That’s not specific to science fiction, though. The action/adventure/thriller genre is filled with similar scenes…and Star Wars is really more of an action/adventure/thriller story than science fiction. In fact, I’d argue that SW was more fantasy than SF, the Jedis are mages who use magic swords and powerful spells, etc.
fantasy, because it lends itself to greater creativity. futuristic science fiction is rarely creative, more of the author’s interpretation of how the future will be.
among the sci-fi scenarios i’ve read, i’m partila to asimov (robotics, YEAH!)
I much prefer science fiction to fantasy. Although the example in the OP doesn’t apply: I like Tolkien but don’t like Asimov.
That’s a load of bollocks right there. Well-written sci-fi is just as creative as fantasy. Near-future sci-fi tends to be more in the simply predictive nature, but Space Opera and far future stuff is as far removed from our lives today so as to be fantastical and just as creative in its nature.
It’s “Forces of Darkness”. 
It depends on the medium. For literature, I tend toward fantasy; for television and film, science fiction. Or, at least for certain subgenres of science fiction. I’ll give any sci-fi television show a try. I like Doctor Who and Firefly. I’ve also like what I’ve seen of the 2004 Battlestar Galactica, though I’ve yet to see the whole series. These three shows are extremely different in story, setting, and mood, but I find them enjoyable. The sci-fi I enjoy reading, on the other hand, tends to be limited to the dystopian, bound-to-earth varieties (like Brave New World and The Giver, to give two classic examples). I tried to get into other kinds of literary science fiction years ago, but they don’t seem to do anything for me.
Fantasy just doesn’t seem to appeal as much on screen to me, though maybe it’s what I’ve been watching. This extends to mythological adaptations as well. I didn’t like any of the popular fantasy series and movies I’ve seen. Buffy, Angel, Xena, Merlin, The Seeker – they all fell flat for me or lacked appeal from the onset. The only live-action fantasies I’ve really enjoyed on screen are Lord of the Rings (which I read before), Stardust (more of a faerie story than a typical fantasy), and The Princess Bride (parody). A friend has recommended Pan’s Labyrinth, so perhaps that can be added to the list when I get around to watching it. I guess fantasy is harder to be convincing on screen for me.
If I had to choose, though, I’d say fantasy appeals to me more. Gritty or glamorized, I’ll take the pastoral and quasi-medieval setting over spaceships any day.
See, I wonder if it’s because these differences are dictated by fairly shallow personal tastes (modern v. medieval; science v. magic). I imagine most people like well-crafted stories and engaging characters - we all just gravitate towards different window dressing.
This. Yes, it’s all just making shit up but I like SF best when there is very little of the made up shit: a couple of pieces of techology we don’t have but everything else the same and then let’s see how it all works out.
I hear what Lyn says about self consistency in fantasy. However, from what I have seen there is much more “wooliness” about the magical powers that feature in fantasy than the technological changes that feature in hard SF. The quality and quantity of the magical powers in fantasy are ill defined and are flexible enough to be whatever the plot requires.
The best SF has, to me, more of a sense of an unwritten pact between writer and reader that - leaving aside certain well defined departures - the writer has an obligation to keep basic physics etc real.
Of course I’m the first to agree that there is a whiff of the true scotsman about what I say: there is very woolley SF out there but I don’t consider it to be true hard SF.
I used to like F and SF pretty equally, but lean much more toward SF now. Part of the reason is the language. Stilted/archaic language is part of the setting for fantasy, and I don’t think that should change, but I’ve lost my taste for it lately. Another part is the world-building. Fantasy tends to have a LOT of the same creatures, magic, races, tropes, etc.
SF has higher requirements for worlds and settings, and has to follow more stringent rules most of the time. The limitations and boundaries of even impossible SF tech that has some basis in real world physics makes for more interesting places. It’s the same with most art, really. Working around what you can’t do makes you more creative at shaping what you can work with.
I tend more toward fantasy, though I have much more patience for mediocre sci-fi than I do for mediocre fantasy.
What it ultimately comes down to for me, is that I like stories that have something true to say about life, the universe, and everything. And, I am a sucker for stories that question the role of imagination in shaping/perceiving reality. Fantasy tends to go in this direction more often than sci-fi, though not exclusively.
Here’s a not-so-solid comparison of two similar, decent-enough movies that represent the sci-fi and fantasy elements of the same story.
The Truman Show: Ultra-light sci-fi story about a kid purchased by a corporation and living in a bubble (unbeknownst to him) where all the people are actors hired to give him a sense of reality so his owners can make a profit by turning his life into an ultimate reality TV show.
Stranger Than Fiction: Fantasy story about a man who, it turns out, is the real-life embodiment of the main character in a yet-to-be-completed novel.
Both of these movies deal with questions like “what is reality,” “am I in control of my own destiny,” and, “what is happiness, and how important is it?” The Truman Show spends a great deal of energy on the mechanics of Truman’s situation. How is it that his virtual reality operates? What exactly is behind the Potemkin Village of his universe? Stranger Than Fiction, however, doesn’t bother with the how/why/what. It says, “ok, Harold is tied up in the story that the author is writing, in some inexplicable way. We don’t know why or how, nor does anyone in the story spend much time worrying about those questions. What truths can we explore from within this fantastic situation?”
One might argue about how well these movies fit into the genres I’ve stuffed them into, but it represents a fundamental difference between sci-fi and fantasy, in a general sense.
That said, I can think of dozens of books/stories/shows off the top of my head that defy what I just wrote. For me, stories like Stranger Than Fiction, that worry less about convincing me that something is actually possible and spend more time exploring humanity within whatever context the author dreamed up, are the ones I like.
Song of Ice and Fire has a lot of themes going on, but gender is a pretty major one, specifically how the various female characters make their way through a patriarchal society. Arya chooses one path, Sansa another, Daenerys a third, Cersei a fourth. None of these paths are really grounded in traditional feminist theory, but they’re all compelling and plausible responses to patriarchy.
Le Guin, of course, writes a great deal of insightful stuff in her Earthsea books.
Mieville’s been mentioned twice (once by you, right?)
His Dark Materials, by Phillip Pullman, plays a lot with the role of government and church in society, to the extent that a lot of folks find it unreadable (I freakin’ adored it).
Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint plays with gender preference, although not in an especially deep way.
Graham Joyce’s The Limits of Enchantment plays in great depth with gender and class.
In fact, when I think about my favorite fantasy books I’ve ever read, they almost all have some deep sociopolitical stuff going on in them.
I prefer fantasy to science-fiction, but I’m not really sure why. Certainly I’d rather read a better-than-average SF over an average fantasy. I think I just get a kick out of magic, is all :).
I think this is a very likely explanation. I know that I usually prefer science, and so it’s not surprising that I gravitate toward science fiction. Certainly I have a lot more tolerance for “engineering porn” than many readers and so I do enjoy works that focus more heavily on that, though I agree that some authors do so at the expense of their characters. (Larry Niven, I’m looking at you! Don’t ever write without a co-author again!)
However, I think there’s one major difference between the fields-- the presence of a large short-story community. The majority of serious science-fiction writers made their names by writing short fiction*, and I think that the perceived necessity of doing so benefits the field by encouraging clarity and succinct thought. I feel that bloat is a less-common problem in science fiction than it is in fantasy and I believe that the prevalence of science fiction short stories is at least partly responsible. The hallmark of sword-and-sorcery fantasy, on the other hand, seems to be the series of giant novels, each several hundreds or even thousands of pages long. For all of J.R.R.T.'s apparent graphomania and obsessive creation in Middle Earth, he really only produced five novel-length books (The Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, and the Silmarillion), all of which are shorter than average by the genre’s standards. I rarely, if ever, enjoy sequels, and so the fantasy genre’s focus on sequels does not appeal to me.
I realize that many science fiction writers write their stories in a common universe or timeline (Heinlein’s Future History, Niven’s Known Space, Le Guin’s Hainish Worlds, Varley’s Nine Worlds, and so on) but these works are less often direct sequels, and so I prefer this for some reason. When science fiction does follow the giant sequence of sequels pattern, I usually feel like it suffers.
*With a few notable exceptions, like Michael Chricton.
Miéville is…iffy. That’s why I specifically called him out in my first post to this thread. The Bas Lag books are as much Science Fiction as Fantasy - his “magicians” are scientists, often as not, and he talks about magic in very science-laden terms, and the rest of his stuff varies too - haven’t gotten the latest (definitely science fiction) one yet, but people I respect think it’s great.