Hespire Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The best science fantasy, for me, are stories that
> don't try so hard to represent any genre, but
> rather use the tropes of science and sorcery
> seamlessly, so that neither genre sorely sticks
> out, creating a natural world rather than a
> novelty. Clark Ashton Smith and Jack Vance, I
> think, handle this balance pretty well.
>
Perhaps my favorite Science Fantasy book cover is this one:
The Pnume (Mayflower). A medieval looking painting, that beautifully blends in a fight with a dragon* at the center, and at the back, not too obtrusively, a spaceship or shuttle has landed. It kind of embodies Science Fantasy for me.
*That dragon creature could also, almost be, in my imagination, one of the "
great crimson-wattled things, half dragon" guarding the portals of Namirrha's house in "The Dark Eidolon". I just love it when I (think I can) see spillovers between Vance and Smith, affirming their "mystical" affinity; it becomes a sort of triumph over the denials of their literary connection, which even Jack Vance was uncomfortable to fully admit. And CAS likely never even knew who Vance was, which I find sad; separated by being born of different generations.