What Is Science Fantasy?

Science fantasy is a work of speculative fiction in which advanced science and technology and genuine magic operate together in one coherent world — and the story depends on both.

The term traces to the late 1930s and John W. Campbell Jr.'s magazine Unknown. Science fiction is the improbable made possible; fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science fantasy refuses to choose — in its worlds, the laboratory and the spellbook are both real, and both matter. SciFan has championed the genre since 2016: first in the pages of SciFan Magazine (2017), today through the SciFan Society and its story publication, Beyond SciFan.

The Five Requirements

Every story Beyond SciFan publishes must pass all five:

The Technological Substrate — the world runs in part on real science and technology that shapes how people live, travel, fight, and rule.
Functional Magic — genuine magic also works in the world: wielded by practitioners, with costs, dangers, and consequences.
Interdependence — the Collapse Test: remove the magic and the story falls; remove the technology and the story falls. If either can be removed, it isn't science fantasy.
One Coherent World — the science and the magic inhabit the same world and interact — they clash, combine, corrupt, or complete each other.
Neither Side Is a Lie — the magic is never explained away as "only technology all along," and the technology is never revealed as mere illusion.

The Anchor Shelf

Star Wars
Jack Vance's The Dying Earth
Anne McCaffrey's Pern
Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun
Shadowrun
Warhammer 40,000
Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light

Star Wars is the household example: a technological galaxy held together by the Force.