- my novel-verse (more than one book) has the following in it: -magic users(mages,most of who happen to be aliens) -alchemy -space ships -cyborgs,and robots -hover boards -deities and cults -ghosts,spirits,demons,etc -witches,vampires,elves ect -virtual reality,cell phones ect is it leaning more towards sci fi,fantasy or is this science fantasy?
Does it matter? It depends on how it's written--the underpinnings of the aliens and their magic, for example.
Depends on what this magic is Star wars had the "foce" and thats not really magic Alchmey? dpends again what it dose and is As for this I'd say its sci fi As more times then not I've read books like that and its listed as such
Does it really matter what genre it is? I always think you should just write your story as you wish it to be, and if it comes to it, let the publisher decide what genre it is
Wow. I think the first thing you need to do with all those elements is to establish what the rules of your universe are - your "laws of physics", so to speak. If you have technology AND magic AND aliens AND deities AND virtual reality, how are you going to ground your readers? Readers need to know what is possible and what is not possible in your world, otherwise there can't be any suspense, or, for that matter, comprehension. Establish the rules of your universe, THEN decide the genre.
genre is tricky and publishers often have a hard time marketing novels that are cross genre, but that's about 100 steps away from where you are now. For now, just write the best story you can and revise the heck out of it. If you plan on writing a series, it's usually a good idea for a first time author to have the first two books completely done and at least good strong outlines for the rest of the series as publishers are averse to taking that kind of risk on someone unproven. But again, those are considerations for the future. If you really want to pin down what the genre is, you have to figure out what are the dominant elements in your story. Some of Guy Gavrial Kay's books dip into the present day (so he has all of our modern conveniences in there) but he definitely writes fantasy. Frank Herbert's Dune books have a lot of fantasy elements, but they are firmly sci-fi. It really all depends on what the relationships are between the various elements of your story.
to maximize your chances i'd suggest going with 'sci-fi/fantasy'... don't restrict your choice of agents to query by trying to make it fit a single genre...
I would start from the fact that you have some definite sci-fi elements: space ships, cyborgs, robots, aliens, virtual reality, cell phones and so on. Alchemy is essentially just chemistry and physics (it is possible to turn base metals into gold -- it just takes a lot of energy!), hoverboards might well be science-based. So what about the remaining elements? Well, remember Clarke's 3rd law: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. So maybe those mages & witches are just doing advanced science that we don't understand (the witches might be using "headology" too). Vampires and elves are just different species (or maybe vampirism is a disease; it has been linked to iron deficiency porphyria). We are left with deities, ghosts, spirits, demons. (Cults can exist anyway.) Your main challenge is working out what they actually are. If they're material beings (or can form themselves into material beings, like Dr Manhattan in Watchmen) then I think you're good to roll with a sort of sci-fi. Not hard sci-fi, but something like the Dr. Who sort of sci-fi where the sonic screwdriver is a magic wand in all but name and fairies are pan-dimensional beings.
I would say sci-fi fantasy, but I don't think it matters in the end. What matters is how it's written.
It matters when you're in the stage where you want to be published. You have to know what genre your story is before you submit it, because you have to submit it to the right literary agent or editor, and then they submit it to a publisher who publishes books in that genre. Even if you for some reason want to submit directly to a publisher, you have to find a publisher of that genre first. OP, it sounds like sci-fi/fantasy.
There are plenty of publishers that cover both sci-fi and fantasy, though, and that are not afrad of genre-crossing.
