Hard Sci-Fi vs Medieval Fantasy? - Magic vs Theoretical Science.

  • 🏰 The Fediverse is up. If you know, you know.
  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account

Title.

  • Hard Science Fiction

    Votes: 41 53.9%
  • Medieval Fantasy

    Votes: 35 46.1%

  • Total voters
    76
Hear me out:
Sci-Fantasy.
Yeah, that’d be cool.
I would be interested in a fantasy setting where magic is not supernatural and obeys the laws of physics, but most fantasy novels and films involve wizards shooting lightning out of their hands.
See that’d be interesting. But most fantasy writers who end up being best sellers don’t give two shits about it. Even if a magic system ends up following the laws of physics and thermodynamics, then it doesn’t get categorized as fantasy, it gets categorized as sci-fi.
 
But most fantasy writers who end up being best sellers don’t give two shits about it.
This is because they would have to explain how people could conjure fire or levitate. Do they have specialized organs that allow them to convert one form of energy to thermal or kinetic energy? Where does this energy come from? How taxing is this process on the human body? These are all questions that would require research to answer convincingly, and many writers do not want to put the work in.
 
reading through the Xeelee sequance currently and it's really giving me Blame! vibes in some aspects. I really wish more scifi authors dared to make wilder concepts in their works.
 
See that’d be interesting. But most fantasy writers who end up being best sellers don’t give two shits about it. Even if a magic system ends up following the laws of physics and thermodynamics, then it doesn’t get categorized as fantasy, it gets categorized as sci-fi.
I've always found the concept of magic being an invention to be neat but it usually boils down to "<thing> was found that breaks physics." It's sort of like the trope of someone getting sent back in time, has a gadget with them, and is perceived as a magic user of some kind. Unfortunately, media that I've come across where that's been pulled off successfully is slim and even if I sat and thought about it for a while, I'd probably only come up with two or three good examples.
 
Back
Top Bottom