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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41981
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

> **Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.** - Arthur C Clarke

There's a reason that science fiction and fantasy are frequently shelved together - separating the two is usually a fools errand.

The Dragonriders of Pern features a preindustrial society where flying, firebreathing, teleporting, and telepathic dragons defend the skies from horrible creatures that rain down from above. They could easily be considered pure fantasy - up until the book where they discover the spacecraft that the human ancestors flew in on, and the labs where they bioengineered the dragons.

In Star Wars (arguably the most famous science fiction property of all time), the Force is really just space magic called another name. And they do all their fighting with swords.

The lists go on and on. Science fiction and fantasy are united in that they explore the impossible. Fantasy uses elements that will _never_ be possible, while science fiction uses elements that theoretically _might_ be possible. But the impossibility is shared.

## Science fiction and fantasy are not a single genre - they are many

Epic fantasy (eg Wheel of Time) and space opera (eg Star Wars) are more similar to each other than they are to urban fantasy or "hard" science fiction.

In some ways, it's inaccurate to call science fiction and fantasy genres at all. They're setting elements. A romance doesn't stop being a romance because it's set on a space station, and a murder mystery isn't any less mysterious because it was an elf who was murdered.

The key to mixing these elements successfully is to understand the expectations of your readers, and meeting those expectations (but in surprising ways). Genre helps define expectations.

If you're writing hard SF, readers expect to see a world that's close enough to our own that they can believe that our world could _become_ the world of the story - magic obviously has no place here.

On the flip side, urban fantasy readers expect the author to have considered the modern world and how it might interact with the impossible. Extrapolations from science to science fiction may be natural depending on the exact nature of the setting.

If the reader has led to expect that the serial killer is a Scooby-Doo villain, then the sudden reveal that the murders were done with actual magic will violate their expectations and frustrate them (in general - there will of course be exceptions). But if the story is framed as a space cop trying to capture a vampire despite not believing that vampires are real, the readers will accept that premise as well as any other.

Original score: 40