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{{Analysis}}{{trope}}
{{quote|''"It's been said that science fiction and fantasy are two different things; science-fiction the improbable made possible, fantasy the impossible made probable."''
|'''Rod Serling''', ''[[The Twilight Zone]], Season 3, Episode 90, "The Fugitive"''}}
[[Science Fiction]] and [[Fantasy]] are the two main classes of non-realistic
A wizard turning people into frogs? Generally considered impossible. Travel at the speed of light? Generally considered only improbable for now - unless you are a physicist using the dominant theories. Eliminating death with [[Suspended Animation]]... Anyone else want to take this one? And [[Time Travel]]... don't even go there.
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Perhaps while Fantasy and SF both deal with the unreal, they differ only in ''how'' unreal. One man's (not to mention one century's) Fantasy is another man's''/''century's Science-Fiction. On the other hand, when Sci-Fi includes [[Dragonriders of Pern|time-traveling dragons,]] mind-controlling spells on a planetary scale, and [[Star Trek|the ghosts of the dead possessing starships,]] it's not clear that it's possible to get any more unreal.
If you label your work "Science-Fiction" and push some people's [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]] too far, you've got a problem: they might accept the plot, character development, narrative devices, etc. as a coherent story, but they won't accept it as a ''sci-fi'' story because the [[Like Reality Unless Noted|impossible]] is only there "because I said so." Even if every planet the heroes encounter is based on a different time/place from Earth's history (perfect internal consistency), the audience will want to know why any such thing should ever be. If you label your work "Fantasy," it seems like you can get away with anything except breaking [[Magic
Some say the safest way to distinguish between the two has, for the better or worse, come down to [[Settings]]:
But what do you do when [[Magic From Technology|Sufficiently Advanced Technology]] and [[Magitek|Sufficiently Advanced Magic]] are equally indistinguishable from each other? D&D can emulate everything in the "Science Fiction" setting above without breaking a sweat. And you could pick any item out of the "Fantasy" side and find a whole [[Sci Fi Counterpart|sci-fi series built around it]].
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To a lesser extent, this conflict can be portrayed as [[Magic Versus Science|outright antagonism between magic and technology]], sometimes [[Harmony Versus Discipline|used as a theme.]] Occasionally it's even [[Lampshaded]] with a [[The Magic Versus Technology War|shooting war between the two]].
A recurring theme in the conflict seems to be a desire to force [[Fantasy]] elements into a more 'realistic' [[Science Fiction]] [[Doing
On the other hand, some works embrace elements from both fantasy and science fiction settings, creating a [[Science Fantasy]] hybrid. Instead of worrying about trying to fit into a genre, they follow other rules, such as [[Rule of Cool]] or [[Rule of Funny]] to build the setting within the larger envelope of [[Speculative Fiction]].
See also [[Magic Realism]], [[Magic Versus Science]], [[Urban Fantasy]], and many of the forms of [[Punk Punk]]. See also
And now you wonder why some larger bookstores have a combined Science fiction/Fantasy section.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Speculative Fiction]]▼
[[Category:Analysis]]
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