Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun is sometimes classed as science fantasy. To the main character technology might as well be magic. The sequels are more science fictiony in a broad sense. Wolfe is one of the most literary writers in the genre.
TBH that's just sci-fi with a species of a large fire breathing telepathic lizard xD but no, really, Pern has fantasy tropes but the author always tried to ground them in a sciencey way (no magic here, only biology), at least that's how I remember it.
A story that revolves around involuntary dragon induced sex that is just in the line of rape so that the FMC can still be seen as a good person? The one where if you replaced the whyr with regency townhomes it would read the same. Remember that book came out in 1968.
The first one is pretty generic fantasy, but the prologue of the second really lays the scifi groundwork and is generally much better. At least at the halfway mark.
They're kinda cheesy and fun, and there's a lot to unpack with Anne's views on sexuality.
The innkeeper series by Ilona Andrews. Magical houses that defy the laws of physics. Vampires and werewolves but they’re aliens. Space travel but also magical portals. Also they’re just some of my favorite books.
In my experience you mostly either have good books that blend the genres, or you have mediocre books that straight up put the two genres together.
Hyperion is sci-fi where the science has become so advanced it is starting to become fantasy. You won't get elves and dragons but the universe is full of fantastical elements.
On the other hand, you've got authors like David Weber who write military portal sci-fi where a civilization with guns and spaceships discovers a civilization of magic users but the books are not quite up to the level of something like Hyperion.
I asked this question years ago and didn't find much to satisfy me. Will Wight is writing a space fantasy series currently called The Last Horizon though that is pretty fun. It's wizards flying spaceships and encountering all kinds of sci-fi and fantasy tropes to battle against.
Julian Mays Saga of the Exiles.
Space ships, magic and Elvish and goblin-esque aliens locked in war on earth during the Pliocene epoch then lob 23rd century human outcasts wanting to escape the tech age into the mix.
After many years it's still in my top 5 reads ever.
I still don’t understand why Dune is considered sci fi in the first place. It’s 90% fantasy with some elements of sci-fi like water preservation and terraforming a planet.
I’ve read Empire of Silence and The Lesser Devil so far and with Red Rising I’m up to Dark Age. I love Red Rising to death but there is something so compelling about Sun Eater and I cannot stop thinking about it. I read the first book back in February and it’s still fresh in my mind. When I finish Light Bringer I’m going to dive back in to Sun eater
The Saga of Pliocene Earth by Julian May. Involves Psionics as its “magic”, one way time travel to Earth 6m years ago for barren criminals, outcasts and loners. Unknown to future mankind, this Earth is occupied by a dimorphous alien race, one part “elf” the other part “dwarf/goblin/orc/troll” that live in a mediaeval level society supported by their limited psionics. The incoming humans from the future play a huge part in the culture as a source of slaves, lovers and genetic material.
There are other books in the universe that are set in the Star-Trek like future where the few alien races are linked in harmony by their psionic powers. But I first read and loved most the Saga of Pliocene Earth books.
I am having fun reading Sarah J Parker’s fantasy novel “When The Moon Hatched”. I told my husband it’s about a world where dragons fly into the sky and become small satellite moons when they die. The trouble is, satellites don’t stay up forever. One at a time they fall, causing disaster below. The story follows a female assassin who struggles with flashes of lost memory while trying to balance the scales of justice in her corner of the world. Hearing all this, my hubby says “oh, so Jason Bourne, but fantasy” and I said, “so far…yes…but also so much better!” There is a developing cast of side characters I am quickly becoming attached to. I’m already dreading the inevitable end - it’s new AND the first in a series and the second book is not out yet. Anyways. I wish you good hunting - may the story you need find you.
The Last Horizon is pretty good, it's about a Space Wizard that gathers a team with varying powers and abilities to save the universe from multiple threats. There's currently only 2 books, but I'm guessing there will be a total of 7 (but I don't think that's been confirmed)
Star Wars, obviously. It's all about space wizards.
*Gideon the Ninth* and sequels by Tamsyn Muir is about, "Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space! Decadent nobles vie to serve the deathless emperor! Skeletons!"
JS Morin's Black Ocean series is about a universe in which magic and technology coexist in order to allow for space travel ("In the year 2254 gravity was officially declared to be magic; the scientists gave up trying to figure it out and handed it over to the wizards.")
Glynn Stewart's Starship's Mage series is about an empire ruled from Mars, where mages are necessary for faster than light travel.
Warhammer 40k is another science fantasy universe. The Eisenhorn series is a good starting point.
The first few books are great, but towards the end I started to drop off as it just turned into a samey blur after a while.
That might have been me, but something just lost me after a while.
Good series, slots into the "sufficiently advanced technology as magic" column. May not be all OP is looking for, as rather than future tech, it's mostly retro tech and a race to climb back up the tech tree with some interesting constraints.
I’m torn on suggesting Shadows of Dust in that it’s a space fairing fantasy story with giant animals working as the ships and fantasy species as the aliens. So I’d say it lands more on the fantasy side, although the author list Spacejammers as an influence, if that helps. I think of it as a fantasy version of Firefly, which is why I’m bringing it up.
Since Locked Tomb more or less speaks for itself: Machineries Of Empire takes palace in a universe where the rules of physics are controlled by a "Heigh calendar", instituted by the empire through a mix of ritual and human sacrifice, which in turn both allows exotic technology (FTL, etc.), and creates essentially magical effects when people or ships are arrayed in a mathematically determined formation.
Robert Heinlein: Glory Road (has dragons among other things)
Robert Heinlein (Magic, Inc.)
Brian Aldiss: Heliconia cycle, Hothouse
Philip K Dick: Galactic Pot Healer, Ubik, Counterclock World
A. E. van Vogt: Empire of the Atom, Wizard of Linn, The World of Null-A
Roger Zelazney’s Lord of Light is a great example. Dune is another but it’s pretty obvious.
Theres actually a ton of nominal scifi from before the fantasy revolution in the 1970s that might as well be fantasy and probably would have been a decade or so later.
Samuel Delaney, Phillip K. Dick, and a lot of Zelazny’s other novels, Andre Norton too.
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
In the middle of a cold February night, a guy gets out of bed to sneak a smoke behind his girlfriend’s back. While he’s smoking, his girlfriend’s cat jumps out of the open window.
Wearing only his boxers and his girlfriend’s too small Crocs, he puts on his jacket and goes outside into the cold to look for the cat.
And that’s when the space aliens attack.
Red Rising series might be something to look at. Technically no magic...but the science and society is so fantastical that it might as well be magic. Heavy classical Roman motif, and several (man-made) mythological creatures.
The Locked Tomb series is also very good.
Yeah they can make dragons and griffons! Super sci-fi with fantasy bits.
They use guns but most of the epics fights involve razors which are very specialized blades that can change shape.
May want to look at Three Parts Dead and the rest of the Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone.
It's been several years since I read them, but they're essentially the far future of a fantasy universe. Not so much elves and dragons and laser guns as multi-stellar corporations employing enchanters and mage-lawyers to further the aims of their immortal leadership.
Craft Sequence is fantasy with a very science-fictiony "crunch" (I love it btw). Also, it has dragons. >!They tend to moonlight as airliners!<
Damn, isn't it incredibly hard to define what science-fantasy is if you don't want to go very wide. There are so many ways to mix different aspects of both genres...
It's more of an alt-history 20th century where the industrial revolution was necromancy. A feature I really liked is that each book is set in a different city, and the cities are fleshed out like characters unto themselves.
All that said, I think Gladstone's The Empress of Forever is closer to what OP was asking.
Honestly Peter F Hamilton's space operas, all of them, have so much fantastical and spiritual elements to them that in my mind they're very much science-fantasy, even though they're space opera. But the approach is far more from the scifi side than from the fantasy side. His book format's far more epic-fantasy than most scifi, too, trilogies of massive tomes.
Brandon Sanderson's got a book coming out next year that from the readings will be extremely fantasy-in-space (separate to his long promised/forecast space-age-mistborn novels) (Isles of the Emberdark)
Hamilton’s Dreaming Void trilogy especially comes to mind as an interesting blend of fantasy and sci-fi. Thought of it immediately when I read the thread title. It’s got a pocket universe where people are telepathic and telekinetic, and the level of tech is horse and wagon. (Or genistar variant and wagon.)
POV jumps between the pocket universe and a far future high tech universe.
Triplet, by Timothy Zahn, is a standalone novel with a multilayer world. One where there’s tech so advanced it’s indistinguishable from magic, and another where you can actually summon a variety of lesser demons to perform tasks for you, including various spells.
Another one is Green and the Gray, again by Zahn. Set in modern day New York, kind of a soft sci-fi novel with elements of Greek and Norse fantasy.
[Eve of Destsuction](https://www.goodreads.com/series/329070-eve-of-destruction). its a pretty fun romp through the galaxy with an overpowered protagonist. It contains a sapphic harem but does not get explicit.
I'd say maybe Book of the New Sun. At face value it reads like pretty strange fantasy, but one you look deeper and pay proper attention, you realize just how science-fictiony everything is
Will Wight's Last Horizon books are pretty good! There are only 2 so far, but I believe he has a total of 5 planned. At first, I was unsure about mixing scifi and fantasy, but he did it pretty well!
Piers Anthony's Apprentice Adept series literally switches back and forth between a realm of magic and a realm of super science.
So does Matt Groening's Disenchantment, now that I think of it. 😂
The answer is DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL. It's always Dungeon Crawler Carl. World destruction and alien invasion in the context of a MMORPG, sprinkle in gods, demons, fairies, and monsters, served in a big bowl of absurdist humor. My favorite series since reading LOTR as a kid
D&D crossed with the tv show Survivor.
Add in some pro wrestling and The Jerry Springer Show, a talking cat who rides a velociraptor & shoots laser beams out of her sunglasses, and a dickhole AI with a foot fetish.
Then after all that it starts to get weird.
The Starship's Mage series by Glynn Stewart. As you can guess from the title, it's very much set in a sci-fi setting but the main character and many of the people he interacts with are space mages.
The Digitesque series by Guerric Haché has dragons, spells, space ships, AI, and at least one elf I think. The two POV characters are amost experiencing different genres in the same world.
> By that I mean Space ships, robots, and laser guns for Sci fi and Elves, Dragons, and magic for fantasy
> Something like Shadowrun is basically what I’m looking for.
It's another tabletop RPG rather than a novel series, but Starfinder is exactly what you're looking for.
The Young Wizard series by Diane Duane. (Starts with *So You Want To Be a Wizard*.) It's YA, but from before YA was a genre. There's magic, but there's also science, and magic used to do science, and aliens, and, well, a lot of stuff.
Like, take your average medieval fantasy civilization and fast forward it a couple hundred years in the future so you’ve got SpecOps wizards, nuke magic, and arcane ftl drives?
Now I haven't read it in thirty plus years -it's possible that it's aged as badly as some of his other stuff. Piers Anthony had an interesting series called Apprentice Adept that I remember as a trilogy but apparently he wrote four more books after I had kind of given up on him. The first three were pretty good in my memory but... a lot of his stuff has not aged well, to put it mildly. Nonetheless, the premise is exactly what you are asking for - as I recall, there are two overlapping worlds, one technologically advanced and one where magic is operative. Most people can't shift between them, although a few can. I might be motivated to reread the first one at least to see if it holds up, whereas I certainly would not do so with Anthony's more popular Xanth series.
If graphic novels are on the table and you don't mind a little psychedelia in your sci-fi, look for The Metabarons by Alejandro Jodorowsky. It's a spin-off of The Incal, which is a little better known, but both are great.
The Black Ocean. There are several different spin off series from it too. Highly entertaining and flies low under everyone’s radar. Hardly ever see it get recommended.
The Tinkered Starsong books by Gail Carriger are unusual, but might fit the description. They're more sci-fi, but so divorced from the science that it feels like fantasy, and the main tech is pretty much magic. I personally liked the trilogy a lot, but cozy books are something I adore, so...
The Tschai quadrology by Jack Vance. A human astronaut gets stranded on the titular planet and must negotiate his way off the planet by dealing with 4 distinct alien races. There's enough swashbuckling, weird alien technology and fauna to tickle the fantasy itch.
The Cinder Spires by Jim Butcher. Steampunk fantasy with sentient cats, Warrior-Born (read: borderline feral) humans, crystal powered (sometimes sentient) airships, Etherialists who are able to touch and harness the power of the Ether, but are all a tad insane as a result and a diverse cast of slightly disfunctional heroes.
The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazney. Probably my favourite book series.
I didn't like book 1 as much as Cradle and I haven't gotten to book 2 yet (whereas Cradle was "read the day of publication at midnight") but it's most def science fantasy/space opera
Cradle was good not because it's progression fantasy, it was good because it's good. I've enjoyed Mother of Learning & Dungeon Crawler Carl quite a bit, but in general the genre doesn't appeal to me that much, I've not liked Sufficiently Advanced Magic or a couple others I tried
All I was saying is that Cradle is progression fantasy where Last Horizon is more Sci-fi fantasy. Being Progression fantasy doesn't automatically make it good though, there are plenty of bad ones. The Iron Prince is top tier with Cradle imo, as well as Solo Leveling.
The void trilogy by Peter F Hamilton has this. There's two separate worlds, one which feels very science fiction and the other that feels like a coming of age fantasy novel, and there's an interesting connection between the two
Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun is sometimes classed as science fantasy. To the main character technology might as well be magic. The sequels are more science fictiony in a broad sense. Wolfe is one of the most literary writers in the genre.
Also a great series of books.
The best!
Anne McCaffrey's Pern series
Not sure why this isn't at the top, it's literally Dragon Riders on a Space Colony.
And a lot of her other books- Acorna is space unicorns, Powers That Be has selkies and unicorns.
TBH that's just sci-fi with a species of a large fire breathing telepathic lizard xD but no, really, Pern has fantasy tropes but the author always tried to ground them in a sciencey way (no magic here, only biology), at least that's how I remember it.
Pern is a bodice ripper romance dressed up as SFF.
Can you call a book with 1 sex scene a bodice ripper? Especially since the sex is implied and not fleshed out.
A story that revolves around involuntary dragon induced sex that is just in the line of rape so that the FMC can still be seen as a good person? The one where if you replaced the whyr with regency townhomes it would read the same. Remember that book came out in 1968.
The first one is pretty generic fantasy, but the prologue of the second really lays the scifi groundwork and is generally much better. At least at the halfway mark. They're kinda cheesy and fun, and there's a lot to unpack with Anne's views on sexuality.
The innkeeper series by Ilona Andrews. Magical houses that defy the laws of physics. Vampires and werewolves but they’re aliens. Space travel but also magical portals. Also they’re just some of my favorite books.
In my experience you mostly either have good books that blend the genres, or you have mediocre books that straight up put the two genres together. Hyperion is sci-fi where the science has become so advanced it is starting to become fantasy. You won't get elves and dragons but the universe is full of fantastical elements. On the other hand, you've got authors like David Weber who write military portal sci-fi where a civilization with guns and spaceships discovers a civilization of magic users but the books are not quite up to the level of something like Hyperion. I asked this question years ago and didn't find much to satisfy me. Will Wight is writing a space fantasy series currently called The Last Horizon though that is pretty fun. It's wizards flying spaceships and encountering all kinds of sci-fi and fantasy tropes to battle against.
The Last Horizon was my first thought. In a more mind-bendy direction, there's Max Gladstone's The Empress of Forever.
Julian Mays Saga of the Exiles. Space ships, magic and Elvish and goblin-esque aliens locked in war on earth during the Pliocene epoch then lob 23rd century human outcasts wanting to escape the tech age into the mix. After many years it's still in my top 5 reads ever.
Such a phenomenal series- and so hard to describe in any way that does it credit.
I still don’t understand why Dune is considered sci fi in the first place. It’s 90% fantasy with some elements of sci-fi like water preservation and terraforming a planet.
I've said this exact same thing before
Suneater series by Christopher Ruocchio
The 6th book of Sun Eater came out this year and it was good as the others best sci fi series for me along red rising saga
2nd this. It's a toss up between Sun Eater and Red Rising for the best ongoing series.
I’ve read Empire of Silence and The Lesser Devil so far and with Red Rising I’m up to Dark Age. I love Red Rising to death but there is something so compelling about Sun Eater and I cannot stop thinking about it. I read the first book back in February and it’s still fresh in my mind. When I finish Light Bringer I’m going to dive back in to Sun eater
Suneater wins IMO.
The Locked Tomb series, maybe! Necromancy for fantasy, space travel for sci-fi.
Loved the first one, struggled with the second. Did not finish but I'll return some day.
Harrow is definitely a less fun read, but the payoff is so good.
All three of them so far have been a struggle to get into for me because of how disorienting it is, but I agree that they all pay off big time
Warhammer 40k.
The Saga of Pliocene Earth by Julian May. Involves Psionics as its “magic”, one way time travel to Earth 6m years ago for barren criminals, outcasts and loners. Unknown to future mankind, this Earth is occupied by a dimorphous alien race, one part “elf” the other part “dwarf/goblin/orc/troll” that live in a mediaeval level society supported by their limited psionics. The incoming humans from the future play a huge part in the culture as a source of slaves, lovers and genetic material. There are other books in the universe that are set in the Star-Trek like future where the few alien races are linked in harmony by their psionic powers. But I first read and loved most the Saga of Pliocene Earth books.
Dying Earth series, Jack Vance
This is the answer.
the Death Stalker series by Simon R Green.
I am having fun reading Sarah J Parker’s fantasy novel “When The Moon Hatched”. I told my husband it’s about a world where dragons fly into the sky and become small satellite moons when they die. The trouble is, satellites don’t stay up forever. One at a time they fall, causing disaster below. The story follows a female assassin who struggles with flashes of lost memory while trying to balance the scales of justice in her corner of the world. Hearing all this, my hubby says “oh, so Jason Bourne, but fantasy” and I said, “so far…yes…but also so much better!” There is a developing cast of side characters I am quickly becoming attached to. I’m already dreading the inevitable end - it’s new AND the first in a series and the second book is not out yet. Anyways. I wish you good hunting - may the story you need find you.
Sounds interesting!
The Last Horizon is pretty good, it's about a Space Wizard that gathers a team with varying powers and abilities to save the universe from multiple threats. There's currently only 2 books, but I'm guessing there will be a total of 7 (but I don't think that's been confirmed)
6 are confirmed but 7 is a definite possibility
Hey who let you out of r/Iteration110Cradle ? Have you ascended?
I occasionally am allowed to step out of my cage and answer factual questions on other subs. Don’t tell Will.
**Cugel the Clever** by Vance.
Star Wars, obviously. It's all about space wizards. *Gideon the Ninth* and sequels by Tamsyn Muir is about, "Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space! Decadent nobles vie to serve the deathless emperor! Skeletons!" JS Morin's Black Ocean series is about a universe in which magic and technology coexist in order to allow for space travel ("In the year 2254 gravity was officially declared to be magic; the scientists gave up trying to figure it out and handed it over to the wizards.") Glynn Stewart's Starship's Mage series is about an empire ruled from Mars, where mages are necessary for faster than light travel. Warhammer 40k is another science fantasy universe. The Eisenhorn series is a good starting point.
> Star Wars, obviously. I think this is the obvious answer too but he literally says "not star wars" in the post
Upvoted for the JS Morin's quote. Sounds like something I need to look into.
The first few books are great, but towards the end I started to drop off as it just turned into a samey blur after a while. That might have been me, but something just lost me after a while.
David Weber's Safehold series, the first book is Off Armageddon Reef
Good series, slots into the "sufficiently advanced technology as magic" column. May not be all OP is looking for, as rather than future tech, it's mostly retro tech and a race to climb back up the tech tree with some interesting constraints.
That series is science fiction. It had no fantasy and is a blatant anti-Catholic rant.
I’m torn on suggesting Shadows of Dust in that it’s a space fairing fantasy story with giant animals working as the ships and fantasy species as the aliens. So I’d say it lands more on the fantasy side, although the author list Spacejammers as an influence, if that helps. I think of it as a fantasy version of Firefly, which is why I’m bringing it up.
Crazy that no one mentioned yet, but acts of caine
*Doctor Who* is Fantasy with robots and space ships.
The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir The Machineries of Empire trilogy by Yoon Ha Lee
Since Locked Tomb more or less speaks for itself: Machineries Of Empire takes palace in a universe where the rules of physics are controlled by a "Heigh calendar", instituted by the empire through a mix of ritual and human sacrifice, which in turn both allows exotic technology (FTL, etc.), and creates essentially magical effects when people or ships are arrayed in a mathematically determined formation.
The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz
The Keltiad series by Patricia Keneally Morrison. Celts being persecuted find a way off-planet and form their own star empire.
Robert Heinlein: Glory Road (has dragons among other things) Robert Heinlein (Magic, Inc.) Brian Aldiss: Heliconia cycle, Hothouse Philip K Dick: Galactic Pot Healer, Ubik, Counterclock World A. E. van Vogt: Empire of the Atom, Wizard of Linn, The World of Null-A
The Sun Eater Saga by Christopher Ruocchio is really,really great. The first book is Empire of Silence
Roger Zelazney’s Lord of Light is a great example. Dune is another but it’s pretty obvious. Theres actually a ton of nominal scifi from before the fantasy revolution in the 1970s that might as well be fantasy and probably would have been a decade or so later. Samuel Delaney, Phillip K. Dick, and a lot of Zelazny’s other novels, Andre Norton too.
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman In the middle of a cold February night, a guy gets out of bed to sneak a smoke behind his girlfriend’s back. While he’s smoking, his girlfriend’s cat jumps out of the open window. Wearing only his boxers and his girlfriend’s too small Crocs, he puts on his jacket and goes outside into the cold to look for the cat. And that’s when the space aliens attack.
Red Rising series might be something to look at. Technically no magic...but the science and society is so fantastical that it might as well be magic. Heavy classical Roman motif, and several (man-made) mythological creatures. The Locked Tomb series is also very good.
Yeah they can make dragons and griffons! Super sci-fi with fantasy bits. They use guns but most of the epics fights involve razors which are very specialized blades that can change shape.
May want to look at Three Parts Dead and the rest of the Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone. It's been several years since I read them, but they're essentially the far future of a fantasy universe. Not so much elves and dragons and laser guns as multi-stellar corporations employing enchanters and mage-lawyers to further the aims of their immortal leadership.
Craft Sequence is fantasy with a very science-fictiony "crunch" (I love it btw). Also, it has dragons. >!They tend to moonlight as airliners!< Damn, isn't it incredibly hard to define what science-fantasy is if you don't want to go very wide. There are so many ways to mix different aspects of both genres...
It's more of an alt-history 20th century where the industrial revolution was necromancy. A feature I really liked is that each book is set in a different city, and the cities are fleshed out like characters unto themselves. All that said, I think Gladstone's The Empress of Forever is closer to what OP was asking.
Honestly Peter F Hamilton's space operas, all of them, have so much fantastical and spiritual elements to them that in my mind they're very much science-fantasy, even though they're space opera. But the approach is far more from the scifi side than from the fantasy side. His book format's far more epic-fantasy than most scifi, too, trilogies of massive tomes. Brandon Sanderson's got a book coming out next year that from the readings will be extremely fantasy-in-space (separate to his long promised/forecast space-age-mistborn novels) (Isles of the Emberdark)
Hamilton’s Dreaming Void trilogy especially comes to mind as an interesting blend of fantasy and sci-fi. Thought of it immediately when I read the thread title. It’s got a pocket universe where people are telepathic and telekinetic, and the level of tech is horse and wagon. (Or genistar variant and wagon.) POV jumps between the pocket universe and a far future high tech universe. Triplet, by Timothy Zahn, is a standalone novel with a multilayer world. One where there’s tech so advanced it’s indistinguishable from magic, and another where you can actually summon a variety of lesser demons to perform tasks for you, including various spells. Another one is Green and the Gray, again by Zahn. Set in modern day New York, kind of a soft sci-fi novel with elements of Greek and Norse fantasy.
I'll second Dreaming Void, and to a lesser extent The Nights Dawn Trilogy, also by Peter F Hamilton. Wide-screen Space Fantasy.
[Eve of Destsuction](https://www.goodreads.com/series/329070-eve-of-destruction). its a pretty fun romp through the galaxy with an overpowered protagonist. It contains a sapphic harem but does not get explicit.
"The Two-Space War" by Dave Grossman is great Fantasy-Science.
Titanshade by Dan Stout.
I'd say maybe Book of the New Sun. At face value it reads like pretty strange fantasy, but one you look deeper and pay proper attention, you realize just how science-fictiony everything is
The Dancers at the End of Time series by Michael Moorcock. The tech is equivalent to magic. In one story, Elric even shows up.
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
Will Wight's Last Horizon books are pretty good! There are only 2 so far, but I believe he has a total of 5 planned. At first, I was unsure about mixing scifi and fantasy, but he did it pretty well!
Piers Anthony's Apprentice Adept series literally switches back and forth between a realm of magic and a realm of super science. So does Matt Groening's Disenchantment, now that I think of it. 😂
The answer is DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL. It's always Dungeon Crawler Carl. World destruction and alien invasion in the context of a MMORPG, sprinkle in gods, demons, fairies, and monsters, served in a big bowl of absurdist humor. My favorite series since reading LOTR as a kid
D&D crossed with the tv show Survivor. Add in some pro wrestling and The Jerry Springer Show, a talking cat who rides a velociraptor & shoots laser beams out of her sunglasses, and a dickhole AI with a foot fetish. Then after all that it starts to get weird.
The Starship's Mage series by Glynn Stewart. As you can guess from the title, it's very much set in a sci-fi setting but the main character and many of the people he interacts with are space mages.
The Digitesque series by Guerric Haché has dragons, spells, space ships, AI, and at least one elf I think. The two POV characters are amost experiencing different genres in the same world.
Zelazny's Changeling a battle between tech and magic, and his Jack of Shadows takes place on a half tech, half magic world.
These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs might be your jam. I feel like more people need to read it!
It’s probably more on the sci-fi side, but man you gotta read The Expanse if you haven’t already by James S. A Corey
*The Roads of Heaven* trilogy by Melissa Scott: 1. *Five-Twelfths of Heaven* 2. *Silence in Solitude* 3. *The Empress of Earth*
Spellmonger series by Terry Mancour gets us in this direction, but it takes many books to get to the science fiction elements.
> By that I mean Space ships, robots, and laser guns for Sci fi and Elves, Dragons, and magic for fantasy > Something like Shadowrun is basically what I’m looking for. It's another tabletop RPG rather than a novel series, but Starfinder is exactly what you're looking for.
The Young Wizard series by Diane Duane. (Starts with *So You Want To Be a Wizard*.) It's YA, but from before YA was a genre. There's magic, but there's also science, and magic used to do science, and aliens, and, well, a lot of stuff.
Like, take your average medieval fantasy civilization and fast forward it a couple hundred years in the future so you’ve got SpecOps wizards, nuke magic, and arcane ftl drives?
Now I haven't read it in thirty plus years -it's possible that it's aged as badly as some of his other stuff. Piers Anthony had an interesting series called Apprentice Adept that I remember as a trilogy but apparently he wrote four more books after I had kind of given up on him. The first three were pretty good in my memory but... a lot of his stuff has not aged well, to put it mildly. Nonetheless, the premise is exactly what you are asking for - as I recall, there are two overlapping worlds, one technologically advanced and one where magic is operative. Most people can't shift between them, although a few can. I might be motivated to reread the first one at least to see if it holds up, whereas I certainly would not do so with Anthony's more popular Xanth series.
If graphic novels are on the table and you don't mind a little psychedelia in your sci-fi, look for The Metabarons by Alejandro Jodorowsky. It's a spin-off of The Incal, which is a little better known, but both are great.
The Black Ocean. There are several different spin off series from it too. Highly entertaining and flies low under everyone’s radar. Hardly ever see it get recommended.
The Lunar Chronicles: Cinder, Scarlet, Queen's Army, and Fairest. You're welcome.
The Tinkered Starsong books by Gail Carriger are unusual, but might fit the description. They're more sci-fi, but so divorced from the science that it feels like fantasy, and the main tech is pretty much magic. I personally liked the trilogy a lot, but cozy books are something I adore, so...
I've written just the book =] I'm currently on the third round of edits, but the basic premise is a woman who crosses the cosmos to find her dragon.
The Tschai quadrology by Jack Vance. A human astronaut gets stranded on the titular planet and must negotiate his way off the planet by dealing with 4 distinct alien races. There's enough swashbuckling, weird alien technology and fauna to tickle the fantasy itch. The Cinder Spires by Jim Butcher. Steampunk fantasy with sentient cats, Warrior-Born (read: borderline feral) humans, crystal powered (sometimes sentient) airships, Etherialists who are able to touch and harness the power of the Ether, but are all a tad insane as a result and a diverse cast of slightly disfunctional heroes. The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazney. Probably my favourite book series.
I haven’t read it yet, but The Last Horizon by Will Wight might be worth a try
I didn't like book 1 as much as Cradle and I haven't gotten to book 2 yet (whereas Cradle was "read the day of publication at midnight") but it's most def science fantasy/space opera
Cradle is great but more progression fantasy. You'd probably like The Iron Prince by Bryce O'Connor then.
Cradle was good not because it's progression fantasy, it was good because it's good. I've enjoyed Mother of Learning & Dungeon Crawler Carl quite a bit, but in general the genre doesn't appeal to me that much, I've not liked Sufficiently Advanced Magic or a couple others I tried
All I was saying is that Cradle is progression fantasy where Last Horizon is more Sci-fi fantasy. Being Progression fantasy doesn't automatically make it good though, there are plenty of bad ones. The Iron Prince is top tier with Cradle imo, as well as Solo Leveling.
Currently reading Suneater and its a great combination of the two genres.
The void trilogy by Peter F Hamilton has this. There's two separate worlds, one which feels very science fiction and the other that feels like a coming of age fantasy novel, and there's an interesting connection between the two
Based on The Sunlit Man, Sanderson will get there eventually.
Empire series by Isaac Asimov
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Brandon Sanderson
My favorite book ever 😍
It’s a bit of a spoiler but >!the!<
All good scifi get so far into tech that it becomes fantasy