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These 2 genres have different feels to them, IMO. Fantasy stories need a sort of Epic feel, whereas Sci-fi tends to be far more subtle. you won't find a guy mysteriously assasinated too much in fantasy stories. rather, you'll see HUGE battles against "the forces of evil".

so which do you all like more?

Both are good, wicth one you like better realy boils down to taste.

Zor

far too sweeping to say whether i like one over the other. there's tons of fantasy books i like and tons of sci-fi books that i like. then of course there's the science-fantasy genre, ala star wars and star of the guardians (series by margaret weiss).

These 2 genres have different feels to them, IMO. Fantasy stories need a sort of Epic feel, whereas Sci-fi tends to be far more subtle. you won't find a guy mysteriously assasinated too much in fantasy stories. rather, you'll see HUGE battles against "the forces of evil".

It's impossible for me to decide which genre I like more.
There are many Fantasy books which have assasinations, there are ven series in which assasins are the heros.

Hard to say. I tend to find that I read more fantasy novels, and watch more sci fi shows. (Not really sure why).

However, I can't really say whether I like one more than the other. If written well they both provide me with great entertainment.

unbeataBULL wrote:These 2 genres have different feels to them, IMO. Fantasy stories need a sort of Epic feel, whereas Sci-fi tends to be far more subtle. you won't find a guy mysteriously assasinated too much in fantasy stories. rather, you'll see HUGE battles against "the forces of evil".

so which do you all like more?

Both, because really they're each too similar to the other to be so different. Fantasy isn't subtle? Read the Earthsea books. Scifi can't have epic fights against the forces of darkness? Uh... Star Wars?

Indeed, I would say a good story combines elements from both genres. The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter Hamilton is both scifi and fantasy, as is something like Star Wars.

I prefer science fiction, when done well. However, a badly written sci-fi book/show/movie bothers me a lot more than a badly written fantasy, since science fiction is generally assumed to have at least some degree of realism to it.

Science fiction. I'm not much into fantasy aside from Lord of the Rings and Discworld.

Fantasy just never really worked for me. The only fantasy series that even marginally managed to catch my attention was Turtledove's WWII parallel series, and that was more in the craft of how he made it extremely similar but not precisely identical to the setup of the big deuce.

I like both, but for some reason I'm better at finding good fantasy books than good Sci-fi books. Possibly because you don't tend to get huge 1,398,401 book-long series in Sci-fi, but if Fantasy authors could live that long, they damn well would try to write a series that long.

It could also be the fact that I always look on the 2nd hand shelf first for Sci-fi, so I only ever get dodgy semi-pornographic 70s sci-fi.

I tend to prefer stories with a science-fiction feel to them. But what is science fiction?

I think science fiction can be characterized much better by it's general tendency to craft a story around a set of "what if?" premises and seeing where it goes from there... science fiction doesn't need to be set in the far-flung future.

Yeah....it's hard to choose. It's like Dragonlance or Stargate SG-1?.

In the end....I guess I would rather hang out with O'Neill and the gang.

I don't see either genre fitting within such narrowly defined borders.

Epic battles against forces of evil? That includes a lot of 'space opera' sci fi. Subtle machinations and plot? Go read George R.R. Martin.

fantasy is my god

I perfer scifi, I like the what if-ness of the genre.
Though I do read a good deal of fantasy: Discworld, LotR, Tom Holt, Zelazny's Amber Chronicles.

I think it's coolest when scifi and fantasy are fused. Not subtly like in SW where everything is scifi-type but there are a few magicy elements added, but like Final Fantasy 6-8 where a world with magic has continued to progress beyond some retrograde medieval state the way most mystical societies are depicted. Magic and science have combined. such that magic-based high technology is prevalent.

Science fiction. In general, I've found it to be more interally consistant. Disbelief is also much easier to suspend.

Sci-Fi, I like technology and science based scenarios more.