Technofantasy is a subgenre of fantasy, which has some elements of science and technology but it does not rationalize their use through scientific or quasi-scientific terms, which distinguishes it from science fiction and science fantasy. The less realistic and the more "technobabble" any explanation is, the closer the work is to technofantasy. [1] The concept of technofantasy has been described as "destroying the difference between magic and science". [2]
Laurence van Cott Niven is an American science fiction writer. His 1970 novel Ringworld won the Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. With Jerry Pournelle he wrote The Mote in God's Eye (1974) and Lucifer's Hammer (1977). The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America gave him the 2015 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award.
Gregory Benford is an American science fiction author and astrophysicist who is professor emeritus at the department of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. He is a contributing editor of Reason magazine.
Science fantasy is a hybrid genre within speculative fiction that simultaneously draws upon or combines tropes and elements from both science fiction and fantasy. In a conventional science fiction story, the world is presented as being scientifically logical, while a conventional fantasy story contains mostly supernatural and artistic elements that disregard the scientific laws of the real world. The world of science fantasy, however, is laid out to be scientifically logical and often supplied with hard science-like explanations of any supernatural elements.
Unknown was an American pulp fantasy fiction magazine, published from 1939 to 1943 by Street & Smith, and edited by John W. Campbell. Unknown was a companion to Street & Smith's science fiction pulp, Astounding Science Fiction, which was also edited by Campbell at the time; many authors and illustrators contributed to both magazines. The leading fantasy magazine in the 1930s was Weird Tales, which focused on shock and horror. Campbell wanted to publish a fantasy magazine with more finesse and humor than Weird Tales, and put his plans into action when Eric Frank Russell sent him the manuscript of his novel Sinister Barrier, about aliens who own the human race. Unknown's first issue appeared in March 1939; in addition to Sinister Barrier, it included H. L. Gold's "Trouble With Water", a humorous fantasy about a New Yorker who meets a water gnome. Gold's story was the first of many in Unknown to combine commonplace reality with the fantastic.
A fantasy trope is a specific type of literary trope that occurs in fantasy fiction. Worldbuilding, plot, and characterization have many common conventions, many of them having ultimately originated in myth and folklore. J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium for example, was inspired from a variety of different sources including Germanic, Finnish, Greek, Celtic and Slavic myths. Literary fantasy works operate using these tropes, while others use them in a revisionist manner, making the tropes over for various reasons such as for comic effect, and to create something fresh.
Brandon Winn Sanderson is an American author of high fantasy and science fiction. He is best known for the Cosmere fictional universe, in which most of his fantasy novels, most notably the Mistborn series and The Stormlight Archive, are set. Outside of the Cosmere, he has written several young adult and juvenile series including The Reckoners, the Skyward series, and the Alcatraz series. He is also known for finishing Robert Jordan's high fantasy series The Wheel of Time. Sanderson has created several graphic novel fantasy series, including White Sand and Dark One.
David Geddes Hartwell was an American critic, publisher, and editor of thousands of science fiction and fantasy novels. He was best known for work with Signet, Pocket, and Tor Books publishers. He was also noted as an award-winning editor of anthologies. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction describes him as "perhaps the single most influential book editor of the past forty years in the American [science fiction] publishing world".
Operation Chaos is a 1971 science fantasy fixup novel by American writer Poul Anderson. A sequel, Operation Luna, was published in 1999.
Worldbuilding is the process of constructing an imaginary world or setting, sometimes associated with a fictional universe. Developing the world with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, culture and ecology is a key task for many science fiction or fantasy writers. Worldbuilding often involves the creation of geography, a backstory, flora, fauna, inhabitants, technology and often if writing speculative fiction, different peoples. This may include social customs as well as invented languages for the world.
Hard fantasy is a term used to describe different types of fantasy literature, especially those which present stories set in a rational and knowable world. In this sense, the term is analogous to hard science fiction, from which it draws its name, in that both build their respective worlds in a rigorous and logical manner. However, the term has other uses, and the scholar Misha Grifka-Wander has argued that it is both unpopular and inaccurate.
Spirits, Stars, and Spells: The Profits and Perils of Magic is a 1966 history book by L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp, published by Canaveral Press. The book sold slowly, and the remaining stock was taken over by Owlswick Press and sold under its own name with new dust jackets in 1980. It has been translated into Polish.
There have been many attempts at defining science fiction. This is a list of definitions that have been offered by authors, editors, critics and fans over the years since science fiction became a genre. Definitions of related terms such as "science fantasy", "speculative fiction", and "fabulation" are included where they are intended as definitions of aspects of science fiction or because they illuminate related definitions—see e.g. Robert Scholes's definitions of "fabulation" and "structural fabulation" below. Some definitions of sub-types of science fiction are included, too; for example see David Ketterer's definition of "philosophically-oriented science fiction". In addition, some definitions are included that define, for example, a science fiction story, rather than science fiction itself, since these also illuminate an underlying definition of science fiction.
Elements of fantastical or supernatural fiction have been part of mainstream Russian literature since the 18th century. Russian fantasy developed from the centuries-old traditions of Slavic mythology and folklore. Russian science fiction emerged in the mid-19th century and rose to its golden age during the Soviet era, both in cinema and literature, with writers like the Strugatsky brothers, Kir Bulychov, and Mikhail Bulgakov, among others. Soviet filmmakers, such as Andrei Tarkovsky, also produced many science fiction and fantasy films. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, modern Russia experienced a renaissance of fantasy. Outside modern Russian borders, there are a significant number of Russophone writers and filmmakers from Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, who have made a notable contribution to the genres.
Magic in fiction is the endowment of characters or objects in works of fiction or fantasy with powers that do not naturally occur in the real world.
Fantasy is a genre of fiction involving magical elements, as well as a work in this genre.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to science fiction:
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to fantasy:
"The Dowry of Angyar" is a science fiction short story by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, first published in 1964. It is the first work of the Hainish Cycle. The story is set on a fictional planet of the star Fomalhaut, and follows a highborn woman as she tries to track down a family heirloom. It was framed by commentary from ethnologists studying the intelligent life-forms of the Fomalhaut system. The story drew from Norse mythology, including the legend of the Brísingamen, and explored the concept of time dilation. "The Dowry of Angyar" drew comments for its stylistic devices, while a review praised Le Guin's writing as "crystalline prose". It was later used as the prologue to Le Guin's 1966 novel Rocannon's World. In later publications, including in the 1975 anthology The Wind's Twelve Quarters, the story was given the title "Semley's Necklace".
"What Good Is A Glass Dagger?" is a fantasy short story written by Larry Niven and published for the first time in 1972. It occurs in the same fictional universe as the book The Magic Goes Away, by Niven, being the second story in this universe, the sequel to the short story "Not Long Before the End". Asimov comments that in this story Niven "seeks to provide a scientific explanation for magic". The concept of mana appears in it, and from it has spread to the RPGs. However, it is not original to the book, as Niven said he learned about it by reading the book The Trumpet Shall Sound (1968). Niven also invokes the principle of conservation of mass at some point in the narrative.