Quote:
Originally Posted by OtterBooks
I do allow myself a bit of snobbery when people refer to Star Wars as sci-fi. It is not. It's Fantasy. Knights and wizards in space.
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No it isn't. If there is a rule that sf can't have wizards and knights, then there is surely also a rule that fantasy can't have spaceships, blasters, and hovercars.
To make things more complicated, until the 60's thing were broken up into science fiction and science fantasy, with science fiction being the more technologically focused extrapolation of technology, and science fantasy was less tech dependent and more focused on other issues. "I, Robot" vs. "The Left Hand of Darkness." The "fantasy" in the title of "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction" was science fantasy. Tolkienesque fantasy didn't develop as a literary genre until later.
But, as many people have pointed out, there are difficulties with this kind of line drawing because it's an attempt to classify forms of art that aren't required to neatly fall within a class. (This is generally true: finding the dividing line between baroque and rococo architecture or rock and r&b music is also difficult at the margins). So it's important to keep in mind that these are invented categories, and there's no rule that something will neatly fit into one or the other.
And to some extent the classification will depend on why you are interested in it. In one sense, "The Dragonriders of Pern" is science fiction - the people who live on the planet are the descendants of colonists who crossed space in spaceships; the "dragons" are alien creatures; the "threads" are the result of astronomical processes; and the society was originally set up to rationally use the one alien lifeform to combat the danger from space. So from that perspective, science fiction.
However, from a reader's perspective (and probably from a publisher's perspective), the best classification is probably fantasy. If you like stories about knights and dragons and kings and castles and magic, set in a vaguely medieval era, you will probably like Dragonriders. If you only like stories about spaceships and blasters and scientists and science and technology, set in a future-y era, you probably won't like Dragonriders, as there are only maybe two pages of the science-y backstory.
I think maybe the best way to think of these categories is to consider each to consist of a bundle of elements. Sci-fi elements would include scientists, technology, aliens, alien planets, space exploration, future setting, etc. Note that no sci-fi story will have all of these elements (and there are probably dozens of them). Fantasy elements would include creatures from folklore, magic, wizards, medieval setting (with kings/castles/knights), medieval technology (swords and bows and horses and ships), etc. Again, there are probably dozens of elements.
In a lot of cases, especially older cases, there is no overlap. Lord of the Rings doesn't have any sci-fi elements; the Moon is a Harsh Mistress doesn't have any fantasy elements.
But often there is overlap, as authors are free to pick and chose from the elements to create a future-y world with scientists and technology, but to also include magic, wizards, and creatures from folklore. In which case you have to make a judgment call as to how you would classify it. (IMO, these cases usually end up as fantasy, as (like in Dragonriders), the main characters and plot elements usually revolve around the fantasy elements, with the technological society being mostly backdrop and background.) This is because someone may want to write a fantasy story with a non-medieval background. I think it's less common for someone to want to write a hard sf novel with magic in the background. But if they did, I'd call it science fiction.