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Most people believe Fantasy to be a limitless genre. I disagree. There are hidden boundaries of fantasy that seem to elude people. In fact, fantasy seems to be filled with more clichés than any other genre in the business.

Now, I notice alot of people think that science fiction is some kind of limitation when compared to fantasy. But the difference is- there's a hell of alot less cliché in science fiction then there is in fantasy. Sure, there's still space opera and the Star Trek formula (Charming, manly captain, warrior person, doctor/"moral" person, and smart person=crew) but there's also stuff like Dune, any of Isaac Asimov's books, Roger Zelazny, Stephen Baxter- they're genii.

So why is it the genre where the only limit is your mind (supposedly) is filled with all sorts of rinse and repeat novels, when the supposedly limited one is the one with all the unique ideas?

And, surprisingly, there are more furries in sci-fi as well. (Anyone ever heard of Sebastian of Mars/Haydn of Mars? Yup. Furries. On Mars. No joke.)

/end rant

I agree completely. The last truly unique fantasy books that I read were C.S. Lewis' Chronicle's of Narnia. However, good sci-fi really has the capacity for being unique. In addition to what you mentioned, there's stuff like Firefly, which could only have come from the mind of Joss Whedon. And there's the older Stargate stuff(SG:A and the later seasons of SG1 did get fairly repetitive, but the movie and the first few seasons were great).

I disagree, but also would like to point out that fantasy really is just easier to write for a starting novelist. Sci-Fi is great, it's thought-inducing, has that cool factor, and the only barriers are the ones you set.

One problem is that there isn't any clear definition between science fiction and fantasy. The man on the street will tell you that one has lasers and the other has swords. Another might tell you that everything falls under fantasy, and only stuff like Asimov's works, the 'what if?' stories, go under sci-fi. You can't really separate the two completely, it's a matter of opinion. As a few examples, Star Wars and Artemis Fowl. Yeah. I know. Kiddy book. Screw you.

The man on the street might also take a step further and tell you what other differences between the two might be, in which case you might realize that most people think fantasy stories consist of a bunch of sword/bow wielding guys going on epic quests to save the land/princess, and sci-fi stories are cowboy stories re-invented for the next frontier.

Then there is the inevitable usage of magic and technology. Neither genre would be complete without these. I now point you towards the second half of my first sentence. Limitless as you think sci-fi may be, a writer still has to explain how stuff works in his little universe. Whereas the fantasy writer can go on about mana, and potions, and all the little arcane details of his magical nonsense, a science-fiction writer actually has to think, and make sense, lest nerds come knocking at his door asking why the solar-warping-field-semiconductor-processing-chip is made out of steel and not silicon. It puts off a lot of people from writing sci-fi.

As to your cliché thingy, the fantasy world is easily split up into those who follow Tolkien, Salvatore or Lewis. Those guys wrote the roots of what most of us now take as fantasy. (Salvatore less so, I don't like him.) Beyond that, I can't really answer you, because I'm not too sure of what you mean by 'limits'. It might be that the people in paragraph four tend to stick to the rules and worlds these guys created, changing the names and plots only slightly most of the time, which ends up giving you the idea that there are clichés.

Maybe it's because I like reading books with simple stories to follow, and don't place such a high empathsis on geniuses writing books for me to read, or that I simply prefer 'kiddy' books, but I really don't see the point of your argument. If you think more people need to write books for sci-fi, instead of what you consider an exhausted genre, do something about it. Go to the story board, write a good sci-fi story and post it there so that the rest of us have some semblance of standard to look up to.

my steel solar-warping-field-semiconductor-processing-chip is molecularly consistant with silicon.....sci-fi has it's limits if you follow existing and known physics, but apart from that hell, there ain't no limit.

(for example one of the ship in my story carries a weapon that could theoretically rip the fabric of space/time apart given enough juice flowing through it....has it's own seperate shield to protect the crew from the effects at much lower levels)

The way I see it (and this is just me), the only difference between sci-fi and fantasy is the level of technology available. That's it.

Now, before everyone starts throwing magic around (which is dangerous, by the way), you've gotta realize that most sci-fi has it's own magic, downplayed though it may be. A lot of technology in sci-fi functions like magic in fantasy. The author can create as detailed a description of how it works as they want, but most of the time it's based, at least partially, on fiction. As a consequence, pieces of technology in sci-fi are incredibly diverse, and each one could presumably operate in it's own unique way, but in most fantasy work, magic functions in only one way, and all things of magic must follow the same rules (exceptions exist, of course).

The most readily available example I have is a character I've been playing around with in my head (figuratively). This character wields a man-portable, high-power railgun. The problem here is that by known technology, the energy require for such a weapon would undoubtedly require a massive generator that would be far too heavy for someone to carry easily. However, since it isn't the future yet, the simple advent of something such as a Small-Scale Fusion Generator (SSFG) can solve that problem. As long as the technology sounds even remotely plausible, most people are generally willing to accept it.

What it all boils down to is that fantasy and sci-fi are essentially the same, with only two exceptions.
1. Sci-fi has much more advanced technology than fantasy, allowing for greater variety in characters and settings.
2. Sci-fi has the capability of much more diverse magic, under the guise of technology, than (most) fantasy.

Again, that's just how I see it.

I generally divied sci-fi and fantasy by the amount of technology used. If you want to get really semantic, it's all fantasy and sci-fi is just a sub-genre including fantasy based on the use of science. xP

Fantasy is fantasy, while sci-fi takes place in the predicted future. So fantasy is other realities and laws of physics, while sci-fi is what might end up being our own.

I found a good compilation called Fantasy Gone Wrong.

All stories are cliche, as someone (I forget who) has pointed out that every story can be summed up as either someone goes on a journey of a stranger comes to town.

So that would place something like Star Wars in fantasy, but where would Star Trek and Mass Effect go?

Mass Effect was very careful to keep consistency in line with current physics and just took some liberties on the drastic theoretical side, and there is a (controversial) physicist who thinks warp might be possible.