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Laethyn wrote:

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Can someone please explain the different between fantasy and sci-fi? Aren't they one and the same? For example, I consider Star Wars to be fantasy. I consider Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov to be fantasy writers (among other things). I consider Salvatore, Greenwood, Martin, etc. etc. to be fantasy writers. 

I just see the lines as far to blurred to break the two genres apart.

I cannot cite a source for this, but this is how I break it down in my mind.

Fiction is an invented story that nevertheless has its basis in fact/reality.  A Law & Order TV show episode that takes real-life crimes and then puts a spin on them, to avoid accusations of misrepresenting true cases or violating privacy, would probably be fiction.

Fantasy is an invented story that has its basis entirely or almost entirely in imaginative and fanciful imagery.  A wizard or sage in a medieval setting who tries to determine which type of monster left the clawed footprints on his porch and scattered the remains of his housekeeper all over the courtyard would probably be fantasy.

Considering how most space-based, futuristic shows use types of technology that are not really based on true science, but rather are imaginative or fanciful projections of what we would like science and technology to be able to produce (warp drive? phasers? light sabers?), I would personally take most "sci-fi" stories and re-classify them as "sci-fant", or science-fantasy.  They tell stories with very unreal elements, but they try to couch them in plausible-sounding technobabble terms.  It sounds good, and looks good, but it's still not all that closely based on fact or reality.  So it's fantasy.

Now, a book/movie like Carl Sagan's Contact really blurs the lines.  The underlying plot device is a set of blueprints for an extraterrestrial machine which no one on Earth understands.  This is made up, but hardly outside the realm of possible reality.  The way that humanity wrestles with the question of whether or not to build the machine and then to use it is all told in a very realistic fashion.  However, whether or not such a machine could be built, and whether it would work, is entirely up to the imagination at this time.  Heck, whether or not extraterrestrial life exists is entirely up to the imagination, for now. 

How about this example: conventional, male-centered pornography?  Of course it entails real people engaging in real sex acts.  But in the overwhelming majority of cases, the performers are contorting their bodies or engaging in actions meant to look graphic and/or dramatic on camera, instead of providing authentic mutual sexual pleasure for both parties involved.  It's choreographed, staged, contrived stuntwork.  The scenes are created by the writers/directors, but they obviously use real humans involved in real human actions.  But the circumstances behind the action scenes are almost always farcical and ridiculously unrealistic.  They're intended to cater to stereotypical, male-centered, fantasy views of sex.  So...fiction or fantasy?

Boggs wrote:

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If we include any story which could be a fantasy, then most action flicks and nearly anything with a fight scene in it would be fantasy, most romantic comedies would be fantasy, many horror movies would be fantasy...

I agree, wholeheartedly.  Way more of our pop culture is fantasy than most of us realize.  The medieval sort seems to get looked down upon as silly, but most of those other types of stories are just as unrealistic, imaginative, and fanciful as what we normally think of as fantasy.

I think it would be good for us to call a spade a spade, in that regard, too.

It's not that things in our lives don't go the same way they do in the movies simply because "it's just a movie".  Rather, things in our lives don't go the same way as in the movies because so many of the movies that we choose to watch are fantasies.

But there are fictional movies out there, too.  I'd call many of the docudramas about Joan of Arc fictionalized accounts of true events: many of them don't give even a mere suggestion of divine magic being involved.  The movie Silent Running, with Bruce Dern, was a very realistic (but low-budget) space-based science fiction flick: Its large colony of spaceships move slowly with conventional rocket power, versus faster-than-light hyper-/warp-drive, there are no phasers or aliens, and the small worker robots are actually quite primitive--it is clearly the protagonist's loneliness that serves to convey them with human traits and seeming personalities.

For me, fiction involves a writer combining realistic elements in an unreal manner.  Maybe there was no actual "Bobby Bruno" in the US Civil War, but a fictional account of that war could easily insert him into it and still be largely plausible: that's fiction.

But have Bobby Bruno miraculously taking multiple rifle shots and cannon blasts and horse stampedes and fiery building collapses from the Union Army, somehow waxing eloquently about sovereignty and autonomy with just a grammar school education, and meanwhile deflowering dozens of Yankee virgins all along the Mason-Dixon line, just to inspire latent Southern Dixie pride...that would be fantasy.

For me, it's pretty simple. Magic and supernatural = fantasy, science and engineering beyond our current capabilities = sci fi. But that doesn't mean that the lines are always clear. Star Wars and The Matrix series have elements of both. There are many vampire movies that have magical elements, but I wouldn't call them all fantasy. The Hunt for Red October has tech beyond our capabilities, but I wouldn't call it a sci fi flick. There is the occasional fantasy book that has no magic or supernatural elements.

This is one of the reasons why I still enjoy Bob's detailed descriptions of close quarter battle.  I'm a meat-and-potatoes, real-world physics kinda guy.  Like Homeland said about Zak, I prefer the steel of a fighter's blade to the crystal of a mage's staff/wand.  With all of this magic floating around all over the durn place, it's nice to read about some things happening there essentially the same as they do here.  It gives a somewhat realistic grounding to these otherwise unworldly storylines and events.  I think that that makes for the best fantasy: good unrealistically imaginative images, balanced with somewhat realistic physics and procedures.