Signal Boost: The Science, Fiction, and Fantasy of Genre

[jesse_the_k]

Even though I identify as a "hard SF-loving reader," the boundary-keeping regarding science fiction versus magic has always annoyed me. That's why I loved

AlexandraErin's essay in Uncanny Magazine: The Science, Fiction, and Fantasy of Genre

Asimov’s robots weren’t any more realistic or rigorously researched than anyone else’s. They might as well be magical. They are certainly miraculous. They are basically humanist golems, brought to life by a mysterious power, living and thinking as conscious being but constrained by the words in their heads, and they effectively grow into gods.

If magic is what distinguishes fantasy from science fiction, and if your technology is indistinguishable from magic, then it stands to reason that your science fiction is indistinguishable from fantasy, isn’t it?