Sci-fi in pretty fantasy clothes?

[Peppa]

ElfQuest has elves in a crashed space ship, but other than that, I don't think I've come across "Elves in Space" (unless you count Vulcans?)

Vulcans may look like elves, but the setting is obviously sci-fi. I was thinking more of worlds similar to ancient or medieval Earth, like in fantasy books. But at the same time, the existence of strange creatures (like elves or dragons) and magic should have a pseudo-scientific explanation. In the Winterlands series, for example, it is said that dragons come from the stars.

 

[Peppa]

Elentarri makes some good suggestions but I think thaGolden Witchbreed t (and its sequel Ancient Light) is pure SF just set in a world where high technology has been mostly lost but, alas, is not completely inactive. By contrast Ash, also by Mary Gentle, fits the requirement of starting off as fantasy or perhaps alternate history and only becomes science fiction towards the end. The Faded Sun trilogy also seems to be pure science fiction. The Mri just throw knives at each other and catch them because being able to react quickly or die is how the Mri like to be. However, the Morgaine Saga fits very well. There are many many stories involving telepathy that were originally classified as science fiction although Cherryh's night horses are unique.

It's pure sci-fi, of course. But I love both real sci-fi and fantasy, and it's nice to meet people who also read Golden Witchbreed and Faded Sun. : )

 

[Elentarri]

Thank you! Some of these books I've read and some I haven't. But Golden Witchbreed and Ancient Light by Mary Gentle are some of my favourite sci-fi books. They are strange and sometimes sad, but very unusual and memorable. And the world building is really amazing.
As for the Shannara books, I tried to read them, but only got through one or two. I remember the story about the girl who turned into a tree, but that's about it.

The story where the girl turned into a tree (Elfstones of Shannara) is the best of the lot. Otherwise, try the Word and Void trilogy (more urban fantasy and science fiction based fantasy but I liked it a lot) or The Genesis of Shannara trilogy (this started off rather grim, I never finished it because I never could find the next 2 books and then forgot about it).

 

[Peppa]

I would contend that sci-fi is fiction about the possibilities that science can offer in the future.

As such, I don't think that fantasy where the magic is explained should count as sci-fi. That's not the difference between the two genres.

This can only apply to very hard sci-fi. But in many sci-fi books there are things that cannot be explained by futuristic technology or common sense.
For example, in Golden Witchbreed, the main protagonist travels to an alien planet and eats local plants and meat from local animals. But in reality, the human body would simply not be able to digest such food. It would be like trying to digest plastic. And there are episodes like this in many science fiction books.
Some authors are aware of it. In Planet of Exile, for example, Ursula Le Guin mentions pills that helped humans on an alien planet to digest food. But that is a rare exception.

 

[Peppa]

Gene Wolfe's "Book of the the New Sun" quite quickly reveals itself as SF. Zelazny's "Lord of Light" takes a while to do the same thing as I remember. There's a particular pleasure in realising that the fantasy book you're reading is actually SF

Haha, there really is a certain amount of pleasure in that.

 

[Peppa]

Gene Wolfe's "Book of the the New Sun" quite quickly reveals itself as SF. Zelazny's "Lord of Light" takes a while to do the same thing as I remember. There's a particular pleasure in realising that the fantasy book you're reading is actually SF

Haha, there really is a certain amount of pleasure in that.

There's a book of linked short stories called The Traveller In Black by John Brunner which is the closest thing I can think of to a Hieronymous Bosch painting in written form. In it, a man from the present day stumbles into a fantasy world and becomes a king. Yet, in a later story, a new city is founded which, we are told, later becomes Paris. It's not quite what the OP is looking for, but it's very cool.

More on topic, Mark Laurence's Thorns trilogy is set in the future but feels like fantasy.

If this city later becomes Paris, this man must have travelled back in time.
Anyway, this book seems very interesting.

 

[The Big Peat]

This can only apply to very hard sci-fi. But in many sci-fi books there are things that cannot be explained by futuristic technology or common sense.
For example, in Golden Witchbreed, the main protagonist travels to an alien planet and eats local plants and meat from local animals. But in reality, the human body would simply not be able to digest such food. It would be like trying to digest plastic. And there are episodes like this in many science fiction books.
Some authors are aware of it. In Planet of Exile, for example, Ursula Le Guin mentions pills that helped humans on an alien planet to digest food. But that is a rare exception.

I don't think this only applies to very hard sci-fi. I think it applies to Golden Witchbreed too. Just because the science isn't spot on in every aspect - or in some cases is wildly off - doesn't mean it's not a projection of where the application of science might take us.

 

[Ray Zdybrow]

This can only apply to very hard sci-fi. But in many sci-fi books there are things that cannot be explained by futuristic technology or common sense.
For example, in Golden Witchbreed, the main protagonist travels to an alien planet and eats local plants and meat from local animals. But in reality, the human body would simply not be able to digest such food. It would be like trying to digest plastic. And there are episodes like this in many science fiction books.
Some authors are aware of it. In Planet of Exile, for example, Ursula Le Guin mentions pills that helped humans on an alien planet to digest food. But that is a rare exception.

Joanna Russ's "We Who About To..." comes to mind.
A book that every SF fan should read, IMO, but off-topic for this thread so I'll not beat the hobby-horse

 

[Swank]

This can only apply to very hard sci-fi. But in many sci-fi books there are things that cannot be explained by futuristic technology or common sense.
For example, in Golden Witchbreed, the main protagonist travels to an alien planet and eats local plants and meat from local animals. But in reality, the human body would simply not be able to digest such food. It would be like trying to digest plastic. And there are episodes like this in many science fiction books.
Some authors are aware of it. In Planet of Exile, for example, Ursula Le Guin mentions pills that helped humans on an alien planet to digest food. But that is a rare exception.

Is the main character identical to 21st century humans? Where did the life on the planet come from, and where did the life on our planet come from? Just because the author doesn't spell out everything to you it doesn't mean that the situation is as straightforward and low tech as it seems.

 

[Peppa]

The story where the girl turned into a tree (Elfstones of Shannara) is the best of the lot. Otherwise, try the Word and Void trilogy (more urban fantasy and science fiction based fantasy but I liked it a lot) or The Genesis of Shannara trilogy (this started off rather grim, I never finished it because I never could find the next 2 books and then forgot about it).

Maybe I'll read them one day. The reason I put the Shannara series down was not because I thought the books were too boring or too silly. It's just that I was in my early teens at the time, and there were so many good books in the world that I hadn't read yet, and I was in a hurry to read them. And then I just forgot about the Shannara series.

 

[Peppa]

Is the main character identical to 21st century humans? Where did the life on the planet come from, and where did the life on our planet come from? Just because the author doesn't spell out everything to you it doesn't mean that the situation is as straightforward and low tech as it seems.

Of course, circumstances can vary. For example, in The Word for World Is Forest, there are great woods of the same trees growing on another planet as on Earth. But that book is part of the Hainish cycle, and virtually all the inhabited worlds there, including Earth, are interstellar colonies planted by Hain long ago.
So there are plenty of opportunities for the author to change things so that eating alien fruit would be normal for humans. After all, this is literature, not a chemistry or biology textbook.
But specifically in this case, the main character, Christie, was a human born on Earth. I don't think it was set in the very distant future, as cities like Karachi or London still existed on Earth in this book. There was also no mention in the book that humans had had time to change very much physically.
That's why I specifically quoted Golden Witchbreed and not any other book. It's one of my favourite books, by the way, and the fact that the main protagonist eats alien food doesn't make the book stupid. I was just trying to prove that sometimes sci-fi and fantasy are very close, and that books that are considered sci-fi can talk about things that are unlikely to ever happen in the future.

I don't think this only applies to very hard sci-fi. I think it applies to Golden Witchbreed too. Just because the science isn't spot on in every aspect - or in some cases is wildly off - doesn't mean it's not a projection of where the application of science might take us.

Of course, in many cases the science isn't spot on in every aspect, and that's fine. But a lot of sci-fi books are not about where the application of science might take us.
For example, many of Lee Brackett's or Ray Bradbury's books are set on Mars, where there are ancient cities and local populations. But obviously there is no science that could take us to such a beautiful Mars. Although I certainly wouldn't mind going there, because I like those books.

 

[Swank]

I was just trying to prove that sometimes sci-fi and fantasy are very close, and that books that are considered sci-fi can talk about things that are unlikely to ever happen in the future.

Errors in SF doesn't make it like fantasy. A fiction book about Wall Street can also have technical errors. Fantasy isn't that the science doesn't make sense. Fantasy is where the science has been displaced by the supernatural in a purposeful way.

 

[Peppa]

Exactly. But in some cases, for some reason, writers put supernatural things in their books first, and then try to create quasi-scientific explanations for them. In such cases, the books contain rather amusing lectures on the workings of the prophets' internal secretion glands, or the peculiarities of elven reproduction. The first post in this thread was about such books.

 

[Lostinspace]

Errors in SF doesn't make it like fantasy. A fiction book about Wall Street can also have technical errors. Fantasy isn't that the science doesn't make sense. Fantasy is where the science has been displaced by the supernatural in a purposeful way.

We must have had numerous threads on the difference between science fiction and fantasy. The existence of magic does seem a very good test. Science fiction sometimes has ideas like FTL, telepathy and time travel which do require a suspension of disbelief from the reader. However, authors of science fiction enter into a contract with their readers to only use a minimum of hand waving and limit the use of deus ex machina endings. The supernatural is explicitly not hand waveable.

The reason that I quoted Graydon Saunders is that his world seems to have evolved like ours until about a quarter of a million years before the stories something called the power came into existence. The power seems to be rather malicious and prevents our sort of civilization as explained by Blossom below (again from A Succession of Bad Days):

Blossom’s head comes up a bit, looking at each of us instead of looking at all of us. “Do any of you remember why steam’s impractical?”

There’s an abrupt quirk to Blossom’s lips. “Water vapour, steam, not the Independent Steam.”

Kynefrid speaks doubtfully into the extended pause. “Something about adding heat the second time.”

Blossom nods. “Thermodynamic cycles. If there’s a Null available to keep the Power away, you can get work out of heat mechanically. But then you have to add heat again. It’s the cyclical nature that does it, the Power objects and you get serious mischief. If there’s no Null, anything that works by moving heat explodes. Using high-pressure steam to cook food faster will eventually explode, less immediately but certainly.”

The story follows an attempt to create a workable civilization in that environment.

 

[Lostinspace]

Slightly changing the subject, there are books that start as apparently science fiction and, at least in the case of Zelazny's Isle of the Dead, reveal themselves to be fantasy very late in the story. People who want spoilers can read Isle of the Dead (Zelazny novel) - Wikipedia.

 

[Peppa]

We must have had numerous threads on the difference between science fiction and fantasy. The existence of magic does seem a very good test. Science fiction sometimes has ideas like FTL, telepathy and time travel which do require a suspension of disbelief from the reader. However, authors of science fiction enter into a contract with their readers to only use a minimum of hand waving and limit the use of deus ex machina endings. The supernatural is explicitly not hand waveable.

Of course. But in some cases the line between science fiction and fantasy is blurred. For example, in many books magicians can read minds, i.e. use telepathy.

The story follows an attempt to create a workable civilization in that environment.

I think I really must read this book. It sounds very interesting.

 

[Swank]

Of course. But in some cases the line between science fiction and fantasy is blurred. For example, in many books magicians can read minds, i.e. use telepathy.

I think I really must read this book. It sounds very interesting.

But they are using magic to do it. That's. The point.

 

[Lostinspace]

But they are using magic to do it. That's. The point.

I agree that magic is normally the marker for fantasy. However, there is one Cherryh story, the Paladin, which feels like fantasy but has no magic at all. One of the more central fantasy stories, the Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay, has only got some accurate foretelling of the future as far as I can remember (see Reviews of The Lions of Al-Rassan – BrightWeavings for Langford's "This hefty volume isn’t a conventional fantasy (though one character has clairvoyant flashes),"). Thus I do feel that the cover and shelving may be even more important than magic.

There is also the problem of Clark's "sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic" which leaves us the problem of how to classify Mary Gentle's Ash.

Added as edit: Perhaps there is a need for a classification of "historical novels in imaginary worlds".

 

[Swank]

I agree that magic is normally the marker for fantasy. However, there is one Cherryh story, the Paladin, which feels like fantasy but has no magic at all. One of the more central fantasy stories, the Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay, has only got some accurate foretelling of the future as far as I can remember (see Reviews of The Lions of Al-Rassan – BrightWeavings for Langford's "This hefty volume isn’t a conventional fantasy (though one character has clairvoyant flashes),"). Thus I do feel that the cover and shelving may be even more important than magic.

There is also the problem of Clark's "sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic" which leaves us the problem of how to classify Mary Gentle's Ash.

Added as edit: Perhaps there is a need for a classification of "historical novels in imaginary worlds".

This is a little bit "exception proves the rule" and a little bit of why we have the term speculative fiction. Some types of fiction don't have especially strong indicators of fantasy or SF.

But any medieval setting book with supernatural elements certainly has no reason to not be shelved with fantasy.


The classification mistake I think gets made all the time is to view SF and fantasy as different due to the same test. While fantasy is largely framed by fantastical forces akin to historical mythos, SF is best defined by the use of speculative elements to create a new world as a rational projection of ours. And that's because plenty of books include speculative technology that are pretty obviously not SF. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six being a prime example. It is firmly rooted in our world, not a speculative one, despite citing speculative tech as plot devices. The virus in that story is the threat, while the virus in Herbert's White Plague is the dividing line between our world and the new reality created in the book.

 

[Peppa]

But they are using magic to do it. That's. The point.

Quite right. But the line between magic and telepathy is even thinner than that between science fiction and fantasy. The existence of telepathy has never been experimentally proven, nor has the existence of magic, and if telepathy or magic existed, people could use it to talk to each other mentally.
So in many cases the difference is just one of terminology. For example, there is the Darkover series of books by Marion Zimmer Bradley. It takes place on a lost colony planet where society and technology have been reduced to medieval levels, and some people have acquired abilities they call magic. As far as I remember, the reason for these abilities was their interbreeding with the native humanoids. If you take away the backstory about the lost colony and replace the native humanoids with some elves, you could easily turn the Darkover book series into a fantasy.

Added as edit: Perhaps there is a need for a classification of "historical novels in imaginary worlds".

Perhaps such a subgenre is really necessary. There are fantasy books that have relatively little magic and so on, and the imaginary worlds are very similar to ancient or medieval Earth. You've given some examples, and I can add Crown of Stars by Kate Elliott.

This is a little bit "exception proves the rule" and a little bit of why we have the term speculative fiction. Some types of fiction don't have especially strong indicators of fantasy or SF.

But any medieval setting book with supernatural elements certainly has no reason to not be shelved with fantasy.


The classification mistake I think gets made all the time is to view SF and fantasy as different due to the same test. While fantasy is largely framed by fantastical forces akin to historical mythos, SF is best defined by the use of speculative elements to create a new world as a rational projection of ours.

Exactly. And the first post was about books that have an obviously medieval setting and a tiny drop of rational elements as seasoning.