Science Fiction is just a subset of fantasy

When asked to name science fiction books, tv shows, and movies on our first day of class, my mind went completely blank. "I don't know what he considers sci-fi," I thought. "Isn't he supposed to be telling us?" But then, of course, the standard pop culture icons came to mind: the Doctor, Tony Stark, Darth Vader, Spock, Batman, Superman. Then I asked myself what unified all of these characters, and pretty quickly got stuck.

So I thought about it. I think that science fiction simply takes fantasy scenarios and tropes and attempts to explain away some of the magical aspects of fantasy in terms that are almost plausible (and if they don't seem plausible it's because humanity isn't advanced enough to understand). Let's take Star Fox 64 as an example. If you're not familiar, Star Fox 64 is an N64 game in which Fox McCloud, an anthropomorphic fox who pilots various vehicles around his solar system, attempts to defeat Andross, an evil scientist who sets his robots and henchmen to kill Fox and his team (also anthropomorphic animals). Now Star Fox could just as easily have been developed as Magic Fox and Andross could just as easily have been made an evil wizard. In this respect, I find science fiction to be very closely linked to fantasy. How is Fox a talking fox? We assume that he either evolved that way or was developed in a lab, not magic. How is he flying from planet to planet? Well he's the pilot of an Arwing, a sophisticated aircraft. How is he fighting his enemies? Lasers, not spells.

So it's my belief that science fiction simply takes a story which is almost definitely not plausible in our world and attempts to explain the impossible parts in scientific terms which the consumer is familiar with to make it seem plausible. It doesn't just use magic as a trump card do create a world where there are no rules and characters can essentially do whatever they want. In fantasy if something is impossible, that's ok. It's magic. In science fiction if something is impossible the writer has to at least come up with some sort of explanation using the scientific laws of our world.

That's it for me. Science fiction is fantasy with restrictions.