Over at the Mad Genius Club I talk about what Science Fantasy is, as a subgenre of science fiction. Where science and magic exist on the same plane, stories that stretch the imagination are born. If you haven’t read any, this is a good place to start. If you love the genre already, then perhaps you will find fresh adventures before you.
Enjoy, and happy reading!
- John Carter of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
- Dave Freer’s The Forlorn
- Foster’s Spellsinger series
- The Dray Prescott series
- “Glory Road” by Robert A Heinlein
- Pam Uphoff’s Gods and Exiles
- Jason Fleming’s the Spring that Never Came
- Also by Robert A Heinlein there is “the Number of the Beast”
- Christopher Stasheff the Warlock series
- The Compleat Enchanter by de Camp and Pratt
- Schooled in Magic by Christopher Nuttall
- Magic, Inc by Robert A Heinlein
- Jack of Shadows by Zelazny
- CJ Cherryh’s Morgaine Novels
- The Gate of Ivory by Doris Egan
- Randall Garrett’s Lard Darcy books
- Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series
- Barbara Hambly’s Windrose series
- Mordant’s Need by Stephen Donaldson
- Marion Harmon’s Wearing the Cape
- Zelazny’s Lord of Light
- Keith Laumer’s World Shuffler
- Watt-Evan’s Worlds of Shadow
- David Brin’s Practice Effect
- Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur Court
- Gene Wolfe’s Book of the new Sun
- Daryl Gregory’s Pandemonium
- Larry Correia’s Grimnoir Chronicles
- Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn
- Ursula K Le Guin’s Lathe of Heaven
- Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts
- Ian Tregellis’ the Milkweed Triptych
- Poul Anderson’s The High Crusade
- Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions
- John Ringo’s Council Wars series (There will be Dragons is free at Amazon)
- David Weber’s Heirs of Empire
- Harry Turtledove’s The Case of the Toxic Spell-Dump
Not really on the list, but the reason that this list, and the post at Mad Genius happened, was a question about my book, Vulcan’s Kittens. While I’d started writing it as fantasy, it morphed into science fiction, something that is even more obvious in the second book, God’s Wolfling. Not fantasy, but not science fiction either. Crossover, and hard to quantify.
Comments
3 responses to “The Starter List of Science Fantasy”
Piers Anthony’s Adept series features two linked worlds, Proton and Phaze, one of which is magic and the other science. The worlds are parallel and affect each other in multiple ways.
I would have to confess that I just read a post (from Mad Genius Club, I think) summarizing a panel addressing the question “Is Hard SF Still Relevant?”. I just wanted to point out that Larry Correia’s Grimnoir trilogy, although clearly Science Fantasy, is also borderline Hard SF: the protagonist, in particular, makes effective use of gravity in his magic…
[…] do, I decided to make up a list of books that do that blend and handle it well. Not necessarily Science Fantasy, which is a genre where the science is so advanced it is indistinguishable from magic, but worlds […]