What would be the different between Science Fantasy World that one that lean more on Science side & Fantasy Side

What would be the difference between Science Fantasy World and one that leans more on the Science side & Fantasy Side as well as stays at the middle ground in everyone's mind

since I was a speculative fiction writer who wrote science fantasy verse that lean more on the Fantasy Side & my friend Title wrote science fantasy verse that lean more on the Science Side but still don't know the Middle Ground of Science Fantasy verse that don't lean more on Fantasy or Sci-Fi

There's no neat divide between science fiction and fantasy. the quintessential example is Star Wars, which has the aesthetics of sci fi but in practice is about Space Wizards with magic swords and magic powers. They just don't call it that.

I don't remember where, but I think Ted Chiang once said that fantasy assumes that there is a part of the universe that we can never hope to understand, while science fiction assumes that the universe can be explained logically. Some of his works are set in mythological or fantasy worlds, but he approaches the said worlds in a scientific, logical way.

I feel like Star Wars, while having fantasy tropes, tends to lean more on the science fiction side. Droids and starships play a heavy role in the worldbuilding and the lightsabers are technological in nature for the most part. Blasters, ,cyborgs, clones, superweapons, space travel, all of that is Science fiction. Andor, Rogue One, Solo and other works not involving the Force (that much) are pretty much Science Fiction.

In my experience, it often goes in the Sci-Fi for the purposes of marketing in libraries and stores.

On the other, I think Legend of Zelda could be seen as being on the far side of the fantasy side of Science Fantasy. There is sometimes advanced technology, but its usually powered by magic or created by gods.

Or better yet, Pokemon. While treated as part of the natural world, the Pokemon themselves have fantastic powers and can be considered genuinely divine such as in the case of Arceus. I guess you could say that Pokemon is a fantasy world that takes place in the future. Legend of Korra is the same as a lot of the technology is powered by bending.

Adventure Time, I think is a series that meets the middle for this genre. There is a lot of science fiction, but there is also a lot of fantasy and its hard to say which one powers the other. Ice King's crown is heavily Magitek as it has circuits, but is powered by magic gems. There were vampires, but they seemed to have only emerged with the effects of a Nuclear War, which may have had magical nukes being launched, which then powdered the Earth with magic, since up until then the Elementals were weak. Princess Bubblegum plans to use a soul to power a robot, but then makes an artificial soul because it's more stable. So, yeah definitely in the middle as far as science fantasy goes.

Edited by Bornstellar on Oct 7th 2022 at 10:31:05 AM