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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/20234
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Sci-fi and fantasy don't NEED to be fundamentally different. If the people in your fantasy world approach the magic that exists in their world in a "scientific" way, then your fantasy elements become soft sci-fi. That is, you are proposing a made-up world in which there are laws of magic that operate exactly like laws of science in our world. Then the only thing to decide is how advanced the magic and technology are in your world. You just have to keep both of them reasonable. For example, if teleporting and/or antigravity devices are commodity items, then people aren't going to have the same kind of transportation infrastructure that we have.

Also, your world's history will influence the levels of magic and technology. They will tend to stunt one another's growth. If certain areas of magic were discovered early in history, then nobody would bother developing technologies in areas already covered by that magic (and vice versa for areas of technology discovered early in history). For all we know, our own real world IS magical, but our technology is so advanced that few people want to bother with magic in its primitive and unreliable state of development.

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