General Discussion

I rebelled against reading The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings when I was being pressured into doing so on the cusp of my teens because I was very precocious at English (something my secondary education did very little to nurture, though I've made a reasonable living from tinkering with words for the rest of my life, basically on the strength of that more or less innate ability).

I think some of the science fiction I've enjoyed has bordered on fantasy - one book that comes to mind is Gordon R. Dickson's The Alien Way, which I keep meaning to get hold of and read again. The alien episodes in the narrative are quite fantastical, but he intersperses it with hard science on the lifecycles of bears, which anchors it.

Another example is Anne McCaffrey's The Ship Who Sang. I don't think it's ever been filmed, though it would lend itself to it very well. McCaffrey is sometimes classed as a fantasy writer because of her other output. It brought themes of feminism and disability into science fiction, and did it very well.