If you're a Sci-Fi fan, chances are good that you don't have an entirely positive reaction to the fantasy genre. This attitude has been around for many years, with science fiction and fantasy defining the two halves of the dichotomy of speculative fiction. Science fiction is characterized by being future-oriented, rationalistic, and technological. The stories tend to be split between character driven and setting centered.
Fantasy is a unicorn of a different color.
Johns Clute and Grant, in their just-released Encyclopedia of Fantasy , center their definition of fantasy around the element of impossibility. This is in contrast to science fiction, which in its very roots plays the game of the possible, or the possibly possible. Mythological paradigms are used in a more overt and traditional way than in science fiction, be they quests, magical objects, demons, dragons, etc. Most important, the world pictured in fantasy is ruled by magical structures. Magic, rather than science, underlies reality.