World Building advantages and disadvantages between Science-Fiction and Fantasy

[starvebeast]

Hey Everyone. I've been thinking world building in Science-Fiction and Fantasy, and the relative advantages/disadvantages to each.

For example, because science fiction is often implied to be part of our known universe (even if very far removed), you can often use common references (pop culture, objects, etc) without breaking immersion. However, in fantasy mentioning something known in our world like "ketchup" could take away from immersion.

However, in fantasy there are a lot of opportunities to world build without having to explain too much--a 'fantasy' zombie could just be someone possessed or cursed--whereas in science fictions, there's an expectation to explain how aspects of the world fit in terms of technology.

So, I'm curious whether the community has more thoughts on advantages or disadvantages in fantasy vs. sci-fi for world building.

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I'm the writer on Starve the Beast, a sci-fi/adventure comic.

[whydocowsfall]

Fantasy is great because you can do almost anything you want with your world - nothing is off limits. Sci-fi is really fun if you like science because limitations of space ships and things is that you might want to think about how it would realistically be possible? For example if you were created a ship that could travel at warp speed it would be really cool to design a ship with a sort of ring-shaped engine similar to the kind that's being designed right now... That said, Sci-fi also allows alien lands so you could do pretty much anything with it as well! Also, you could mix the two and create a space ship powered by magic! Not sure if this helps you in any way, but that's my opinion on the genres. (:

[Kyosu]

actually, I'd prefer sci-fi than fantasy because it has a logic behind all the things you create in your "world".
It's true, there are limitations but those "limitations" can feel your unverse alive than a fantasy universe.
Take my comic for exaple. http://tapastic.com/series/One-Of
the aliens' structure has a logic like the animals, plants and wheater.

[starvebeast]

@whydocowsfall Yeah--I'm interested in what sorts of limits you might impose in either genre to keep a consistent universe. What (if any) rules do you impose, and why?

@Kyosu First of all, beautiful comic! Subscribed. Second, so how did you go about creating the logic of your world? Did you build off of a particular reference?

[keii4ii]

You can have fantasy stories that have strict limitations and rules. Some of them even revolve around those limitations, like Fullmetal Alchemist. Or even Death Note, which is a fantasy story taking place in our own world. In both examples, the characters work against and/or take advantage of the limitations and quirks of their "magic."

In addition, sci-fi gets away with little to no explanation all the time. If sci-fi really had to explain their technology, every writer who's ever made a sci-fi story that has teleportation in it should be given the Nobel Prize for figuring out how to make teleportation work.

[scythe]

This is something I've spent a lot of time thinking about and developing. My comic, The Woken, is neither sic-fi, nor is it strictly what people think of when they think fantasy. It's more akin to the sub-genre contemporary, or urban fantasy, set in 'our world', but with a kind of alternate history.

The things that happen in it would be physically impossible in real life, but I nonetheless impose strict physical laws to the 'powers' I give my characters. So to anyone from our world, what they're doing appears to be magic, but in their world, it's not a suspension of physical laws, but rather, the laws of physics are simply more pliable.

So it's neither advanced science or magic, but rather a re-imagined nature. Very much a kind of "what if..."

The advantage of having a story like this is obviously that the settings and people are more relatable, so readers can instantly immerse themselves in the story as oppose to being confronted with a completely new, made-up world, with which they have no connection yet. It's like a ready-made fantasy setting. Also, I don't leave myself open the kinds of plot holes you get with stories like, Harry Potter, for example, where you get questions like, "why is there money in a society where almost anything can be conjured?", or "why was time travel a viable magical solution to just one problem, but never any others?", or even, "why didn't Voldemort just slit Harry's throat with a blade?"

However, the disadvantages might be that for the story to stay believable, the plot can't stray too far from what people know of the real world. So I have to be clever, and be constantly scouring my story for any potentially disastrous plot holes (because let's be honest, almost any fantastical element to a story comes with some kind of a plot hole, even if it's tiny and not really noticeable). In my story, I've shown that the people in it are capable of physical and mental feats beyond those we're familiar with, and that fact will at some point require an explanation that not only makes sense within my story, but also within the framework of how people understand the real world to work. I can't just say, they can do all this because that's what people in this world can do. My readers know and recognise the world I'm showing them, so they're not going to buy that unless I (ultimately) offer them a more sophisticated and nuanced reason why these things are actually possible within the bounds of the story.

[KathleenKelley]

I struggle with math and science so hard sci-fi was never something I could even begin to approach. But I've found wading in the middle ground between sci-fi and fantasy gives me the wiggle room to leave out the hard science while keeping the science-y flavor.

Either way, I think the important thing is to have rules. In the Harry Potter universe, we are given a clear framework in which magic operates. Interesting drama occurs when the framework has to be obeyed or bent or worked around in order to achieve a goal. And if you can make your audience care about your characters, they can generally forgive minor plot holes resulting from gaps in the rules. (Why did no one else use Hermione's time turner?)

And any sufficiently advanced technology is basically magic anyway so the same thing applies, no matter how wacky the tech is. An audience can stretch their suspension of disbelief as long as they have an understanding of your universe's norm as well as it's limitations.

[scythe]

That's so true about Harry Potter. You get so swept up int he characters and gripping story, you either don't notice or plain just don't care about those minor plot holes.

As long as they're minor, audiences are very amenable to overlooking inconsistencies, which I think are just unavoidable in fantasy world building .

[KathleenKelley]

Definitely! At the end of the day (most) people are looking for a human element--some thread that will resonate with them. No matter how detailed it is, if a story does not have a heart it will fall flat.

In my opinion, that is why movies like Transformers are so tasteless. The technical work poured into those films is phenomenal. But Shia LaBeouf only plays Shia LaBeouf. There is no character or arc. It's just stuff happening on a screen. It's enough to make your brain flat line for the two hour run-time.

[GFalconDX]

Truth be told, it really depends on what kind of story you want to write. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, especially with my comic, The Chronicles of SolLuna. It's both fantasy and science fiction because it take place in a steampunk world, but with laws and restrictions to make is more realistic. However, even those rules and restrictions can be broken because there is magic involved in my story, and a lot of it. However, even the magic abilities that my characters will be using will have a limit, and trying to break that limit would have consequences.

Don't know if this helps.

[iddqd]

I started off wanting to write a fantasy, but the more I worked on worldbuilding, the more I leaned towards a sci-fi. At this point, I think the distinction between the two is very difficult to make, and I don't think it's useful, anyway. You can have a fantasy with spaceships and lightsabers (hello, Star Wars), but you can also conceivably have a fantasy setting that is technically a very hard sci-fi (Game of Thrones comes fairly close, sans some supernatural elements...). Currently, my own setting is a mix of the two - yes, there is limited magic with its own set of rules, but a lot of technology operates on physical laws as we know them, like flares made with saltpetre and magnesium, or wheellock guns. Hey, it's period-friendly, too. Also, nothing stops me from doing a fantasy on a tidally locked planet rotating around a binary star, with some visitors from outer space down the line! My point is, I think it's a bit of a false distinction, but it's all somewhere on the "sci-fi hardness scale".

[ErithEl]

Personally, I've always only done fantasy stories because world building for that genre has been easier for me. I've always been interested in sci-fi, but never actually attempted to create a story in that genre.

I think the main difference between world building in fantasy vs science fiction is this:

Fantasy – you create your own world from the ground up, so to speak. You decide which religion, race, geography, customs, etc. exist within that world. Obviously, inspiration or fundamentals can always be drawn from the "real world" (Full Metal Alchemist is a good example of that), but still there are going to be parts of any fantasy world that do not exist anywhere else.

Science Fiction – you create a world based on what technologies, customs, religions, races, etc will survive in the future of your world. It doesn't have to be all hover cars and space ships, but more what aspects of the world you think will have evolved over the course of time.

One of my favorite sci-fi series is Firefly because it's not all shiny buildings and space ships zipping around and people wearing silver onesies. It really takes into consideration what kinds of people would have survived, and what cultures would have sustained throughout the decades. The world they created is one where most people are just trying to get by with very little and law enforcement who don't do a very good job of protecting them against the actual threats. In that universe, people have learned to really take care of themselves and their own, and I find that to be a pretty convincing depiction of a futuristic world!

[AnnaLandin]

I've always been more in the fantasy camp than in the scifi camp, so read my post with that in mind.

Advantages of scifi worlds:

• Methods of instant communication and the spreading of information that don't have to be explained in detail. We're already familiar with cellphones and computers - they're so common that we don't need extra time to explain them in the story.
• Medical technology and knowledge can be assumed to be on a level where non-lethal wounds and illnesses aren't much to worry about.
• The aforementioned pop cultural-references (though this works in urban fantasy as well)
• If your story takes place in the near future, instead of in some far-flung galaxy thousands of years from now, a lot of the work regarding cultural and historical background for your characters has been done for you. You don't need to invent a culture for character A - you can simply tell the reader they're American, or Chinese, or Brazilian, and with little effort, you've delivered a certain amount of cultural/historical information to them.

Advantages of fantasy worlds

• Complete creative freedom, especially if it's off-world fantasy (as in, it takes place in a world that is not ours). You can do whatever you want. You want dwarves? You can have dwarves! You want dragons? You can have dragons! You can have dwarves on dragons, and no one would complain.
• You don't have to deal with the racist or sexist modes of thinking that exist in our world unless you want to. You don't have to import the gender inequality, or the ethnic and religious conflicts, unless that is something you specifically aim to deal with. You want women to be able to be knights the same way men can be? Go ahead! No one's stopping you! Want to have a world where people of all cultural backgrounds get along without racism getting in the way? Do it!
• The chance to create something new and fascinating that does not have to obey the laws of physics of you don't want it to. Invent islands floating in the sky, or a massive mountain-range made entirely out of crystal, if that is what you want to see in your world. You can use the landscape to reinforce the theme of the story, or you can use it just to have something pretty for the readers to look at/think about while you tell your story. No one said off-world fantasy HAD to take place in medieval Europe.
• To a certain degree, "a wizard did it" works to cover up plot holes. Deus ex Machina are never a good storytelling tool, but if you're stuck in a place where your main character has a broken leg, and you NEED them to NOT have a broken leg in the next chapter - bring out the magic and heal them. If you've established previously that this is something magic can do, then go ahead and do it. Magic can also give you instant communication, or teleportation, or whatever. It will do what you need it to do.

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That said, the border between fantasy and scifi is blurry at best. You've got your extremes on the opposite ends of the scale, but you've also got a middle where stuff gets mixed in with one another. You've got steampunk, you've got dieselpunk, you've got flintlock fantasy, you've got urban fantasy, you've got scifi where the tech gets so complex it might as well be magic, etc., etc.

And one of the things to keep in mind with fantasy is that you can't just do anything and get away with it. By which I mean that any action taken in the story has to be grounded in some kind of established rules. If you've established that magic can turn night into day, but can't bring a dead person back to life - well, then, you can't have a character die and then ressurrect them via magic. You can't. If you do, you have better have a good explanation for why your rules no longer apply. If you've told us that dragons can only breathe fire once a day, then you can't have a dragon breathing fire more than once a day. And so on.

Fantasy still needs to adhere to the rules of good storytelling, no matter what you've put into it. The same goes for scifi, obviously.

[starvebeast]

Wow, too much awesomeness to respond to...where to start?

@Annalandin Your points on fantasy worlds/gender inequality brought up the Witcher 3 controversy--and also Game of Thrones. The author/devs both made the point that even though the works are fantasy, they're still operating within a 'historic' norm--which informs their view of gender roles, power, the place of women in war, etc. I've always wondered whether fantasy world builders, in particular, stick with traditional gender so often.

On this note, if anyone hasn't read The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin, it's a great sci-fi novel that upends gender.

So, when you write a fantasy, I guess the question is: What elements of our world (how our world works) do you keep for your reader, and which do you stretch/replace? Because as @ErithEl and @KathleenKelley and @scythe have noted, people often need something familiar, something recognizably human, that they can latch onto. Or do they....?

[AnnaLandin]

Your points on fantasy worlds/gender inequality brought up the Witcher 3 controversy--and also Game of Thrones. The author/devs both made the point that even though the works are fantasy, they're still operating within a 'historic' norm--which informs their view of gender roles, power, the place of women in war, etc.

Yeah... It's perfectly understandable that certain gender-tropes/inequalities get imported. I can't speak for the Witcher, but Game of Thrones is based very heavily on the Wars of the Roses, a real historical event, and uses a worldview that is very medieval - so I can see where GRRM is coming from there.

That does not, however, make it something we shouldn't talk about. We need to discuss and consider the ease with which we allow our real-world prejudices influences our imaginary world. GRRM found it easy to fashion several new religions to go with his brand new world - but didn't think to retool his gender-roles. That matters.

... Hi. I love ASOIAF, but I am very willing to admit it has considerable flaws and is deeply problematic in many ways.

[DruidPeter]

Well, my universe is kind of a hybrid between Fantasy and Sci-fi genres. You said in your post, @starvebeast , that mentioning something like "ketchup" would take away from immersion, but I actually look at the situation a bit differently.

I feel that the original works of Tolkien, having set the standard for the fantasy genre, also unintentionally set some harsh barriers on what can and can't be done within Fantasy. Usually, for something to be considered pure "fantasy," it has to fit a medieval setting fairly well. There's not too much room to deviate from the original Tolkien "Middle Earth" Model.

Granted, this has changed as of late. Excellent comics like Heart of Keol, and countless other stories have deviated from the norm enough. Now, Tolkienesque worlds are generally relegated to the sub-genre "High Fantasy", while others may occupy "Dark Fantasy", "Grunge Fantasy", etc, etc.

The problem still remains, however, in that you can't really mention stuff from our world in the "fantasy" world without breaking immersion. But what if "Ketchup" wasn't just a reference in the fantasy world, but something that actually exists within it and is understood by all the denizens of that world?

What if you had a so-called "fantasy" world that didn't borrow ketchup as a "reference" but that had Ketchup on its own terms, and didn 't need some reference back to our world in order to justify its existence?

You see, I think that the Fantasy and Sci-Fi genres can encompass so much, that it's almost impossible to create something that escapes their grasp. In order to create a new world, but at the same time tell a story that is so different that it actually breaks the boundaries of what Fantasy and Sci-Fi are capable of containing? That's what I'm aiming for.

My world doesn't have references to ketchup, (Well, it will, but that's another story alltogether), but it does try to establish its own conventions and norms outside of typical Sci-Fi and Fantasy tropes.

I don't know if I'll be successful or not. I do know, however, that when all is said and done I want to people to think of the Kolodrwynn, not as a world of fantasy/sci-fi, but as a specific world uniquely its own. No genre classification needed.

[iddqd]

You bring up a good point. I think fantasy equals elves, dwarves and dragons in a faux-medieval world in the mind of a lot of people, kind of just like horror equals dismemberment, maniacs, and copious amounts of blood. That's just window dressing though, but unfortunately, it becomes a sort of unwritten law. Good for you for trying to go beyond these limits in your work. Personally, I started off with High Fantasy and a medieval-style world for my comic, but the more research I did for this world, the more I wanted to break out of these conventions to tell the story I want to tell. Early Modern period has very few works modeled after it, so I thought, hey, that sounds like a good idea, even if it's not very much a "fantasy". And when you break one "rule", others sort of follow.

[DruidPeter]

Nice! Also, it does seem like once one major convention is broken, a whole host of other paths suddenly crop up, waiting to be explored. Makes the entire situation that much more exciting and rewarding, I suppose.

It's interesting that you mention the early modern period, actually. As a genre in its own right, that period of our history is probably least explored in these sorts of stories. There's likely to be a vast amount untapped gold in them hills, so to speak.

Makes you wonder why no one has thought of it before, eh?

[iddqd]

I know, right! It's like there's ok, there's the middle ages, and then BOOM! Victorian steampunk. I actually ended up with Early Modern period as my prototype by accident - most of the references I looked up on "medieval" costumes, past manuscript illuminations, were the Northern Renaissance painters and engravers. With such a wealth of visual reference material, I just sort of got suckered into it. No ragrets.

As for why no one really explores this period, I don't know. It's actually a fairly exciting time period, with the whole reformation thing, peasant wars, nation states warring... I think the Witcher games come fairly close to it, but I can't think of any other work of fiction that would tap into this period (I am not into historical fiction novels, but maybe they have something). I also blame fantasy gun control. Knights and firearms in the same setting? Shocking!

[DruidPeter]

lol! I laughed out loud at the "fantasy gun control" line. That's great. I'll have to remember that for later. You're going to have a great time with your storyline, @iddqd. There really was a ton of stuff going on during that time period. The whole world must have seemed like it was being turned upside down and set on fire, so to speak.

I wasn't really thinking about it, but my main storyline takes place in a world that fits the "early modern" period. Although, by the time we actually get to it things have moved maybe a little bit past that point. I think maybe that might have something to do with why this period in time is so little delved into.

After all, the middle ages lasted from about the fall of Rome to several centuries later. By contrast, it almost seems like Martin Luther had just barely nailed his thesis to the church door, and then bam, half a century later we were already in the golden age of Mercantilism. It just moved so fast, people hardly had time to catch their breath. lol.