two parallel worlds, one running on advanced science and the other on magic. But hey, it'd be a hard one to argue against being a dichotomy.
Damasta wrote:So I've been thinking about
the question concerning whether a book can be both Sci-Fi and Fantasy. In particular, I've been thinking about CPM's answer. I take issue with his criteria since a lot of the best sci-fi and fantasy
don't meet those criteria. But by his own admission they are oversimplified, so I won't belabor them here. But I will take issue with his score for
Star Trek.
...
The only one that gets a pseudo-explanation is the Betazoid ability.
Interesting that each of what you qualify as 'magical' harks back to CPM's first criterion biological vs. mechanical. The matter/antimatter drive intermix ratio is often as fantastical as
empathy/telepathy/mind melding et al. I think most of the biological variants in Star Trek are given a scientific hand waving and tossed into the black box of evolution. In the case of Q and especially the Traveler, their abilities derive from their advanced state. (doesn't Westley end up duplicating some of the Traveler's abilities? Part of the reason no one outside of the writing team liked him?)
I think it largely boils down to artistic intent. In a sci-fi work, the explaination comes fairly quickly that the standard rules of physics can be assumed, with deviations noted and often explained in some way. In a fantasy, magic may be the mode of action, but it in itself is a science, as if it were without rules, the audience would be unwilling to accept it. ("He has magic, anything he wants he can get, without restriction" hmmm, hard to have convincing conflict there...) In fantasy, mind-reading is magic because that is what the audience will accept, whereas in sci-fi it is classified as an evolutionary trait that we simply lack. (Which could be the basis for any 'magical' ability, the sighted man in a blind community could easily be called magical, discerning that which his vision-less peers cannot. {insert your 'Seer' lame joke or epiphany here})
