Milan Shah: "Elves with Ray Guns: Differentiating Science Fiction and Fantasy"

Elves with Ray Guns: Differentiating Science Fiction and Fantasy

By Milan Shah

            Before I begin to discuss my distinction between the two types of Speculative Fiction, I should first answer why it matters. I believe that the distinction between science fiction and fantasy exists primarily to make the jobs of the readers easier. One thing that we, as humans, like to do is label things and categorize them. We give pretty much everything a name, I mean we’ve even named the metal parts of our pencils! We’ve also given unique organisms their own little place in a collection of collections of even more collections of things within our world. By doing this, we are able to refer to different things easily. This is the same as we are doing for science fiction and fantasy, by having different names the reader can look for things that specifically appeal to them. 

            In order to make seeing the distinction easier, let’s first examine the similarities. The easiest one to see is that both science fiction and fantasy can have something similar to Joesph Campbell’s hero’s journey. Though it’s mostly associated with fantasy, we can see through Anakin’s or Luke’s journey in Star Wars that it can exist in science fiction as well. Similarly, authors of both can use creatures of their own creation in their stories. Fantasy has elves, dwarves, orcs, etc., while science fiction typically has any form of life that the author chooses and can place them under the label extraterrestrial. But there is no reason that the two can’t mix. Science fiction writers could make their extraterrestrials elves or other fantastic creatures, and there certainly isn’t any rule that says that a fantasy writer can’t have something like a wookie as part of the worlds they create (aside from copyrights and such of course). Furthermore, both science fiction and fantasy can have other worlds within their stories. Generally, in science fiction this is done through the use of multiple planets, like in The Lost Stars or, once again, Star Wars, while in fantasy it is done through portals of some sort, like in Neverwhere or the Pendragon series. However, both can also exist within a single world or our own given world. 

            So with all these similarities it’s understandable why it’s difficult to distinguish between the two. Some people may think like Leigh, where if you have elves or other fantasy tropes it is fantasy, but if you add technology it becomes science fiction. However, I personally believe that the key difference lies in what makes each of their world(s) work.  When a story’s world(s) functions because of magic or some form of it, the story is primarily fantasy. If it’s due to technology then the story is science fiction. However, defining it like this brings up a few immediate questions. 

            First, what about Clarke’s three laws? What happens when the technology looks just like magic? Well, look at how the technology is described? If the technology is well explained and extremely intricate, I would consider it to be science fiction, such as in Lord of Light. If it is not super detailed, then we have to consider if we can take the technology away. In stories such as Iron Man series, we could replace all his technology with some sort of magic with its own rules then it can be called fantasy. 

            The second question comes up actually about stories like Star Wars, what happens when you have a lot of technology and magic? In Star Wars there is technology, mainly through the spaceships, and magic, through the force, so why is it science fiction. In these cases look at the elements removing them one at a time. Let’s say we take out the technology from Star Wars. Then, we would have a similar story however, just taking place via portals or on the same world. However if we take out the magic from the story, we would essentially have the same plot and the same setting, and not much would change over all. That is why we can consider Star Wars to be science fiction under this definition. With that in mind, let’s consider a story that somehow involves elves and ray guns. Would it be science fiction or fantasy? Well in this case it would be science fiction, since there is nothing suggested about magic. However, if there was some sort of elfish magic that was far more important than the guns it certainly would be fantasy.