Futuristic Fantasy? WTF is that?

Okay, I know that the terms futuristic and fantasy don’t seem to go together.  When most people think of fantasy, they think LOTR, the Wheel of Time, Valdemar, etc.  Even though urban fantasy has grown in popularity in recent years, the notion of fantasy set in the future might be a bit confusing.

It’s not really new, though I don’t think anyone has ever used the term “futuristic fantasy” before.  Piers Anthony did a little of this in his Incarnations series–mixing fantasy with SF to a limited extent, but most Science Fantasy has leaned very heavily on “pseudo-science” like psionics–i.e.  Julian May’s Saga of Pliocene Exile and her related Intervention series.

No one has really taken the concepts of fantasy and mixed them so thoroughly with scientific and futuristic elements like starships, genetic engineering, and the like.  Oh, the RPG Shadowrun, with its cyberpunk concepts, did a little of this, but I like to think I took it a little farther.  Grafting some fantasy elements onto a generally cyberpunk universe worked well, as far as it went, but I’ve been doing this to some extent or another since the mid eighties.

One of my goals from the beginning was to create a fantasy universe that stripped away the mystical elements so many depend on, yet still keeping with many of the basic premises.  One of my beliefs is that “supernatural” is a complete misnomer, that NOTHING in the universe can be supernatural, for all that exists is somehow natural–weird as it might seem.

So in my universe I define nothing as existing outside the natural order.  “Super” or “para” NORMAL,” sure.  But not supernatural.  The “gods” are humans altered by an alien disease.  Vampires and lycanthropes are humans changed by Loki’s Sin.  Magic is a human birthright that uses energy left over from the creation of new universes via quantum “many worlds” theory.  Goblins are human children, stolen and twisted by a combination of magic and technological know-how.  Trolls are people who were defiled by the effects of yet another nanovirus created by Loki.  Imps are extremly complex spells given self-awareness.

I wanted to change the rules, to look at fantasy from a totally different direction.  I like to believe I succeeded, but I guess only time will tell.