Its Fantasy! No it's Sci-Fi! Drop dead bugger, its Fantasy and you are wrong!

[Homdax]

I love Fantasy and Sci-Fi. And other stuff that is not one or the other. But which is what?
It would be safe to assume that Lord of the Rings is Fantasy, right? And Wheel of Time?
But Final Fantasy? It is not Hentai at least .
And what about Star-Trek? Yes, all rite dudes, it Sci-Fi. No questions asked. But Doctor Who?
Warhammer?

Yes, Warhammer and Doctor Who in the same sentence, chew on that one...

So, where to draw the boundaries? Can we set a fixed genre to everything? Is all Chaos?

[Paladin]

Extra fun edge-case: Superhero comics.

[Homdax]

Thats Cartoons. Indubitably!

[Starblade]

If you have to ask call it "science fantasy" and get on with your life.

[OhJohnNo]

Doctor Who and Warhammer were in separate sentences, actually.

I define Doctor Who and Star Wars as science fantasy, myself. Star Trek is soft Sci-fi (and there's nothing wrong with that). Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time etc. would be fantasy, definitely. Warhammer 40k has a well-defined genre of "oh holy shit what the fuck aaaah oh my god batshit insanity awesomesauce".

[Fish Of Doom]

sci-fi/fantasy.

[Rotlung]

The bigger question would be that of how such genres are defined/differentiated, and how strictly they are applied.

[Methuselath]

It's fiction. Anything goes.

[Commander ASOP]

I am sure book store workers the world over are pondering this question as we speak.

Fiction by it's very nature is difficult to neatly catgorize. I mean mad killing sycopath is horror. If the killer is a robot it is sci-fi. If the story is told from the point of view of a detective on the case it is murder mystery. God forbid if the detective is a vampire as well and they live in a world where the south won the civil war.

[Methuselath]

If there's a story of a mass murdering bot being hounded by a Vampire detective in a alternative history where South won the civil war, as a bookstore worker I'll just dump it on the same shelf as Warhammer 40k. In fact, there should be a Fiction - Batshit Insane shelf on EVERY bookstore.

[SquidDNA]

Genre has two purposes: to help the reader categorize his or her expectations and to help the publisher and bookseller market books to those expectations. Once you have read a book (or watched a film, or played a vidjagame) there is absolutely no need to type it in a genre, except if you are too lazy to describe it to someone in more than three words.

[tyrion]

Science fiction is fiction whose plotlines rely on scientific rules or principles, fantasy is fiction where the plot or setting works because those rules do not apply.

Arthur C Clarke wrote lots of sci fi, Star Trek is by and large fantasy.

There you go, the pot has been stirred

[Vijil]

Most bookstores here don't bother distinguishing and just have a "SciFi/Fantasy" section. Somewhat wise imo.

[Exsus]

All the book store near me just have a general fiction section. Only hard defined fantasy or Sci-fi stuff has it's own section,t he rest is mashed together.
And Warhammer/40k is just mashed under the RPG section.

[Nanaki]

Personally, I always saw fantasy as taking place within a medieval enviornment, and sci-fi as taking place in a technological (future, not present-day) one. However, there is also a third catigory of worlds that do not conform to either assumption, which are hard to classify.

[Elerium]

As I kind of lumped them, a bit silly but hey it works for me:

Fantasy= magic, medieval or more backward setting, Conan and the like.

Magic Science= varing degrees that range from Star Wars to Warhammer 40k, mostly always soft sci-fi, has technology that is similar in practise to fantasy magic e.g. slower than light lasers which can't work in real life, warp powers, folding space, etc. May require a clocking on power levels just to make sure things don't get too crazy, those that don't often find themselves going down the sliding power creep and heroes becoming gods (I have no idea why fiction writers would even want to go down this route, but as an example the Doctor may possibly be a god in that he can never really lose whilst existing in a Magic Science verse).

Hard SF= Plausible stories whose main plot revolves around or includes as a major part of the backstory science that works in real life or which talks about theoretical scenarios involving said real science.

[Codex]

Arthur C Clarke wrote lots of sci fi, Star Trek is by and large fantasy.

Star Trek is fantasy? Woah, that flies in the face of the whole point of Star Trek.

The definition which I've learned, having gone to a seminar on Science Fiction/ Fantasy (Sci-Fi is such a degrading term :P) is that Science Fiction is plausible/possible, whereas Fantasy isn't. For example, take Star Wars vs Star Trek. Star Wars says that it's set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Now that's either fact or fiction. I assume that most of us don't believe that Star Wars is fact, so it's implausible, impossible fiction i.e. Fantasy.

Science Fiction deals with the plausible stuff. No, we might not be able to teleport stuff, but Star Trek would provide scientific bases for their technology, and wouldn't do anything which outright contradicts the science.

Since I'm lazy and at work:

Science fiction is largely based on writing rationally about alternative possible worlds or futures.^[2] It is similar to, but differs from, fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of nature (though some elements in a story might still be pure imaginative speculation).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction

40k is fantasy. For one it is not concerned with trying to postulate its universe in a scientific plausible way. Doctor Who, don't watch it. :P SHOCK HORROR.

[SquidDNA]

Star Wars says that it's set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Now that's either fact or fiction.

It's metaphor. That you've missed this indicates you may have missed the point of Star Wars!

[tyrion]

Star Trek is fantasy? Woah, that flies in the face of the whole point of Star Trek.

Does it? I always took ST to be more of a cultural commentary, a human parable using a fantastic setting in order to make it's observations more palatable to an audience who may or may not be ready to have their prejudices challenged.

In terms of it's "science", I'd look to any phycisists to offer any explanation for warp speed, subspace disruptions, telepathy and Godlike beings such as Trelane, The Prophets or everyone's favourite, Q, which for all I know might qualify as scientifically plausible enough for hard sci fi.

For that matter I'd be interested in a sociologist's assessment on the likelihood of space travel bringing humanity together in utopian peace and harmony.

Or it could just be I missed the point and it's speculation on the likely course of human technological development and expansion after all.

Hmmm, suspect I'm occasionally being a little too verbose.....

[Codex]

It's metaphor. That you've missed this indicates you may have missed the point of Star Wars!

I'm so, so, sad.

Owned by the Squid

[Nanaki]

Star Trek is fantasy? Woah, that flies in the face of the whole point of Star Trek.

The definition which I've learned, having gone to a seminar on Science Fiction/ Fantasy (Sci-Fi is such a degrading term :P) is that Science Fiction is plausible/possible, whereas Fantasy isn't.

These are two contradictory statements.

Science Fiction deals with the plausible stuff. No, we might not be able to teleport stuff, but Star Trek would provide scientific bases for their technology, and wouldn't do anything which outright contradicts the science.

Star Trek uses a lot of 'science' with little to no scientific foundation at all, and a lot of things that happen on that show that more or less will not happen in real life. There is a very good reason why Star trek is the trope namer for the term 'Technobabble' and why the definition of that term is 'Any impressive- and scientific-sounding, but ultimately nonsensical utterance.'

So, by your very own definition, Star Trek would be fantasy.

The funny thing is, there is actually not much difference between soft sci-fi and fantasy (aside from technological vs medieval). Both pretty much violate real life equally, but one goes for the technological route and justifies itself with technobabble and the other usually just drops all pretense and openly tells you 'It is magic'.

That is why 'adherance to real life/science' cannot be used as a litmus test for Scifi, because a vast majority of sci-fi shows and franchises (including all the major ones) would fail it completely.

Do you want to know more?

[OhJohnNo]

Sci-fi is in space. Fantasy is on the ground. Problem?



(Actually, the lines are more nebulous. Generally - but not always - you know sci-fi when you see it, and likewise for fantasy.)

[Malachi]

That is why 'adherance to real life/science' cannot be used as a litmus test for Scifi, because a vast majority of sci-fi shows and franchises (including all the major ones) would fail it completely.

But that would just mean they aren't really sci-fi shows and franchises, and this is how I treat them. The fact that something claims to be science-fiction doesn't mean we need to change the category limits just to fit it in, just becaouse it is "widely considered" as such.

TL,DR: You all know nothing and I and only I can decide what is SF and what isn't!

[kais58]

"Fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science fiction is the improbable made possible."
- Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone

This is the definition I use, seems to work pretty well.

[Zephyr]

I'm pretty sure I've seen impossible things in sci-fi... Or at least things that completely smash physics

[kais58]

Zeph: I never said it was foolproof

[Shin]

Fiction is defined best by what it isn't. It's not non-fiction.

If you're wondering why the double negative is necessary it's because as much as I'd like to say that fiction is not "fact", not all non-fiction books are considered factual. Some can be opinions rather than fact, but they don't fall under fiction because they're not made up (usually).

So when you make stuff up, it's fiction.

Fantasy is really just a subset of fiction. The important distinction is that the made up stuff relies on magic.

Science fiction is, of course, also a subset of fiction. The important distinction is that the made up stuff is extrapolated from understanding (or misunderstanding) of scientific laws and theories.

There are, of course, works of fiction that use both science and magic. In fact, Arthur Clake says it best: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Magic is therefore often seen in the traditional, pre-industrial age cultural sense where people fly on carpets instead of anti-gravity capes. It's really the atmosphere and language that define the difference. Neither is better than the other, really. A lot depends on the skill of the writer in touching the readers' imagination. I would personally much prefer the fantastic explanation that the Force is something that all living things possess, surrounding us, penetrating us and binding the galaxy together; rather than it being based on the number of midi-chlorian cells in the bloodstream.

[Goobers]

Alchemy is magic, Chemistry is Science, despite fundamentally being pretty much the same thing.

I'm going to say the difference between the two is how much the 'world' attempts to explain things. One story has an evil necromancer using magic to raise an army of the undead, the other blames it on parasites/disease/aliens, both however end up with zombies.

[Hand of Asur]

Fiction is fiction.

[LoCo]

The distinctions are slippery if you are trying to, as seems the norm these days, polarize the debate. But if you want to understand things instead of just spouting rubbish...

There is Fantasy:

High Fantasy
Soft Fantasy
Fantasy

There is Science Fiction:

Hard Sci-Fi
Soft Sci-Fi
Sci-fi

Then there is Sci-Fantasy:

Sci-Fi Heavy
Fantasy Heavy
Magi-Tech
Sci-Fantasy

Then there is Adventure. Adventure can often blur the lines between Soft Sci-Fi and no Sci-Fi, as well as doing the same with Fantasy. Erazer (Old Arnie movie) had hand held Railguns in it - rather sci-fi for the time. But nothing else in it was related to Sci-Fi. It was an Action Adventure. Many Romantic Comedies take elements of Fantasy, but they don't change over into the realm of Fantasy, they stay Romance Comedies.

What is it, exactly, that is wrong with simply saying:

It's Sci-Fi with some Fantasy elements.
or
It's Fantasy with some Sci-Fi elements.

?

Just take the dominant genre and put it first.

Nothing else in the world is black and white. Why does this have to be?

[ÜberJumper]

I just finished a book about aliens invading earth. It was pretty awesome up until Dracula showed up and killed all the aliens, then took over their fleet by riding the shuttles up out of the atmosphere.

[LoCo]

Technically that would be Science Fiction with Gothic elements ÜberJumper.

[tyrion]

I think sometimes it's possible to overdo the whole "putting things into boxes" thing.

[Ramrod]

It was pretty awesome up until Dracula showed up

And then it became double awesome. That's the genre. Double-Awesome.