Sci-Fi Fantasy Combo that blew you away

[W.]

To piggyback on Chris' thread... What was your absolute favorite Scifi-fantasy combo book. In other words it has to incorporate scientific and magical themes.

It can be standalone or a series.

[Sam]

Would The Broken Empire series from Mark Lawrence qualify? There were some distinctly scientific themes within the book and it had all the earmarks of fantasy.

[Mary]

Dread Companion by Andre Norton. Far-future, interstellar civilization where the Fair Folk haunt a planet.

[Michele]

Gene Wolfe's New Sun books have to take the cake here. Really - just awesome in scope, language, ideas...Gene Wolfe in general blows my mind.

That said :) my all time favorite since I was a kid is The Warlock in Spite of Himself and the rest of the series. I just loved the mix in these books - true magic - at first it's just psionics believed to be magic, but then in a later book they go to a different universe with real, fireball kind of magic - and space ships, sentient computer robot horse, elves, ghosts - Stasheff really took all the SF&F tropes and through them into this great, fun melting pot and Wow, I loved this series.

The suck fairy has gotten to it a bit, I'll admit. Now I see some of the stuff I missed, like the heavy-handed politics that get thrown in here and there, but I still like them for the sheer fun and exuberance they have - just, "This is great! Let's add more stuff! And blow stuff up! And ghosts! And vampires! And force fields! What did I miss? More lasers! And leprechauns! Time travelling Neanderthals!"

[V.W.]

Michele wrote: "Gene Wolfe's New Sun books have to take the cake here. Really - just awesome in scope, language, ideas...Gene Wolfe in general blows my mind.

That said :) my all time favorite since I was a kid is..."

I have to agree. Christopher Stasheff's Warlock series is one of my all time favourite SF/Fantasy mash ups.

I also like Jerry Pournelle's Janissaries and Poul Anderson's The High Crusade which are mirror images of each other, one being modern warriors thrown into a fantasy historical situation, while the other is a bunch of medieval knights who capture a spaceship and end up in space fighting aliens.

[Teanka]

I consider all the fantasy books where there is a mention that people originally came from the stars or another universe, a sci-fi fantasy. Among my favourites are Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey which is a great novel as a standalone, and also the Morgaine cycle beginning with Gate of Ivrel and Finisterre duology Rider at the Gate/ Cloud's Rider by C.J. Cherryh. I also loved The Coldfire Trilogy Black Sun Rising by C.S. Friedman, where the entire magic system is based on the premise that humans are not native to the world of Erna and therefore unwillingly (or willingly) manipulate the fae, that is the magic currents that surround them.

I'm sure I could name other books easily, and I think The Broken Empire fits into this category nicely but for people not familiar with Prince of Thorns this classification would become a spoiler of sorts.

[Sarah]

Is Prince of Thorns good?

[Ken]

My work here is already done. :)

Gene Wolfe's fantastic New Sun series absolutely obliterated all my preconceptions of what "SF" and "Fantasy" fiction was supposed to be. He set a new bar in the stratosphere above the old bar. It's subtle, it's daring, challenging to read, as alien as any SF novel, but deeply, deeply human.

[W.]

I'm going to go into the recesses of time and pull out Glory Road by Robert Heinlein, which wasn't as grand of a scope as some of the others mentioned here, but it certainly paved the way for them. Dragons, golems, inter-dimensional travel, and even Cyrano De Bergerac! It might be the first fantasy/sci-fi combo, although I'd be interested to see if somebody knows of an older one.

[Wastrel]

I'd third the mention of the Book of the New Sun (and Urth of the New Sun), and, in a completely different vein, of McCaffery. I don't believe Dragonflight really counts, but Dragonsdawn is almost a prototypical example of the genre.

However, my favourite is probably Ash: A Secret History, which combines fantasy, SF, and alternate history. If you had to narrow it down to one and had to take it at face value, it claims ultimately to be SF - but it's a very non-hard SF, and from the point of view of the characters it's basically fantasy. Which you don't realise at first because it evolves subtly out of an alternate history, which itself looks like a historical novel at first.

W: certainly not the first! there was plenty of sf/fantasy combo in the early days - Edgar Rice Burroughs, for instance, and CS Lewis' "Perelandra" novels and so forth. And then again around the time of that Heinlein book, when Burroughs was being imitated - Vance, Herbert, Lucas, Le Guin, etc.

[Teanka]

Sarah wrote: "Is Prince of Thorns good?"
It's good but as it belongs to a grimdark subgenre of fantasy it's not for the faint of heart. The main young hero (antihero:) Jorg is a total sociopath which makes his deeds hard to swallow most of the time. Personally, I liked this kind of dark humour, it certainly is an original book with a lot of secrets left to be uncovered as the story progresses.

[Caleb]

I second Black Sun Rising. Great sci fi/fantasy combo. It blew me away when I was in 7th grade. Recently re-read it and it is extremely solid but not quite as good as I remember. But the "vampire" main character is AWESOME.

[spikeINflorida]

My fave is Dan Simmons' Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion. I experienced several brain meltdowns.

[Trike]

Back in the day I thought Piers Anthony's Apprentice Adept series was pretty great. It's about a world existing in two parallel universes, one of magic and one of science, and if you don't have a doppelganger on one planet or the other, you can travel back and forth.

I'm certain I didn't read all 7 of them, but I enjoyed the first 3 or so. No idea if they hold up, but when I was 16 I liked them.

Split Infinity is the first one.

[Fabi NEEDS Email Notifications]

For me it was Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card. Excellent mix of sci-fi and fantasy.

[Jeremy]

Simon R. Green's Nightside series and Secret Histories series blend science and sorcery. They're not exactly high literature, but they are tons of fun

[Anil]

Dune

Philip Jose farmer Riverworld series

[Mary]

Come to think of it, Keith Roberts's Pavane also fits the bill.

[Voss]

I'd have to say it's either Gormenghast (Mervyn Peake) or His Dark Materials (Phillip Pullman).