![]() ![]() Magic and technology, space aliens or mutants or mythical beings, are merely one or another source of superpowers, used to fight crime and save the world. Strange and Iron Man and Silver Surfer can serve on the same super-team with no one to bat an eyelash of disbelief, and likewise Cyborg and Wonder Woman, or Starfire and Raven can serve the Justice League or Teen Titans. Superhero stories are likewise generous in what they permit. Like the blasters in Star Wars, the guns in an Urban Fantasy are usually there more for flavor and atmosphere than as serious, problem-solving weapons. With the notable exception of the Monster Hunter International books by Larry Correia, guns in Urban fantasies operate under the laws of nature, but our leather clad heroines prefer to stake vampires with a sharpened stick. Like horror stories, Urban fantasy usually will allow anything that keeps to the mood and flavor of a film noir film, and allows for considerable variation on what is involved. Usually the magic is honest-to-the-devil magic, complete with pentagrams and bubbling cauldrons, and contracts with demons signed in blood, but sometimes it has a science-flavor figleaf which explains vampirism or lycanthropy as caused by a blood disease, or what have you. Guns and bombs and even the unlicensed nuclear accelerator backpacks of the Ghostbusters work in urban environments, but there are also all the famous movie monsters running amuck as well, vampires and werewolves, and perhaps elves and dwarves and the like. Urban fantasy is a close cousin to nuts-and-bolts fantasy, but it has rules and protocols of its own. Perhaps it is a technology based on alchemy or New Age aura fields rather than physics, but there are no gods and spirits involved. On the third hand, in the MASTER OF THE FIVE MAGIC by Lyndon Hardy, as well as in MAGIC, INC by Heinlein, the so-called magic is literally magic, but it is treated as an alternative technology bound by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and there is nothing that looks or feels supernatural about it. (My own SOMEWHITHER falls into this category). ![]() Such works are actually fantasy, and the technology is treated as a type of magic, that is, a set of rules that apply in only one of many realms or worlds. On the other hand, in Zelazny’s Amber books, there are technological things like guns and gunpowder (a crucial plot point in the second book) but the worlds where gunpowder works, and the laws of nature are set, is merely one shadow among countless, all controlled by what is basically a magic rune-pattern created by a wizard of chaos with the aid of a unicorn and a magic jewel. van Vogt wrote some, in his ‘Wizard of Linn’ setting) - and treat them seriously, with a serious science fictional explanation for why nobles fight with blades rather than gunpowder or rayguns, have no computers nor robots, but still have starships and space colonies. Specifically, this is Frank Herbert’s rather successful attempt to take the tropes of a “swords and spaceships” yarn - a genre now largely forgotten, but once popular (A.E. This is science fiction dressed in the garb and ornaments of fantasy. Their role in the plot, as manipulators of the beliefs and bloodlines or others would seem to justify the term, but they do not literally have magic powers. Likewise, the common people in DUNE by Frank Herbert refer to those trained in the observational and parapsychological skills of the Bene Gesserit order as Witches. This is science fiction flavored to look like fantasy. They look and act just like magic dragons, but technically they inhabit a naturalistic and scientific universe. The dragons of Pern, for example, are intelligent extraterrestrials with psionic powers. My suggestion is that works with both science fictional and fantasy elements be categorized into genres by the theme and appeal of the invented world. ![]() When Gandalf the Gray returns from the dead, this is a miracle arranged by the Valar, the angelic powers of the world but when Spock returns from the dead this is mumble mumble mind meld something something genesis torpedo something. Fantasy has witches and wizards with magic powers, whereas in science fiction the exact same character doing the exact same thing is called a psychic or psionicist.įairy tales have monsters and science fiction has space monsters.įairy tales have absurd, unbelievable, impossible things like true love, heroic sacrifice, noble knights, holy hermits, and fair damsels chaste and pure, whereas science fiction has believable and realistic science things like time machines, mind reading, parallel worlds and faster than light drive. We all know the difference between fantasy and science fiction. ![]()
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