Sci Fi Fantasy

Why Shelve Sci-Fi and Fantasy Together?

What's with bookstores anyway? Mystery has its own shelves, horror has its own shelves, romance, humor, travel, computers - all get their own shelvage but science fiction and fantasy are always jumbled up together as 'sci-fi/fantasy'.

Is this a sign of disrespect, or smart marketing?

Smart Marketing

While there are readers of sci-fi who wouldn't read fantasy on a bet, and vice versa, there is a huge population of readers who read both fantasy and science fiction.

More to the point, there are a number of authors who write both fantasy and science fiction. And fantasy/sci-fi readers are loyal - when they discover a writer they like, they typically will hunt down and read everything that author has written, regardless of genre.

Herewith, a few cross-genre authors:

Orson Scott Card

Card is perhaps best known for Ender's Game, and all its myriad sequels, prequels and offshoots. But Card also writes fantasy as well. One of his ongoing series, the Alvin Maker series, features a 'seventh son of a seventh son' in an alternate version of our 19th century, and the magical powers he learns to control.

Card also has several stand-alone fantasy novels (a rarity in the genre these days), including Enchantment, which sends a contemporary American male back to ninth century Russia to play a part in a fairy tale, as well as other science fiction multi-book series such as the Homecoming saga, set in the far future, a sci-fi novelization of the Book of Mormon. (Card is a member of the Mormon church.)

Ursula LeGuin

Anne McCaffrey

This article is an unfinished stub. Please feel free to contribute by adding your own author profiles or book titles that fit into a sci-fi fantasy genre.