McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Science Fantasy worlds

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Dom:
So, I'm thinking of worlds today.  And I was thinking, of all the worlds I've read about in books, the ones I like the most are science fantasy.  Such as Anne McCaffrey's Pern, and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover.  I've read urban fantasy, I've read high/epic fantasy, and I have some dearly-loved characters from those stories, but the worlds I like best are Pern and Darkover, and those sorts of settings.

It's possible that I'm overly attached to these two because I read those books when I was 12--basically at the very start of my SFF-reading career.  There might be some...heh...Impression going on.  ;)

But I was wondering if this special liking of mine for science fantasy worlds (you can toss Robert Silverburg's Majipoor in there as well!) where I like the world even more then the characters in it is more then personal...I'm wondering if such worlds have any sort of broad appeal?  Look at Joan D. Vinge's Snow Queen and Summer Queen...science fantasy.  Dune...science fantasy.  Lots of the best damn books in SFF are set on compelling science fantasy worlds.  C. S. Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy.  There's more I'm not listing.

What do you guys think?  Am I on to something, or biased by my own preferences?

blgarver:
Well, I gotta tell ya, this post made me realize i've never actually read a story set in a science fantasy world. 

I know of the Pern books, and they sound friggin awesome, but I'm just not sure where to start.  I always enjoyed the Dinotopia world, though that was more a world built through art and later turned into a movie.

Outside of LOTR and Dresden, I guess I'm kind of a noob at SFF reading.  I grew up reading Crichton, and that's all I read.  Crichton is borderline, but not really the kind of SciFi we're talking about here.  The first fantasy I read was...A Ripple in Time...anyone remember that?  Cause i don't...lol.  I'm not even sure if that's the correct title, or if it counts as SFF.  I remember we read it in elementary school, but that's about all I remember.

"The Hobbit" was my official first fantasy book I guess, but other than that I didn't really read much fantasy.

But, I can kind of see where you're coming from.  A good world can indeed be a character all in itself.  I've got sort of a vague idea for the world in my trilogy I'm gonna write next, but I need to do a lot more developing I think, cause I want it to be one of those memorable worlds.

Dom:
You know, I just realized I never quite defined how I'm using the word "science fantasy".  To me, a science fantasy is a novel set on a world that technically has sci-fi origins (ie, colonized by a ship from earth), but said people on the world have forgotten everything about that past, and usually have regressed to a mediaeval level of technology, so the story itself generally plays out more like a fantasy, with ancient complex machines sometimes taking place of ancient complex magic.

Anyway--blgarver...If you do ever read Pern, the order they were written in I think is the best way.  Anne McCaffrey is an excellent writer for the first few books in any given series, but she has a tendancy to retcon things from old books (or maybe she just forgets they're there) to fit newer books.  So a fact from one book can be contradicted by a fact in a new book, and if you read them out of order an older book can have some things that just don't make sense if you read a newer book first.  Drives us fans crazy!  So yeah, if you read newer books first, such as The MasterHarper of Pern, earlier books don't always make sense.  So I reccomend reading them in this order...Dragonflight (used to have the green cover), Dragonquest (used to have the purple cover), The Harper Hall Trilogy (Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, Dragondrums), The White Dragon, The Renegades of Pern, Dragonsdawn, All the Weyrs of Pern. (Then there's some more books which are scattered around after All the Weyrs of Pern).

jtaylor:
A good example of a world you might like Dom, is Kundala from The Pearl by Eric V. Lustbader. It is a world that had low tech and the people who lived there had access to sorcory provided by thier goddess Mina and her dragon followers. The world was invaded by a Ultra-tech society of aliens and colonized. There is a great contrast with the interaction between the sci/fi and fantasy elements.

becroberts:

--- Quote from: Dom on March 01, 2007, 06:54:27 PM ---You know, I just realized I never quite defined how I'm using the word "science fantasy".  To me, a science fantasy is a novel set on a world that technically has sci-fi origins (ie, colonized by a ship from earth), but said people on the world have forgotten everything about that past, and usually have regressed to a mediaeval level of technology, so the story itself generally plays out more like a fantasy, with ancient complex machines sometimes taking place of ancient complex magic.

--- End quote ---

That actually makes me think of the Samaria books by Sharon Shinn, which initially look like religious fantasy about angels but are actually about a group of people brought from a dying world in a spaceship that they think is their god. There's a solid romance angle but to me, the most fascinating part is reading about the various human peoples and the angels slowly coming to realise their origins, about the few scraps of technology they still have, and why creating new technology is frowned upon.

So while I can't compare to the books you've listed, as I haven't read them, I think you're on to something about science fantasy worlds being intriguing.

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