Question: What's the difference between Sci-Fi and Fantasy?
Answer: Some would say that there is very little difference between the two forms. Orson Scott Card, an award-winning novelist in both genres, has said that the difference is illusory. "Half joking, I was writing to Ben [Bova] about this very subject, and I said, look, fantasy has trees, and science fiction has rivets," Card said in a 1989 interview. "That's it, that's all the difference there is, the difference of feel, perception."
Science fiction and fantasy both explore other realities than our own. And in the sense that either way what really matters in human nature, the difference is one of setting and environment.
But there is a fundamental difference -- one of aspiration. Humanity can look forward to the kinds of achievements postulated in science fiction, while with another part of our brain we can dream of the impossibilities conjured by fantasy. Science fiction expands our world; fantasy transcends it.
