Lois’s answer to “Hello! New reader here, really enjoy your books. Since you have written books of both the fantasy a…” > Likes and Comments

Although fantasy and sf are different countries, the border between them is very blurred. It can be argued that some staples of sf, such as faster-than-light travel and time travel, are really fantasy because it's hard to fit them into science as we know it.

I'm more familiar with sf than fantasy, so I feel happier with fantasy when it has rules to it: laws of magic akin to the laws of science. I think few authors lay out detailed and specific laws of magic, but it's quite common to imply that such laws exist. In the World of the Five Gods, there seem to be things that demons can do and things that they can't: there are laws of some kind, although we don't know exactly what they are.

On the other hand, some authors write anything-goes fantasy, in which magic can achieve effects without limit, at the whim of the author. I find this unsatisfying, because it means that magicians in such stories can escape from any predicament with a wave of the hand. Any difficulties that they run into are therefore illusory and not to be taken seriously.

I've long enjoyed the Lord Darcy stories by Randall Garrett and (later) Michael Kurland, in which there are fairly firm limitations to magic, although we never get a full specification of the laws. The quality of writing is not in the Bujold class, but the stories are fun to read anyway.

To take a completely different example, S. M. Stirling's "The Peshawar Lancers" is an alternative-history adventure story that adheres in most respects to science as we know it; but it features a small group of women who have visions of the possible futures that may develop from actions taken in the present. This kind of ability is normally regarded as fantasy, but the story implies that there be some scientific explanation of it.

The book Aloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson and its sequels come to mind. The characters use magic to move objects, speed up time etc, but it all still seems to follow the simple rules of physics. For example if you put a pushing force on something it has to go in a straight line unless something else interacts with it.

Jump the 5GU forward about a thousand years, and...

I'd say that the Pern books are a good mixture of both fantasy and sci-fi. The majority of the setting takes place on a planet with dragons. But how they later discovered their origins which were definitely sci-fi in nature - a spaceship in orbit over the planet, information about a rogue planet that drops deadly thread when their atmospheres pass too closely. And even the dragons' ability to teleport is -- it isn't entirely magic, but is a natural ability. Or is it natural? The dragons were originally genetically altered from a species the first colonists encountered. A good example of merging the genres. I loved those books as a teenager. :)

I consider the Pern books to be pure sci-fi and I still love them as a senior citizen. The In Death series has a bit of a mix - it's sci-fi as it's set in the future but some characters have some psychic ability. It's also primarily murder mystery (with plenty of sex). I don't read much fantasy (except LMB) - I think because what I read in the past didn't have "rules" - wizard A could just summon up something stronger than wizard B for no apparent reason

The Darkover novels can be considered a combination of fantasy and science fiction.

I highly recommend "Enchantress from the Stars" for this discussion. The story is told from 2 points of view - one as a standard SF story, the other as a fairie tale. There is also a story by Ursula K Leguin "Semley's Necklace" who's framing story is SF and Semley's is Fantasy.