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Breaking Down Sci-fi and Sci-fantasy
Sci-fi and sci-fantasy share many things — but differ in key ways.
At nearly 5 years old, in May of 1977, my parents took me to see a movie that would shape my life in a lot of different ways. The opening theme boomed, the famous text crawl scrolled up, and then a ship came flying in — blasting away at a bigger ship in pursuit.
I am, by no stretch of the imagination, the only one on whom Star Wars made a lasting impression on. It not only sparked my love of sci-fi — but opened me to a greater sense of creativity.
Over the years I got to see even more cool sci-fi on the small screen. Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Babylon 5, and Star Trek: TNG and Deep Space Nine. These, and then later sci-fi shows like Farscape, Firefly, and The Expanse, continued to fuel my love of this genre.
As I began to write my own works of sci-fi (and fantasy), I started to become aware that there are two primary divisions of sci-fi. Sci-fi and sci-fantasy
Specifically, sci-fi is futuristic stories with plausible technology employed to explore, colonize, and experience space. The various Star Treks, Babylon 5, The Expanse, and Firefly live here, as they look at a future ideal for humankind and employ tech that’s not beyond plausibility.
