Anybody else get irked...

I do, but I also have sympathy for book stores with limited space.
Tolkien and A C Clark have almost nothing in common apart from being authors, but where would you classify Star Wars? The humble peasent meets strange wizard who teaches him magic gives him his fathers sword and goes off to rescue a princess. Sounds fantasy to me. oh yeah they fly in space ships worry about tractor beams, hyperdrives and have fantastic space battles. Sci-fi?
Have you read Julian May, The Golden Torc? I still can't decide which catogory it falls into, or Christopher Stasheff, a explorer with spaceship and robot horse who ends up on a medival world?
To go back to your point it can be the lazyness of bookstores, and the ignorance of people who don't read the genres but some authors really don't help the cause.

Yeah, sometimes I find it irksome to see the master Tolkien's works set beside one of the Science-fiction series that I couldn't care any less about. But as Wrexscar said above me, there is that limitation of storage space. And while the two genres may be completely different from one another I see some overlaps between them; they both offer escape from the real world and direct us into the imagined realm, either "magical" or "technological", that has a name and a history of its own.

Inkabink said:

...that sci-fi and fantasy are almost always lumped together? They aren't the same genre. Is it a matter of ignorance? Laziness?

I'm a fantasy author and fan. I like the Dark Ages. I don't like spaceships. I am not a big fan of sci-fi. When did "science" fiction come to equal fantasy?

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Sounds like you're not reading the right sci-fi...

There is quite a bit of overlap between the two genres. Sci-fi and fantasy can be considered subgenres of "speculative fiction" (along with alternate history, time travel, horror, etc.). While the "hard" sf of Asimov, Clarke, and others may not seem to have much in common with fantasy, other sf subgenres do. Space opera (Star Wars, Buck Rogers, etc.) and, to a greater extent, the planetary romance (1930s Flash Gordon comics, E.R. Burroughs' Mars and Venus stories, Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure, Moorcock's Hawkmoon, etc.) bear many similarities to fantasy; the archetypes, plot devices, and other characteristics are dressed up in pseudoscientific jargon instead of medievalisms. (The Star Wars example offered by another poster is very good...) Here I'm reminded of Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Fantasy doesn't have to conform to a certain technological level or time frame. (IMHO, the fantasy genre has become really boring and stale because of authors' overuse of the cliche quasi-medieval setting, but that's another thread entirely.) What about the urban fantasy of Charles de Lint? The weirdness of Robert W. Chambers and H.P. Lovecraft? "Lost world" adventures like those of Haggard or A. Merritt? The "dying earth" tales of Jack Vance, Clark Ashton Smith, and Gene Wolfe?

Where does an alternate reality fit?

Historically they are linked. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is older than most posters here.

The roots are the same. Someone asking one question. What if...

And it is not as if there is a section labeled 'Science Fiction' that one has to look in to find Fantasy.

Oh and a few more. Where would one put the whole Proton/Phase series? What of Glory Road or Magic Inc.?

Not to mention the fact that there is a huge cross over in readers.

Fans know there is a difference but I don't get irked by them lumping it together as long as it gets recognized. I read either as the mood takes me. I'll read it in secular fiction, I'll read it in Christian fiction. Also, sometimes, the lines between fantasy and science fiction blur depending on the author. Not all of SF is space ships and star battles (in fact, military SF is one of those things I avoid reading...no interest), and outright war stories with fantasy elements? Same thing. I don't like them much. But author who did the Darkover series tended to blend elements of both depending on her story, same for Anne McCaffery. Generally, I'm happy just to see a good selection of both at the library or the bookstores. It's usually easy to tell which is which. At the library I am at right now, they have put stickers on the spines of the books, one for fantasy titles and one for SF.

Hmmm...I remember the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

Agreed on some of those authors above, Moorcock, Burroughs (loved the both as a kid and young adult).

I also tend to agree that fantasy has become predictable and generally boring. I don't read it nearly as much as I used to. There is really only so much a writer can do with fantasy plots, Heroic fantasy, dragons, magic, battles, evil gods, despots and tyrannical rulers. Yeah, some can come up with new stuff, things with a bit of twist on the old stories, but most of it is same old-same old. This does NOT mean that some fantasy writers are not interesting. Some are quite capable of crafting a wonderful story, but there seem to be fewer and fewer these days who write in ways that capture my attention.

One other pet peeve about fantasy novels is that they have gotten ridiculously LONG! Sheesh. 600 to 700 pages is ridiculous. I realize they want to craft interesting worlds and cultures and governments and many do succeed at it. But they lose me if the plot is just the usual fare. I remember the 'good old days' of Burroughs, Lin Carter, L. Sprague De Camp, norton, Moorcock and Lieber etc. who could write a 200-250 page book (which I could often read in 2 nights of easy reading) and they were more than capable of creating interesting characters and plots, as well as 'world building' within those 'limited' number of pages. I long for the days when I could pick up a book and be done with it in a matter of a few days even when pulled in many other directions by life's general obligations.

keith99 said:

And it is not as if there is a section labeled 'Science Fiction' that one has to look in to find Fantasy.

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Not true. I have been to several libraries and smaller bookstores that have a sign for 'Science Fiction' and that is where all their Sci-Fi/Fantasy is.

keith99 said:

Oh and a few more. Where would one put the whole Proton/Phase series?

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After the original trilogy? Into the garbage...

LadyNRA said:

One other pet peeve about fantasy novels is that they have gotten ridiculously LONG! Sheesh. 600 to 700 pages is ridiculous. I realize they want to craft interesting worlds and cultures and governments and many do succeed at it. But they lose me if the plot is just the usual fare. I remember the 'good old days' of Burroughs, Lin Carter, L. Sprague De Camp, norton, Moorcock and Lieber etc. who could write a 200-250 page book (which I could often read in 2 nights of easy reading) and they were more than capable of creating interesting characters and plots, as well as 'world building' within those 'limited' number of pages. I long for the days when I could pick up a book and be done with it in a matter of a few days even when pulled in many other directions by life's general obligations.

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Preach it, sista!

There's definitely something to be said for the "economy of words" exercised by older writers, many of whom got their start writing for pulp magazines. You could probably fit E.R. Burroughs' entire 12-volume Mars series into the space of one Jordan or Goodkind entry.

I don't think that the world building of recent F&SF novelists is any better or worse than their antecedents, it's just more long-winded. There also seems to be a shift in world-building attitudes. Guys like Leiber and Robert E. Howard were all about plot. The setting in which the heroes fought and quested was almost an afterthought in the "world-building" sense-- you got snippets here and there, just enough to provide some context and color for the adventure in this month's issue. Nowadays, fantasy novelists seem to be more interested in immersing the reader in their fantasy world. For better or worse, that means more history and cultural anthropology lessons and more appendices of unpronounceable names (with plenty of hyphens and/or apostrophes) and gobbledygook "languages". Not my cup of coffee really (with the notable exception of Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen), but whatever, YMMV...

Unless the science fiction is based on hard science, then it really is nothing more than fantasy. The aforementioned "speculative fiction" umbrella works well, too. Still, the pairing of science fiction and fantasy has been around for next-to-forever. It is a part of the genre's charm.

LadyNRA said:

One other pet peeve about fantasy novels is that they have gotten ridiculously LONG!

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Full thirty foot she towered from waterline to rail.
It took a watch to steer her, and a week to shorten sail;
But, spite all modern notions, I’ve found her first and best –
The only certain packet for the Islands of the Blest.

Fair held the breeze behind us – ‘twas warm with lover’s prayers,
We’d stolen wills for ballast and a crew of missing heirs.
They shipped as Able Bastards till the Wicked Nurse confessed,
And they worked the old three-decker to the Islands of the Blest.

...

That route is barred to steamers: you’ll never lift again
Our purple-painted headlands or the lordly keeps of Spain.
They’re just beyond your skyline, howe’er so far you cruise,
In a ram-you-damn-you liner with a brace of bucking screws.

...

But when you’re threshing, crippled, with broken bridge and rail,
At a drogue of dead convictions to hold you head to gale,
Calm as the Flying Dutchman, from truck to taffrail dressed,
You’ll see the old three-decker for the Islands of the Blest.

You’ll see her tiering canvas in sheeted silver spread;
You’ll hear the long-drawn thunder ‘neath her leaping figure-head;
While far, so far above you, her tall poop-lanterns shine
Unvexed by wind or weather like the candles round a shrine!

Hull down – hull down and under – she dwindles to a speck,
With noise of pleasant music and dancing on her deck.
All’s well – all’s well aboard her – she’s left you far behind,
With a scent of old-world roses through the fog that ties you blind.

Her crews are babes or madmen? Her port is all to make?
You’re manned by Truth and Science, and you steam for steaming’s sake?
Well, tinker up your engines – you know your business best –
She’s taking tired people to the Islands of the Blest! -- Rudyard Kipling, 1894

Ah Rudyard Kipling. I knew this sounded familiar! Now what you should do is put some of your own stuff on here

Inkabink said:

When did "science" fiction come to equal fantasy?

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You don't have to like science fiction, but that doesn't give you the right to detract from its validity as a genre by using quotes and calling it "science" fiction. Just something to think about.

To answer the OP, both genres are essentially fantastic, meaning that they cover themes that have not, or cannot, exist at this moment and in this world. Then there is the overlap between science fiction and fantasy, which others have pointed out, which leads naturally into the fact that many lovers of science fiction are also fans of fantasy (and vice versa), as am I, and that big companies like to do all they can to make money (gotta love corporate capitalism), so they jam all the thematically and demographically similar entertainment into the same slot. You have media outlets, like the SciFi Channel, which, if it confined itself to nothing but science fiction, would only fill about two-thirds of its programming schedule, which is already frought with awful movies and tangential series. (How is pro wrestling scifi or fantasy? Maybe it fits in with fantasy, just not in the good way.) And Scifi's channel may not even still have anything scifi-worthwhile about it once Stargate: Atlantis ends.

So just be thankful that there are sources that provide science fiction and fantasy in the same outlet. Because if either genre had to stand on its own, they would fall, not because either isn't worthy of attention, but because individually, they aren't that commercially viable.

Sci-Fi/Fantasy just go together. It's the way life works - or at least the way genre division works. What's even sillier is when bookstores have both a Sci-Fi section and a Fantasy section and then divide up an author's works between the two sections based on which ones are a little more leaning towards Sci-Fi and which ones are a little more Fantasy. I like it better all in one place - if you don't like one genre or the other, it's easy enough to tell the difference based on the covers.

I also happen to like the long fantasy novels - when they're written well. Short ones can be fun, but I like the conntection you can build with the characters that just can't come until a few hundred pages into a book. I've read well-written short fantasy novels and well-written long ones. I like the long ones.

I love science fiction and fantasy