Editing Science Fantasy (section)

===Hard Fantasy===

A somewhat special case in the Science Fiction vs. Fantasy argument: There exists a classification known as "Hard Fantasy", where there is a magic system, yes, but the author goes out of their way to spell out all the important details, and tries to follow through on the logic of such a system.

As a general rule, if magic is regarded as an almost scientific force of nature and subject to the same sort of rules and principles, you have Hard Fantasy.

Interestingly, it's possible to mix "Hard Fantasy" with a "Soft Magic" system, where the exact mechanics of magic are left vague; this can happen when the costs and limits of magic are clear, even as the exact mechanics are not. For example, in Lord of the Rings, great things can be accomplished by "magic"<ref>And it is explicitly spelled out that the Elven word for what Hobbits call "magic" is "craft" or "skill"</ref>, but it is noted that such great workings come at a great cost; Sauron, for example, poured a lot of his power into the various Rings he crafted, which in the end left him much weaker without them, but with them, particularly with the One, he was unstoppable. No particular details of how Sauron and Elves crafted their Rings are given, but the costs, and rough powers of the Rings (which, among other things, allow the user to defy entropy and act as power amplifiers) ''are''.

This approaches Science Fantasy from the other direction, as it were. Examples of "Hard Fantasy" include [[Exalted]], [[A Song of Ice and Fire]], and [[Discworld]].