Not Sure if Sci-Fi or Fantasy: 8 Invented Universes that Blur the Lines

John Carter of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Forget the epic-bomb of a film adaptation (though it’s actually not a bad flick); Burroughs’ original novels are science fantasy through and through. John Carter is transported to Mars in a manner that, while unexplained, is more or less magical—Burroughs isn’t bothered to offer a single line of dialog to explain it. On the red planet, the author combines ideas that would become hardwired genre tropes—civilizations that are an odd mix of primitive and technological, and the concept of “The One,” a legendary hero who will defeat evil and unite a people. Yet Carter’s prowess as a warrior is explained via the SF concept of Mars’ lower gravity, and the story settles into the uneasy valley between pure sci-fi and pure fantasy.

Who Fears Death, by Nnedi Okorafor
Okorafor’s brutal, beautiful, and amazing novel has given rise to the term “magical futurism” to describe her unique approach, which grows from a firm science fiction seed a story that is almost the living definition of Clarke’s Third Law (you know, the one about science and magic). While Who Fears Death can be read as a fantasy (heck, it won a World Fantasy Award), what with protagonist Onyesonwu’s seemingly magical abilities to transform and travel the spirit world, the prequel novel The Book of Phoenix makes it clear that the universe Okorafor has created is in fact science fictional—it’s just science fiction that can be read as fantasy. As with just about every other aspect of this remarkable novel, this tension between what could be magic and scattered references to lost technology is purposeful, designed to force readers to recalibrate their assumptions, and make it hard to pin to one genre.

The Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe
Wolfe’s most famous (and famously complex) work, The Book of the New Sun applies a familiar tactic in science fantasy, starting out firmly in one genre and then slowly teasing out the secret elements of the other. The story of Severian the Torturer’s apprentice begins in the fantasy realm, but his travels slowly reveal his world to be set far in the future and dominated by incredibly advanced technology that belies the magical and medieval nature of the world as originally perceived. While the precise nature of Wolfe’s creation continues to be studied, argued over, and dissected, one thing is clear: the book combines science fiction and fantasy in a powerful way that may never be duplicated.

All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders
This one isn’t out until January, but take our word for it: it’s a classic of whatever name we’re assigning self-aware, genre-hopping, pop culture conversant hybrids. Listen to the elevator pitch: childhood friends Patricia and Laurance lose touch with one another as they grow up, their differing paths sending one of them to a secret school for magicians and the other to the best engineering programs on offer. Years later, they meet again, with the fate of the world at stake, and the forces of science and magic edging toward all-out war. In this book, magic is real, but science is too, and no one is quite sure which is to blame for the worsening state of a near-future world plagued by scarcity and environmental collapse—nor which will ultimately be they key to its salvation. We love the way Charlie Jane Anders’ magic works—innate, an extension of the Earth’s own mysterious life force—but the science (fictional and otherwise) is top-shelf too (two-second time machines! Artificial intelligence! Wormhole generators!). In the end, it’s perhaps the best illustration of that aforementioned adage about advanced science being indistinguishable from magic…except maybe we’ve got it the wrong way ’round.

The Shannara series, by Terry Brooks
Now that The Shannara Chronicles is heading to television, Brooks’ popular series is poised for discovery by a whole new generation. Like The Book of the New Sun, Shannara starts off in a recognizably pure fantasy setting that is slowly revealed to be far in our own future, after an apocalyptic (and probably nuclear) world war left the Earth shattered and civilization nearly extinct (the TV adaptation makes this rather explicit from the get-go). The idea of a magic-based world emerging out of the flames of our modern-day technologically-based one isn’t exclusive to Shannara, but Brooks has developed the idea more deeply than any other author, making the slowly unveiling of the secret history behind the Four Lands an especially gripping example of science fantasy.

Updraft, by Fran Wilde
People who don’t actually read any fantasy often make the assumption that once you introduce magic to a story, all logic and reason go out the window. After all, any plot point can be waved away via mystical mumbo-jumbo and new rules invented on the spot. The reality is, many fantasy novels dip their toes into science fiction through the simple application of constants like the laws of physics. Wilde’s Updfraft certainly feels like a fantasy, but there is actually zero magic in this fantastic novel. The setting, a city of towering bone that stretches into the heavens, stalked by invisible, flying cephalopods, is alien and unique—but the real “magic” is actually engineering: the glider-like wings that allow people to fly, the immense bridges that connect the towers and allow commerce and travel, all of it logically adhering to the laws of physics as we know them, but treated with the same sense of wonder as a feat of magic.

Doctor Who
Leaving the landscape of books, we come to one of the longest-running franchises in science fantasy. The title of the first episode of season nine of Doctor Who says it all: The Magician’s Apprentice. Ostensibly, this is a science fiction show involving a member of an ancient, advanced race who can travel through time via a complex piece of machinery known as a TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space). But the fact is, many Doctor Who adventures are resolved via The Doctor’s more or less omnipotent powers to warp reality. Up until very recently, he even carried a magic wand of sorts—his “Sonic Screwdriver,” purported to be an incredibly advanced computer, but basically the thingie he waves around to cast spells. The genius of the series, evidence over five decades, has been the writers’ willingness to explore science fiction concepts and resolve them more or less magically, and vice-versa.

Star Wars
Star Wars is the most widely seen example of a fictional universe that gleefully combines elements of both sci-fi and fantasy. The original trilogy lures you in with a fairly straightforward science fiction setting—alien planets! spaceships! Wookies! blasters!—before slowly introducing The Force, a mystical and magical power, and the Jedi and Sith who can do incredible things with it. Later attempts to explain the Force with pseudo-science aside, it’s basically magic, and you could easily do a search-and-replace for the words “blaster” and “spaceship” with “sword” and “boat” and you’d have a pure epic fantasy.
What’s your favorite example of science fantasy?