Growing up, I read my first Fantasy books – the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, starting in second grade. Not long after, I read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series.
They were two very different experiences, and I loved them both. Ever since, I’ve found myself reading a little hard sci fi, and then bouncing over to the other pole and reading a great epic fantasy novel. It’s a little like eating a salty dinner and washing it down with wild cherry pepsi.
But I’ve also learned to love that middle ground – the fusion of sci fi and fantasy. It’s fairly uncommon, at least relative to the larger numbers of straight (forgive the word) sci fi or straight fantasy. But I have run across a few excellent examples.
It;s something that Anne McCaffrey did particularly well in her Pern novels, managing to go from straight-ahead sci fi/world building in books earlier in the timeline to feudal /fantasy complete with dragons later on.
Peter Hamilton also managed it well in his Void trilogy, with a hyper sci-fi world melded with a magical fantasy one.
Piers Anthony also comes to mind with his Phaze series, where two worlds – sci fi and magical – co-exist in adjoining dimensions.
Writing hybrid sci-fi / fantasy is one of my favorite things, and I’m learning how to add MM into the mix now too.
What about you? Are you a sci fi purist, or do you like your genre’s mixed?
This makes me think of Arthur C. Clarke’s maxim that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” So it depends on a character’s POV as to whether they’re seeing SF (tech) or Fantasy (magic).