Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26936
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

It is a historical fact that _The Magazine of Fantasy_ started in 1949 changed its name to _The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction_ starting with the second issue and still uses the title today. No doubt the proportions of fantasy and science fiction vary over the decades.

[The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magazine_of_Fantasy_%26_Science_Fiction)

And take a look at the contents of _Fantastic Stories of the Imagination_ volume 13 # 4, April 1964. I have a copy of that issue packed away somewhere and remember some of the stories in it.

The cover story, "Centipedes of Space" is a space opera with a space fleet fighting an interstellar war. But the plot depends on a rather metaphysical speculation. "The Rule of Names" by Ursula K. Le Guin is an early Earthsea story with wizards and dragons. And "The Devil Came to our Valley" by Fulton T. Grant, didn't seem to have any science fiction or fantasy elements, although it is described as sort of a "lost race" story.

[Fantastic Stories of Imagination, April 1964](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?58201)

Here are some more stories that mix science fiction and fantasy elements:

_Krull_ (1983) mixes sword and sorcery and alien invasion of the planet Krull.

_Star Trek: Deep Space Nine_ mixes science fiction and space opera with the plotine of the protagonist becoming the emissary of the wormhole aliens/Prophets worshipped by the Bajorans and the Pagh wraiths.

Are _At the Mountains of Madness_, "The whisperer in darkness", and "The Shadow out of Time" fantasy, science fiction, mixed, or pure H.P. Lovecraft?

There are countless millions of people alive today who use the products of science and technology and believe that science and technology work and also believe in various supernatural aspects of their religions.

And so there are many millions of people who believe that just as science fictional airplanes, computers, atomic bombs, trips to the Moon, etc. have come true, many even more advanced science fiction elements will become real in the future, and ho also believe in the reality of supernatural beings of various types.

There are some people who would believe, for example, that a story about a benevolent god assigning an angel-like being to secretly stop a mad dictator from starting World War Three and killing hundreds of millions of persons was perfectly plausible.

A reader can enjoy a fantasy story equally ell if it is set on a flat Earth that is the center of the universe or if it is set on a spherical Earth that is one of gazillions of of planets in the universe. J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth is both a different times.

If a reader can believe that elves and dragons might exist alongside an ancient or medieval human society, he can believe they might continue to exist alongside an advanced star travelling human society.

If a religious reader can believe in science and technology existing in a world with the supernatural beings of his religion, he can accept a story in which science and technology exist in a world with fictional supernatural beings.

So it is possible but not guaranteed for stories that mix science fiction and fantasy elements to succeed.

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