Science Fiction and Fantasy

Most readers are fairly clear about what they define as science fiction or as fantasy. Science fiction is about the future, including new technologies, the scientific mindset, space travel, and the like. Fantasy, on the other hand, deals with magic, swords and other archaic weapons, fantastic creatures like dragons, and medieval politics and mindsets.

There is a new kind of book, however, that has been appearing with more frequency on the science fiction and fantasy bookshelves since the mid-1960's. Instead of clearly defining which of the two genres it belongs to, this new kind of book merges the two, developing its own plot and scene with borrowings from both genres in a new kind of melting pot where the results are never the same twice. This new book is science fiction, because it includes all or some of the traditional elements of science fiction: new technologies, travel to and among the stars, the inquisitive and rational scientific mindset, and all the other conventions of science fiction. However, since it also includes conventions like swords and magic (especially psionic magics), feudal structures and societies, and different ways of understanding the universe that are not limited to the scientific paradigm, it is also clearly fantasy.

Several names have been proposed for the new, blended genre, but as of yet, none of the names have done it justice. Several critics have called it "science fantasy," blending the two names,but that term has not been adopted wholesale, because so many different types of blends still exist. There are now, however,several common denominators to describe classes of this blended genre, into which many of the most popular hybrid series fit.

Blended Universes

Parallel Worlds

Lost Colonies

These, however, are just a few of the many possibilities that are becoming more and more complex as the two genres of fantasy and science fiction come closer and closer together. Critics have tried to describe some of the complicated intersections of the genres, but the genre expands more rapidly than critics can keep up, drawing from all types of writing: science fiction, both hard and soft, utopias and dystopias, essays on politics and philosophy, traditional fantasy, mythology, folk tales, and even "normal" realistic fiction. However, a brief critical bibliography is available, just to see what is out there in terms of research on science fantasy, or whatever it ends up being called.

Incomplete Bibliography of Science Fiction and Fantasy Intersections

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